American IQ scores have rapidly dropped, proving the 'Reverse Flynn effect'

From a strict evolutionary perspective I have doubts that a high IQ is useful anymore.

A big part of "The Bell Curve" was arguing that no interventions could change IQ except genetics and so any money spent on low IQ people (African-Americans in the book, but the author followed up by attacking poor people more generally) was a pointless waste.

It turns out he wasn't just an asshole, he was also wrong.

I have yet to read “the bell curve” said, but did they really use an argument that flew in the face of the abundant evidence of IQ increases unlinked to genetics as a result of better nutrition and education? Hell America gained a few IQ points nationwide from banning leaded gasoline alone so we also knew of environmental means to affect IQ levels. This was all known about and very well established at the time of authorship. Is there an excerpt?

> According to Herrnstein and Murray, the high heritability of IQ within races does not necessarily mean that the cause of differences between races is genetic. On the other hand, they discuss lines of evidence that have been used to support the thesis that the black-white gap is at least partly genetic, such as Spearman's hypothesis. They also discuss possible environmental explanations of the gap, such as the observed generational increases in IQ, for which they coin the term Flynn effect. At the close of this discussion, they write:

> > If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Part_III._The_N...

The part I find especially amusing is how often the Flynn effect is used to refute The Bell Curve, even though the term "Flynn effect" comes from The Bell Curve.