Great comment. As you say, denying the research outright is playing a similar tune to those who would abuse the research to support pre-existing notions about everyone's rightful places in society.
We should be extremely skeptical of any argument that serves solely to justify the positions those in power, which is a typical endpoint for too many discussions of genetics. Using science to validate the status quo and describe certain economic and social classes as superiors/inferiors is a cruel perversion, but outright denying the science is similarly dishonest and not very convincing either.
Genetics are powerful, but only a piece of the great puzzle underlying human traits and behaviors. Especially when considering life at the individual level, you can't easily make any declarative statements about someone's potential, or even clearly discern the total effect of genes on their most basic traits like height without also considering a host of other factors with similar weightings. Beyond the ambiguity surrounding how genes and environment conspire to produce our traits, as Chomsky argues, the traits that are rewarded with wealth and power are often arbitrary: they are certain traits that can be identified in those who already have wealth/power in a self-justification of the existing hierarchy.
So even if we take the science at face value, it is quite a stretch to say that the science supports the current stratification. The two are not casually linked.
Agreed, the trick is to keep policy at the individual level. Because assumptions or observations of group behavior cause problems on both the right and the left.
For instance, there is a strong progressive assumption that the male/female divide if it were truly fair would be 50/50 in all industries (or at least the ones they focus on, e.g. comp sci).
But you can't on the one hand make bold statements about expected outcomes and then remain blind to the science of group differences. These issues would be far simpler if solved by focusing purely on individual achievement.
Given we have a fixed amount of effort to apply to scrutinizing superficially reasonable but deeply poor arguments, we should focus on those that -- if false -- have the most deleterious effect on utility, broadly defined. If social equity is a component of the utility function, and I think for many it is, then power-preserving arguments would be such a target.
This could really be articulated in any way you choose, but no it doesn't follow that "we should be more skeptical of arguments that facially seem to support the powerful at the expense of the weak" is an irrational or wrong position.
We should be extremely skeptical of any argument that serves solely to justify the positions those in power, which is a typical endpoint for too many discussions of genetics. Using science to validate the status quo and describe certain economic and social classes as superiors/inferiors is a cruel perversion, but outright denying the science is similarly dishonest and not very convincing either.
Genetics are powerful, but only a piece of the great puzzle underlying human traits and behaviors. Especially when considering life at the individual level, you can't easily make any declarative statements about someone's potential, or even clearly discern the total effect of genes on their most basic traits like height without also considering a host of other factors with similar weightings. Beyond the ambiguity surrounding how genes and environment conspire to produce our traits, as Chomsky argues, the traits that are rewarded with wealth and power are often arbitrary: they are certain traits that can be identified in those who already have wealth/power in a self-justification of the existing hierarchy.
So even if we take the science at face value, it is quite a stretch to say that the science supports the current stratification. The two are not casually linked.