Political Correctness and the Study of Racial Differences

Abstract

I tabulate international data showing Africans and Asians scoring at opposite ends of a continuum with Europeans falling in the middle. This Asian-European-African gradient occurs in mean scores on a long list of characteristics including brain size, crime, sex hormones, sexual behavior, personality, family stability, speed of physical maturation, twinning rate, and social organization. It seems to me that only evolutionary theories are able to fully explain the consistency of the pattern across so many variables. Theories about social inequalities and social problems may need to be revised in the light of this new in/onnation. This challenge to the social science orthodoxy brought political correctness out in force against me, some examples of which I document here. However, numerous benefits derive from studying race particularly in the field of medicine which I illustrate with special emphasis on AIDS. I conclude that if more scientists would speak openly about the views they now voice only in private, our world would become not only a safer place, but a more enlightened one as well.