The general intelligence factor is found in several studies to be immutable.

Studies get published if they survive peer review, and publications have citations. Citations, please?

I do not know why his views are continuously brought up when there are 100s of guys in the field that is better educated than him.

Because Flynn does his homework and makes unassailable research findings that are published in the best journals. Arthur Jensen has written, "Now and then I am asked . . . who, in my opinion, are the most respectable critics of my position on the race-IQ issue? The name James R. Flynn is by far the first that comes to mind." Arthur Jensen, "Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus" in Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy, Sohan Modgil & Celia Modgil ed., p. 379 (1987). N. J. Mackintosh writes about the data Flynn found: "the data are surprising, demolish some long-cherished beliefs, and raise a number of other interesting issues along the way." Mackintosh, N. J. (1998). IQ and Human Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flynn grapples with the data, analyzes the data carefully, and engages in discussion with scholars from a wide variety of points of view about what the data mean. That's why Flynn's most recent book gains the praise

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=865429

already mentioned in another reply to this thread.

After edit:

Because I have Pinker's book at hand, I checked his chapter on the issue, and Pinker says, "The Third Law: A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families." The environment in the world at large does matter, and it matters for a lot. Pinker is forced to acknowledge this because that is what the research shows. It is regrettable that Pinker fails to cite the articles that establish the difference between heritability and mutability ("malleability") directly in the text of his book, but I will cite those here. There is a crucial issue here to be curious about, and that is exactly what a calculation of broad heritability definitely predicts. It predicts a lot less than what many readers unfamiliar with genetics might guess. It happens that some of the leading authors on human behavioral genetics just wrote an article about what heritability does and does not mean

Johnson, Wendy; Turkheimer, Eric; Gottesman, Irving I.; Bouchard Jr., Thomas (2009). Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 4, 217-220.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/cdir/2009/00000018...

(one online abstract)

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122587149/abstrac...

(the main link to the article)

Alas, a peek behind the pay wall that was available a little while ago when I posted this article here on HN

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=838534

is now dead. But I have the full text of the article at hand, as I am currently attending a weekly journal club with some of the authors, and one key paragraph from the article must be read by anyone who draws conclusions from heritablity figures:

"Moreover, even highly heritable traits can be strongly manipulated by the environment, so heritability has little if anything to do with controllability. For example, height is on the order of 90% heritable, yet North and South Koreans, who come from the same genetic background, presently differ in average height by a full 6 inches (Pak, 2004; Schwekendiek, 2008)."

This simply reemphasizes a point that is familiar to anyone who has studied genetics carefully, namely that the pre-Mendelian concept of heritability says nothing about malleability, the degree to which a trait can be influenced by environmental variables.

Angoff, W. H. (1988). The nature-nurture debate, aptitudes, and group differences. American Psychologist, 43, 713-720.

Mange, A. & Mange, E. J. (1990). Genetics: Human Aspects.

Kaufman, Alan S. (1990). Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence.

So any statement in this thread that heritability somehow constrains the expression of g or of IQ is actually conceptually incorrect.