> For example, research might affect one's opinion about race-based affirmative action programs mandating that the admitted student body mirror the overall popu

> For example, research might affect one's opinion about race-based affirmative action programs mandating that the admitted student body mirror the overall population No, because affirmative action programs operate from an absolute commitment to diversity and/or a recognition of systemic violence against certain communities in recent history. Those commitments hold (or not) regardless of genetic variation. > In the scientific realm, if IQ were indeed heritable and if there were substantive differences across large groups of people, wouldn't people be curious why, and by figuring out the pathway, perhaps be able to design supplements or lifestyle changes to raise people's IQs There's a whole field of research called "Education" that studies essentially this question, but not unnecessarily confined to IQ as a sole metric. And yes, many education researchers investigate the effectiveness of interventions in the context of communities (include racially-defined ones). The race/IQ correlation question is totally irrelevant to the discovery and evaluation of assessments among subcommunities. How could knowledge of racial differences in IQ possibly do to push forward education research? Everything we know about differences between subcommunities points to behavioral interventions being effective, and nurture aspects playing a dominate causal role. And even if you want to go full on eugenics / genetic engineering, we have some comparatively stronger hypotheses about some genetic causes for IQ variation that are absolute (i.e., genes that effect IQ but are not correlated with race). So even in a crazy futuristic (I would say dystopian) world of genetic engineering for things like intelligence, investigating racial theories is still a waste of time.