I guess that applies mostly to people who can be reasonably expected to go to Church. Buddhists for example go to temple. For example, a Korean family with a history of Buddhism would not be expected to go to Church, and as such, simply because they don't go to Church does not mean they are criminals. To this particular family, criminalism and temple might have an inverse relationship instead.  
 
It is my belief that "Church" has nothing to do with it. It probably has more to do with social interaction and the reasonable transfer of values through interaction with people who are a bit wiser (monks, priests etc...). This interaction is often more readily available in places like a church (a temple, synogogue etc...). Maybe even the strong social ties have something to do with it too. A strong base of belief, and a good pillar to rely on rather than simply wandering from unreliable social network to unreliable social network.

Asian American: All(152.02, 9.84, 8.4%), F(151.69, 9.56, 4.5%), M(152.41, 10.15, 3.9%) 
Caucasian: All(152.47, 8.71, 65.0%), F(151.91, 8.57, 30.4%), M(152.96, 8.80, 34.7%) 
African American: All(142.43, 8.48, 10.4%); F(142.25, 8.30, 6.8%), M(142.78, 8.82, 3.6%) 
 
Where do people get the idea that the variance for Asians is lower? What data give them that idea? I saw data for the GRE too and it seems to paint the same picture (decent mean + high variance). I continuously read this idea of a narrow variance throughout the net, and yet everytime i see data Asians in general always have higher variance (though sometimes lower means i guess).

Anyways, enough of my rant. If someone could crunch some numbers that would be amazing. In my mind, even if the numbers do not explain the lack of Asian creativity, it might point towards FUTURE asian creativity or maybe FUTURE lack of creativity. Science is fun because you can make predictions based on data when it defies previous expectations.

I actually read up on it because it bothered me a lot, his logic. Being a boat person is not always a direct result of being involved with the Democratic regime of the south. You could leave for other reasons as well. The boat people however are relatives of those in combat (the 2/3 who are Vietnamese). The 1/3 who are ethnic Chinese often were not in any form of combat, but were businessmen who were actually exiled for simply being Chinese. Even though they were not directly in any combat, it seems like the Vietnamese communist government were afraid of Chinese spies and distrusted the Chinese ethnic group due to the Chinese attack on Vietnam in 1979. The percentage of ethnic Chinese of ethnic Chinese in the boat people class actually does not reflect the percentage of ethnic Chinese orphans, they are not actually related. It makes more sense to believe that there are way more ethnic Vietnamese orphans. The disproportionate amount of ethnic Chinese in the boat people class also makes sense due to the general hatred towards the Chinese during the time, forcing them to leave. Forcing someone to leave your land doesn't produce as many orphans as fighting in combat though.

I highly doubt anyone would somehow choose a majority orphaned Chinese kids for a study when the majority of the orphaned in Vietnam were Vietnamese children. Lynn is kind of ridiculous at times. 
 
badly worded, let me give it another try. What i meant was that, it is ridiculous to believe that it is likely that a study can contain mainly Chinese orphans when the children were picked up at a Vietnamese orphanage, in country with mainly Vietnamese orphans, due to a war whereby the Chinese ethnic group within the nation refused to fight, hence not producing many orphans. It is possible that maybe one or two of the randomly chosen children were chinese, but as a whole, fit is not enough to skew the numbers to the extend that someone would throw them away altogether or try to explain it away in the manner that Lynn did. It is much more likely that the majority of the chosen children were Vietnamese.  
 
Someone probably already mentioned this stuff before, but it kind of annoys me how Lynn did that. His book had so much potential, would have been a much more solid book if he didn't have all those small flaws in them.

Several studies have found that Oriental populations tend to have high mean IQs, strong visuo-spatial abilities but relatively weaker verbal abilities, as compared with Caucasian populations in the United States and Europe. The present paper reports data on these claims for 19 Korean infants adopted by families in Belgium. The children were tested with the WISC at a mean age of 10 yr. Their mean IQ was 118.7, the verbal IQ was 110.6 and the performance IQ 123.5. The results are interpreted as confirming those obtained from other Oriental populations. 
 
There seems to be a few studies on adopted Asian children. There seems to have been one by Clark & Hanisee in 1982 (i think, if my memory serves me right) on adopted Vietnamese and Korean children (into White Belgian and American families). Once again, both the adopted Vietnamese and Korean children outperformed their national averages by at least 10 points when it comes to IQ. It seems like the Lynn study didn't include Vietnamese children.  
 
On a side note, did anyone notice Lynn's bias against the Vietnamese? He doesn't seem to base his numbers on the Vietnamese on anything substantial, and he explains away higher than expected Vietnamese IQ by saying they must have somehow randomly tested chinese people instead of Vietnamese. He even refused to take numbers that were gathered recently (both hovering above 99) and instead made an estimate of 95 or something in his latest edition, basing it on an average of Thailand and China (once again, instead of using data). The main seems biased against the Vietnamese at times (i've noticed since the Vietnamese IQ thing is often brought up as an attack on Lynn's weak scientific method). I found his specific claim that the adopted Vietnamese children being chinese is kind of ridiculous. Mainly because it comes without any proof, and is based mainly on speculation (bad for a scientist in my opinion, speculating without proof), especially considering the fact that during the Vietnam War the Chinese ethnic group were notorious for refusing to fight in the war (low death rate). Most orphans were a result of families that actually were involved in the war (Vietnamese familities). I highly doubt anyone would somehow choose a majority orphaned Chinese kids for a study when the majority of the orphaned in Vietnam were Vietnamese children. Lynn is kind of ridiculous at times.

Yes, this has bothered me as well. The whole culture is very literate ... and I know plenty of Chinese people, both those who were educated in China and those who were educated in Western countries, and they are no verbal slouches, so I do not understand the claims that they lag in verbal skills compared to math skills. 
 
There are probably a variety of reasons. Maybe cultural stereotype? Most Chinese are immigrants and don't know English at the same level as Caucasian peers. The problem with this is, testing you on a language you are not %100 fluent in isn't definitive of your skills in language. It's like trying to determine the IQ of America by giving them a Chinese language test. I think the verbal lag of Chinese people is greatly exaggerated, although probably not unfounded. There might be a slight defeciency, but I doubt it is as big as some people try to make it out to be. I actually know many Asian lawyers, they compete just fine with their Caucasian peers. Law is a field i assume requires language skills. Just look at the incoming class of Harvard, Yale, Stanford for LAW (yeah, most people think Asians only represent 20% for non-Artsy stuff, but check up for Law, i think you'd be surprised). So either Asians are at least average on the verbal sector, or they work hard enough to overcome it. Either way.

Oh, full title of book i was mentioning is "Science and Civilization in China." I assume that's the book people are referring to when mentioning Needham at times as well.

"What is not clear to me is that they did invent gunpowder or cannon and whether Needham exercised enough caution in making his claims or that he understood that many works were attributed to earlier authors to lend them more authority." 
 
No one really knows who invented the canon. You're right, Needham didn't exercise much caution. On page 311 of his book called Science and civilization he actually mentioned the Vietnamese as a possible inventer of the canon, and that there was evidence that the canon was actually brought into China during a conquest of Annam (name of Vietnam during that time) during the Ming Dynasty. He simply explained it away by saying that the metal-smiths in Vietnam "could have" been Chinese metal smiths without giving any further evidence. Saying that the chinese "could have" introduced the cannon in Vietnam earlier, and then it "could have" been reintroduced into China years later when China invaded Vietnam. It was a weak rebuttal, and those few paragraphs alone were not convincing enough to make me believe China invented it. There seems to be a good chance that Vietnam actually invented it. Unless i read it wrong, but check it out yourself.

"can expect to compare a nation filled with geologists to produce more nobel laureates than a nation filled with a more diverse body of Physiscists and Chemists etc..."  
 
It should be "can't expect" just in case someone reads carefully and gets confused.

"does east asia punch at its weight in proportion to its 25% or so of the world's population?" 
 
Probably not. Asia still has problems in that sector. But i have no doubt that things are changing, and the Asian nations are gathering a much larger share of acclaim than they used to. Year by year it seems like the number of asian recipients of big prizes are growing. I don't doubt that it's probably a function of the economic growth somehow as well. More wealth = better labs.  
 
The one thing that might be interesting in crunching numbers is to compare the population of educated engineers/scientists and compare that to the number of laureats in that nation. Just comparing total population to amount of laureates would produce a skewed understanding. For example, India and China combined probably make up a large chunk of the world's population. 20% or so. But how many people in India and China actually get an education? How many of them actually get an education at the post-graduate level that rivals European education? How many of them actually have higher education that would prepare them to be creative in ways that would actually make them contenders for the nobel prize? You can expect to compare a nation filled with geologists to produce more nobel laureates than a nation filled with a more diverse body of Physiscists and Chemists etc... Even though there is 1 billion people in China for example, by no means do they have as many people (by percentage of their population) having completed post secondary. It's changing, but it's still not quite there. 
 
I guess Japan would be a more fair comparison (their educational level actually is pretty good up to the High School level), so a comparison is more valid between US and Japan for example.  
 
Still, another issue i want to bring up about Japan, on top of having a corporate culture that hinders creativity, also has an educational system that hinders creativity and knowledge (surprising that knowledge is in there eh?). Japan is known to work their students to the bone up until High School graduation. But Japan is also known to have the most relaxed post-secondary educational system in the world. Even if you go to the most difficult school in Japan (University of Tokyo), students are known to sleep in class (that is if they show up at all). They drink, sleep and eat. That is all they do. Teachers are known to give out automatic As, there is no curve! No incentive to compete once they've accepted. Why? It is partially tied once again to the corporate structure. Corporations in Japan actually prefer blank slates (who are potentially smart, proven by acceptance into big name schools). They don't actually want new employees to know anything. They want to train new recruits to fit exactly like a puzzle into their corporate structure, learning the system as it was taught to them, by way of spoon feeding. There i
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One must also note that scientific advancement is greatly hindered by a lack of incentives in Asia. I don't know how Korea and China works, but specifically in Japan it is still a problem. You only have to check out the bio of the man who invented the blue LED. He was basically driven out of his company, despite having developed something that accounts for a large part of their current income. He asked for a percentage of the earnings (something that is easy to get in teh US), but was instead given a bonus of $5000 for something that gave the company a source of income worth hundreds of millions per year. He sued and eventually got a few million and moved to the US altogether. When the execs of the company were interviewed they actually said something along the lines of "him leaving is no big loss, we prefer to have someone more normal working for us, he was selfish for wanting compensation for working for a company that gave him a job." 
 
To deny culture having a play is kind of foolish. In this case, corporate culture can make it harder to strive. Who wants to spend an extra 30 hours a week fora year to develp something new and be given only 5000 dollars? It's ridiculous over ther sometimes as well.

For over 2 thousand years Asians in general focused on literature rather than math and science. If you ever wanted to become something in life all you gotta do back (even just 150 years ago) was to memorize the confucious classics, write an exam and impress the Emperor by writing a few original poems.  
 
People who don't understand the history of Asian education would bring up the idea of a "higher asian aptitude in math" and suggest that Asians are not performing according to what the average IQ would suggest. However, one must realize that the sciences were not even incorporated into the educational system until about 70 years ago. Science was not valued, even though China for example was technologically the most advanced nation for a while, there was no real value put on science education, instead education was always focused on the Arts. 
 
The phenomenon whereby Asians in general value science only really kicked in within the last 120 years in Japan, and last 70 years or so in China. Occurred mainly after having seen the value of technology first hand through what was brought by the West. Ever since, it's been a catch up game.  
 
Asians are actually doing pretty well for nobel prizes. When making comparisons, one should really only look at the past 50 years of nobel laureates for an even slightly fair comparison (anything past 50 years ago there weren't many tech schools in Asia to begin with, everyone was still based on Arts with the government trying to force science to advance within the nation). Not only that, but the Nobel prize is very West oriented. 50 years ago Asians didn't even know who Nobel was, nevermind that he had a prize named after him. The committee in Sweden didn't focus on Asian scientists, nor did Asian people care about nominating. 
 
Half the time I see people posting ideas such as "asians have higher IQ but they have lower variance" which is untrue, because the variance is actually higher as well, it's almost as if the West is afraid of losing their dominance eventually once Asia catches up. Already Japan has developed an engine that runs on water (once thought to be an idea of science fiction, but yes, check out Genepax). The technique of changing skin cells into stem cells was developed by two teams, once in Japan and one in America (the main researchers in America were actually Chinese, the supervisor was Western, but his contributions are small compared to the main researcher).  
 
Asians are a force to be reckoned with. It's only beginning to show now, but they are pretty scary. I'm just really hoping the US and UK can figure out a way to keep China at bay. Japan is an ally, but China is iffy. Who knows what they'll do once they're #1 in tech and economics.

Haista vittu !