There's a post over at the Volokh Conspiracy trying to argue that Summers' comments were totally reasonable and showed intellectual curiosity since he was willing to raise such a question.

This is ridiculous. It is not intellectual curiosity to wonder if the difference in GDP/person between the USSR and the USA from 1950-1990 is, in a small part, a result of intrinsic genetic differences between Russians and Americans. It is not intellectual curiousity to wonder if the difference in starvation rates between Ethiopians and Americans over the past 25 years are, in a small part, a result of genetic differences between the two populations.

You can't understand small affects until you understand large affects extremely well. The genetic differences in all these cases are so much smaller than the large obvious differences that the errors in your understanding of the large affects swamp out the small ones.

The Harvard math department in its entire history has had z-e-r-o tenured women. It's not intellectual curiousity to wonder if some of the reason for that is genetic differences, it's bait-and-switch.