Atheism isn't a worldview, but

[Fred]

If the proposed mechanism is sound, if they can back up their findings, and if others can use the same methods to reach the same conclusions, then what problem would I have with it Fred?

That's just it. You wouldn't have a problem, because it makes eminent sense from a rational pov, and I would agree with you. But not everybody sees it the way you and I do, because I agree with you all the way. (Twice in one day, R. That's gotta suck, huh?)

Link it.

http://orthodoxytoday.org/articles/Wolfe...t-Died.php

You would probably find another article in this Wolfe collection interesting if you were to actually read it, lots of stuff on EO Wilson and his ants, and the raft of shit he took when Sociobiology came out. The relativist wing did as much as they could to turn his name to shit.

Here's the pertinent part re the IQ Cap:

Even more radio–active is the matter of intelligence, as measured by IQ tests. Privately—not many care to speak out—the vast majority of neuroscientists believe the genetic component of an individual's intelligence is remarkably high. Your intelligence can be improved upon, by skilled and devoted mentors, or it can be held back by a poor upbringing—i.e., the negative can be well developed or poorly developed—but your genes are what really make the difference. The recent ruckus over Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's The Bell Curve is probably just the beginning of the bitterness the subject is going to create.

Not long ago, according to two neuroscientists I interviewed, a firm called Neurometrics sought out investors and tried to market an amazing but simple invention known as the IQ Cap. The idea was to provide a way of testing intelligence that would be free of "cultural bias," one that would not force anyone to deal with words or concepts that might be familiar to people from one culture but not to people from another. The IQ Cap recorded only brain waves; and a computer, not a potentially biased human test–giver, analyzed the results. It was based on the work of neuroscientists such as E. Roy John 1, who is now one of the major pioneers of electroencephalographic brain imaging; Duilio Giannitrapani, author of The Electrophysiology of Intellectual Functions; and David Robinson, author of The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and Personality Assessment: Toward a Biologically Based Theory of Intelligence and Cognition and many other monographs famous among neuroscientists. I spoke to one researcher who had devised an IQ Cap himself by replicating an experiment described by Giannitrapani in The Electrophysiology of Intellectual Functions. It was not a complicated process. You attached sixteen electrodes to the scalp of the person you wanted to test. You had to muss up his hair a little, but you didn't have to cut it, much less shave it. Then you had him stare at a marker on a blank wall. This particular researcher used a raspberry–red thumbtack. Then you pushed a toggle switch. In sixteen seconds the Cap's computer box gave you an accurate prediction (within one–half of a standard deviation) of what the subject would score on all eleven subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale or, in the case of children, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—all from sixteen seconds' worth of brain waves. There was nothing culturally biased about the test whatsoever. What could be cultural about staring at a thumbtack on a wall? The savings in time and money were breathtaking. The conventional IQ test took two hours to complete; and the overhead, in terms of paying test–givers, test–scorers, test–preparers, and the rent, was $100 an hour at the very least. The IQ Cap required about fifteen minutes and sixteen seconds—it took about fifteen minutes to put the electrodes on the scalp—and about a tenth of a penny's worth of electricity. Neurometrics's investors were rubbing their hands and licking their chops. They were about to make a killing.

In fact—nobody wanted their damnable IQ Cap!

It wasn't simply that no one believed you could derive IQ scores from brainwaves—it was that nobody wanted to believe it could be done. Nobody wanted to believe that human brainpower is...that hardwired. Nobody wanted to learn in a flash that...the genetic fix is in. Nobody wanted to learn that he was...a hardwired genetic mediocrity...and that the best he could hope for in this Trough of Mortal Error was to live out his mediocre life as a stress–free dim bulb. Barry Sterman of UCLA, chief scientist for a firm called Cognitive Neurometrics, who has devised his own brain–wave technology for market research and focus groups, regards brain–wave IQ testing as possible—but in the current atmosphere you "wouldn't have a Chinaman's chance of getting a grant" to develop it.