The Unread Book and the Uncorrelated Locus

2026-08-25 · AI-generated insight

Lewontin's famous argument and the AAA's condemnation of Race and Reason are usually filed as separate episodes — one statistical, one political. Read together, they look like the same move performed in two registers: reaching a socially desired conclusion by declining to look at the relevant evidence in aggregate.

Coon's colleagues condemned a book almost none of them had read. Lewontin's argument, in a subtler way, has the same structure. His empirical claim is true: at any randomly chosen single locus, most variation is within groups. But classification doesn't work locus by locus — it works on the correlation structure across many variables. Winegard and Carl's skull example is the counterpoint in miniature: two correlated variables suffice for 80% accuracy, and with thousands of genetic markers, population assignment approaches certainty. This is Edwards's famous rebuttal, but you can see it just by juxtaposing the two quotes. Lewontin examines the variables one at a time, finds each individually weak, and concludes the ensemble is meaningless — the statistical equivalent of voting on a book without opening it.

What's most revealing is Lewontin's second paragraph, where the empirical claim pivots into a normative decree: classification is 'positively destructive' and 'no justification can be offered for its continuance.' That is not a finding; it's a resolution passed at the meeting. Like the AAA statement, it borrows the authority of science to settle a question the evidence hadn't settled — which is precisely the breach of trust the Coon note identifies. The public assumes the scientist has weighed everything and reported honestly; here the conclusion visibly precedes the weighing.

Warne's paper is what happens downstream: because the question was declared closed by fiat rather than by evidence, it never actually closed. Fifty years later researchers are still assembling 'converging lines of evidence' on a topic officially resolved in 1972. Taboos enforced through unread books and unaggregated loci don't end inquiries — they just guarantee the inquiry returns with a grievance attached, and with the institutions' credibility as collateral.

Woven from these notes

The past 30 years of research in intelligence has produced a wealth of knowledge about the causes and consequences of differences in intelligence between individuals, and today mainstream opinion is that individual differences in intelligence are caused by both genetic and environmental influences. Much more contentious is the discussion over the cause of mean intelligence differences between racial or ethnic groups. In contrast to the general consensus that interindividual differences are both genetic and environmental in origin, some claim that mean intelligence differences between racial groups are completely environmental in origin, whereas others postulate a mix of genetic and environmental causes. In this article I discuss 5 lines of research that provide evidence that mean differences in intelligence between racial and ethnic groups are partially genetic. These lines of evidence are findings in support of Spearman’s hypothesis, consistent results from tests of measurement invariance across American racial groups, the mathematical relationship that exists for between-group and within-group sources of heritability, genomic data derived from genome-wide association studies of intelligence and polygenic scores applied to diverse samples, and admixture studies. I also discuss future potential lines of evidence regarding the causes of average group differences across racial groups. However, the data are not fully conclusive, and the exact degree to which genes influence intergroup mean differences in intelligence is not known. This discussion applies only to native English speakers born in the United States and not necessarily to any other human populations.

— Russell Warne Between-Group Mean Differences in Intelligence in the United States Are >0% Genetically Caused: Five Converging Lines of Evidence 2026-07-20

The primary reason that natural philosophers began to classify humans into different races is that human populations look different from one another. Their skin colors, hair textures, facial structures, and stature all differ, often in predictable ways. Furthermore, these differences reflect their divergent geographical origins. In fact, researchers can classify human variation by continent quite accurately using only data from the human skull. (They are able to correctly classify human skulls into black and white Americans with about 80% accuracy, using only two variables.) Therefore, despite the common charge that racial classification is ipso facto racist, and that most Enlightenment typologies of human variety were motivated by prejudices and a desire to rationalize imperial domination, ordinary people and Enlightenment philosophers also took to classifying human differences for the mundane reason that such differences actually exist.

— Bo Winegard, Noah Carl Superior: The Return of Race Science—A Review 2026-07-21

Carleton Coon was one of the greatest anthropologists of the 20th century and a champion of the study of racial differences. In 1961 he was elected president of the American Anthropological Association. It was during this year that Carleton Putnam's infamous book Race and Reason came out. Putnam's book argued that there were significant differences between the races and that this had important political implications. A few anthropologists became upset when they saw the book gain popularity and wanted the AAA to intervene. But they knew that Coon supported the book and that, as a result, having the AAA take action against it would be difficult. So they organized a secret meeting behind Coon's back in order to issue a statement denouncing Putnam's work. Coon found out about the meeting and went to stop it. Upon entering the meeting Coon asked all the association members who had actually read Putnam's book to raise their hands. Only one rose. He then asked for the hands of everyone that had even heard of the book prior to that meeting. Only a few hands rose. None the less, the statement against the book passed. Coon, disgusted by the actions of his peers, resigned from the AAA (1). This incident stands out in the history of science as a particularly clear example of scientists not living up to what people expect of them. People often take what scientists say for granted. They trust that scientists have looked at the evidence rationally and are giving the public as accurate an account of all the relevant facts as they can. When explaining science to laypeople researchers are expected to only make authoritative statements on topics they are knowledgeable of, to not lie about scientific evidence, and to not omit obviously relevant facts. People trust scientists to do these things and so feel comfortable taking what they tell them for granted. (See

2026-07-21

It is clear that our perception of relatively large differences between human races and subgroups, as compared to the variation within these groups, is indeed a biased perception and that, based on randomly chosen genetic differences, human races and populations are remarkably similar to each other, with the largest part by far of human variation being accounted for by the differences between individuals. Human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance.

— Lewontin 2026-07-21