You wrote: “..I think a better subject would be the relationship between cultural values and intelligence rather than between gene pools and intelligence, since I believe the way parents raise their children is the primary factor in how children turn out.”
That has already been done by Charles Murray in his just published book, “Coming Apart”:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2843097/posts?page=21#21
bttt
I believe it is quite obvious that intelligence is largely though not exclusively inherited. We all know that some people are born geniuses and others mentally retarded. It is reasonable to assume all other humans differ in intelligence between these extremes on the standard bell curve for most distributions of traits.
IQ, which is an attempt to measure intelligence, is indeed found on such a curve.
I believe the evidence is very strong that each human is born with a particular intelligence potential. That potential can be achieved under ideal circumstances. Any circumstances less than ideal will result in a level of intelligence at adulthood something less.
This is similar to height and other physical characteristics. Growth can be stunted by malnutrition, disease and other things, but the genetic potential cannot be exceeded regardless of the environment.
Now whether average genetic potential for intelligence differs by race is an entirely different question. It is fairly obvious, at least to me, that it could be answered by an appropriately designed investigation.
Whether as a society we find the potential for disruption so great that we ban such studies is again a different question.
A third question is what other fields of study do we ban because we are afraid of what we might find.