Are Richard Lynn's national IQ estimates flawed?
Trying to gauge the average IQ of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Written by Noah Carl.
Back in 2010, Richard Lynn and Jelte Wicherts had a written debate over the average IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lynn argued it was closer to 70, while Wicherts argued it was closer to 80. Much of the debate concerned the representativeness of samples. Wicherts suggested that Lynn had excluded studies purely because they yielded higher average IQs. Lynn insisted those studies had been excluded because they were based on unrepresentative elite samples, such as private school students.
The debate was never resolved in the sense that neither side conceded much ground. Lynn is now deceased (though others have continued his work, notably David Becker). And Wicherts appears to have moved on to other topics. A skim of his Google Scholar page indicates he hasn’t published anything on national IQ since 2010.
Away from the arcane pages of academic journals, the debate continues to rage on social media. Every so often, one or other version of the national IQ map goes viral. Then a bunch of critics jump in to point out that the underlying figures have been debunked. Even some hereditarians count themselves among Lynn’s critics. Describing his work on national IQ as “profoundly flawed”, Nathan Cofnas has stated that we should not be “making excuses for him”.
Over the last year, criticism of Lynn’s work on national IQ has entered a new phase. A group of academics led by Rebecca Sear has been campaigning for his articles to be retracted on the basis that they are not merely flawed but “explicitly motivated by white supremacist ideology”. (Unmentioned is the fact that Lynn deemed East Asian countries to have the highest average IQs, suggesting it would be more accurate to call him an “East Asian supremacist”.) The campaigners have already managed to get one recent paper by Heiner Rindermann retracted. And they are almost certainly the force behind Elsevier’s decision to “review” all of Lynn’s research. This, in turn, may be what led Elsevier to install two poorly suited editors at Intelligence without consulting the editorial board, thereby prompting mass resignations.
