He Wrote About The Wrong Thing

I remember the brouhaha over The Bell Curve a couple decades ago.  I wonder how good this guy's statistical analysis was:

Nicholas Wade, a British-born science reporter and editor for more than 30 years with The New York Times, is no longer with the newspaper — just days after the release of his latest book, in which he depicts blacks with roots in sub-Saharan Africa as genetically less adapted to modern life than whites and Asians.

Was The New York Times uncomfortable with Wade’s science or his conclusions? It’s unclear. Neither Wade nor his former employer returned requests for comment...

Wade’s main thesis is that “human evolution has been recent, copious and regional.” He writes, “Though there is still a large random element, the broad general theme of human history is that each race has developed the institutions appropriate to secure survival in its particular environment"...

In Slate, Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, said the book’s central theories were “simultaneously plausible and preposterous: plausible in that they snap into place to explain the world as it currently is, preposterous in that I think if he were writing in other time periods, he could come up with similarly plausible, but completely different, stories.”

How good were his numbers?  What hidden gems do they illuminate?  I'd be interested in hearing from a statistician about the statistics.

Because without data, all you have is an opinion.