Even though I have not yet conducted any biogeographic ancestry admixture studies myself, I am an attentive recipient of all genetically informative studies (heritability, genetic markers, SNPs, ancestry, indirect indicators, etc.). Traditionally, these studies work with individual data (e.g., twin studies) and measure abstract heritabilities or correlations with genetic markers (usually without information on specific genes and their causal pathway).Biogeographic ancestry admixture studies produce correlations with evolutionary origins. Initially, this is not information about genetic influence. For example, one could correlate sex (XY or XX) with hair length and find a high correlation. Nevertheless, the sex difference between men and women in hair length could still be explained purely culturally, namely through different ideals of beauty. These ideals of beauty could, in turn, have an evolutionary component, which has to be clarified theoretically. Long story short, correlations with biogeographic ancestry do not provide clear evidence of genetic influence, so environmental factors should be controlled for empirically and theoretically.However, if high correlations are found between certain characteristics and biogeographic ancestry and these correlations are otherwise not taken into account in research, then one can speak of a possible bias in this research. And correlations with biogeographic ancestry provide indirect evidence for possible genetic influences, particularly when other relevant environmental factors have been controlled and the association with biogeographic ancestry still exists. This is exactly where the study by Gregory Connor, John G.R. Fuerst, and Meng Hu comes in. It does not simply examine the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and biogeographic ancestry using a new sample, but has conducted a meta-analysis of the many single studies available to date. To do this, they searched for studies according to the usual methodological standards (documented in detail in the appendix), evaluated them for usability, calculated mean correlations, also for subgroups, and looked for outliers. Tables and figures present the mean results. The reported correlations are not high, but consistent.Some suggestions:In the abstract, include the average result (correlation in r), the final number of studies (k), and the final number of subjects (N).This should be added to the abstract (also with an average correlation): ”correlation estimates on samples restricted to African-American SIRE and to Hispanic-American SIRE show essentially the same patterns as unrestricted samples”. (Table 8) It should also be emphasized (in the discussion section of the manuscript as well as very briefly in the abstract) that still existing correlations within the SIRE groups are an indirect indication of possible evolutionary-genetic effects.Table 4: Describe what correlates with what (so that a quick reader can understand it without having to read the entire manuscript).Figure 2: Describe what correlates with what (so that a quick reader can understand it without having to read the entire manuscript).Tables 7, 8, 9, 10: Express the results in usual r-correlations, not Fisher's Z. What correlates with what?What is the most meaningful end result?Take into account the problem of unpublished studies.

This article provides a broad overview of intelligence research at the international, country-comparative level. A variety of relationships at the country level are presented, and the (sometimes heated) discussion within the scientific community on this topic is broadly reported. Main message: Nonlinearity and formal operational stageI would like to focus here on the core statement: that there are nonlinear relationships between intelligence and characteristics of societies which depend on it, and that this nonlinearity can be theoretically explained by an increase in cognitive development towards formal-operative thinking according to Jean Piaget (and Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff).In a nutshell, Henss assumes a threshold value of intelligence. Below a certain IQ (approx. 80), increases in intelligence are of no use; a lower IQ can even reduce e.g. corruption because there are no options for action. Only the step from pre-formal to formal operational intelligence leads to a reduction in corruption. Henss suspects that such non-linear relationships with intelligence occur more frequently at the national level (non-corruption, scientific productivity, low maternal mortality, GDP/c, government integrity, low tax burden, low number of children/fertility rate). This is a significant and innovative new idea that is worthy of further scientific investigation and also has great practical implications.One aspect that should be considered more closely is that nonlinear regressions practically always provide higher variance explanations than linear ones. This is usually the case. A substantive (theoretical reasons) or statistical criterion is needed to determine when an increase in variance explanation is important.Minor issuesIn the key words (and only there): TIMMS -> TIMSS.”Quotations from German sources have been translated by me, R.H. This applies in particular also to originally English-language texts which I have available in German version” – if possible, always use the (English) original.Add page numbers (in the ResearchGate-version of the paper).”They do not understand that the reversibility of the action is equivalent to volume preservation.” – Difficult to understand, describe differently.”Today’s intelligence tests measure something different from earlier tests, or rather, they evaluate performance according to different standards.” – Which earlier tests?”From all this we conclude: Psychometric intelligence tests and the international student assessment studies essentially measure the same latent variable, namely intelligence.” – The individual level must also be considered, especially through cognitive psychological analyses. E.g.:Rindermann, H. & Baumeister, A. E. E. (2015). Validating the interpretations of PISA and TIMSS tasks: A rating study. International Journal of Testing, 15(1), 1–22.What explanation do you have for the positive correlation between intelligence and gender equality (Table 6)?Table 9: The terms are not understandable (e.g., “Retain”, “Enable”).Regarding Table 11, higher correlation of intelligence with Functioning of Government (r=.62) than with Political Culture (r=.42) and others: It seems that intelligence is more important for competence-related issues, for political issues culture seems to be more relevant. See:Rindermann, H. & Carl, N. (2018). Human rights: Why countries differ. Comparative Sociology, 17, 29–69.Rindermann, H. & Carl, N. (2020). The good country index, cognitive ability and culture. Comparative Sociology, 19, 39–68.”The first fundamental leap was the ascent from the preoperational to the concrete-operational stage during the Achsenzeit.” – Add further empirical evidence to support this statement.”and almost all the other key figures of the Scientific Revolution were born within 150 kilometers of this core area” (Ferguson, 2013, p. 117).” – There is a nice figure in Murray (2003, p. 297), “The European Core”:Murray, Ch. (2003). Human accomplishment: The pursuit of excellence in the arts and sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. New York: Harper-Collins.”An instructive example is Germany in PISA 2018. In the focus domain of Reading, immigrants reduced the score by 3.1 IQ points.” – Add further empirical-statistical evidence to support this statement.Maybe reduce some of the side tracks in the manuscript (you can elaborate and publish them in another manuscript).

This is an empirically oriented paper in a series of publications on freedom and bias in science (see cited literature in the reference list of the original work). I would like to point out just a few points that the authors could consider in a possible revision:Terms ”liberal, Liberals”. As you show, e.g., Figure 1, ”Liberals” tend to censor results of studies more depending on outcome than ”Conservatives”. This and other studies (e.g., Geher, 2020; Geher et al., 2020) have shown that ”Liberals” are less liberal than other persons with other political orientations. Liberals are not liberal. Therefore, the term ”liberal” should be replaced by ”progressive” or ”left.”Geher, G. (2020, November 26). Politics in academia: A case study. Abgerufen von Psychology Today: Darwin’s Subterranean World website: www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/202011/politics-in-academia-case-studyGeher, G., Jewell, O., Holler, R., Planke, J., Betancourt, K., Baroni, A., … Eisenberg, J. (2020). Politics and academic values in higher education: Just how much does political orientation drive the values of the ivory tower? doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/BYCF2Lower status people: ”women, Black people, Muslims”. Why should women (e.g., Kim Kardashian, Hasina Wajed, Margaret Thatcher, Taylor Swift) be seen as lower status people? Or Muslims? In a global perspective, Christians face much more, much more brutal and deadly persecution, particularly by Muslims (e.g., www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2022/01/20/one-in-seven-christian-minorities-under-threat-in-2022). You may change your wording, e.g., ”often viewed as people of lower status in Western societies.”Since the authors already have articles on the topic in other journals, it would be good to emphasize the striking difference of this article right at the beginning (for example, in comparison to the article in PNAS).The Kennedy quote is great – where and when did he say that?p. 10: ”Participants leaned slightly liberal (M=3.36, SD=1.76).” – What scale?p. 12: "vice versa (b=1.09), t=5.22, p<.001." – Please always include standardized betas or correlations throughout the text.Figure 1: The difference in response behavior depending on the ideological content of the tasks is much greater for leftists (here, men or women are the better leaders) than for moderates and rightists. This should a) be presented as d-effect sizes (e.g., fictitious d[Left]=0.90 vs. d[Right]=0.30) and b) be highlighted appropriately in the text.See also Figure 3 (here not always left>right).p. 37: There is no Clark et al. 2024 in the reference list.

This is certainly an important paper. The main problem, however, is that maybe only 10 to 100 people worldwide can really understand and evaluate the topic and the manuscript. It is a specialist paper with great potential if rewritten.E.g. (p. 23): ”In fact, as shown in the introduction, Qst (erroneously named ”phenotypic Fst” by Bird) is often much higher than Fst as shown by mathematical modeling (Kremer and Le Corre, 2013) and empirical results (Berg and Coop, 2014). The equivalence between Qst and Fst (Qst = Fst) is expected under neutrality, and higher values of Qst (Qst > Fst) indicate divergent selection (Leinonen et al., 2013). Bird’s failure to acknowledge the difference between Qst and Fst leads him to expect Qst = Fst and to discard deviations from this equivalence as due to environmental factors or erroneous estimates of average IQ (Bird, 2021).”Who can really judge whether this is an error on the part of Bird or a misjudgment on the part of Piffer?My suggestions are aimed at making the content easier to understand so that more scientists (also outside a small circle of specialists) and maybe a broader audience (e.g., the average biology teacher at school) can benefit from it.Use like PNAS boxes to explain all major terms and results and their significance for a broader audience:FstQst (and the difference between Fst and Qst)candidate geneFst of background genetic variationallelic covarianceadd boxes significanceSNPsGWASpolygenic scoreneutral SNPsindividual lociCOJOMTAGEA and educational attainmentmeaning of all figures (in the notes), e.g. ”This Figure shows that ...”meaning of all tables (in the notes)Regarding Figures 5 to 8: Very good that a correlation is shown. But why R (in capital letters standing for a multiple correlation between various predictors and one criterion) and not a r (in lowercase meaning a bivariate between two variables as shown in the Figures 5 to 8)?Regarding Figures 5 to 8: Is it correct that the polygenic scores for education (what exactly is education here?) and for height were found in sample A and the presented correlations in the Figures 5 to 8 are found in an independent sample B, so it is an independent replication? Very important, stress this, explain this, this would be a very important finding if not one of revolutionary importance.Regarding Figures 5 to 8: Mention and discuss that correlations at the national data level are usually larger than correlations at the individual data level. Consider controlling the correlations between polygenic scores and education/height for GDP/c and HDI. Mention that you overcontrol here as GDP/c and HDI depend on education (cognitive ability and somewhat conscientiousness).

Thank you for this contribution. It provides an easy-to-understand overview of genetic and environmental determinants of group-level differences in intelligence. It presents the research itself and also gives an insight into the political climate at universities, under which this research is severely hindered. Finally, the friendly and reserved tone with which this article was written should be mentioned. Comprehensibility and friendliness are exemplary!For example, very good:”One: the reader must balance the totality of evidence across these diverse, multiple lines of evidence. Two: the reader must be able to decouple their political/moral concerns about racism from their objective evaluation of the evidence on purely scientific grounds.” (Connor, 2023)”By including both admixture proportions and SIRE variables, admixture regression identifies the separate influences on cognitive ability of racial identity (captured by the SIRE identity variables) and genetic variation (captured by the admixture proportions determined from DNA).” (Connor, 2023)”This enforced-ignorance counterstrategy is not logically coherent if one simultaneously claims that the environment-only theory is true. If the theory were true, then new research findings would tend to support it rather than reject it and thereby be ”de-stigmatizing” by such criteria.” (Connor, 2023)Also very good: Starting each chapter with a synopsis. But I still see room for improvement, which I want to outline here.Major points:1. ”Race”, ”biogeographic ancestry” etc.There are two problems here with how these concepts are used in general, especially by politics. In the US, Indians and Chinese, for example, form a racial group called "Asians". This has absolutely nothing to do with evolutionary history, correct taxonomy and scientifically meaningful categorization. This is nonsense! Second, "Whites" are usually compared to "African Americans". But Whites are only a subgroup of the evolutionary group "Europeans-Indians” (also or formerly Caucasians, Caucasoid). If one were to use Romani people (Gypsies) or Indians from India from this group, the results of a comparison with African Americans would be completely different. Equally, if one were to take southern Italians instead of northern Italians as a comparison group.This should definitely be mentioned and critically commented on. See:Rindermann, H. (2022). Biological categorization within Homo sapiens and its consequences for differences in behavior – or not. Human Evolution, 37(3-4), 139–179. https://doi.org/10.14673/HE20223411012. There are many more arguments for genes to be involved in cognitive ability differences between evolutionarily or geographically defined groups (e.g., genetic distances). For an overview see:Fuerst, J. G. R., Shibaev, V. & Kirkegaard, E. O. W. (2023). A genetic hypothesis for American race/ethnic differences in mean g: A Reply to Warne (2021) with fifteen new empirical tests using the ABCD dataset. Mankind Quarterly, 63(4), 527–600. https://doi.org/10.46469/mq.2023.63.4.2Rindermann, H. (2018). Cognitive capitalism: Human capital and the wellbeing of nations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/97811072793393. It should be emphasized that as long as all genetic explanations lack reproducible evidence for specific explanatory genes that encode intelligence and for the neurobiological mechanisms that drive from gene to intelligence, results for gene effects are only preliminary.4. Worldwide patterns – patterns in many countries – are described by Richard Lynn:Lynn, R. (2008). The global bell curve. Race, IQ, and inequality worldwide. Augusta: Washington Summit.5. Africans in the US have better results than Africans in Africa. On the one hand, this contradicts racism (better in ”white” America than in free and ”black” Africa), and on the other hand it speaks for positive environmental and genetic effects.Minor points:1. Genetic analyzes are very, very fine in their results. You can tell people apart genetically almost at the village level. The distinction itself is less relevant, it is relevant whether this is accompanied by relevant psychological differences and whether there is an evolutionary cause for it. See:Elhaik, E., Tatarinova, T., Chebotarev, D., Piras, I. S., Maria Calò, C., De Montis, A., … The Genographic Consortium. (2014). Geographic population structure analysis of worldwide human populations infers their biogeographical origins. Nature Communications, 5(1), 3513. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4513Rindermann (2022).2. Regarding NAEP, White-Black-IQ differences are only about 10 IQ points. Rindermann, H. & Pichelmann, S. (2015). Future cognitive ability: US IQ prediction until 2060 based on NAEP. PLoS ONE, 10(10), e0138412.3. The footnote style of citations is odd. 1. Readers do not see the authors in the manuscript. 2. Readers do not see the publication year, the seniority of the studies. 3. Readers have to keep scrolling back and forth. 4. The authors are not listed in alphabetical order – making them difficult to find.Therefore, please change the style of references from footnotes to the more modern and appropriate style of APA!4. Personal remark: In 2010, I was told that James Flynn, speaking personally to friends, assumed that the intelligence difference between whites and blacks was partly genetic.5. ”Empirically, across a wide range of studies, there is a substantial and highly significant negative regression coefficient linking cognitive ability test scores to African admixture proportions.” ”their estimated coefficients are often relatively small and sometimes statistically insignificant” – add numerical results (standardized beta).6. Regarding Gould: Carroll, J. B. (1995). Reflections on Stephen Jay Gould’s The mismeasure of man (1981): A retrospective review. Intelligence, 21, 121-134.Lewis, J. E., Degusta, D., Meyer, M. R., Monge, J. M., Mann, A. E. & Holloway, R. L. (2011). The mismeasure of science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on skulls and bias. PLoS Biology, 9(6), e1001071.Michael, J. S. (1988). A new look at Morton’s craniological research. Current Anthropology, 29, 349-354.According to these studies, it was not Samuel Morton who was a fraud, but Stephen J. Gould!7. (I'm not entirely sure if that shouldn't be better listed under "Major points"...) Rinderman -> Rindermann (several times). I suggest copying names, not writing them. By copying, we never misspell names, not even Csikszentmihalyi!