In retrospect, despite how it stood out, I shouldn’t have made much of just that one Nigerian student, but aside from that, it is not difficult to come across nigerian americans who are accomplished scientists, hold high university positions etc.

A few comments:

-I have gotten the impression for some time Jamaicans might have a higher average IQ than african-americans. Jamaican-americans do seem to perform better than african-americans, though some have greatly overblown this differential. There’s also the oft-made claim the black-white gap is lower in the UK than in the US. Their diaspora population is very large in comparison to Jamaica’s overall population, and are likely very representative. What is your impression? I would guess their genotypic IQ would be around 90.

-Peter Frost somewhere claimed that the IQ of Somalians is around 95, but I forgot the reference.

-How much have you personally examined the educational attainment and social outcomes of african immigrants in the US? You might be familiar with this article, which is likely exaggerated in ways, but it does serve as a starting point: http://www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=528

On a more anecdotal note, I recall seeing a recent documentary on a texas school for gifted children (who’s name sadly escapes me), in which the bar for entry was an IQ of 145. Virtually all of the students were white, east asian and indian- there was one black kid, and they happened to interview his mother, and she turned out to have a Nigerian name. Just one example, but considering their small population in the US and other points, arguably worth nothing.

My disbelief stemmed from his claim on the lack of studies since then, not the relation between brain size and IQ. The more recent paper he referenced was in regards to a single region of the brain that differed between whites and australian aborigines. This prompted me to email Holloway, but I’m still uncertain of the nature of this conclusion he made.

What else do you know of the claim the Masai have 27% middle eastern ancestry?

I don’t find the brain stuff to be compelling. A recent meta-analysis found only a modest (0.24) correlation between brain volume and IQ, so this doesn’t seem to be a particularly good index of cognitive ability.

Re: African Immigrants.

This, specifically, the lack of data — apart from the three studies discussed on pages 13 to 15, was discussed in the cited paper. Black immigrants in general do poorly. But most Black immigrants are West Indian. Typically scores are not presented by region of origin — so it’s difficult to tell. If you can find data, let me know.

Re: GRE

To increase reliability you should average score across years. See here. On average Black Africans do poorly — bear in mind the imperfectness of the measure. So either the ones that come (at least for college and graduate study) are very selected or have low levels of measured ability.

“I find that unlikely. See the relevant discussion here: http://openpsych.net/ODP/2014/07/ethnicrace-differences-in-aptitude-by-generation-in-the-united-states-an-exploratory-meta-analysis/ Also, individuals who are citizens of Black African counties do awful on the GRE math. See: “Snapshot of the Individuals Who Took the GRE® revised General Test 2011-2012″. One would only expect that those who come to the U.S. would do equally poorly, barring rather strong migrant selection. Whatever the case, if you could find and send me test score data broken down by region of origin I would appreciate it. The data overall indicates that Black West Indian and African immigrants perform about as poorly on measure of general aptitude as do native African Americans. Though, disentangling West Indian and African origin Black immigrants is not without difficulty.”

I looked up the GRE reference and found this: http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/snapshot_test_taker_data_2014.pdf

I am not familiar with the GRE, but from what I can tell (starting on page 16 in the corner/20 on the top), african countries generally do admittedly poorly, but I did find some seeming peculiarities, such as kenyans and jamaicans scoring higher than the japanese on 2 of the 3 scores. Regardless, these are apparently within their countries, many of the sample sizes are small, and the africans generally perform at the level of people from other third world countries. I find it unlikely the performance of african immigrants is typical of their home countries and that there is strong selection, but I do not see how you can actually dispute the high performance of african immigrants. Virtually all data I have seen indicates as such, including widespread anecdote. I attended a community college in Worcester, which has a large african immigrant population (mainly from Ghana) and this was my impression as well.

I looked at the paper, and it contains virtually no data on african immigrants- the sole one being the low scores from the study by Richwine, which had a sample size of only 52 and did not break down by country of origin. It’s possible they were from a country who’s immigrants are known to perform poorly, such as Somalia. I do not see how you can much the pronouncement they do as poorly as american blacks by such a vague, small sample.

“Using genome-wide SNP data (publicly available for the Mozabite and Maasai, and collected here for the Yemeni) we show the Yemeni to have ~7% and the Mozabite to have ~26% recent sub-Saharan admixture, while the Maasai have ~27% Middle Eastern admixture.”

This is the very first time I have ever, ever heard the masai have middle eastern admixture. Are they seriously a quarter non-african?

“If one disbelieves there are populational differences in the weight and/or structure of the brain, one should examine the papers by Klekamp and his colleagues, particularly regarding the finding that the primary visual striate cortex of Australian aborigines is significantly larger than in brains from people of European descent (Klekamp et al. 1994). This paper is, to my knowledge, the only paper published since the 1930s that demonstrates a real difference in brain morphology between modern populations.”

How can he make this claim when there are countless studies on brain weight, MRI etc. between the 1930s and 2008? This post is filled with them.

“Well this is strange because on the contrary in my college Africans are outscoring everyone in Houston… The African immigrants are overflowing all the bio-chemistry and math classes. I truly believe there is a lack of research regarding this.”

I find that unlikely. See the relevant discussion here: http://openpsych.net/ODP/2014/07/ethnicrace-differences-in-aptitude-by-generation-in-the-united-states-an-exploratory-meta-analysis/ Also, individuals who are citizens of Black African counties do awful on the GRE math. See: “Snapshot of the Individuals Who Took the GRE® revised General Test 2011-2012″. One would only expect that those who come to the U.S. would do equally poorly, barring rather strong migrant selection. Whatever the case, if you could find and send me test score data broken down by region of origin I would appreciate it. The data overall indicates that Black West Indian and African immigrants perform about as poorly on measure of general aptitude as do native African Americans. Though, disentangling West Indian and African origin Black immigrants is not without difficulty.

Well this is strange because on the contrary in my college Africans are outscoring everyone in Houston. Doesn’t matter if you’re White, African-American, Asian, or German. The African immigrants are overflowing all the bio-chemistry and math classes. I truly believe there is a lack of research regarding this. I understand environments have a great ordeal in regards to intelligence but in order to put race in the matter there needs to be a more global effort with all different nationalities in one room to provide as much of an unbiased research as possible. The thing about research is that 80% of it is always biased whether it’s intentional or un-intentional…and “WE” did a research on that in Psychology class!

I agree Alelle testing & counting may help give us more conclusive results. Any genes must be identified then proven to be more or less prevelant with in racial phenotypes. As for the HMGA2 c-allele I feel it has been adequately ruled out as a culprit in concerns of the low mean IQ of Afro Americans. In my opinion the studies supporting race based IQ disparities are speculative at best. Also I would argue European Americans are far more heterogeneous than Afro Americans. Due to color classism Whites strived to remain genetically “pure” regarding thier mixed offspring as Black or anything other than White. Due to this same classism Blacks placed a high regard on “mixed” blood. Blacks historically where forcibly micegenated with the White slave masters & interbreed of their own free will with poor Whites, Amer-Indians & even Chinese immigrants. Afro Americans are a highly genetically jumbled bunch. im not sure admixture mapping will help until more genes that definitely effect IQ are discovered. So far Ive seen studies that look at the same genetic data but arrive at different conclusions. When it comes to things dealing with mental health & aptitude I would say enviromental stimuli must always be factored in & the case of Afro Americans the case of active discrimination from the out side society is to well documented to dismiss. In my opinion determining the genetic components in this era will always be contaminated by enviromental effects.