Diamond is very much in the same camp. In the introduction to Guns, Germs, and Steel he stated that his motivation for the work was to come up with evidence wit

Diamond is very much in the same camp. In the introduction to Guns, Germs, and Steel he stated that his motivation for the work was to come up with evidence with which to counter an Occam's Razor assumption (basically, that certain groups had done more smart things because they were smarter) that contradicted his campus political theory. The "academic's consistency" is the lawyer's consistency of only making the arguments that support what he has decided in advance to support, and the "attention to detail" is attention to only those details that support his case. The fact that his book presented no evidence in favor of the Occam's Razor position (the reason certain groups do more smart things is because they are smarter) but only a list of possible counter-arguments makes it not an investigation of an issue, but an attempt to defend a pre-existing political position. Even anthropologists sharing the same campus politics have been unwilling to endorse Diamond's arguments with any real enthusiasm.