Moral Philosopher and Intelligence Researcher James Flynn wanted to debunk a racist article by UC Berkely professor Arthur Jensen (who was concluding that blacks scored lower on IQ tests because they were genetically inferior). He ended up discovering that far from scoring lower, they were actually doing steadily better, and to his amazement, so was the entire population, regardless of race or ethnicity.  This was later called the Flynn Effect and numerous studies across the world, across populations and over time frames confirmed his conclusions