JL: No. DavidB: Yes. I am not bothering with the details of some months having different numbers of days, with leap years and so on. None of that arcana would make any difference to the larger point. (Figuring out precisely the correct way to handle leap years is an interesting statistical question . . .

Ruchira Datta: Raymond wrote the well-regarded "The Art of UNIX Programming." If that does not meet your criteria for serious software expert, I am not sure what would.

1) I am happy to "acknowledge the point that racist groups might not correctly report the facts." In fact, the same is somtimes true of non-racist groups. 
 
2) "To him the fact that blacks do better in college football is as plain as day and that justifies citing anybody to support that claim." This is as "plain as day" to anyone who watches college football. I don't think that there is a single FBS team (out of 100+) --- excepting, possibly, the military academies --- in which African-Americans are not over-represented relative to their share of the population. 
 
3) "As with all complex human activities there are multiple factors affecting the outcome. It's amazing how often people in the HBD-sphere forget this." Which people in the HBD-sphere forget this? I don't know a single HBD-blogger who would disagree with this obvious truism.

1) Caste Football is making a series of empirical claims. If you don't believe them, you can check those claims. If a noxious group X claims that the sun will rise in the east, they may be right or wrong. 
 
And, as pointed out above, in this case the data contradict the central tenet of caste football. When group X produces data that goes against their prior beliefs then, on average, I am more likely to believe the data.  
 
I poked around a bit on various college teams websites. I found nothing that contradicted the claims from Caste Football and much to support. Is there a specific team whose data you distrust? 
 
2) Steve: I would tend to doubt that admixture tells the story here. Judging by skin color, there is a wide range of ancestry among black players, in the SEC and elsewhere. 
 
3) daveinboca: Agreed. There is clearly something of a social/cultural phenomenon related to region. If you are big and fast and grow up in the south, local football coaches will come looking for you, no matter what your color. That happens a lot less in, say, New York City. So, it is not just raw population that matters but the intersection of population and sorting efficiency. 
 
I was just amused by the "sunshine" comment, especially in conjunction with "they're coming for the speed." Every knowledgeable football fan knows what that means . . .

I believe that Caste Football is reliable on this sort of stuff. You can check their totals for individual teams if you like. (Keep in mind that players get injured, starters get benched and so on.) I don't know any college football fan who would disagree with the claim that the SEC has a higher percentage of black players than other conferences. 
 
Note, also, that it is not clear why Caste Football would want to lie about this. Their thesis is that white football players are unfairly discriminated against by coaches. If that were true, one would expect to see teams with more white players do better. The fact that the most successful conference is the least white one contradicts their prior beliefs.

Apologies if this is too off-topic, but whenever HIV articles come up, I always wonder about Duesberg and the other HIV-is-a-harmless-retrovirus folks. What do GNXP folks think of that stuff? I would be especially curious to here from gcochran.

Tyler notes that his post made clear from the beginning that: 
 
I was offering my own views on the issues and not making a comparison with Steve at all. 
 
True! 
 
1) For readers of GNXP, I think that the most interesting aspect of your post was not your own views (to the extent that we can figure them out) but whether or not you do, in fact, differ from Steve. Big picture, there is virtually nothing in your post with which Steve would disagree. I realize that you are not claiming to capture Steve's views, but it is interesting to note that your stated views are, as best I can tell, indistinguishable from his. The tricky part is that you only address a subset of what matters in the dispute. 
 
2) Much more interesting than a debate about whether or not you are comparing your views to Steve's is the question that came up in your own comment thread. Let me rephrase it: 
 
If you believed what Steve (and James Watson) believes --- that IQ and race are meaningful scientific concepts and that the average IQ among (some) races differs by a practically significant amount --- would you admit it? If you did admit it, what would happen to some aspects of your professional life, like your NYT column? 
 
That's a much harder question. Care to answer it? 
 
PS. Thanks for taking the time to comment on this thread.

I just put up a new post that is too long. What magic html do I need to add to get the 
 
Read full post.... 
 
break to work? Thanks.

JQ at Crooked Timber provides this. To my suggestion for another round. 
 
DK, I?ve said my piece for now, but I?d be interested to read a GNXP view of the main developments in recent decades, taking account of the Flynn effect. If someone at GNXP wants to write something like this, I?ll certainly make some comments and may respond at greater length. 
 
If I knew the literature better, I would do this myself. But I am just a dabbler. 
 
Could someone do a post (or point me to one already done)? Help bring the good word of GNXP to the sheltered masses at Crooked Timber!

Thanks for the help. The thing that I was most looking for was a handy literature summary to refute the claim that the "only significant new information in the last few decades" on intelligence and heredity is the Flynn Effect. My sense (I am no expert) is that a lot has been accomplished in the genetics of IQ in the last few years.) I tried to find a handy GNXP literature review post but couldn't locate one.

Although I haven't studied the legacy data at Harvard as closely as I have at Williams, I think that the average SAT scores of legacies and non-legacies is virtually identical. Now, this isn't a fair comparison since more non-legacies than legacies are likely to fall into other preferred categories (URM and athletes mainly). But even if we match legacies with similar students in terms of other attributes, the gap is probably quite small.