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In this article, the authors argue that the overwhelming portion of the literature on intelligence, race, and genetics is based on folk taxonomies rather than scientific analysis. They suggest that because theorists of intelligence disagree as to what it is, any consideration of its relationships to other constructs must be tentative at best. They further argue that race is a social construction with no scientific definition. Thus, studies of the relationship between race and other constructs may serve social ends but cannot serve scientific ends. No gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence, so attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time. The authors also show that heritability, a behaviorgenetic concept, is inadequate in regard to providing such a link.

The article presents a biography of psychologist Elena L. Grigorenko, who received the award for distinguished scientific early career contributions to psychology for her distinguished and highly creative work investigating cognitive abilities and disabilities in children of different ages and in different cultures of the world. She is associate professor in the Child Study Center and Department of Psychology at Yale University and associate professor of psychology at Moscow State University, Russia, where she teaches part time. Grigorenko's entry into the field was through research on the genetic mechanisms underlying the acquisition of reading.