You seem to be entrenched in the position that the only possible reason why someone would want to study population level differences is to justify some sort of

You seem to be entrenched in the position that the only possible reason why someone would want to study population level differences is to justify some sort of racist or otherwise evil agenda. There are plenty of reasons to do so, and more broadly I take issue with the notion that there needs to be any justification for expanding our understanding of the universe. Take for example the disparity in prison populations between women and men. If we believe that there are no differences in behavior or tendencies between the sexes (and a large number of people do), then it would be fair to conclude that our justice system is exhibiting blatant sexism against men. Around 80-90% of prisoners are men. This is very far from equality of outcome; one sex is around an order of magnitude more likely to be a prisoner. But there is a strong body of evidence to suggest that even absent any discrimination differences such as these will likely exist. Men exhibit higher levels of aggression and risk tolerance. These patterns exhibit themselves relatively uniformly throughout all societies regardless of development levels, cultural trends, etc. If we did not perform this kind of population level analysis then society may have tried to balance our prison population with bad policy that tries to engineer an equality of outcome when there is no reason to expect equality of outcome. Is the above "flirting with some idea of totalitarian elitism"? Are we "ranking the value of human beings" by concluding that men are more likely to get incarcerated even in non-discriminatory systems? I think it'd be ridiculous to say yes. And if using population level analysis to justify a 10 to one disparity in prisoners is justified, then it's also justified to use population level analysis to reach the conclusion that, say, a 5 to 1 disparity in tech jobs can be reached without discrimination. On the note of "ranking the value of human beings", plenty of people in my workplace would agree with your statements. But then they'd turn around and engage in the very practice you describe. For instance, at our recruiting events we give each candidate a star if they're black, Hispanic, or female. If they're an Asian male they get an "ND" which stands for "negative diversity". Whether a resume has two, one, zero starts, or an "ND" is used when determining which to include in our candidate search. We're ranking the value of human beings explicitly, on the basis of our own political ideology.