Dr. Cochran has some fun with Eric Turkheimer’s race-iq nonsense from 6 years ago in support of anti ugly truth taboos for ‘ethical reasons’. I thought Linda Gottfredson utterly dominated her intellectual adversaries at the Cato Unbound debate with characteristic civility and class. But I found this bit from Turkheimer’s essay amusing:
While we are at it we could open a whole scientific institute for the scientific study of racial stereotypes, and finally pull together the evidence on sneaky Japanese, drunken Irish, unintelligent Poles, overemotional women and lazy Italians.
I think you have to admit it’s a humorous visual when you try to imagine it. Also, funny, I thought we already had something like this, what with 90% of the enterprise of the non-STEM parts of Western Higher Education these days dedicated to attributing all darkness and wickedness to to heterosexual European males, and goodness and light to everyone else.
In general, knowledge is good and we shouldn’t be scared of truth, no matter how ugly or taboo, and with perhaps only the minimally necessary nod to the preservation of social cohesion and political stability.
What Turkheimer is trying to do is put certain kinds of truth about humanity, and the investigation thereof, off-limits through moralistic demonization. It would be one thing if he were also to put the opposing lies similarly off-limits and uphold an ideal of benign agnosticism in public, “It could be true, it could be false, we just don’t know.” But he doesn’t, and so his putting certain modes of inquiry off-limits permits the pretty lies to stand unchallenged.
You could go much farther than Turkheimer’s puerile attempt to shock our fragile, prone to offense via hair-trigger consciences, and expand the mandate of inquiry for The Institute to include all politically incorrect and ‘controversial’ topics (i.e. inconsistent with progressive dogma). The results of your secret research program would constitute the substance of Dark Enlightenment.
These days, you could almost simulate The Institute and it’s periodical The Journal by curating and compiling existing publications and research. It’s getting easier too. Certain taboo topics are going mainstream enough that young new researchers see an opportunity to make a name for themselves. The easiest way to be seen as adding to a body of knowledge is to aim for the sacred fences that have been walling off some low-hanging fruit.
Turkheimer’s the guy hanging up the sign, “None shall pass! Violators will be excommunicated and fired!” Progressives, it turns out, are interested in defending some borders. But the promised land full of factual riches lies on the other side, and so gradually the intellectual migrants will find their paths across.
Handle's Haus 
“finally pull together the evidence on sneaky Japanese, drunken Irish, unintelligent Poles, overemotional women and lazy Italians.”
I thought that we had already done this? I find evidence for the “drunken Irish” hypothesis every Saturday night, when I look in the mirror.
You could walk into a bar with Scots-Irish and say ‘You’re all so belligerent, you’ll fight over anything!’ and they’ll all get up, enraged, ‘Them’s Fightin’ Words!’
Sun Tzu: “If I dare ask, if the enemy is numerous, … I would say, first seize something that they love for then they will listen to you.”
The estimated percentage may be off, but that sounds about right. The problem may not be, however, with number of resources dedicated to understanding and elminating stereotypes, but the sort of people whom they are dedicating to it: Non-STEM. Dedicate some STEM folks to explaining stereotypes and, voila, you’ll have an answer forthwith: Dr. Bernstein-Richardson, it appears to us that Japanese really are, on average, more sneaky; women really are, on average, more emotional; Italians really are, on average, more lazy; and Blacks really do, on average, like fried chicken more.
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