Testosterone is an independent factor in muscle mass and accounts for the majority in strength difference. Also, muscles in the upper body have a higher androgen receptor count and therefore respond greater to serum testosterone levels and physical stimuli.
+1. The few women with high testosterone are also better are building muscle, have higher sex drives, and female babies with high testosterone are less interested in faces than things, much like male babies (Baron Cohen at Cambridge, let me hunt a link if you need it)
Very interesting, thanks. I'm always interested in reading up on things along these lines. At this point the amount of studies that show fundamental differences between the sexes are so overwhelming that it's hard to deny it with a straight face. Culture simply does not have the power that people want to attribute to it.
More importantly it didn't even support the argument presented. I guess what they intended was "African Americans have low IQ and so do Africans, ergo IQ is race-related". Yet African Americans have higher IQ than Africans, because they live in a more prosperous region, with less disease, more opportunities etc. so what does that tell us about IQ and race, and racial differences within countries? That maybe it's not…
A pretty big racial cognitive gap remains after adjusting for income, at least in America. Poor whites do better on cognitive tests than wealthy African Americans: http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/19/a-sociologist-looks-at-race-di... African Americans are closer to European IQ levels than Africans, probably for several environmental and genetic reasons (better nutrition and schooling, ~25% European ancestry, etc)
That's true, that a gap remains when you adjust for a some obvious confounding factors, which makes it all the stranger that people are so determined to use the non-adjusted figure, it's as if the bigger number somehow resonates more with what they want to believe, than the more scientifically valid one. Maybe they're scared a that a smaller gap could be bridged by simply examining a few more variables.