To Slate’s credit, they have published a lengthy critique by Stephen Metcalf of Will Saletan’s disastrous series on race and intelligence. Here’s a sample (the emphasis is mine):

In a semi-retraction, labeled “Regrets,” Saletan writes, “The thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited,” and goes on to describe how that author is pretty clearly a white supremacist. This Clintonian admission is technically true—Saletan did cite the work of J. Philippe Rushton, and and some may consider Rushton, based on his comments and connections, to be a dyed-in-the-wool, old-fashioned racist. Rushton is not the author of “one of the articles” Saletan cited. Rushton is the author of the article from which Saletan draws almost all of his ammunition. Rushton’s paper, co-authored with Arthur Jensen, “Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities,” is a meta-analysis, a purportedly even-handed review of all the relevant research on race and intelligence. The majority of Saletan’s facts come to a reader, therefore, not secondhand, but third-hand, and via the prism of two highly biased researchers.

…Does it feel as though researchers like Jensen and Rushton, the so-called “race realists,” have spent their careers examining a range of competing hypotheses for the black-white IQ gap, and carefully scrutinizing the quality of the research at their disposal? Or have they been attempting, at all costs, to prove a single hypothesis—that blacks are congenitally dumber than whites? Shouldn’t researchers on any highly charged subject be required to show a minimum of clean hands? Why is it that every researcher I can find who supports the heredity-only thesis takes money from the Pioneer Fund? Would you ever take money from the Pioneer Fund? Under any circumstances?

How could Saletan miss this stuff? What was he thinking? It’s inexplicable.

Update 12/6 9:23 AM: I missed a December 1 New York Times article on the subject in which we learn that (a) the series wasn’t edited and (b) Saletan apparently blames the Internet, in part, as a place where we can’t have such a debate:

Appearing on a site with a liberal bent and written by its generally liberal science and technology columnist, William Saletan, the articles drew particular attention — and particular scorn. “William Saletan and the Editors of Slate Demonstrate That They Are Not Members of the Genetic Elite” was the headline on the Web site of the economist Brad DeLong (delong.typepad.com). On his popular political Web site, talkingpointsmemo.com, Joshua Micah Marshall referred to it as “Will Saletan’s nauseating foray into black genetic ‘pseudo-science.’”

Mr. Flynn and Richard Nisbett, two noted researchers on intelligence, also criticized the Slate series as grossly one-sided. Mr. Flynn said he was most persuaded by evidence that the environment causes I.Q. differences, but added that certainty on either side is misplaced given that the research is still in its infancy.

On Wednesday, Mr. Saletan posted a fourth article labeled “Regrets,” confessing that he had not realized that J. Philippe Rushton, a researcher on whom he had heavily relied, is the president of an organization that has financed a segregationist group. He also amended his previous position, stating that it was too early to come to any firm conclusions about the causes of racial differences in intelligence.

“If I had to do it again, I would have been much more circumspect about judging” the evidence, Mr. Saletan said in an interview. He later added that he should have written about inequality and left race completely out of it.

Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate, said that since Mr. Saletan is a senior writer, his posts went up without anyone there reading them. “Given the sensitivity of the subject, Will’s commentary should have been carefully edited in advance of publication, and it wasn’t,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Mr. Weisberg said he was disturbed by the casual “what if” thought experiment and some of the sources Mr. Saletan cited. “I wouldn’t have stopped Will from writing on this subject, but I would have challenged him on these and other issues,” he wrote.

He added that a rejoinder by another Slate writer, Stephen Metcalf, was scheduled to be posted Monday.

Mr. Saletan said he was completely unprepared for the voluminous and vehement reaction. “I did not mean to start a wildfire.”

A subject as sensitive and complicated as this deserves to have a higher level of proof, he said, adding that he erred in treating it like any other topic.

“I don’t agree that it’s best not to discuss it,” he said, but “you have to do it in a responsible way and always with a constructive purpose.” Judging from his own experience, he said, the Internet is not a place where that can be done at the moment.

“I’m a little disappointed in myself,” he added.

He’s not the only one.