The "gap" between the races on matters such as income, education achievement, or the demographics of Google engineers is a source of constant handwringing.
There are two explanations that are publicly admissible:
1) You can slander and libel white people and blame racism 2) You can slander and libel black people and say it's because of "black culture", because black parents don't tell their kids to do well in school
If you take a third position, the position that thousands of years of evolving in different environments and civilization complexity levels meant that there is a different statistical distribution in different traits, which means there is a different
This third position blames no one, yet the holders of this position are called bigots and are banned from conferences if they even mention this view under a pseudonym in an unrelated context. I confronted tptacek, because he is a person that I have up until now respected, yet he called Saletan an idiot for holding this third position. So I was interested in why tptacek called Saletan an idiot, and I was also interested in the more general problem of how to convince reasonable people to stop slandering black people or slandering white people on the issue of the gap between the races.
I also didn't call Saletan an idiot, obviously.
"He apologized for the series of columns he wrote, and acknowledged that he sourced them poorly"
Are you referring to this article? http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur... I read this as him downplaying the certainty of the genetic hypothesis, in order to get the heat off his back. It is pretty obvious he is scared at getting purged: "I don't want this role...You'll have to judge the evidence for yourself." It is not obvious that he changed his mind. And he apologizes for not disclosing Rushton's associations, not for citing Ruston. He doesn't make any claims that Rushton's studies were bad science that should not be cited. Again, sounds like non-apology apology to get the heat off his back. But I can't peer into Saletan's soul so I don't know.
I don't actually think Saletan's article is a great article. I'm lukewarm on how accurate Rushton's stuff is; I think other evidence for the hypothesis that Saletan leaves out is actually more compelling. But I don't think the article is idiotic either.