Race Science

A good observation from Henry Farrell:

As an aside – one of the most aggravating things about Saletan, Sullivan, Douthat etc’s embrace of the scientiness of race and IQ is that they seem to have convinced themselves that they are bold truthsayers fearlessly committed to challenging commonly accepted falsehoods etc etc etc.

Quite so. In particular, Saletan and my bloggy colleagues seem to have convinced themselves that there's overwhelming opposition in public opinion to the view that whites are intrinsically smarter than blacks and also that there's strong scientific consensus in favor of that hypothesis. As best I can tell, however, neither is true. The "black genes make you dumb" crowd is siding with widely-held popular prejudice against what most researchers believe.

Now, of course, that doesn't mean the racialists are wrong. It's entirely possible that the sort of views about black inferiority that were sufficiently widely and strongly held as to provide key ideological support for centuries of enslavement, imperial conquest, Jim Crow, etc. and had public support for desegregation in the low thirties and trending down as recently as 1978 are correct. Maybe the slave-owners, white supremacists, imperialists, etc. were right all along about the facts of the matter but simply drew the wrong normative conclusions. Maybe the scientific consensus over the past handful of decades is a mistake -- an ideology-driven overreaction to an ethical backlash against white supremacists.

But if that's your hypothesis, it should be seen as what it is, the hypothesis that a long-established widely-held popular prejudice is correct and the more recent expert consensus is mistaken. And of course one wonders why it is that Saletan is saying things like "I've been soaking my head in each side's computations and arguments. They're incredibly technical." Is Saletan a technical expert in the relevant fields and therefore felt a need to adjudicate? No. So what's the prurient interest in race science? And I say it's a prurient interest precisely because Saletan doesn't go on to draw any sweeping white supremacist conclusions.

Indeed, he concedes that there's evidence of a trend toward a narrowing of the black-white IQ gap that may in the future close the gap to zero, he just offers the opinion -- speaking as a non-technician whose decided to enter a debate he regards as highly technical -- that it probably won't. So he's not entirely sure he's right that blacks are genetically inferior, and he doesn't think this fact has any clear implications for public policy or how we should interact with individuals we encounter in our daily lives, but he just thinks it's really important to go on record with the view that blacks are inferior. Why? Given the source, the diagnosis of knee-jerk contrarianism run amok seems most appropriate but it's pretty odd.

Comments

but he just thinks it's really important to go on record with the view that blacks are inferior. Why?

because he's a racist. This has been another edition of simple answers...

Posted by drjimcooper | November 21, 2007 5:36 PM

I think open racism is another available explanation for this. Saletan is no technical guy, but he's no dope either. Surely he knows that if black IQs are different in Africa and the U.S. (as he says), and black genetics are the same (as he assumes), then those differences must be the result of environmental factors. But in his ludicrous column he writes that a 15-point difference in IQs demonstrates the irrelevance of environment - specifically the irrelevance of racism.

Racism, he says, "can't account for the patterns in IQ scores. Why do blacks in the white-dominated United States score 15 points higher than blacks in black-dominated African countries, including countries that have been free of colonial rule for half a century?"

Please. Can someone explain how a smart, non-racist guy can make this argument? Like I say, Saletan's no idiot. At some point, one has to abandon the assumption of good will.

Posted by politicalfootball | November 21, 2007 5:40 PM

i don't think this is a fair post.

Posted by none | November 21, 2007 5:50 PM

There's also the resistance to what these people see as political correctness.

And I am sympathetic to that, to a point. One can certainly see where an atmosphere where academics cannot even discuss possible gender or race differences could stifle needed debate. You certainly don't want someone to worry that they might be denied tenure because they are coming to uncomfortable conclusions about race and intelligence.

But this isn't mindless political correctness. It is political correctness that has a very good rationale behind it. I hate to say that any idea is dangerous, but these ideas are about as close as any come, precisely because they have been used and continue to be used to justify all sorts of noxious policies, and also because people are very quick to jump from the conclusion that there may be some racial or gender differences to the conclusion that those differences are all that "matter", that discrimination isn't important anymore, and that weneed not care about social factors and constructions and preexisting biases that influence our conclusions about these issues.

So there's a reason we need to be very careful around these ideas. They are a tinderbox. If there is evidence showing race or gender differences, it shouldn't be suppressed. But it should always be contextualized, we should be clear about what we don't know and any contradictory evidence, and we should never forget the influence of other factors as well as our own biases towards these sorts of conclusions.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 21, 2007 5:50 PM

Now this is a very clever post.

Not being Atrios or me and writing for The Atlantic you can not provide the obvious answer to your question.

My compliments.

Posted by Armando | November 21, 2007 5:53 PM

I've never understood Sullivan's long obsession with the Scientific Truth that dare not speak its name, i.e., blacks are genetically inferior. Maybe it is just the contrarian's Nirvana to embrace such an unpopular position. I wouldn't call him a racist in theory, I guess, but if someone came along and set out to prove "scientifically" that there are differences between Aryans and Jews ('come on, now, we can't let political correctness stop the march of scientific Truth!'), I would have to question his motivation. Doubly so if he were merely a pundit and not a scientist in the first place.

Speaking of Nazis, there was some Holocaust-denying engineering prof. at Northwestern years ago who set out to prove that it simply wasn't physically or logistically possible to exterminate so many Jews in such a short period of time. He was only interested in the practical, "scientific" question involved, of course. Because that is really an important scientific question. You know, like whether whites are genetically superior to blacks.

Really, I don't get it. But then I don't get Sullivan's obsession with circumcision (sorry, "Male Genital Mutilation Torture Treatment") either. Almost seems like self-parody for a gay man to be so publicly obsessed with cut/uncut penises, but that's Andrew.

Posted by jim | November 21, 2007 5:55 PM

i don't follow saletan as much, but if he's doing the same dance as sullivan, then i think the issues are as follows:

one motivation is your garden variety racism. and they think that as long as they aren't wearing white robes, they couldn't possibly be racist, so they feel safe spouting racism.

but the main motivation, certainly in sully's case, is that however much he dislikes blacks, and however much he dislikes the klan, what he really, really deep down hates are his cartoon fantasies of libruls. saint maggie and saint ronnie both taught him that libruls are the root of all evil.

and even though he finds himself lining up with libruls on 8 out of 10 substantive positions against the bush regime (on torture, gay rights, fiscal responsibility, competence in govt, etc. etc.), he still hates him a librul. ("even though" should perhaps be "exactly because".)

so: how can he still show saint maggie that he is a good, pious librul hater? by being a "contrarian" about race, i.e. talking racist smack which he knows is offensive to librul sensibilities (as well as, you know, *black people*). you see, it's the "contrarianism" of educated elites; if you spend most of your time in providence r.i. and cambridge ma., you don't realize that this kind of racist talk is as common as dirt and not "contrarian" at all.

but the important thing is: it's a stick to beat libruls with. that's all sully cares about: showing he's not a librul, and telling libruls that he hates them. and from what i know of saletan, that's likely his motivation as well.

Posted by kid bitzer | November 21, 2007 5:56 PM

The trouble with this discussion is that IQ does not actually measure inherent intelligence, or even recognize that there are many different types of intelligence.

Posted by mad6798j | November 21, 2007 5:57 PM

As you say, they are siding with the popular opinion against the voices of the liberal/intellectual authority that is perceived to be oppressing it. It's just fascism.

Posted by Toadmonster | November 21, 2007 5:57 PM

Indeed, he concedes that there's evidence of a trend toward a narrowing of the black-white IQ gap that may in the future close the gap to zero, he just offers the opinion -- speaking as a non-technician whose decided to enter a debate he regards as highly technical -- that it probably won't. So he's not entirely sure he's right that blacks are genetically inferior, and he doesn't think this fact has any clear implications for public policy or how we should interact with individuals we encounter in our daily lives, but he just thinks it's really important to go on record with the view that blacks are inferior. Why? Given the source, the diagnosis of knee-jerk contrarianism run amok seems most appropriate but it's pretty odd.

This paragraph is the best response to Saletan's nonsense I've seen. Really well said.

Posted by LizardBreath | November 21, 2007 6:06 PM

"Race Science"

That's one way to go.

I think "Sail(er) Bait" would have been a better title, but that's just me.

Speaking of Nazis, there was some Holocaust-denying engineering prof. at Northwestern years ago who set out to prove that it simply wasn't physically or logistically possible to exterminate so many Jews in such a short period of time.

He's still there, and yes, he is what Ron Paul-supporter RKU (I think) would refer to as a white activist.

Posted by SoCalJustice | November 21, 2007 6:15 PM

"Maybe the scientific consensus over the past handful of decades is a mistake"

I think that's inaccurate - the recent achievement gap literature I've read basically says that when they control for bias and SES and so forth there's still a gap. Everybody sensible, in particular the researchers, knows a priori there's no discernable difference in these population subsamples, esp. given that we're talking about social science, but if you didn't care what the answer happened to be and just looked at what the data say today you've got the sign wrong. I recently bit my tongue when a liberal policy expert mentioned in passing to me that the data show innate differences in ethnic groups - it's just not something that's at all useful (and in fact very counterproductive) to discuss outside of a technical context, because even if a correct treatment of bias etc left a tiny gap on these measures, there would be 0.0 policy or any other implications.

Posted by rilkefan | November 21, 2007 6:17 PM

Excellent post, Matt. It really is quite astonishing to see the intellectual descendants of John Calhoun position themselves as bold resisters of popular pc-ism.

I think the comment above about Sully's emotional aversion to a sort of perceived and chimerical liberalism hits it on the head.

Posted by Ben Cronin | November 21, 2007 6:25 PM

Now, of course, that doesn't mean the racialists are wrong.

This does not make my irony meter peak the way it should, in context or out.

Posted by Righteous Bubba | November 21, 2007 6:27 PM

Having followed this "debate" since the 1970s, I'd like to suggest, Matthew, that you are overlooking an obvious explanation: Saletan, Sullivan and, sadly, Douthat, get off on the idea that they are violating some taboo. Like Pinocchio tells Lampwick on treasure island, "being bad is fun."

The conservative approach to racial differences has long reminded me of a National Geographic special about Jane Goodall's studies of chimps I once saw: she witnesses chimps hunt and kill a money and chittering excitedly over the carcass. She says that it's as if the chimps realize that they are partaking of some forbidden fruit.

When conservatives talk about innate racial differences I always think of those chimps: they're so excited at the prospect of offending against what they dismiss as "political correctness" that they don't stop to ask "is this full of shit?"

Thus, it took Douthat all of a few sentences to go from embryonic stem cells to Black genetic inferiority; Sullivan -- a gay man for goodness sake! -- is quite willing to draw sweeping conclusions about another minority group while not seeming to notice that anyone can cherry-pick data to say some pretty damn hateful stuff about gay folk, as well. Saletan, while not a nutter, seems so locked into his biological determinism shtick that he trips over himself to make the half-assed "point" you referred to.

Posted by Roberto Rivera | November 21, 2007 6:27 PM

Armando, I think contrarianism is the obvious answer. You get more attention for being a contrarian about things that most other writers hew closely to public opinion on, not to mention that Andy's whole career is based upon being contrary -- a gay Republican, a Catholic homosexual, and lately, a British Yank, an anti-Bush conservative. It is certainly not as hard to imagine that he'd keep and constantly refer to an opinion which he practically owns among his writerly peers, for the attention it brings. The racism theory, that Andrew doesn't like black people and allows this belief to influence his writing without regard to his career prospects, doesn't seem nearly as likely; usually that kind of writer ends up in a Steve Sailer-style niche rather than a broad-appeal political columnist.

Posted by neil | November 21, 2007 6:28 PM

"he just thinks it's really important to go on record with the view that blacks are inferior."

Where does he do this? And not in a "well he doesn't come out directly and say it but I can tell he wants to" way.

"Why?"

Well, for one thing, he says (though not in response to what I think is your straw reading of his position) in the next article:

"Why write about this topic? Why hurt people's feelings? Why gratify bigots?

Because truth matters. Because the truth isn't as bad as our ignorant, half-formed fears and suspicions about it."

Posted by rilkefan | November 21, 2007 6:31 PM

No one here including Matt has addressed Saletan's substantive arguments (or rather the ones he was trying to make though he did so very inarticulately)...Namely, there is disturbing (even if incomplete) evidence that the following could be true:

1. There are/will be persistent IQ differences between self-identified racial groups ie even Flynn admits that his Effect is not leading to the convergence that he predicted. These IQ differences are moreover very predictive about a variety of socioeconomic outcomes (even within families which destroys the arguments about racism as a confound, etc.) regardless of whether or not one believes IQ or g 'exists.'

2. These IQ differences have a plethora of studies indicating a substantially genetic basis to them, anywhere from 50-80 % of the variation. (Twin studies, adoption studies, etc.)

3. Recent genetic studies, despite their flaws like incomplete mechanisms, etc. also support the intuitive idea that there ARE differences in the distribution of genes that correlate with intelligence (see Saletan's link). In other words, darwinism-below-the-neck which Saletan attacks is untenable.

Thus, even with all the technical caveats about the three above points, pretending that this information is not suggestive of a fundamental looming problem as more studies are done is too optimistic.

In other words, unless a more convincing response than "There's no proof..." or "IQ doesn't exist" or "It's all racism" is found, many who were already predisposed to racism will have much more credibility than they deserve with the public...

The case for equality should not be an empirical one.

Posted by v | November 21, 2007 6:31 PM

This is pretty uncharitable gloss on what Saletan and others are up to. Here are two possible explanations as to why they take the stance they do.

1. Some of them (e.g., Sullivan, Douthat) believe that human nature is more-or-less fixed, and that this is an insight of conservatism that liberals have missed. Now, if you think human nature is fixed, then you're forced to deny cultural explanations of most behavior -- including, as a special case, cultural explanations of racial differences on IQ tests. And this leaves you embracing a genetic explanation of such differences.

Now, this line of reasoning might be resisted at various places. But the important point is that it's a commitment to a fixed human nature which is driving the argument here, not racism or anything else prurient.

2. Others (e.g. Saletan) are presumably responding to the sort of argument being attributed to James Watson. The Watson line goes like this: the IQ difference between the races *does* have a genetic explanation, and this fact *should* lead to changes in public policy.

There are (at least) two ways to criticize this argument. (A) Deny that the IQ differences have a genetic explanation, or (B) grant (at least for the sake of argument) that the IQ differences have a genetic explanation, but then deny that anything normative follows.

Saletan goes for (B). I don't see anything unseemly about this. That (B) is an open option seems like a very important point to make, even if we ultimately go with (A) or something else.

Posted by Justin | November 21, 2007 6:34 PM

If someone came along and set out to prove "scientifically" that there are differences between Aryans and Jews .. I would have to question his motivation.

Of course Saletan is one of them! He just puts the Jews (which include himself) above the Aryans, as well as all those dumb black people. Racism is Good for the Jews now that the Jews are on top of the totem pole. It's a long way from Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.

they think that as long as they aren't wearing white robes, they couldn't possibly be racist, so they feel safe spouting racism.

One thing we should make clear is that people who make these arguments are racists by definition. Saletan, Murray et. al. argue that blacks are inherently mentally inferior to whites, and that's about as close to the textbook definition of racism as one is going to get. Calling them "racist" isn't an insult, it's a fair description of their views and they should accept the label without complaint.

Posted by Matthew Stevens | November 21, 2007 6:36 PM

If you think that spurious accusations of racism will prevent objective discussion about the issues of race and IQ, you are whistling past the graveyard. Since there are significant public policy implications to the data, it would be irresponsible for pundits not to look at this subject objectively. Let's review the basics and then discuss the most obvious implication.

1) The data about the significant IQ gap (~one standard deviation) between blacks and whites have been overwhelming for decades. There's no debate that this gap exists; the data include literally millions of IQ tests performed over decades.

2) Evidence about a narrowing of that gap has been inconclusive. If it has narrowed, it has barely narrowed and shows no sign of narrowing significantly anytime soon.

3) The idea that IQ, unlike any other attribute (e.g., height) is 100% due to environmental causes and 0% due to genetics is, aside from being implausible on its face, belied by all sorts of evidence, e.g., studies of identical twins; the phenomenon of low-income white and Asian children of poorly-educated parents outperforming, on average, black children of affluent, educated parents, etc..

The most obvious implication of this reality is that the premise of affirmative action programs is flawed: Since only 1 in 6 African Americans has an IQ equal to that of an average white American (~100), it isn't reasonable to assume that the percentage of blacks in fields which require an IQ of over 100 should be proportional to the percentage of blacks in the overall population.

Posted by Fred | November 21, 2007 6:38 PM

Matt says: "So he's not entirely sure he's right that blacks are genetically inferior..."

So let me make sure I have this right. Saletan is suggesting that, on balance, blacks have lower intelligence than whites. This, to you, equates to Saletan suggesting that blacks are inferior to whites.

Putting aside the issue of race for a moment, according to this way of thinking, an individual with lower intelligence than another individual is therefore inferior.

So, in your world Matt, the attribute of intelligence is the only (or the major) determinant of an individual's worth? That is very convenient, Mr. Smart Guy. I like to consider myself pretty smart as well, but certainly I have no difficulty admitting that many less intelligent people have a lot more to offer the world than I do.

Or maybe you are really saying that all humans have the same innate level of intelligence? Without bothering to do clinical studies on the matter, I would suggest that that is an extremely difficult argument to make.

Would you argue that all individuals have the same level of athletic ability? The same eyesight? The same quality of singing voice? Or maybe, out of all the various human attributes, intelligence is uniquely the same in every individual. I think not.

Would it not seem preposterous if one were to suggest that, based on available evidence, whites are less athletic than blacks, and that therefore whites are "genetically inferior" to blacks?

In other words, on what basis do we elevate intelligence over other human attributes, thereby making it near impossible to debate subjects like this without name-calling and people taking offense? And in any event, assuming we don't discrimination on the basis of race (for example, in hiring for a job requiring high intelligence), doesn't it really only matter how smart an individual is rather than how smart, on average, the people of his or her race are?

Posted by hiphoplawyer | November 21, 2007 6:42 PM

I think Kid Bitzer is on to something about Sullivan. As for Saletan, if you're a contrarian there's no bigger pinata to hit than race. MY, as so often, is being a bit too slick when he denies that racism faces "overwhelming opposition in public opinion." I think a lot of whites are racist, but I have heard very few whites racist views except in furtive, hole-and-corner ways. If you watch TV and movies, you can find plenty of unconscious giveaways that betray racist attitudes ("magic negro," etc.). But try finding direct expression of the view that whites are smarter than blacks.

A whole lot of people believe something that they are afraid to say. Such situations draw the contrarian the way shit draws flies.

Posted by Kyle | November 21, 2007 6:43 PM

Surprisingly, these bigots (you are unnecessarily too polite in using the vaguely neutral term racialis for them ) have not come up with some sort of Laffer curve which would point to an intial increase in IQ followed by an ultimate decrease as the whiteness increases from zero (pure black) to brown to yellow to white, under which hypothesis the whites would be 'proved' to be inferior to the majority of the humanity.

I wil be happy to accept the existence of that Laffer curve.

Posted by gregor | November 21, 2007 6:44 PM

Saletan, Sullivan et al. are not entirely wrong in their perception of themselves as holding a contrarian position.
The key is, that the scientific question is of high importance to liberals who for sound theoretical reasons _did_ actually spend a lot of time trying to show there is no difference whereas it's meaningless for most racists (of varying degrees). If blacks are not more stupid, your garden variety racist out there is undeterred. They're still lazy, criminal drug using, wife-stealing trash to her or him. And they can still be discriminated against on those grounds, regardless of "science", 'cause a real American knows what he or she knows without them fancy professors. No need to argue.
Those on the other hand actually do have a stake, for one, because "their side" puts great emphasis on having a scientific legitimation for doing things, second because it's what they believe and third because they realise the alternative is standing up for a clause causal or genetic link between pigmentation and mental ability and they're not keen on wearing that particular foolscap.
So yeah, in terms of the passion of opposition, the racialists are being "bold".

Posted by markus | November 21, 2007 6:45 PM

Maybe the catalyst is the very real possibility that the Democrats will nominate a black man for president (who happens to be smarter than any journalist). They're taking him down early.

Posted by Stuart Eugene Thiel | November 21, 2007 6:45 PM

The idea that IQ, unlike any other attribute (e.g., height) is 100% due to environmental causes and 0% due to genetics is, aside from being implausible on its face, belied by all sorts of evidence

But Fred, I don't think anyone is claiming that it is 100-0. The problem is that people are jumping to all sorts of conclusions about studies that show potential genetic factors without considering the extent of cultural factors and also everyone's preconceived biases about this subject.

There's a great book on this subject when it comes to gender differences, Carol Tavris' "The Mismeasure of Woman". It isn't that there are no differences, it is that people are so intent on finding biological sex differences and using them to explain gender roles that they ignore contrary evidence, overstate the impact of biology, and give knowing or unknowing support to policies and attitudes that hold women back and therefore tend to "prove" that the essentialists were right all along.

The same dynamic is operative on racial differences. They may very well exist; and they may even turn out to be relevant factors in explaining some racial disparities-- but given the biases and the prevalence of cultural attitudes towards race, and also given the racist policy conclusions that some would wish to draw from the data, we must proceed with caution.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 21, 2007 6:53 PM

"Maybe the catalyst is the very real possibility that the Democrats will nominate a black man for president (who happens to be smarter than any journalist). They're taking him down early."

It's early in the thread, but this is an early candidate for the lamest comment yet. Neither Saletan, Sailer, or Sullivan suggests that Obama isn't intelligent. Saletan, in part three of his Slate piece, used Obama's early stance against the Iraq War as an example of intelligence. Sullivan wrote a laudatory cover piece for The Atlantic on Obama. And Sailer has written of Obama's obvious intelligence and writing ability in his review of Obama's autobiography.

If you don't understand that average differences in IQ don't preclude the existence of individuals with high IQs in all racial groups, you are either ignorant or being deliberately obtuse.

Posted by Fred | November 21, 2007 6:55 PM

Thank you. I have little to add. It is infuriating to hear all of these people pat themselves on the back for their "courage". This has been a racist country and a racist world for far longer than it has been an anti-racist one, and there's never been a time when racism didn't remain hiding in one place or another. What is particularly galling is that they constantly speak of the need to eliminate emotions and speak only of the data. But this kind of self-congratulation is precisely the kind of emotionalism they say they deride. If it's really just about the data, they can stop with the hectoring of people for being able to accept these "dangerous truths" they are so proud of trumpeting. Saletan's three part essay was nothing else than self-aggrandizement, a navel-gaze sold as profundity. Please.

Posted by Freddie | November 21, 2007 6:56 PM

Re: Some of them (e.g., Sullivan, Douthat) believe that human nature is more-or-less fixed, and that this is an insight of conservatism that liberals have missed.

In that case they shouldn't be willing to posit that human nature varies between populations since that's only possible if human nature is not fixed.

Posted by Jonf | November 21, 2007 6:57 PM

Saletan is a moron's moron. But it is interesting that the genteel KKK crowd always come out for pseudoscience about black intellectual inferiority to whites and usually end up displaying their own considerable intellectual incapacity to understand the simplest arguments. Daniel Koffler at Jewcy does a good slice and dice job on Saletan's argument - but I particularly liked the two paragraphs in which he goes beyond the cascade of false assumption, skewed studies, distortions and cherrypickings that make up the undercarriage of Saletan's case and gets to the damningly illogical construction of Saletan's marshelling of his argument:

So far, we have left alone an initial assumption implicit in the case for insuperable genetic differences in intelligence between races, and that is the existence of g, the general intelligence factor, which in its initial formulation by Spearman is the quality that all tests of mental ability measure in addition to any specific qualities, and is still supposed today to be responsible for a significant proportion of observable correlations in performance among standardized tests, and between tests and academic performance. If g does not exist, then there is no one quality that even a perfectly designed intelligence test would measure, and therefore, naturally, there could be no sense in which a racial gap in IQ scores would indicate a racial gap in intelligence.

Saletan comes recklessly close to acknowledging this point in the midst of his musings about brain size, when he ingenuously concedes, "[y]ou can debate the reality of g, but you can't debate the reality of head size." To be sure, no one doubts the reality of head size, but if g is not real, then the quantities purporting to correlate with g, head size among them if Saletan insists, are vacuous markers of differential intelligence."

That Saletan thinks that head size is somehow correlated with g even if g doesn't exist, because, uh, head size exists ... is an exercise in the dreamlogic of the racist. And racist is, of course, what Saletan is - down to and including the horrific and Nazi like suggestion that doctors (I guess superior white doctors) will, in the future, just fix those pesky inferior black chromosones. If he didn't work for Slate and he published this in, say, some journal put out by a white citizens council, would anybody doubt that they were reading the Klanish ravings? Don't give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

Posted by roger | November 21, 2007 7:08 PM

Intelligence (as a function of ethnicity) has nothing to do with science. The question itself indicates bias, and, to my mind, it's an almost meaningless question in that meaningful redress is ultimately subjective.

Indeed, the concept of 'intelligence' itself is barely understood. Reading First Word currently; the author mentions some interesting studies regarding ape & dolphin intelligence. More than a few words are mentioned in the context of anthropomorphism.

I was amused by this anecdote:

A dolphin would happily eat the [fish] head and the middle, but would eat the tail only if the fins were cut off. If the dolphin misbehaved during feedings, Reiss gave it a time-out. This involved getting up from where she knelt at the side of the pool, walking back about twenty feet, and looking at the dolphin but not interacting with it in any way for a minute or so. "It let her know something was not right," explained Reiss. One day Reiss accidentally let an untrimmed tail slip into the dolphin's food. The dolphin responded by swimming to the opposite side of the pool and then rising out of the water ina vertical posistion, just looking at Reiss for a minute or so. 'This feels a lot like a time-out!' thought Reiss.

She decided to test the dolphin, and a few days later she let an uncut fish tail slip through on purpose. The dolphin did the same thing, giving her another time out. Reiss repeated the experiment three additinoal times, each with the same result.

Posted by Monty | November 21, 2007 7:22 PM

Markus makes a very good point.

Posted by Kyle | November 21, 2007 7:23 PM

I remember getting into a similar discussion a few years ago and i threw out the novel idea that maybe 200 years of selective breeding, i.e., slave owners killed the more active slaves, ala, Nat Turner, and bred the more docile and physically stronger slaves, creating a physically superior but mentally weaker strain of human.

i can't remember if I came up with this before or after I read about it in a historical study of certain periods of slavery. Either way, i do remember reading about certain slave masters having their more amenable slaves procreate upwards of 20 children, while it is common knowledge that the more active slaves incited rebellion and were killed.

I thought it was a dumbass hypothesis that made a little intuitive sense, then when some old curmudgeon who liked to think of himself as very egalitarian minded, even though he spent his whole day thinking about gold, vowed to fight that evil idea til his last dying breath, i thought I might be on to something.

Posted by jeromy | November 21, 2007 7:28 PM

"...but he just thinks it's really important to go on record with the view that blacks are inferior. Why?"

Oh, I know speculation is impermissable but I really do presume they have their reasons and that this is a tactical or strategic part of a plan.
There are policy preferences somewhere here, just as there are in supply-side economics.

I don't know, maybe it helped just a little in the ethnic cleansing on NOLA. Taxes. College admissions. Whatever. But I always assume Republicans are doing their little cogitations for a reason.

Posted by bob mcmanus | November 21, 2007 7:34 PM

One meta-question I've asked on Sailer's site is whether emphasizing the scientific evidence about average IQ differences between different races is useful in achieving policy goals. On affirmative action, for example, while the data on IQ differences do invalidate the goal of seeking proportional representation of non-Asian minorities, the successful campaigns to ban affirmative action in CA and MI weren't based on this evidence; they were based on egalitarian arguments (in contrast with the rationale an affirmative action advocate -- the former president of my alma mater -- admitted during a career-threatening Watson moment).

Another point I've made is that on immigration, one can structure a policy that favors intelligent immigrants without explicitly mentioning IQ: simply suggest a point system that gives weight to education, like the ones Australia and other countries have. This, btw, would also separate those who have legitimate concerns about the human capital of immigrants from those who want to go back to 19th Century demographics, since an immigration policy that favors educated immigrants will attract a lot of East- and South-Asians as well as caucasians from Europe elsewhere.

Posted by Fred | November 21, 2007 7:38 PM

My wildest speculation involves a de facto re-secession of the South with the return of Jim Crow. Another 25 years of polarization like we have been enduring and they will dare President Chelsea to send the National Guard to Tuscaloosa.
I doubt she would do it, I doubt America wants to see millions dead to liberate Dixie again.

Posted by bob mcmanus | November 21, 2007 7:38 PM

There are all kinds of correlations between different genetic traits: eye color and IQ, shoe size and obesity, baldness and IQ. There is some sort of correlation between all of these. The question is whether there is some causal relation -- and why on earth you would ever waste your time trying to determine if there was a causal relation between these factors.

So why race and not eye color or innie/outie bellybuttons? Of course, then you could say (naively) that this isn't how science works -- you never know what seemingly useless finding will lead to later. Sullivan always uses that argument. And, sure, in theory, the relation between outie bellybuttons and IQ should be investigated if our goal is to know everything about the universe. But in reality there are political and social motivations at work that influence what is actually investigated and why.

Posted by jim | November 21, 2007 7:45 PM

Those of you touting the existence and measurability of racial intellectual differences could be taken a lot more seriously if you acknowledged the subject matter of Yglesias's post. Yglesias maintains a studied agnosticism on the scientific validity of racism (or "racialism," as he politely calls it).

Rather, his limited purpose is exposing the ludicrous argument that Saletan makes, and offering a charitable explanation ("contrarianism") for it.

Posted by politicalfootball | November 21, 2007 7:46 PM

There are hundreds of millions of black people smarter than Saletan and he does ok, so what possible difference should this make to anyone's life outside of Saletan's head?

Posted by Boronx | November 21, 2007 7:57 PM

Saletan is an ignoramus who has no background to discuss the things he writes about.

But uh, that goes for you too Matt. On any number of occasions you've jumped in with an opinion based on groupthink or an analysis of subjects you have no background in. And even last month, you were chewed out by your feminist friends for a knee jerk refusal to believe a study or even to look into its data.

Yes, most pundits talk shit about stuff they have no knowledge of.

Are you in a race with Ezra today for who will become Broder faster?

Posted by jerry | November 21, 2007 8:00 PM

Contrarianism may make them willing to entertain the argument in private over too much booze, but to spend so much time promoting it as if it had no implications for how other humans might be treated - that still requires you to be a racist, or else just a plain old sociopath.

Posted by Avedon | November 21, 2007 8:01 PM

They are Bigots!

"Bigot is often used as a pejorative term against a person who is obstinately devoted to prejudices even when these views are challenged or proven to be false or not universally applicable or acceptable.

Simple Answer to a Simple Question"

Posted by F | November 21, 2007 8:02 PM

As I understand it, the chief reason for denying that there could possibly be any innate difference in intelligence between the races, is that once you accept such a possibility as real, you can no longer safely assume that disparate outcomes are a result of direct or indirect racism. You're confronted with an alternate explanation, and suddenly have to prove that your preferred explanation is correct.

And that's remarkably inconvenient.

In short, race and IQ is largely just a proxy for a fight over who bears the burden of proof when racism is alleged to be the cause of some disparity or other.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 21, 2007 8:10 PM

Re: Some of them (e.g., Sullivan, Douthat) believe that human nature is more-or-less fixed, and that this is an insight of conservatism that liberals have missed.

In that case they shouldn't be willing to posit that human nature varies between populations since that's only possible if human nature is not fixed.

Another insight of conservatism is that different classes of people have different abilities and characteristics and should play different roles. These differences between categories of people--men and women, blacks and whites, "smart" and "dumb"--are part of human nature and hence fixed. Maybe someone else can tease out why conservatives believe this.

Posted by yave begnet | November 21, 2007 8:12 PM

Matt, I gather you must not follow the news closely, but if you did, you would have noticed that James Watson, who is probably America's most prominent man of science, just got, well, Watsoned over this.

If you had been reading the papers lately, then you'd have realized that the premise of your post doesn't make any sense.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 8:19 PM

According to the wikipedia on race, the majority of anthropologists only believed there was no such thing as race for 10 years.

What I think is really exciting is how in the course of ten years, we can move from the majority of anthropologists believing race was a valid concept to now stating flat out that anyone that still believes this is an out and out racist fuck.

Posted by feh | November 21, 2007 8:19 PM

The idea of political bloggers and writers not commenting on things they don't know about is a brilliant idea that will sadly never work in practice.

Posted by Justin | November 21, 2007 8:21 PM

If anybody is actually interested in what James Watson had to say about race, IQ, and Larry Summers in his recent book, you can find out here:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/071021_watson.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 8:23 PM

I was once a card-carrying MENSA member. Literally.

White, under 40, male, living in the US.

Do the demographics.

Posted by Monty | November 21, 2007 8:24 PM

Well said, Matt.

I have absolutely nothing to add but a retraction (...well, at least a momentary retraction...) of a previous snotty comment I made about laziness and unprofessionalism.

Well said.

Posted by Rihilism | November 21, 2007 8:24 PM

Jim said about Sullivan: "I wouldn't call him a racist in theory, I guess"

I would.

Posted by Pope Ratzo | November 21, 2007 8:30 PM

Matt:

Saletan's knowledge on the race-IQ question is dramatically larger than your knowledge on the climate change question, which hasn't stopped you from writing confidently about that.

Personally, I almost never write about the global warming controversy because I haven't put in the effort it would take for me to have an opinion worth expressing.

I have put in a lot of effort in learning the science in areas surrounding race and IQ, and I can assure you that your summarization of the current state of scientific knowledge is pretty close to 180 degrees wrong.

The point is that we don't know for sure about race and IQ, but the rapid advances in cheap genome sequencing (James Watson's entire genome is now online, for instance) mean that pretty soon we will know pretty much for sure.

The fundamental fact: the final word on the race-genes-IQ linkage is likely to come in the next decade or two simply as a byproduct of crucial medical research.

Personally, I've never been wholly convinced that the racial gaps in IQ have a genetic component (there's always the Flynn Effect to complicate matters). But I'd definitely offer five to one odds that at least half of the one standard deviation (15 point) black-white gap will turn out to be hereditary. I'd probably go as high as offering ten to one, but not, at present, to one hundred to one.

Still, the data is pouring in, especially from the HapMap project comparing Europeans, West Africans, and Northeast Asians. So it's only a matter of time before we have a clear picture.

What political thinkers can do now is start thinking about how we can live with such knowledge if, as is likely, it arrives.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 8:34 PM

I know this is kind of peripheral, but has Saletan disclosed his hat size? His head seems kind of small in his pictures, and... well....

Posted by Aaron | November 21, 2007 8:45 PM

Matt Yglesias asserts:

"The "black genes make you dumb" crowd is siding with widely-held popular prejudice against what most researchers believe."

Let's take a look at the data on what the current popular prejudice is:

Sociologist "Inductivist" writes:

"I haven't taught for 30 years, but combining my time as student and teacher, it has been my impression in the classroom that people have grown less inclined to turn to genes as an explanation for behavior. This has seemed odd to me since scholarship has turned increasingly in that direction over the same period. The best scientists have been telling us one thing, while the classroom instructors, the media, and the public have been telling us something very different.

"But this has all been my sense of the situation, so let's see what the data say. The General Social Survey has asked since 1977 if respondents agree that blacks are poorer and have worse jobs and housing because of an innate inability to learn. Over that time more than 20,000 Americans have answered that question, and the results for whites, blacks, and "others" are displayed above. The first year is 1977 and the last is 2006.

"My hunch was correct. For whites, those agreeing dropped steadily from 27% in 1977 to 8% in 2006. Blacks have been asked this question only from 1985 on, and those agreeing fell from 18 to 12% over the period. Notice, how more blacks than whites look to genes now. The sample sizes are small for "others" but their numbers have fallen as well.

"This suggests that public opinion does not follow science, at least in the short run. It follows instead the cultural and political trends of the time. There is something like a 50 year lag, and we've been under the dominance of the extreme environmental determinists for a long time now. Maybe before I'm dead the race realists will lead the culture, but I ain't putting any money on it."

http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2007/10/fewer-americans-believe-genes-explain.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 9:03 PM

Matt,

Did ever occur to you that in your casual reading on the subject of intelligence in the popular press you weren't getting the straight story because people don't want to get fired, like, oh, say, the president of Harvard and the chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory got fired?

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 9:05 PM

I love posts like these, because they draw the racists out of the woodwork. They ooze into the picture like cockroaches spotting a discarded hot dog bun in a New York City gutter. They scurry out, misuse and abuse science and talk big about utter bullshit. At least the cockroaches have the decency to leave science alone and keep their vile opinions to themselves.

And Steve Sailor, I was SHOCKED to see an anti-Semitic strain in your blogging. Because, you know, Gould's Mismeasure of Man was definitely just part of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy to [mumble mumble, something something, cover-up, conspiracy]. Seriously, go crawl under a rock and never come back out --- you aren't a "realist", you're an ignorant racist and you disgust decent human beings.

Posted by Slim Tyranny | November 21, 2007 9:06 PM

Matt,

Have you also ever noticed that many of your commenters have a serious problem with mindless rage?

I realize you don't follow current events, but we recently saw a lot of the same emotions in the worldwide attacks on James Watson. The psychology of why it was so fun for so many to help crush Watson was memorably outlined in Orwell's 1984, when the interrogator O'Brien explains to his prisoner Winston Smith the exciting future envisaged by the Party:

"Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever. …The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. … The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever. … Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible—and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord."

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 9:12 PM

C'mon, Steve, explain to the room why The Mismeasure of Man is really a clever Jewish head-fake to make sure the "masses will [never] learn about the Jewish-gentile IQ gap, which would cause them to pick up their torches and pitchforks and stage pogroms across America."

My advice from before applies: scurry back to where you came from and continue talking about the dangers of "interracial breeding" and "slantier eyes and bigger noses" with your fellow racists.

And oh crap, I've made a classic mistake --- engaging a crazy person in debate. If this were on the street and escalated to shouting, no one would be able to tell I was the sane one and you were the racist lunatic.

Posted by Slim Tyranny | November 21, 2007 9:20 PM

"What I think is really exciting is how in the course of ten years, we can move from the majority of anthropologists believing race was a valid concept to now stating flat out that anyone that still believes this is an out and out racist fuck."

While I'm sure there's some connection between the shift in the publicly stated opinions of anthropologists on this subject, and the tendency of anybody who publicly says they believe race is real to be called an "out and out racist fuck", I've got some suspicions that the direction of causality isn't what you think it is.

Sailer is correct: We don't really know now, but with dropping costs of gene sequencing, we WILL know soon. And the universe makes no promises to conform to anybody's moral preferences.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 21, 2007 9:23 PM

It is a mistake to always infer that the qualities of the the audience are shared by the author of an article, but when you have an audience as racist as Bellmore and Sailer applauding Saletan, I think the inference is justified. Saletan's beliefs are pretty much Steven Sailer's. That should be enough to get him dropped from a decent magazine, but I doubt that will happen at Slate. Still, one has to wonder what the atmosphere is like when Saletan is about down there in the Contrarian HQ. Does he try to avoid touching in any way his black inferiors, or is he alright with, say, a black janitor taking out his garbage? He should really write a personal essay about it - it would be quite heartfelt, I'm sure.

I hope, Matt, that you discuss that on a blogging heads tv. I'd like to see Robert Wright explain why Saletan isn't a Sailer style bigot.

Posted by roger | November 21, 2007 9:32 PM

I think we're in agreement Brett. I am amused at the number of lawyers, philosophers, english majors are here who know so much more about this than the geneticists. What I'm truly impressed with is the degree of certainty.

I may just be overly impressed with degrees and experience and Nobel Prizes, but when James Watson says something about genetics, I would tend to listen as opposed to casting onto the shoals. But it's really neat how many folks with no real experience or knowledge in the field and barely any academic background in it either can just out and out flatly say these people are wrong.

Also intriguing is how understanding that there are big problems with IQ tests means that intelligence can never be measured. Or that there are big problems with "race" means that there will never be any sort of related concept. Seeing the wizardry our statisticans and geneticists have performed, I am leery of both of those bets.

I would think the reality based liberal view would not be to flatly deny that there might be relationships found and excoriate those asking the questions as racists, but would be to work to make sure that all of the information found is put to useful work and cannot be used to deprive any person of life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

Posted by feh | November 21, 2007 9:35 PM

One thing we should make clear is that people who make these arguments are racists by definition. - Matthew

Exactly right. There's a discursive logic similar to the torture debate going on here, in which the fact that something has been stigmatized and placed outside the pale of reasonable discussion leads people to conclude that whatever they're doing can't possibly appertain to the stigmatized behavior. At the time when people were not ashamed to call themselves "racists", they simply meant quite literally that they believed some races were genetically inferior to others. To claim that one is not necessarily a racist just because one thinks blacks are not as smart as whites is to eviscerate the term "racist" of any meaning.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 21, 2007 9:39 PM

I have a couple of baseline questions for those who agree with Saletan, et alia:

1. What is the basis for including everyone with recent subsaharan ancestry within a single group? Have those people been interbreeding significantly? Are the Koi-San closely related to people from the source of the Nile? the Niger delta? For that matter, why are all people from east of the Ural mountains lumped together as "Asians?" Is there some basis for considered, say, Dravidians, as being closely related to the Han?

2. What is the explanation for American Indians' generally poor performance on IQ tests? It is my understanding that they migrated from Asia within the last 20,000 years, meaning they are separated from Asians by about half the time that Europeans were separated from Asians and Africans. Why are their IQ scores so much lower than Asians?

Posted by Karen | November 21, 2007 9:43 PM

"I would think the reality based liberal view "

I think the term "reality based" is similar to "Democratic people's republic"; You don't bother saying it if you really are it.

But what really impresses me is the degree of invective Saletan's essay has provoked, given it's mild nature, and relatively uncontroversial conclusions. It's as though the less clear it is somebody is a racist, the louder you have to scream it, to make up for the lack of visible evidence.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 21, 2007 9:48 PM

There's an intellectual thuggishness on display here and in other threads that really bothers me. Maybe Saletan and the rest will be proved to be wrong. Maybe, despite the huge number of tests showing a disparity, the results will end up being explained away by environmental factors and deficiencies in the testing.

But, its hardly surprising that many people, like Saletan, will take the testing results at face value, and be dubious that these other potential factors will end up explaining them away. I don't think you need to postulate any particular motivations on their part. Given the amount of testing data out there, I'm surprised so few people believe that genetic differences account for some portion of the gaps in IQ scores.

Posted by Jim W | November 21, 2007 9:53 PM

As Matthew Stevens points out above, nobody can reasonably object to labeling Saletan or Watson as racists.

The Saletan/Watson argument is that black intellectual inferiority is a scientific fact. That is to say, they are arguing that racism is a scientifically valid view of the world. Why are we arguing whether they are racists?

Sailer, to his credit, doesn't deny being a racist, nor does he deny this about Watson or Saletan. If I understand Sailer correctly, he's saying that racism gets a bad rap, but that it will ultimately be vindicated.

Don't the rest of you own a dictionary?

Posted by politicalfootball | November 21, 2007 9:53 PM

Karen raises a good question about American Indians. This population seems perfectly suited as a test case of whether ancestry or more recent history of "underprivilegeness" (for want of a better term) are more important.

Posted by Jim W | November 21, 2007 9:59 PM

I don't think racism is the correct term for the belief that there are phenotypal differences that correlate with race. If that's true, then we are all racists if we dare to aknowlege that blacks have darker skin on average than whites. Come on, do I have to make this blindingly obvious logical point?

Posted by Jim W | November 21, 2007 10:05 PM

As anthropologists recognize, race is a useless concept. Consider the following:

- A person whose parents are both white is viewed as white.
- A person whose parents are both black is viewed as black.
- A person with one white parent and one black parent is viewed as black.

Why? Because race is an idea loaded with cultural baggage. Humans are visual creatures. Skin color, which is a determined by a tiny fraction of a person's genes, is so dominant in the human imagination precisely because it is so visible. It's why people who descend from ancestors with different skin colors are so often categorized as though their ancestry was entirely one color.

Similar arguments can be and have been made about IQ. What does it really represent, if anything? Does it really measure "intelligence"? Can cognitive ability be measured with a single number?

This whole "race and IQ" argument is such a crock because both of the concepts involved in the argument are so sloppily defined.

Posted by Jake | November 21, 2007 10:07 PM

More like it won't do you any good to make it.

Politicalfootball, "racism" isn't just about what you think the facts on the ground are, it's also about what conclusions you draw from them. The non-racist "racialist" is well aware that a few points difference in the means of groups has absolutely no implications as to the characteristics of any particular member of that group you might encounter. You still have to take people as individuals, it merely means that you can't count on broad statistical measures to line up precisely from group to group.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 21, 2007 10:14 PM

Saletan was description of the liberal position on this as "liberal Creationism" was apt. There are Creationists who still refuse to believe the theory of evolution because all the gaps in the fossil record haven't been filled in. It's a pretty weak position on the merits, but you have to empathize with their fears.

The fears of Christian Creationists were that once the Creation theory was ditched, so would the structure of Christian morality above it, and its latice-work undergirding society: marriage, family, respect for life, charity, etc. Correlation isn't causation, of course, but looking back now, it's tough to wonder whether or not they had a point.

Similarly, liberal egalitarians today hide behind the (shrinking) gaps in the science to pretend to believe that there are no inherent differences in capabilities between different races. They do so out of fear that if people can no longer be bullied into ignoring the obvious, it will legitimize the hatred of other races.

This suggests a obvious compromise: What race realists agree to ignore the science on this and liberal egalitarians agree to let Christianity into schools? Christianity espouses egalitarianism, so liberals should like that. And the moral guidance of a strong religious faith would probably do more good for the average African American student than a semester of evolution theory.

Posted by Fred | November 21, 2007 10:16 PM

We need a name for this pattern of rhetoric. "I'm not afraid to speak the truth, even if I may be ostracized for it: the infidels and untermenschen are inherently inferior to my kind!" It's too common a pattern to be ignored. Basically the entirety of racist, xenophobic and anti-Islamic discourse in the Netherlands since the late '90s falls into this pattern. Pim Fortuyn's "But Islam IS a backward religion!" is close to the paradigm case for the class -- or Theo Van Gogh's extrapolation, his notion that it was brave and praiseworthy to be the first media figure to stand up and call Moroccans "goat-fuckers". How brave and honest it is of me, to be unafraid, as a member of the dominant class, to give voice to my own bigotry!

Posted by brooksfoe | November 21, 2007 10:19 PM

The epilogue of James Watson's new book "Avoid Boring People" is devoted to the Larry Summers Show Trial and its aftermath. Watson writes:

"To my regret, Summers, instead of standing firm, within a week apologized publicly three times for being candid about what might well be a fact of evolution that academia will have to live with. Except for the psychologist Steve Pinker, no prominent Harvard scientist voiced a word in Summers's defense; I suspect the majority were fearful of being tarred with the brush of political incorrectness."

The end of Avoid Boring People centers upon an April 2006 meeting between Watson and the post-Larry Summers interim president of Harvard, Derek Bok, who had also been president when Watson was a professor there in the 1970s.

Watson writes:

"Before leaving Derek's temporary office I remarked that the time was surely not far off when academia would have no choice but to hand political correctness back to the politicians. Since 1978, when a pail of water had been dumped over [Harvard sociobiologist] E.O. Wilson for saying that genes influence the behavior of humans as well as of other animals, the assault against behavioral science by wishful thinking has remained vigorous."

Watson, the first head of the Human Genome Project, says:

"The relative extents to which genetic factors determine human intellectual abilities will also soon become much better known."

As the countdown proceeds, the hysteria will only mount on the part of those who want to cover up the findings.

In his book's penultimate paragraph, Watson raises The Forbidden Subject:

"A priori, there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Watson then foresees the gibberish and lies that he has had to endure over the last month:

"Rather than face up to facts that will likely change the way we look at ourselves, many persons of goodwill may see only harm in our looking too closely at individual genetic essences."

(Here, Watson, a famously ornery son-of-a-gun, shows some unexpected—and, sadly, undeserved—graciousness in referring to his future demonizers as "persons of goodwill".)

Watson ends his autobiography with a brief but telling exchange with then-acting Harvard president Bok:

"So I was not surprised when Derek asked apprehensively how many years would pass before the key genes affecting differences in human intelligence would be found. My back-of-the-envelope answer of 'fifteen years' meant Summers's then-undetermined successor would not necessarily need to handle this very hot potato.

Upon returning to the Yard, however, I was not sure that even ten years would pass."

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 10:23 PM

Dear Brooksfoe:

Great examples! As everybody knows, Pym Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh were never in the slightest danger of being murdered for expressing their views.

Oh ... wait, never mind. Maybe those aren't such good examples. But I'm sure you'll be able to come up with better ones.

Or, maybe, you _like_ those examples because you like seeing people you disagree with get what's coming to them? Maybe you like seeing the boot stamping on the heretic's face - forever.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 10:28 PM

On average black people are taller than whites. Seems like a trivial point that no one cares about. Why is it trivial? Because it has no social/political significance.

"Intelligence" does have social/political significance. And racist theories of the past several hundred years are explicitly based on the notion that certain races are less intelligent than others. Is it really shocking that people who espouse these theories and cheerlead research on this topic are at least suspected of racism? Well, we should really just say "scientifically justified racism." But wait! These people aren't advocating any political or social policies based on these findings, are they? If not, then what is their point? They need to know which race is relatively more intelligent in case it comes up in a game of Trivial Pursuit?

Maybe we should investigate if there is a gene for stealing and fathering children out of wedlock, too. These are important scientific questions that we must answer. Much like the Watermelon gene that was recently discovered. I suspect all of these problems are the fault of evolution and liberals, though. In any case, once we determine the genetic link between race and stealing, we can come up with an appropriate response. What would that be? I wonder.

Posted by jim | November 21, 2007 10:42 PM

It's pretty simple. People vary in intelligence in significant part because of the variance in the genes that they were blessed with. This is well established. In the larger context, there is established differences in the gene frequencies observed in various human ethnic groups. The result is that there are differences in intelligence (IQ) group means. I think bringing in the problematic concept of "race" is key. All "races" are capable of interbreeding and even within a "race" there are large variances between the ethnic groups classified as some as being its members. The true level of analysis shouldn't be "race" rather it should be endogenetic (relatively inbreeding) ethnic groups that have developed isolate genetic characteristics as a result of their environment and cultural practices.

"Race" is a highly problematic concept. I also think that people bring up the concept of "race" rather than more precise terms because they are looking for a way of stopping intelligence discussion.

The truth is intelligence (as well as many other physical traits of humans) has a significant genetic basis and the underlying genes are not evenly distributed among all human ethnic, cultural groups.

Posted by Matt | November 21, 2007 10:44 PM

The kind of attitudes displayed by commenters like Brooksfoe are reminiscent of those that led to the assassination of Dutch political leader Pym Fortuyn, a potential Prime Minister.

When reports emerged that the leftwing lawyer who had shot Fortuyn was an animal rights activist, the European Establishment breathed a sigh of relief. The gunman was just some animal rights loony. Vilification of immigration reformers had nothing to do with it.

Whew!

Well, guess what? The assassin, Volkert van der Graaf, finally made his confession in court this last week. And—what do you know! – he says he killed Fortuyn largely for opposing Muslim immigration.

The London Daily Telegraph reported:

"Facing a raucous court on the first day of his murder trial, he said his goal was to stop Mr. Fortuyn exploiting Muslims as 'scapegoats' and targeting "the weak parts of society to score points" to try to gain political power. He said: 'I confess to the shooting. He was an ever growing danger who would affect many people in society. I saw it as a danger. I hoped that I could solve it myself.'"

The Boston Globe noted:

"Van der Graaf said that he had sensed an increasingly unpleasant and anti-Muslim atmosphere in society after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States—a time when Fortuyn's star was beginning its meteoric rise. Van der Graaf said Fortuyn, 54, had tried to use that atmosphere for his own aggrandizement. 'I saw him as a highly vindictive man who used feelings in society to boost his personal stature. The ideas he had about refugees, asylum seekers, the environment, animals. . . . He was always using or abusing the weak side of society to get ahead.'"

Reported Expatica.com:

"Van der Graaf claimed, according to the Algemeen Dagblad, he was greatly influenced by politicians who compared Fortuyn with Austrian far-right leader Jorg Haider and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini." [emphasis added].

Fortuyn himself had foreseen exactly this, saying the month before his murder:

"....when I am killed or wounded then you [former Prime Minister Wim Kok] are responsible because you give me no protection and you make the atmosphere in this country so poisonous that people want to hurt me...."

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 10:44 PM

No dictionaries in this group, apparently.

Here's what my American Heritage Dictionary says about racism: "The belief that a particular race is superior to others."

Posted by politicalfootball | November 21, 2007 10:45 PM

"These people aren't advocating any political or social policies based on these findings, are they? If not, then what is their point?"

I related the point above: Currently, any disparate outcome is taken to be proof of racism, justifying remedial action. After all, we "know" the races are identical in all meaningful respects, there can be no other explaination for disparate outcomes.

Given this state of affairs, anybody running a signficant organization has to keep track of racial demographics, and actively intervene to make sure they come out "right", or risk being charged with discrimination, and forced to somehow prove otherwise.

Establishing that the races are not necessarily equal in their capacities is a way to shift the burden of proof back to the accuser.

Which is where it belonged all along...

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 21, 2007 10:52 PM

This is about hte worst comment by yglesais i've ever read-even though it's a rare example of an issue where i'm actually closer to him than Saletan is!

a) Look at the polls among scientist who actually study the field- - the polls by intelligence magazine again and again find inherent support ( in particular I’m suspicious it may understate the role of married learning oriented pans or that people who are willing to adopt black kids are less good parents) -however it is undoubtedly the scientific consensus (though not as overwhelmingly as what summer said about female intelligence types-which is just a fact) - I mean can’t you actually provide any evidence scientism in the area agree with you in terms of survey's , articles act?

b) It does not mean black people are "inferior" mother Teresa is not inferior to Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell though I be they're more intelligent than she is. Intelligence is not moral worth-or even indent worth it's just a variable quality among human beings with no moral signifnace for worth than say resistance to sun light or ability to run or lactose tolerance-of course it may be useful for lots of task in modern society (though certainly not all- I imagine Barry bonds is more successful than Thomas Sowell in most respects though no doubt less bright)

I actually think this is linked to leftist views on abortion- the desire to say the unborn can be killed because they're intellect hasn't reached a certain level suggests the absurd idea that intellect is some measure of worth or even relative worthiness ( yeah so mangle was worth so much more than Mother Teresa)

It’s also a fascinating insight into what gleans sees as worth-why redistribute from Harvard graduates then-or is the idea to make the state so powerful no one else gets a lock in planning their own lives? The notion the less intelligent are worth less than the more intelligent I think frankly is

c) Sale tan may be saying this out of a concern for truth? Or does that no longer count for anything for Ygelisasi- how can he criticise the ADL on the "Israel lobby" after this I do not know!

Fred appears to at least have a point though of course this is not a realistic political bargain.

as for why this is politically relevant -well if this consensus is correct it suggests that racial disparities may not be the result of human action(of course even if they are there's plenty of grounds for saying it might differ human action some might say discrimination is the main cause others family structure ) so you couldn’t just assume from african Americans getting into top universities it's the result of discrimination against them or from Jews getting in more it's the result of discrimination in their favour

finally why is it that liberals have slated saletan for his statement on a scientific opinion about "liberal creationism" -given his very careful to say this does not mean we should treat black people less well, even that it's an argument for treating them better and not for his actual agenda for eliminating the unintelligent (see the end of his series) by genetic engineering and (presumably) selective abortion- talk about warped priorities!

Posted by true outside | November 21, 2007 10:53 PM

true outside,
I am fascinated with your theories and would love to subscribe to your newsletter.

Posted by Tiny Tim | November 21, 2007 10:56 PM

Proof positive that spell checkers should never be set on autopilot!

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 21, 2007 10:58 PM

""Race" is a highly problematic concept."

The way race is determined for IQ studies is the same way as on the US Census, in anti-discrimination lawsuits, and for affirmative action benefits -- they just ask people to check whatever box they feel most suits them.

In places like Brazil, where they recently implemented affirmative action for "blacks," people are so mixed along a continuum from pure black to pure white (not too mention Indian) due to not having a One Drop rule, they have had put in panels of judges to determine if you are black enough for affirmative action in college admissions.

As it turns out in the U.S., as you'd guess if you stopped and thought about the effect of the One Drop rule of categorizing people black if they are at all noticeably black, self-identification is more or less good enough for government work and for scientific work. Population geneticist Mark Shriver of Penn States big nationwide study of racial admixture found that 90% of self-identified African-American adults were at least 50% sub-Saharan African by ancestry. And the vast majority of whites were at least 90% Caucasian by genes.

This is what you get with a One Drop rule, where anybody at least 1/8th black is called black and told not to marry whites. Now, as interracial marriage increases, the genetic distinctiveness of blacks and whites in the US will diminish, but it will take quite a few more generations than any of us will be alive before there's a big effect.

If you would stop and think further, you'd realize that to the extent that self-identification is misleading of the underlying genetic reality -- that, say, the identical twin black intellectuals Shelby Steele and Claude Steele -- are really more white than black, you'd realize that excluding people like that would likely just make the racial IQ difference even more distinct (although by a small amount).

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 11:02 PM

If anybody is interested, a simple, widely usable definition of a biological racial group that fits how the U.S. Census uses the term "race" is "a partly inbred extended family."

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/presentation.htm

The way the US Census uses the term "ethnic group" is to mean "a group of people who share characteristics that are often passed down within biological families/races, such as surnames, language, religion, cuisine, self-identification, etc., but that don't have to be passed down biologically."

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 11:08 PM

It's not because he's racist, it's because this is a stance that marks him as serious. To admit there is no evidence of a racial basis for intelligence would mark him as a crazed moonbat. It would be as bad opposing warrantless wiretaps or torture. And nearly as bad as claiming there is no Social Security crisis.

As with everything that Saletan, Sullivan, and their ilk say, the point of saying it is so position themselves as serious, tough-minded modern Orwells, not afraid to say gutsy things that will shock the weak-minded liberals.

Posted by Exile on Ericsson St. | November 21, 2007 11:09 PM

MY:

"... Maybe the scientific consensus over the past handful of decades is a mistake -- an ideology-driven overreaction to an ethical backlash against white supremacists."

Matthew Yglesias, what do you believe this "scientific consensus" you are invoking says?

Posted by James B. Shearer | November 21, 2007 11:14 PM

Note when someone says whites in America have higher incomes than blacks you don't get the same volume of inane quibbles about the definitions of race or income.

Posted by James B. Shearer | November 21, 2007 11:24 PM

James,
If you really do not understand why your comment at 11:24 is inane then you really should spend a few years contemplating just how stupid you are. You are really really dumb.

Posted by Tiny Tim | November 21, 2007 11:27 PM

Hiphoplawyer said: "...[O]n what basis do we elevate intelligence over other human attributes...?"

We elevate intelligence because, other things equal (and neglecting most of the entertainment industry), intelligent people tend to get the high-paying jobs in a liberal market economy. We justify their doing so by equating intelligence with merit. This allows us to justify distributing a lot of attractive and powerful jobs according to individuals' likely ability to perform them, rather than letting those jobs be passed down through families or given away to friends or supporters. Intelligence "meritocracy" is in considerable measure good. It is not good, however, when it's used to justify letting smart people rig an economy so that they pull in unreasonable shares of its production. Unsurprisingly, smart, successful people sometimes have difficulty appreciating this.

Posted by RRS | November 21, 2007 11:28 PM

So, Matt, are you _ever_ going to let the dread words "James Watson" pass your keyboard?

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 21, 2007 11:30 PM

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

Harrison Bergeron
by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.

“Huh?” said George.

“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.

“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.

“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”

“Um,” said George.

“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”

“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.

“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”

“Good as anybody else,” said George, "Maybe even as good as Matthew Yglesias."

Posted by Harrison Bergeron | November 21, 2007 11:34 PM

After the Bell Curve came out 52 psychologists (yeah, actual experts) came out with a statement on the racial IQ gap.

"IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. Its relation to the welfare and performance of individuals is very strong in some arenas in life (education, military training), moderate but robust in others (social competence), and modest but consistent in others (law-abidingness). Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance."

"Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both their environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1), most thereby indicating that genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals. (Heritability is the squared correlation of phenotype with genotype.) If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin."

"There is no persuasive evidence that the IQ BELL CURVES for different racial-ethnic groups are converging. Surveys in some years show that gaps in academic achievement have narrowed a bit for some races, ages, school subjects and skill levels, but this picture seems too mixed to reflect a general shift in IQ levels themselves."

"Racial-ethnic differences in IQ BELL CURVES are essentially the same when youngsters leave high school as when they enter first grade. However, because bright youngsters learn faster than slow learners, these same IQ differences lead to growing disparities in amount learnedas youngsters progress from grades one to 12. As large national surveyscontinue to show, black 17-year-olds perform, on the average, more likewhite 13-year-olds in reading, math, and science, with Hispanics inbetween."

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/wsj_main.html

Posted by Arizona Jeff | November 21, 2007 11:38 PM

Intelligence is not independent from morality. No test will prove that Hitler was smart: he flunked. Similarly, this focus of discussion (and those who think that provoking it is clever) is stupid. Is any of this news, that race, class, personal history, help handicap the way we interact with systems? Why do some folks seem to get a tingly thrill from a freshly offensive way of positing this every so often? As if anyone benefits, learns, changes, explores, opens, grows, as a result. These people are just buried within their own fear and confusion. And seem to think that there's a way of spinning this hype so as to make themselves seem smart. Instead they might explore what intelligence really is, in the first place, and try to dedicate themselves to contributing wisdom personally, even if to do would likely mean having the humility to shut up.

Posted by e | November 21, 2007 11:41 PM

I always thought that conservatives (the sane sort) have traditionally ridiculed things like group identities, sociological tinkering, and "scientific" attempts to remake society. But apparently there are some "conservatives" who are all for that -- as long as all of this science proves that it is the fault of blacks that they "aren't suited" for "desired outcomes" and that their position in the US is definitely not the fault of whites. It's the fault of their black genes. But don't worry, this doesn't mean we should be mean to blacks (actually, we should be nicer and speak more slowly to our retarded brethren so they will understand us).

Of course there is a large genetic component to intelligence, in individuals and in any group you want to define on any basis. Blondes may be more intelligent than redheads. Who the fuck cares? If you meet someone who is obsessed with proving that blondes are more intelligent than redheads, however, you might ask why. Especially if redheads have a long history of victimization at the hands of blondes and if this victimization has been based precisely on the grounds that some blonde scientist is trying to prove "scientifically."

Ok, thus ends the Two Minutes Hate. Haaa.

Posted by jim | November 21, 2007 11:48 PM

While I tend to agree with e, that anyone that wants to study how genes code for intelligence and how that intelligence may be distributed across different racial/ethnic groups must clearly be a NAZI scientist, I wonder what that will do to Alzheimer's research....

http://ncrad.iu.edu/forResearchers/sampleTransfer.asp

These people have the erroneous impression that knowing the racial/ethnic makeup of their sample populations is of critical importance.

I know we want to believe that it just makes no difference AND that if you think it does you are a racist, but it may be that Hitler aside, there are good reasons that doctors, geneticists, and others think the concept is useful.

Matt? E or F?

Posted by f | November 21, 2007 11:49 PM

Steve Sailer-

You want to talk about Watson? If I recall the exact quote which brought him censure, it had to do with an assertion that black people in his employ were stupider than their white colleagues. One might surmise that he would prefer to be able to limit his hiring of black people based on this observation.

Likewise Fred at 6:38 says:

"The most obvious implication of this reality is that the premise of affirmative action programs is flawed: Since only 1 in 6 African Americans has an IQ equal to that of an average white American (~100), it isn't reasonable to assume that the percentage of blacks in fields which require an IQ of over 100 should be proportional to the percentage of blacks in the overall population."

An outside observer begins to get the sense that Watson and individuals like yourself and Fred who seem to be of a mind with him are, in fact, interested in the issue of race correlating to IQ because of the obvious policy consequence- that blacks could be openly discriminated against (like in the past) for the purposes of employment.

These studies on IQ and race, and the publicization of those issues, which are purportedly tied to the pure pursuit of knowledge, begin to look like the rhetorical groundwork to turn back the clock on civil rights.

So, to clear things up, I have a question. If blacks are found, by science, to be an intellectually inferior group, should employers be allowed to actively discriminate against them as an HR-risk management strategy?

Posted by oljb | November 21, 2007 11:50 PM

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html

The APA's own statement was more neutral and was full of notices about the incompleteness of our understanding of genetics and intelligence.

The APA said that IQ, imperfect as it is correlates with school performance. IQ scores are partly genetic. A racial IQ gap exists. The racial IQ gap is not solely an artifact of socioeconomics.

Posted by Arizona Jeff | November 21, 2007 11:51 PM

Politicalfootball--That's one of the best comments I've read about all this. Saletan is a racist by definition. I do wonder why he won't just come out and say it.

To a couple commenters: I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that genetics influences intelligence. The questions are, 1) is IQ a good measure of intelligence (no) and 2) is race a valid way to divide up populations? Again, no.

The book below, though a bit dry, offers a good explanation as to why race is not a scientifically valid concept.
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/he/subject/Anthropology/PhysicalBiologicalAnthropology/HumanVariationRace/?view=usa&ci=9780195173512
Essentially, the point is that if you conduct widespread population testing and look for enough distinction to warrant using skin color as a way to determine a population sample, there simply isn't evidence to do that. There's not nearly enough difference, and far too much overlap.

Posted by brad | November 21, 2007 11:53 PM

>> is race a valid way to divide up populations? Again, no.

There's the rub. Maybe the size of people's ears is a better indicator of intelligence, but we simply don't know that because no one has chosen that as a way to divide up populations. Race is as much a social construct, with a tragic and violent history, as it is "scientific classification." That is not to say race is purely social construct -- skin color is a genetic difference. What the racialists here fail to grasp or fail to answer is "why race?"

Posted by jim | November 22, 2007 12:06 AM

I thought the issue here was whether we get to call people unaware of what anthropologists have *known* for ten years now racist fucks, or whether we are forced to deal with them as human beings and find out where their concepts and ours differ.

I think it's thrilling that so many of us with little to know understanding of genetics and statistics are able to be so confident in understanding their mastery of this material and what scientific consensus is.

For instance, apparently actual scientists, not just philosophy majors that play scientists on websites, are interested in how Alzheimer's may differ depending on racial/ethnic boundaries. I think it would be a shame to force these guys to waterboarding just because their racist nonsense is harming real actual research into Alzheimers. So calling these researchers racist fucks is not a bad first step, but one I'm not happy with.

Anyway, I prefer just tasing people until they admit there are four lights. Just calling people racist fucks is a bit too wimpy for my tastes.

Posted by g | November 22, 2007 12:12 AM

Steve Sailer,

the fact that one is murdered for one's views does not make the views held any more noble. Trotsky was murdered for his views, too, as was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas. If you run around calling people goat-fuckers and "cunt-Moroccans", who is it that has "poisoned the atmosphere"? If you walk into a crowd of young Israeli men and start yelling that the Jews should be driven into the sea, and you get your head kicked in, are you going to go crying that your right to free expression has been infringed upon?

Posted by brooksfoe | November 22, 2007 12:17 AM

If you walk into a crowd of young Israeli men and start yelling that the Jews should be driven into the sea, and you get your head kicked in, are you going to go crying that your right to free expression has been infringed upon?

Huh? The answer of course is yes. If you are a really hawt chick with 38 C titties and you walk into a coffee house near Harvard Square wearing only a pair of Daisy Dukes and a Yale Mortar Board and some Harvard Philosophy kid throws you down on the tile and hate fucks you while sipping his latte, are you going to go crying that you were raped?

I want you to know I have 38 C titties and you ain't getting 'em.

Posted by h | November 22, 2007 12:24 AM

There was a debate on this subject between Charles Murray & James Flynn, if anybody's interested. Also, there's a good discussion at Cato Unbound.

Also, in regards to the allegedly powerful relationship of IQ to educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes, I'd recommend Meritocracy and Economic Inequality by Kenneth Arrow & Samuel Bowles, which includes a number of empirical studies that find that the relationship of IQ to inequality is rather weak.

Posted by Peter H | November 22, 2007 12:35 AM

One thing I never understand. Conservatives like Fred, Bellmore and Sailor are quick to jump all over anything that hints at proving that IQ is genetic and then argue that this proves that people are richer/more successfull and so on because they are smarter.

Uh guys, if wealth and/or sucess is determined by your IQ and IQ is genetic then don't all your political views suddenly become wrong? If IQ determines your place in life and IQ is genetically predetermined and thus beyind your control then the only valid way to organize society is based on something like "to each according to his needs, to each according to his abailities" and not a free market free for all.

Posted by eric k | November 22, 2007 12:41 AM

"Currently, any disparate outcome is taken to be proof of racism, justifying remedial action. After all, we "know" the races are identical in all meaningful respects, there can be no other explaination for disparate outcomes.

Given this state of affairs, anybody running a signficant organization has to keep track of racial demographics, and actively intervene to make sure they come out "right", or risk being charged with discrimination, and forced to somehow prove otherwise.

Establishing that the races are not necessarily equal in their capacities is a way to shift the burden of proof back to the accuser.

Which is where it belonged all along..."

That comment by Brett Bellmore nails the policy significance of this. One specific example (out of many) is the current DOJ lawsuit against the FDNY because blacks don't do as well on its written test as whites. As Heather Mac Donald asked:

"Isn’t this farce getting a bit old? In the 1970s, when knowledge about the cognitive skills gap between whites and Asians, on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics, on the other, was less widespread, it may have seemed plausible that disparities in passing rates resulted from biased tests or biased test-administering institutions. Today, however, after society has spent decades and millions of dollars trying unsuccessfully to close the test score gap on the SATs, LSATs, MCATs, NAEP, and every other objective standardized test, the claim that any given test is racist simply because blacks and Hispanics don’t score as well on it as whites and Asians is absurd. The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has twisted itself in knots for over 20 years trying to hire more blacks and Hispanics without wholly compromising standards."

Posted by Fred | November 22, 2007 12:50 AM

"I am amused at the number of lawyers, philosophers, english majors are here who know so much more about this than the geneticists."

The geneticists aren't coming down on the side of the racists though.

"I may just be overly impressed with degrees and experience and Nobel Prizes, but when James Watson says something about genetics...."

James Watson is a molecular biologist, not a geneticist, and a number of actual geneticists came out and roundly debunked his statements. And has been pointed out many times from many places, his Nobel Prize mostly resulted from being in the right place at the right time, and working with people more talented than him. He ain't no genius.

"can just out and out flatly say these people are wrong."

It's actually pretty easy to do, when there are a lot of geneticists and evolutionary biologists also saying that these people are out and out wrong.

"Or that there are big problems with "race" means that there will never be any sort of related concept. Seeing the wizardry our statisticans and geneticists have performed"

The 'wizardry' that the geneticists performed was to pretty much destroy the concept of "race" in the first place.

Posted by Chris | November 22, 2007 1:05 AM

Dang, I sure missed this discussion.

I frankly don't know why people are so anxious to connect race and IQ anyway. What's the use? It's not like finding a race/IQ correlation would change how we should set up our meritocracy.

Also, I think most people forget the fact that, although Europeans on average test at a lower IQ than East Asians, Europe did a heck of a lot better than East Asia for many hundreds of years, and invented a lot of cool stuff that East Asians never dreamed of. So much for the "average IQ equals group performance" theory.

Posted by Mr. Noah | November 22, 2007 1:09 AM

See Chris, that's what's so goddamned spectacular about you. I would never have the self-esteem, balls, or arrogance to stand up and say that James Watson is a know nothing who got lucky. Or say that he knows squat about genetics because his Ph.D and Nobel were in a different field from the field he fucking invented. And the ability to just write that lots and lots of nameless others have said he is out and out wrong and not feel bad about that piece of intellectual dishonesty is wondrous!

I am so lame, that I sit here with my limited understanding of high school and college chemistry, biology, and genetics courses and I think this is a really interesting discussion, because race and iq both are very problematic, but to just say out and out that anyone that wants to even discuss this is a racist is so fucking cool. Especially when it is acknowledged that for so many scientists, they're understanding of this has only come about in the last ten years.

Especially when we see so many gene related traits and see so many ethnically linked diseases all of the time. Why, I am a carrier of at least two ethnically linked diseases!

I could never be as confident or self-assured as you. It's why I truly admire you Chris. You can just spot the racists and the scientific frauds like Watson, and just call them on their bullshit.

I think you're right to vote to deny Alzheimer's researchers funds based on their racist theories.

Posted by i | November 22, 2007 1:18 AM

I frankly don't know why people are so anxious to connect race and IQ anyway. What's the use? It's not like finding a race/IQ correlation would change how we should set up our meritocracy.

Refusing to allow research or discussions of how race might be linked to neural processes might harm how we understand and treat various diseases. It might even change how we understand how best to teach people. It may change how we understand how evolution works or worked. It may change how we understand how the changing environment or pollution can effect us.

But when people flatly state that anyone that looks into this question and doesn't start and end with the conclusion there is no link is a racist, then we lose all of that.

It's especially appalling that this cry comes from people that claim to be reality based, interested in free speech and academic freedom, and who were legitimately upset when the government bans funding of stem cell research, or reproductive choice education, ....

I've only heard once or twice of researchers limiting their research. Using NAZI results. And research into human cloning. I don't hear researchers saying it is necessary to stop this research. But I do hear a bunch of bloggers saying anyone that disagrees with the current laymen's view is a racist fuck.

This is not progress. And I don't think it's liberalism.

Posted by j | November 22, 2007 1:33 AM

The problem with "race science" is not the idea that populations differ in the frequency of rare alleles. That is the very definition of a population. My discomfort comes from using a eugenically inspired subjective measurement like intelligence to identify supposed genetic differences for the purpose of discrimination.

Posted by Just Karl | November 22, 2007 1:35 AM

"serious, tough-minded modern Orwells, not afraid to say gutsy things that will shock the weak-minded liberals."

Orwell was a liberal with decidedly left-leaning politics.

Steve Sailer:

Are you aware that VDARE is a white supremacist website? It goes without saying that any data on the topic of race published by neo-Nazis, skinheads, militia goons and KKK/CCCers is going to come to pre-ordained conclusions.

Posted by Chris | November 22, 2007 1:38 AM

eugenically inspired subjective measurement like intelligence

I think people were noticing who was smert and who was dum a long long time ago, and not for reasons of eugenics.

Instead of refusing to look into the question, the best liberal reality based science respecting approach is to discuss the issues, and then to make sure that regardless of the outcomes, genetic information cannot be used against an individual in insurance, employment, school, or any situation. And that the information must be kept private.

Keeping your head in the sand is no way to go through life son.

Posted by k | November 22, 2007 1:48 AM

"What the racialists here fail to grasp or fail to answer is "why race?"

If you want to pretend there's no such thing as race and treat everyone as individuals, sign me up for that. But that would mean that you'd have to scrap affirmative action based on race in employment and education, and you'd have to stop presuming bias when blacks and Hispanics don't do as well on tests, aren't as well-represented in high-IQ professions (or the FDNY, for that matter), etc.

You can't have it both ways, demanding race take precedence over merit, and then telling anyone who questions this that race is a "social construct" they shouldn't focus on. Like Chief Justice Roberts said, "the way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race".

Posted by Fred | November 22, 2007 2:04 AM

I think people were noticing who was smert and who was dum a long long time ago,

And we've all noticed which one you are.

Posted by Just Karl | November 22, 2007 2:20 AM

What does that even mean Just Karl? That you have no idea how to respond? That you've run out of argument?

If you think I'm an idiot, why not actually attack my statements that demonstrate that. Isn't that what argument and dialog is?

Otherwise all you're doing is masturbating, all of us see that, and none of us want to.

Posted by k | November 22, 2007 2:26 AM

What does that even mean Just Karl?

It means you are stupid, k.

Posted by Just Karl | November 22, 2007 2:31 AM

Yup, Watson's a genius, all right.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/11/13/MN111208.DTL

Posted by Jeff S. | November 22, 2007 2:31 AM

"See Chris, that's what's so goddamned spectacular about you. I would never have the self-esteem, balls, or arrogance to stand up and say that James Watson is a know nothing who got lucky."

The woman who didn't get the Nobel for the discovery contributed more to the discovery than he did. He only knew where and what to look for because of her. I wouldn't call him a know-nothing. But he definitely got lucky (as opposed to Einstein or Feynman, who were genuinely brilliant).

"Or say that he knows squat about genetics because his Ph.D and Nobel were in a different field from the field he fucking invented."

He didn't invent genetics, he got credit for his work on nucleotides. Cold Springs would have stood behind this 79-year old if what he was saying had a strong scientific backing. It just doesn't.

"And the ability to just write that lots and lots of nameless others have said he is out and out wrong and not feel bad about that piece of intellectual dishonesty is wondrous!"

It's not intellectually dishonest when it's true. Here's just one example I remember reading a few weeks ago: http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/10/17/is-james-watson-senile-or-just-stupid/
There were many others as well, but you get the picture.

"I am so lame"

Don't belittle yourself like that, I bet you are a wonderful person.

" but to just say out and out that anyone that wants to even discuss this is a racist is so fucking cool."

I am actually pretty damn cool, aren't I?

"Especially when we see so many gene related traits and see so many ethnically linked diseases all of the time. Why, I am a carrier of at least two ethnically linked diseases!"

Most diseases are environmental, now that you mention it.

"I could never be as confident or self-assured as you."

I have a series of self-help audiotapes that can help with that.

"It's why I truly admire you Chris."

Thank you.

"You can just spot the racists and the scientific frauds like Watson, and just call them on their bullshit."

The fact that he has a Nobel Prize means I shouldn't call him out on his bullshit?

"I think you're right to vote to deny Alzheimer's researchers funds based on their racist theories."

1. When did I say that?

2. Why would I say that when Alzheimer's affects people of all races?

Posted by Chris | November 22, 2007 2:37 AM

If you want to pretend there's no such thing as race and treat everyone as individuals, sign me up for that.

So in theoretical, color blind, utopialand (where we all live except for the dystopian elements of affirmative action) what happens when Darius Washington and John Smith submit identical resumes and John Smith gets a call back and Darius doesn't. Not just once, but company after company. This has happened in multiple studies in the 21'st century.

If you are the company your best recourse is to hire Steve Sailer, great truth teller to the Academic Elite, to explain in his couldn't graduate from college scientese that blacks are stupid and all things being equal pitch the nig- nogs resume in trash is the only realistic course of action for a company. Then you golden parachute your ass out and pray for the best.

Yeah, this is an intellectual goldmine.

Posted by Ed Marshall | November 22, 2007 2:42 AM

>>If you want to pretend there's no such thing as race and treat everyone as individuals, sign me up for that. But that would mean that you'd have to scrap affirmative action based on race in employment and education

Funny. I'm against affirmative action and I don't assume bias when someone doesn't do well on a test. I might assume that a host of factors were involved, like personality, what they ate for breakfast, socio-economic status, work ethic, mood, random chance, genetics, etc. So I guess I don't seem to be "having it both ways."

Second, I specifically said, "That is not to say race is purely social construct" -- mainly because I knew some idiot like you ("are you black?") would drag out this straw man.

Funny again: it seems that people who are so eager to prove this race/IQ connection instantly trot out affirmative action and "race-based whining" as justifications for what they are supposedly against -- judging people on race. It seems you are having it both ways.

There have been plenty of scientific studies documenting right-wing personality types. They lean towards authoritarianism, nativism, and fascism generally. There are also studies that show (using statistics and whatnot that is just too complicated for anyone but James Watson) that there is a strong correlation between education and liberalism. The less educated you are, the more conservative you tend to be. And the more educated you are, the more liberal you tend to be.

Funny. Conservatives tend to regard these studies as politically motivated and find all sorts of reasons to question their validity. They probably view them as thinly veiled attacks masquerading as science. They may even see them as attempts to perpetuate stereotypes. But it seems clear that certain personality types, which have a genetic basis, are attracted to things like jackboots, marching, and racism. This does not mean (I want to stress this point) that we should treat conservatives any differently, but it is clear now that, contrary to their claims, their idiocy is not the fault of liberals, and furthermore, we should not expect the genetically challenged to achieve the same outcomes as their liberal peers.

Posted by jim | November 22, 2007 2:42 AM

Steve, Fred, etc, I'd like to ask again:

Do you feel that employers should be allowed to exclude blacks from employment opportunities as a means of mitigating their HR risk?

Posted by oljb | November 22, 2007 2:52 AM

If you want to pretend there's no such thing as race and treat everyone as individuals, sign me up for that. But that would mean that you'd have to scrap affirmative action based on race in employment and education, and you'd have to stop presuming bias when blacks and Hispanics don't do as well on tests, aren't as well-represented in high-IQ professions (or the FDNY, for that matter), etc.

Saying that race is a social construct is, of course, not the same as saying that it does not exist. What it means that it exists largely because our society has has organized itself around a set of physical classifications that are extremely tenuous at best. There is really no argument about this. The question - why race? - to which you were responding is in the way of pointing out just how tenuous these constructions are. If one wants to study IQ differences in different populations, one could just as easily choose eye color or hair color as race.

But I am sure you are aware of that. You are just being deliberately obtuse in the construction of your counter argument.

You can't have it both ways, demanding race take precedence over merit, and then telling anyone who questions this that race is a "social construct" they shouldn't focus on.

Does this really need to be explained? The fact that race is a social construct does not mean it does not have and has not had a social effect. On the contrary, its primary manifestation as a social construct has been to devalue various groups within the socioeconomic pecking order.

But when you start talking about race as something that can be understood as an essential, not socially defined, difference, you are saying something quite different and, for the most part, incorrect. Populations, for the purpose of genetic differentiation, are very poorly delineated by our societal definitions of race. Therefore, making sweeping statements about the correlation of a tenuous concept like race to an equally tenuous concept like "intelligence" based upon studies of populations is a pretty ridiculous exercise. This is not the same as saying that our society doesn't attempt to define race or that its definitions are not responsible for harmful effects which we will do well as a society to address. Despite all the opinions expressed on this thread, it is still something of a mystery to me why so many people, you included, pretend not to understand this.

If you want to argue that racism is not a major factor in the current disparity than good luck. But the socially constructed nature of race is really a separate issue and I think you know that.

Posted by brent | November 22, 2007 3:06 AM

Wow, what a thread. I'm surprised no one has suggested another implication of the "importance" of saying the racist garbage from et al: cementing again the moral imperative behind colonialism. Was colonialism good or bad for the occupied? Who cares! What's more interesting is how those people needed to help to be civilized, and how the West (those crazy dreamers!) answered the call.

Of course, that is the ancient past and has absolutely no baring on today's world events.

Posted by bwunderlick | November 22, 2007 3:08 AM

saletan IS a racist. IQ does not accurately measure intelligence in any meaningful way.

when i was teaching in the inner city, it was a constant puzzle why some black and hispanic kids who were demonstrably and obviously bright often tested so poorly.

it is an interesting question, and there are lots of complicated answers for why this might be so, but to take IQ alone and argue based on this that blacks are dumber than whites (which is what saletan does argue) is not only racist but also simply lazy and unimaginative thinking.

the question should be why many black kids who are clearly smart do so poorly on IQ and other tests. that this question -- nor the possibility that IQ tests are not a perfect proxy for intelligence -- has apparently never occurred to saletan for a moment, is strong evidence of his cretinism, his racism, or some combination of the two.

Posted by zafar | November 22, 2007 3:21 AM

h:

Don't be ridiculous. You have a constitutional right to call someone a dirty greedy kike, but if you run around doing so constantly, you will find that the energy of the New York City Police Department will be expended on more important tasks than preventing you from receiving an ass-kicking. And when you get your ass kicked, your anti-Semitism will not be ennobled by it. Finally, if you try to press a case for assault, you may find yourself running up against one of the last few areas where the Supreme Court doctrine of "fighting words" still holds.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 22, 2007 3:24 AM

Let's do some IQ tests among all the people arguing that blacks are genetically inferior.

Posted by novakant | November 22, 2007 3:59 AM

"Maybe the scientific consensus over the past handful of decades is a mistake -- an ideology-driven overreaction to an ethical backlash against white supremacists."

The Snyderman/Rothman study, where 1,020 experts on IQ were polled anonymously, did not show a consensus against a genetic factor in the black/white IQ-gap, only 17% reported the belief that it was entirely environmental:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyderman_and_Rothman_%28study%29

Posted by Kalle Kula | November 22, 2007 4:19 AM

It's the little things that show the bad faith of racists. Using that oh-so-reliable source, Wikipedia, I learned that the Snyderman/Rothman study was conducted in 1987, so we're not talking recent. But here's the larger dishonesty --- the study did NOT, as Kalle claims, survey 1,020 experts on IQ. In fact, the entire study was "a broad sample of 1,020 scholars in specialties that would give them reason to be knowledgeable about IQ (but not necessarily about race)", and this included journalists, science editors and "IQ experts" (as a separate category within the 1,020, apart from journalists and science editors).

The 17% referred to "psychologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, educators, and geneticists".

So we have a survey on the opinion of people with so-called expertise in IQ (but not race) commenting on IQ AND race. From 20 years ago. Hmmmmm.

Posted by Slim Tyranny | November 22, 2007 4:49 AM

Chris asks: " Steve Sailer: Are you aware that VDARE is a white supremacist website?"

The answer is, of course, yes he is. After all, it was on VDARE's website that Sailer himself argued, following Hurricane Katrina, that the lower average IQ of African-Americans found in intelligence research correlates with "poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups...[t]hus they need stricter moral guidance from society." I'd link to his actual piece, but then I'd be exposing you further to his racist bullshit, with amazing insights like:

"In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan—because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren't blacks."

"Nor is it surprising that the black refugees at the Superdome and the convention center failed to get themselves organized to make conditions more livable. Poor black people seldom cooperate well with each other because they don't trust other blacks much, for the perfectly rational reason that they commit large numbers of crimes against each other."

Posted by Slim Tyranny | November 22, 2007 4:59 AM

(my original post disappeared due to me forgetting to enter a name, but I'll try to reconstruct it)

Slim Tyranny, true, i missed that, it was actually 661 experts "in the field of intelligence drawn from the ranks of the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the National Council on Measurement in Education, and other relevant professional organizations", here are their responses:

Entirely environmental 15%
Entirely genetic 1%
Partially genetic 45%
Data Are Insufficient 24%
No response 14%

As you can see there was no consensus, and definitely not in on a "Entirely environmental" explanation.

Posted by Kalle Kula | November 22, 2007 5:28 AM

You guys familiar with Murray's essay on Jews and IQ from April?

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/Jewish-Genius-10855

Posted by Brett | November 22, 2007 5:32 AM

Kalle, you still fail to recognize two other flaws w/r/t the study:

(1) It's from 1987

(2) The truly glaring flaw: those experts you list are supposed experts in "the field of intelligence"; nothing about expertise in the scientific backing of intelligence test results. You have IQ experts commenting on the issue of race, a field in which they are not even claiming to be experts.

A poll of IQ experts (comprised of sociologists, educators, etc.) is not very revealing when it comes to determining if there is a scientific consensus on race and intelligence.

Posted by Slim Tyranny | November 22, 2007 6:03 AM

Please dim the lights and remain quiet as I attempt to channel the demon spirit, Sneve Snailer...

"I have put in a lot of effort in learning the science in areas surrounding race and IQ, and I can assure you that your summarization of the current state of scientific knowledge is pretty close to 180 degrees wrong."In other words, I'm not scientician, but I play one on the Internet.

"The point is that we don't know for sure about race and IQ, but the rapid advances in cheap genome sequencing (James Watson's entire genome is now online, for instance) mean that pretty soon we will know pretty much for sure." But despite the fact that we don't know for sure, I won't hesitate to build an entire cottage industry (albeit, a rather unprofitable industry, else, why would I inundate this blog with links to my own "research"...) based on this lack of information. I will continue to make hypothetical inferences and categorical statements with no supporting genetic or statistical evidence regardless of what new research demonstrates. And I will do so with a smug self-satisfied assurance that I will always be able to track down just enough "evidence" to support my already formed beliefs (that the "evidence" that I find may contradict my previous or future statements is not relevant to this current discussion).

Did Watson I Watson happen Watson to Watson mention Watson Watson? Because Watson I Watson believe Watson that Watson what Watson Watson has Watson to Watson say Watson is Watson relevant Watson to Watson this Watson discussion Watson despite Watson Watson's Watson obvious Watson lack Watson of Watson expertise Watson in Watson this Watson field,..., Watson.

I, Watson for Watson one, Watson believe Watson that Watson we Watson ignore Watson Watson at Watson our Watson own Watson peril,... Watson.

Ah,..., Ah,..., Ah,..., AHCHOOOOOOOwatsonsummersdukejennacan'tyouseetheconncetionscieticianwatsonjunksciencewillmakemerichwhereismyglamshotwithmargretthatchershe'saniceladyoy...

(sniffle)Excuse me, my Watson allergies Watson are Watson acting Watson up....

Posted by Sneve Snailer c/o Rihilism | November 22, 2007 7:05 AM

"You guys familiar with Murray's essay on Jews and IQ from April?"

I wasn't, so thanks for linking to it. It's a hoot. I particularly enjoyed this ripe bit of drivel:

"Consider an IQ score of 140 or higher, denoting the level of intelligence that can permit people to excel in fields like theoretical physics and pure mathematics."

Oh dear. Young Feynman clearly doesn't have what it takes.

Posted by Kevin Donoghue | November 22, 2007 7:28 AM

Koreans tend to score among the highest on IQ tests, which is why North Korea is the richest country in the world. [/end snark] I wonder what decades of not having enough carbs and protein has done to the IQs of North Koreans, especially considering that they have never been tested. Maybe it's made them into closet VDare fans.

"See Chris, that's what's so goddamned spectacular about you. I would never have the self-esteem, balls, or arrogance to stand up and say that James Watson is a know nothing who got lucky."

You don't know many scientists, do you? My friends who have taken classes with some of his former colleagues (some of them Nobel Prize winners) talk about how much they think he was a bit of a slimeball who rode to fame on others' work.

The obvious point that some people on this thread (Sailer, Fred, etc.) are racists is definitely true. However, you have to wonder what motivates it. At what point does one decide, especially in a society that has had a secular trend towards anti-racism, to embrace racism and defend it? Why does one become so emotionally invested in it? Is it genetically implanted on inferior brains? Is it just to be an asshole at other people's expense, like stabbing strangers on the street? Is it just some form of social dysfunction? Is it to spite some beautiful black girl from their past? Why do you guys hate black people so much? Do you have any black friends? Have you ever gone out with anyone of a different race?

And thanks to the people on this thread who don't buy that "Theo van Gogh" was a martyr bullshit. In the UK after 9/11, there was a higher proportion of people of South Asian and Middle Eastern descent attacked in hate crimes than in the US in the relevant period, yet none of them get celebrated as martyrs by Paul Berman and company.

Posted by Reality Man | November 22, 2007 8:49 AM

Kalle Kula, since when does "genetics" = "race?" You can go into just about any village of at least 100 people in sub-Saharan Africa and find more genetic diversity than in much larger European communities. It's almost an apples-to-oranges comparison to compare Africans and Europeans as a group on genetic issues beyond skin pigmentation and hair. After all, differences in genetics can be defined in just about any random grouping of characteristics, such as (as some have pointed out) eye color, height, etc. It can also be determined by parental behavior that affected their own genes (history of hard drug use, exposure to radiation, etc.) A kid born to a mom who would snort lines of coke off of an old copy machine while drinking lead-saturated water would probably come out a bit fucked up.

Just a couple of general factoids for everybody: the Mongolian education system is inferior to the Chinese one (in part due to less wealth and the lowest population density of any nation on Earth), yet the Mongolian minority in China is on average the most educated ethnic group in China. Also, lead paint exposure early in life has been tied across populations and time to a history of anti-social behavior, such as crime. All over the world, generations that we young when lead paint was introduced tended to be more criminally active than previous generations and generations that would grow up afterwards when lead paint was replaced by safer types of paint then tended to be less violent.

Posted by Reality Man | November 22, 2007 9:00 AM

The Snyderman/Rothman study, where 1,020 experts on IQ were polled anonymously, did not show a consensus against a genetic factor in the black/white IQ-gap, only 17% reported the belief that it was entirely environmental:

An additional problem with this study, Kalle, is that it doesn't dispute what Matt Y is saying. No one really doubts that there are genetic factors that influence IQ. His point, whether he is right or wrong, is that the consensus is that race is a poorly chosen categorization method and that IQ is a very limited measurement of "intelligence." Your study doesn't address the issue of consensus around either of those issues in any way.

Posted by brent | November 22, 2007 9:11 AM

snort lines of coke off of an old copy machine while drinking lead-saturated water

It can't be done. I've tried.

Posted by Steve Sailer's mom | November 22, 2007 9:26 AM

Why can't Smatt Byglesius just admit he's been Watsonified in the Borkinification by Sneve's superior credentianalationism. This is clearly a case of misinformalackoevidentiarystatisquopoliticocorrectivism run amuck.

Posted by Teve Torbes on behalf on Sneve Snailer as interpreted by Rihilism | November 22, 2007 9:46 AM

Slim Tyranny, in a sense though, that study and your reaction is the point I am trying to make. That study shows 20 years ago, this was a belief amongst 17% of the reasonably educated in these matters set. IIRC, the wikipedia page on race shows that 10 years ago, the 17% had moved up to a bare majority of anthropologists.

So much of this belief and change in the cultural thought is a very recent occurrence to people that would be relatively well educated in this area.

That's the reason I think that flat out attributing currently holding the older belief or wanting to discuss or research this further as racist is a ridiculous position to hold.

It's not that there aren't racists involved, it's that there are plenty of educated people of perfectly good intentions that aren't racists but perhaps haven't got the message yet that are impugned and smeared needlessly.

But as you also point out, that study and others are not really from the group of people that would know most about race and IQ. Well, actually, neither are most if any of the people pontificating in this thread, including MY. Most of these folks have a layman's understanding of the fields, have not read the papers, and do not have the educational background. They have heard all of this, including most likely MY from a third party. So their belief is actually akin to the cargo cult. Their belief is more faith based than knowledge based, which is why I find it hilarious and appalling that so many people can so arrogantly state matter of factly that its racism that causes any scientist in the field or related fields to believe that race may yet be a real world entity that needs consideration.

Plate Tectonics was derided and laughed at for about 40 years, and then it made a very quick for science, about ten year sweeping revolution of the field.

And we do have geneticists like Neil Risch (an Ashkenazi Jew) who can and do make a case for race. (Near as I can tell as a layman perusing google.) (I admit a bias towards Risch as I am a carrier of one of the ethnically linked lipid storage diseases he studies.)

We've seen science make lots of errors -- that IS the scientific process, and since scientists are human, we know that scientists are motivated by political and politically correct agendas -- that's the importance of Feynman's cargo cult essay.

It's not racism to think, contrary to Harvard Philosophy majors and a Philadelphia based economist that there may yet be a case for race as a real physical world entity of relevance here.

And as I've said above whether it's race and IQ, or just your genes and diseases, the important result is NOT to stop studying and discussing, the important result is to make sure that any information obtained CANNOT be used to discriminate against a group or individual.

Posted by l | November 22, 2007 9:53 AM

I studied and worked David Wechsler arguably the great influence and inspirirer of Intelligence testing. After he retired he said he doubted there was anything called intelligence, and the the whole field was hogwash.
But if we are going to get into it, let's suppose that whites are one standard deviation smarter than blacks. (that's supposing a REALLY big difference!) it then follows that only 1/3 of black people is smarter than the average white man. I suppose it then should follow that we ought to do something -eugenic?- about all those stupid black and white people.

Posted by Dick Mulliken | November 22, 2007 10:18 AM

What is the motivation to cherry pick some research in order to suggest blacks are inferior to whites? Why does one repeatedly present these arguments? Alfred Alder said to look at goals to explain motivation. Andrew Sullivan, Steve Sailer, James Watson, Saletan, fred and various people who posted with one letter are clearly racist. They want to establish as scientific fact that whites are superior to blacks. That is call white supremacy. Chris Rock commented on people discussing whether Micheal Richards was racist. "What does he have to do join the Klu Klux Klan?"

When racists are confronted about their racism they will complain that their Free Speech rights are being violated. In doing so they want to suppress the speech of those who state the obvious. You can spout all the racist comments you want, just stop whining when people call you on it. They also will bring up Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as being racist and "Self-Appointed Black Leaders". Steve Gilliard pointed out that they were the ones to organize an speak out. I would call them Media Appointed Leaders, since the lazy cable and beltway media will only call them and not Cornell West or Steve Dyson.

Oh I forgot about the accusation of Political Correctedness which is used by bigots when they are confronted and called on their hate.

And by the way Watson, Crick and Wilkins stole and plaigarized Rosalind Franklin's research and failed to give her any credit. Watson made the comment "She did not go out of the way to make herself attractive". How dare she not put on make up a short skirt and plunging neckline when she went to the lab. She died when the Nobel prize was given. Jimmy Watson was so persecuted when his appearances were cancelled after his racist blathering. Maybe he can speak at other white supremacist groups such as the American Enterprise Institute or Family Research Council.

I about spit up my coffee when Uncle Thomas Sowell was portrayed as intelligent black man. Clarence Thomas and Sowell are self loathing and merely spew right wing talking points

Posted by Patrick | November 22, 2007 10:54 AM

Patrick, please point to a single racist thing that any one letter comment (f-m) writer has written. Thanks.

Posted by m | November 22, 2007 10:59 AM

I think it's time to start measuring the intellectual inferiority of racists who have somehow learned to use big words. Or maybe it's a form of autism?
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | November 22, 2007 11:50 AM

Like brooksfoe (@9:39) and some others have said: whatever else, it seems pretty clear that the function of Saletan et al's musings is to bring racist thinking back into the mainstrem - or more exactly, to render it part of acceptable discourse.

Why now, I dunno. Sometimes I think one can see traces across many domains of some big cultural shift underway and lumberingly picking up speed, whether in the sudden frequency of nooses showing up or the increasingly mainstreamed talk about whites being outbred, etc., etc., etc. Dunno. But certainly Brettt and Fred are on the money (insert Ron Paul joke) about the policy implications of belief in such views.

Of course, given that everyone accepts that environment, society, etc. play at least some role, even if one believed that there were on-average inherent genetic differences in something meaningfully described as intelligence between populations reasonably well-corresponding to our folk-bio view of 'races' (and I see little reason to), we're talking about very small differences - a literal handful of IQ points. It's a difference that would be dwarfed by the effects of those differences in the world outside our genes, from wealth gaps to culture to greater likelihood of childhood exposure to lead and other potent neurotoxins. But such a belief would be used by many to justify dismantling any and all attempts to balance out the (unquestioned and unquestionably real) effects of poverty and discrimination, of history and society.

Now, if in the coming decades sound science does reveal meaningful genetic differences in intelligence between populations in a way that (as MattY rather nicely pointed out) happens to line up with long-standing and very racist prejudices, that's something we'll have to work with. (Trust me, I'm not holding my breath). But right now all I see is some folks busily laboring off of a predetermined agenda - involving certain obsessively held rightwing policy preferences built on a foundation of old hate and fear - in a way that consistently comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted.

Posted by Dan S. | November 22, 2007 11:50 AM

One can certainly see where an atmosphere where academics cannot even discuss possible gender or race differences could stifle needed debate.

Indeed. And, ever since the Nazis gave anti-semitism a bad name, you can hardly ever find anyone to seriously debate the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Political correctness is hampering open and honest debate on just how ignorant people are because of their skin color, our 6,000 year old earth, etc.

It's a shame.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | November 22, 2007 11:54 AM

The number of biochemical reactions that take place in order to produce the expression of "intelligence" is massively complex. Intelligence is not one gene or even one set of genes. The idea that we've narrowed down the genetic picture because Watson's genome is available on the web is preposterous. Genomics is the study of the physical expression of genes. Genes turn on and off, genes control other genes, and genes respond to environmental stimuli (like virus). Many, many, genes from many different locations on the genetic map are interacting to produce the multitude of biochemical reactions involved in any expression of a single trait of intelligence, say memory. A single rare allele in the middle of all these gene complexes that make up memory can change everything about intelligence. What race science does is start from the rare allele and work towards expressed inferiority. It's picking those genes which are least frequent in the black population and then trying to figure out how those genes make that population less "fit" genetically. He tries to fit the "fact" of the rare allele into his preconception of blacks being intellectually inferior without knowing the first thing about the working of the intellect.

Posted by Just Karl | November 22, 2007 12:14 PM

"Patrick, please point to a single racist thing that any one letter comment (f-m) writer has written. Thanks.

Posted by m | November 22, 2007 10:59 AM"

All of them. This has been easy answers to retarded Klansmen.

Also, say all of this racist tripe was true and there was 1) a clear 15 difference in the average black and white person's IQ 2) IQ did really equal intelligence and 3) this was cause by racial genetic determinism. 15 points is nothing. I've taken IQ tests where I've differed on the score by almost 60 points (138-195) depending on my mood and such. With the 138 I was bored and not paying attention as much and the 195 I just guessed right randomly for a bunch of questions.

Posted by Reality Man | November 22, 2007 12:27 PM

Yes, Just Karl, the understanding of the genome is in its infancy, which is why I personally put little store in that kind of evidence. The belief that genetics explains a significant part of racial differences in intelligence is based on evidence such as this.
If you want to critique race science, this is the body of work you have to deal. Nothing I've seen on this thread even attempts to make a dent in it. Call it the flight from the empirical.

Posted by Kismet | November 22, 2007 12:39 PM

I've taken IQ tests where I've differed on the score by almost 60 points (138-195) depending on my mood and such.

When and where did these tests take place? I'm assuming these were professional tests, of course. Not just something off the Internet...

Posted by Lex Lucre | November 22, 2007 12:43 PM

Reality Man is a racist Klansman.

See, RM, anyone can play that game. But you're playing it, because you can't actually point to a single racist statement in anything I wrote.

Posted by m | November 22, 2007 12:44 PM

"Reality Man is a racist Klansman."

Considering that they would lynch me, I highly doubt this.

"See, RM, anyone can play that game. But you're playing it, because you can't actually point to a single racist statement in anything I wrote.

Posted by m | November 22, 2007 12:44 PM"

No, I just don't feel like playing your therapist and going through your posts under changing names one by one and having to hold up all of your own shit to your face. If you can't tell that you're a racist, you're the one that has to live with the consequences of that, not me. People like you don't exist to be engaged, but mocked. You never convince a racist he's a racist. Strom Thurmond probably thought that he was a perfectly reasonable man. After all, he had fathered black children! (Out of wedlock with underage girls who worked for his family) Your life is a punchline and that makes me laugh.

Posted by Reality Man | November 22, 2007 12:55 PM

ok m this one is half and half, the other I did not digest enough
"Refusing to allow research or discussions of how race might be linked to neural processes might harm how we understand and treat various diseases. It might even change how we understand how best to teach people. It may change how we understand how evolution works or worked. It may change how we understand how the changing environment or pollution can effect us.
But when people flatly state that anyone that looks into this question and doesn't start and end with the conclusion there is no link is a racist, then we lose all of that.
It's especially appalling that this cry comes from people that claim to be reality based, interested in free speech and academic freedom, and who were legitimately upset when the government bans funding of stem cell research, or reproductive choice education, ....
I've only heard once or twice of researchers limiting their research. Using NAZI results. And research into human cloning. I don't hear researchers saying it is necessary to stop this research. But I do hear a bunch of bloggers saying anyone that disagrees with the current laymen's view is a racist fuck.
This is not progress. And I don't think it's liberalism.
Posted by j | November 22, 2007 1:33 AM
Because linking IQ to intelligence is ignorant. It only depicts a culturally biased look into certain types of intelligence that the dominant culture values. Neural processes yes. Environment is critically important. Van Gogh was a poor student by his knowledge of color far exceeds all but a handful. African Americans were deprived of education until recently. I wen to see Sonny Rollins recently a true genius. Almost all the major American art forms come from African Americans which they developed from their home countries-Gospel, Blues, Ragtime Jazz and with the Celts-Rock and tap dancing. The Irish were also deprived of education and thus excelled in dance, music and storytelling. With education they had a high tech revolution so no more cheap land for Americans. Native Americans excel in pottery jewelry and weaving. They understand nature far better than the rest of us. Traditional healers are botanical psychological, pharmacological and medicinal geniuses.
Saleten, Sullivan, Murray, Watson and Sailer are racists, misogynists anti-semites and except for Sullivan homophobic

Posted by Patrick | November 22, 2007 1:06 PM

The Irish were also deprived of education and thus excelled in dance, music and storytelling. With education they had a high tech revolution so no more cheap land for Americans. Native Americans excel in pottery jewelry and weaving. They understand nature far better than the rest of us. Traditional healers are botanical psychological, pharmacological and medicinal geniuses.

Yes, and migrating birds have an uncanny knack of navigation, and spiders spin fantastically intricate webs. Ipso facto, humans aren't more intelligent than either birds or insects.

Posted by Kwikfit | November 22, 2007 1:15 PM

I´m sorry to see this is so far down the list but, uh, this debate was definitately put to rest years ago by (most famously) Jared Diamond, who didn't use any technical studies, but merely pointed out that ¨"race" is hardly an objective category, but rather a malleable construct. In light of this, all "scientific" studies on race and IQ are moot. Link below is to the 1994 article.

http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/001377.html

Posted by Musa | November 22, 2007 1:33 PM

I´m sorry to see this is so far down the list but, uh, this debate was definitately put to rest years ago by (most famously) Jared Diamond, who didn't use any technical studies, but merely pointed out that ¨"race" is hardly an objective category, but rather a malleable construct. In light of this, all "scientific" studies on race and IQ are moot. Link below is to the 1994 article.

http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/001377.html

Posted by Musa | November 22, 2007 1:33 PM

Kismet,

I reject the IQ as an inaccurate measure of intelligence, so how could it possibly tell me anything about the genetic differences between populations? Adding further uncertainty makes it even more flawed and biased.

Posted by Just Karl | November 22, 2007 1:37 PM

What is a race? It is essentially a lineage. A racial group is merely an extremely extended family that inbreeds to some extent. Thus, race is a fundamental aspect of the human condition because we are all born into families. Burying our heads in the sand and refusing to think clearly about this bedrock fact of life only makes the inevitable problems caused by race harder to overcome.

Read Sailer, not Saletan

If races don't exist, neither, by extension, do animal breeds, nor indeed species.

Posted by Monty Don | November 22, 2007 1:48 PM

I reject the IQ as an inaccurate measure of intelligence, so how could it possibly tell me anything about the genetic differences between populations?

Which raises the following questions. What, if anything, do you accept as an accurate measure of intelligence? We've heard from the race doesn't exist school; are you one of the intelligence doesn't exist crowd?

Posted by Kismet | November 22, 2007 1:55 PM

On average black people are taller than whites. Seems like a trivial point that no one cares about. Why is it trivial? Because it has no social/political significance.

This is an example of popular misconceptions about racial differences. According to the National Health & Nutrition Examination Survey, American whites are taller than American blacks in every quartile & at every age. It's unwise to generalize from small, highly selected groups like professional basketball players to the larger populations from which they were selected.

One secondary reason for the susceptibility of some opinion journalists for this kind of stuff may be that anyone who shows the slightest openness to it is assiduously courted by politicized race scientists like the one Saletan naively cites (the South African, now Canadian, psychologist, J Philippe Rushton), who're extremely anxious, for non-scientific reasons, to change the climate of ideas among opinion makers. Like a lot of people with money to spend & an axe to grind, professional racists (e.g., the people associated with entities like the Pioneer Fund) lobby political journalists for the eminently sensible reason that they can sometimes influence what gets written. I'm unaware of any comparably concerted lobbying effort on the other side.

Posted by K | November 22, 2007 2:10 PM

In particular, Saletan and my bloggy colleagues seem to have convinced themselves that there's overwhelming opposition in public opinion to the view that whites are intrinsically smarter than blacks and also that there's strong scientific consensus in favor of that hypothesis. As best I can tell, however, neither is true. The "black genes make you dumb" crowd is siding with widely-held popular prejudice against what most researchers believe.

Sorry, Matt, but I'm calling that bollocks. There's a big difference between private opinion and public opinion. The whole point of PC is to police it.

And the identities of the majority of researchers in the field of psychometrics who contest the race realist position remain curiously absent. Instead, we get Stephen Jay Gould, Jared Diamond and other usual suspects.

Posted by Luka | November 22, 2007 2:17 PM

"What I'm truly impressed with is the degree of certainty."

Do some research. Think about it. Get back to me. The idea that races have identical average cognitive function after tens of thousands of years of geographic separation is on its face a strange claim, given the genetic physical differences. The data supports strongly these differences, and environmental factors have not been strongly indicated in explaining these differences (poor whites outscore affluent blacks; the Minnnesota adoption study which shows the standard 1 standard deviation gap). Read the Saletan piece. Read the recent Gene Expression defense by Jason Malloy. There is a strong case to be made.

Posted by Hans Gruber | November 22, 2007 2:22 PM

I'm unaware of any comparably concerted lobbying effort on the other side.

The situation is evidently asymmetrical. A ruling party, dogma or paradigm has no need to lobby for support.

Posted by Kilter | November 22, 2007 2:27 PM

Dear Editor(s):
I read the article Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science (Peter Lawrence, 2006) and would like to congratulate you for having the courage to publish it. A scientific approach to studying gender differences ?? what a novel concept!

I grew up and studied engineering in India from a top institution, where I was one of the only two women among a class of about five hundred men. I constantly faced overt discrimination and questions about my ability and choice of profession.

Despite the sexism that I personally faced in a society like India (where both men and especially women make it their life's mission to keep women down), I have become increasingly disturbed by the tyranny of the gender studies departments in the western world. The women leading these departments are so sure that every problem in their life is due to gender discrimination (even though most of them have not really seen much of it) and that any discussion of genetic differences among men and women is a ploy to subjugate them, that they have pretty much squashed most of the scientific debate in this field.

Their view is patently false, unscientific and frankly embarrassing to self-respecting women all over the world. It is indeed ridiculous that such people will actually try to quash truth and science because it does not support their ideology (shouldn't they be questioning the ideology instead and its lack of correspondence to reality?).

The problem is that it does not help women in any way to oppose the publication of scientific work in this area. On the contrary it makes us look like we have something to hide, or worse, something to be ashamed of. As for the men who will not support the pursuit of scientific discovery in this area, they are simply running scared of getting lynched like Larry Summers.

Of course we do not want to use average differences to create policies to keep people out of certain professions, clubs or other social networks - because individuals matter - but it is about time we used science to establish the truth vs. political correctness and ideology. That's the only way we will actually have a level playing field, not by fearing the truth.

I would submit that hiding the facts on how women and men on average are different actually hurts women more. Not only does this prevent us from celebrating our and our sisters' strengths it also makes us seem scared of being who we are. It even gives license to people who actually hold and justify radically sexist views because the obviously false "men and women are created equal and are identical" dictum is the alternative they can easily and laughingly dismiss.

In any case, your publication will be happy to know that I forwarded this article and received many supporting emails mostly from very successful and intelligent women. Please keep up the good work knowing that reality is on your side. Take care and good luck!
Sincerely,
Reena Kapoor
Redwood City, CA
USA

Posted by Related | November 22, 2007 3:31 PM

This discussion has legs. A while ago someone here indicated that Flynn has admitted that the black-white IQ convergence may not be occurring after all. I went and read Flynn and Dickens's 2006 AEI papers, which were cited by Peter H in a different post. There, Flynn and Dickens seem to hold to the position that a considerable chunk of the IQ difference has, indeed, disappeared over recent decades--perhaps one-third to one-half of it. Though we would like all of the gap to have disappeared by now, this would still represent important progress. Flynn and Dickens (2006) acknowledge the existence of contrary data but argue that those data are flawed. Perhaps Flynn et al have published something less sanguine elsewhere in the meantime (if so, I would appreciate a citation). And it's certainly possible newer data will reveal that the IQ convergence has stalled or reversed recently, due to cutbacks in ameliorative programs attributable to the movement-conservative backlash.

I'm unfamiliar with the papers in the Arrow and Bowles collection, which Peter H indicates support the idea that IQ may not play an important role in determining economic inequality after all. Certainly IQ is not the only factor that determines inequality; and it would be mistaken to focus on it in discussions of the runaway growth in inequality since the '60s. At least in the long run, however, it seems unlikely that whatever IQ measures is unimportant to differences in economic inequality because IQ is defined and measured in terms of differences among individual's abilities to learn the kinds of things we teach in school. Still, it remains plausible to suppose that, today, the influence of "merit" on empirical measurements of inequality growth might be overshadowed by the effects of the non-merit-related factors that have produced runaway income growth among the very wealthy.

Posted by RRS | November 22, 2007 3:44 PM

Monty Don: If races don't exist, neither, by extension, do animal breeds, nor indeed species.

This is a remarkably ill informed statement. Even the definition you provide is remarkable for its vagueness. Whatever race is, it is certainly not as strongly definable as species and breeds. Is it really necessary to slowly explain all of the fundamental problems with categorizing populations by skin color? Do we really need to go through all the nonsense about the one drop rule etc? Are supporters of race based science truly this dense? How about this: Why don't you try providing us with a definition of a particular race that excludes all people who do not belong in the race and includes all people who do belong in the race and somehow manages to strip away all of our social and cultural assumptions?

Kismet: Which raises the following questions. What, if anything, do you accept as an accurate measure of intelligence?

The entire point of what everyone who has been arguing against race based science has been saying over and over is that we do not have very good measurements of intelligence. It is an extremely difficult thing to define and IQ is obviously inadequate to the task. Perhaps you disagree with this but have you not been paying attention? If so, why ask that question?

We've heard from the race doesn't exist school; are you one of the intelligence doesn't exist crowd?

Again, saying that race is a social construct is not the same as saying that it does not exist. Saying that inherent intelligence is very difficult to measure, especially along the lines of a one dimensional test, is not the same as saying that it does not exist. These points, whether one agrees with them or not, are not difficult to understand. Why pretend that they are?

Posted by brent | November 22, 2007 4:29 PM

Hard to know whethert Steve Sailer or Fred is the scummier racist. A scummy tie probably.

Posted by Jennifer | November 22, 2007 5:29 PM

Dilan Esper - But this isn't mindless political correctness. It is political correctness that has a very good rationale behind it. I hate to say that any idea is dangerous, but these ideas are about as close as any come, precisely because they have been used and continue to be used to justify all sorts of noxious policies, and also because people are very quick to jump from the conclusion that there may be some racial or gender differences to the conclusion that those differences are all that "matter", that discrimination isn't important anymore, and that weneed not care about social factors and constructions and preexisting biases that influence our conclusions about these issues.

The flip side of the "danger" is ideologically driven identity politics that assumes that since no significant racial or ethnic differences exist - then all unequal outcomes are due to racism, oppression, discrimination that require very harsh and noxious punitive social actions to "achieve the justice of equal outcomes".

* Teach history that the lack of high civilizations and written languages in subSaharan Africa was due to racism.

* Since Jews are 40% of Ivy League and were 45% of elite Soviet universities - quotas are called on to "properly balance" what must be an unfair edge, if Jews are no smarter or harder working or talented than the average Russian or Italian-America.

* Establish mandated diversity in companies where hiring too many talented white and Asian engineers will screw a manager's career on performance reviews, any discrimination lawsuit. To be safe, one must look at the Race Card Bingo Chart and ensure the black numbers are equal to population percentage.

* Maintain race discrimination at university to mitigate past racism that "kept blacks out of elite lawyer and rocket scientist jobs" - given their equal intelligence. And since blacks don't graduate from challenging majors once admitted on preferences, create easy degrees and departments they can transfer to so they have a better shot at graduating (African-American Studies, Critical Studies, Black Political Science, etc.)

* Swear to fellow PC, "race is an artificial construct of oppression!!!" true believers that lack of champion black swimmers is due to swimming pool shortages in black neighborhoods and lack of white or Asian sprinters is due to lack of spaces where whites and Asians can run in a straight line. Ignore the snickers..............

...............Just say again and again - Race does not exist! Differences in civilizational attainment, infant maturation differences, impulsiveness&criminality, IQ differences, DNA differences affecting metabolism, muscles, and bone structure differently are just misleading constructs of the Oppressor Peoples!

Posted by Chris Ford | November 22, 2007 5:57 PM

The idea that races have identical average cognitive function after tens of thousands of years of geographic separation is on its face a strange claim, given the genetic physical differences.

How do you measure "average cognitive function" and when were these "tens of thousands of years of geographic separation"?

pseudo-science + historical ignorance = racist
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | November 22, 2007 6:04 PM

Teach history that the lack of high civilizations and written languages in subSaharan Africa was due to racism.

A singularly ignorant sentence in both content and construction. The ignorance required for endowing pre-modern, American-style skin-color racism with scientific certainty is simply amazing.

Is anyone studying these primitives?
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | November 22, 2007 6:09 PM

Again, saying that race is a social construct is not the same as saying that it does not exist. Saying that inherent intelligence is very difficult to measure, especially along the lines of a one dimensional test, is not the same as saying that it does not exist. These points, whether one agrees with them or not, are not difficult to understand. Why pretend that they are?

Because it's not just their ideology that's threatened by science. It's their entire identity and sense of place. Why do you think they keep trying to repackage a pre-modern view of race from one tiny corner of the world, one moment in time? Imagine if they were instead trying to preserve the 13th-century pseudo-historical justification for the division of orders in western Europe. It'd be a dead giveaway.

But for some reason, we're supposed to humor these plantation poseurs. That's nice. A monkey playing with a camera is cute, too.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | November 22, 2007 6:14 PM

"Steve, Fred, etc, I'd like to ask again:

Do you feel that employers should be allowed to exclude blacks from employment opportunities as a means of mitigating their HR risk?"

Absolutely not: employers shouldn't discriminate in favor or against any racial or ethnic group.

Posted by Fred | November 22, 2007 6:56 PM

Hard to know whether Steve Sailer or Fred is the scummier racist. A scummy tie probably.

To the interested and casual observer reading this thread Jennifer, all I see is that you are a jerk. I don't think you are helping the cause that I would like to think you and I both share.

The same goes for anyone just mindlessly shouting "racist."

Here's a cute little kid that has explained this many times to many FARKers.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v469/Artadius/ThatsRacist.gif

Posted by Casual Observer | November 22, 2007 7:12 PM

A meta-question few liberals seem to ask is who actually benefits from the status quo, which assumes an equal distribution of IQ among different groups and requires affirmative action to ensure equal outcomes?

Who benefits when a Patrick Chavis is admitted to medical school over an Allan Bakke? One could argue that Chavis himself benefited, and affirmative action advocates such as Ted Kennedy, for whom Chavis became a poster-boy, benefited from the warm glow of self-righteousness they felt. Certainly the patients Chavis maimed (and the one he killed) didn't benefit. And here's the crucial point: those patients weren't affluent white liberal women; they were poor black women. When marginal or unqualified black applicants are accepted into medical schools, the patients who suffer are usually black too.

More broadly, affirmative action hurts those black professionals who are truly qualified, and it breeds resentment among the whites and Asians who were discriminated against to make room for less-qualified black and Hispanic candidates.

Since no good comes of this system, why not end it? Isn't it a reasonable compromise for it to be illegal to discriminate in favor or against anyone based on their ethnic or racial background?

Posted by Fred | November 22, 2007 7:27 PM

I'm tired.

Posted by Mark | November 22, 2007 7:57 PM

If you don't understand that average differences in IQ don't preclude the existence of individuals with high IQs in all racial groups, you are either ignorant or being deliberately obtuse.
Posted by Fred

Quite correct! Overlapping Bell Curves. Just as the Chimp and parrot Bell Curves slightly overlap the dumbest humans.

The good news is when the Hap Map is completed, it will be like the 1920s when up to 400 cultured and wild rice strains were identified - and we can improve the stock - Borlaug's next step of using genetics to create new strains fast, or the late 90s effort to GE - where we could one day give Asians fast-twitch Congloese muscle fiber, make the two brain mutations blacks lack inserted in the race to catch up their mental abilities as a group, maybe weed out the black propensity for criminality - and so on....

*****************************
Musa - I´m sorry to see this is so far down the list but, uh, this debate was definitately put to rest years ago by (most famously) Jared Diamond, who didn't use any technical studies, but merely pointed out that ¨"race" is hardly an objective category, but rather a malleable construct. In light of this, all "scientific" studies on race and IQ are moot. Link below is to the 1994 article.
http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/001377.html

Jared Diamond was just another race-norming liberal Jew, using phony anthropology and excuses of "luck!" "no harbors!" - "temperate regions had all the breaks", "white disease/white oppression!!" to explain the inability of subsaharan blacks to construct a high civilization. Then claiming race was a silly notion not grounded in science. It was all environmental. "race is artifical, a construct.

*********************

Posted by Chris Ford | November 22, 2007 8:52 PM

I'm not sure that the point about the significancy of our current, popular concepts of race has been well enough explained. It is my understanding that the genetic differences between the races are extremely small when compared to the similarities. Humans of all races are 99.999999... % genetically identical. I'm making this number up, but unless I'mm completely misinformed, it is something of this order. In fact, humans and chimps are something like 98%-99% genetically identical. But we get hung up on insignificant differences like skin color or eye shape because they are observable, and easy triggers for our inherent zenophbia. We see a different color skin and assume all kinds of other differences such as differences in IQ when the odds that differences in "intellegence" are included in the .00000001 percent of human genetic variablity, are--obviously--quite small. But we make this assumption and use this as a starting point for our research over all the very real and quantifiable differences between african americans and white americans.

And then there is the other part of the equation: IQ. There are are so many problems with IQ tests and all the twin studies and blah blah blah that keep getting brought up over and over on the internet. Statistical problems, contrary results problems, test taking problems... Anyone who is saying that the evidence for IQ differences between the races is substantial, overwhelming, conclusive... they are full of crap. It's all a big inconclusive mess.

And about Steve Sailer. He's made what sure seem to be racist statments on vdare. That doesn't mean every thing he says is wrong, but it does mean that you can't take what he says about race at face value. Sorry Steve, but that's the truth, at least as I see it.

Posted by cw | November 22, 2007 9:01 PM

I´m sorry to see this is so far down the list but, uh, this debate was definitely put to rest years ago by (most famously) Jared Diamond, who didn't use any technical studies, but merely pointed out that ¨"race" is hardly an objective category, but rather a malleable construct.

Musa,

Race as a construct? Wow, such a great point. And one that hadn't been mentioned once in the 100+ posts before yours.

Posted by Glaucon | November 22, 2007 9:53 PM

The logical argument is so simple:

1. Racial groups are poor categories with respect to populaton genetics.

2. IQ tests are poor measures of intelligence.

3. Therefore, its inconceivable that different races could have different averages of intelligence.

Why is it so hard for people to follow this logic?

Posted by Jim W | November 22, 2007 9:58 PM

Probably because, as you've stated it, there's no logic to follow. 3 doesn't logically follow from 1 and 2.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 22, 2007 10:04 PM

Yeah, I meant it as sort of a joke. Kind of lame, I guess.

For cw, I think the problem is that the effect of genetic differences is highly nonlinear. The effect of genetics via development is analogous to a computer program, so small changes can have large effects.

Much of evolution is akin to parameter tuning, such as allocating larger or smaller portions to different parts of the body, or scheduling developmental milestones at different times, rather than changing any of the underlying structures. This is one of the reasons evolutionary changes can happen so fast.

Posted by Jim W | November 22, 2007 10:09 PM

I think there's little reason to think there is any strong correlation between race and intelligence. I also think there's little reason to think there's no correlation between race and intelligence.

A small correlation tells you nothing at all about any given individual you might encounter. A point Saletan is at pains to emphasize. All it tells you is that if you find a disparate outcome between the groups, you can't just assume that it's a result of racism.

I think that's the cause of most of this hysteria: That assumption is darned convenient, isn't it?

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 22, 2007 10:40 PM

The real problem with your #3 Jim W is that it is not the argument that anyone is making based upon those two points. It is the pathetic strawman that gets drawn into this argument on every single occasion by those who assert that there is strong evidence of fundamental racial disparity in intelligence.

The argument that most people would make is that if 1 and 2 are true, it is both untrue and socially irresponsible to make the claim that one has strong evidence for the inherent intellectual inferiority of certain populations based upon race. In fact, that is precisely the argument that has been made numerous times on this very thread. That particular argument is the entire reason for this thread. So to ask your question again, why is that logic so hard to understand? More importantly why is it necessary to trot out a strawman rather than respond to the actual argument that is being made?

Posted by brent | November 22, 2007 10:42 PM

"How do you measure "average cognitive function" and when were these "tens of thousands of years of geographic separation"?

pseudo-science + historical ignorance = racist"

An ancestor fairly close to modern man is thought to have left Africa around 40,000-100,000 years ago. Specifically, to take but one exmaple, Australian aborgines are thought to have first moved to Australia around 50,000 years ago. That's a lot of time to sit on that rock, a lot of time to evolve or at least not to evolve as other (geographically separated) populations are evolving.

To take another example, humans are thought to have crossed the Bering land bridge around 25,000 years ago and migrated from Asia to America (possible many also came in boats later). Now of course, there's some interbreeding as peoples and tribes move around, but if this happened as much as you think it did, races wouldn't be readily identifiable, which of course they are.

It's also important to remember that founder effects might explain a lot of the biodiversity in regional populations. That is, a small and unrepresentative population migrates to a new area, significantly varying from the original population.

Why is it that this debate so often produces "you're racist" type of comments instead of delving into the issues substantively? And when those few do delve into the substance, they quote Lewontin's fallacy or some other hokum. I'm sure it's pleasing to stroke your ethics peen and pretend anybody who disagrees with you must be an idiot or racist. But a realistic and public appraisal of human diversity is beginning to take hold, Saletan is just the latest example. You can sharpen up your arguments or exit the debate. But screaming racist isn't going to work anymore.

Posted by Hans Gruber | November 22, 2007 10:43 PM

The argument that most people would make is that if 1 and 2 are true, it is both untrue and socially irresponsible to make the claim that one has strong evidence for the inherent intellectual inferiority of certain populations based upon race. In fact, that is precisely the argument that has been made numerous times on this very thread.

I haven't seen that argument made by ANYBODY in THIS thread, except for people like yourself stating that other people are making that argument.

It is a long thread and maybe I missed it, but I would truly be grateful if you can point out the numerous times that argument has been made.

Posted by huh | November 22, 2007 10:56 PM

"Jared Diamond, who didn't use any technical studies, but merely pointed out that ¨"race" is hardly an objective category, but rather a malleable construct."

The species concept is also "malleable." Grab three textbooks and you'll find slight differences. Some define it as a population which can successfully breed. But different species can often do this, like lions and tigers (heard of a liger?). Donkeys and horses (mule). The list goes on. So others define it as the population which can breed and produce a fertile offspring. But some hybrids, like Mules or Ligers, can occasionally produce fertile offspring (though this offspring is often sterile).

So, I'm sure you are going to agree that because species is "malleable" we should just abandon it. You see, it was all just in our imagination, a "social construct" best discarded, because *species don't really exist*.

Posted by Hans Gruber | November 22, 2007 11:01 PM

huh,

Are you joking? Are you really trying to say that you believe that no one on this thread has made the points that

1. race is a social construct

2. IQ is not a good measure of intelligence

as a refutation of Saletan's argument?

Is that what you are asking me to respond to seriously?

Posted by brent | November 22, 2007 11:17 PM

that one has strong evidence for the inherent intellectual inferiority of certain populations based upon race.

I haven't seen anyone make any claims as to the strength of any evidence. Going back over the first third or so, it seems that Fred is the only one that can be said to make any claim that one "race" is inferior to another.

Most of the arguments are of the form that race is not merely a social construct, though like obscenity, there is no great definition for it, though we know that geneticists like Neil Risch seem to believe there is something there, and also of the form, fuck IQ, intelligence is a real construct and though we have no wonderful way to measure it without cultural bias today, it's not clear that we won't have such tomorrow.

Even Steve Sailer who everyone here wants to call a racist seems to be saying that the effects are real, and non-zero, and in no way should be used to discriminate against anyone.

In response, I see tons and tons of people calling anyone with any doubts about this as racists, even though it is clear that the majority of scientists who would be knowledgeable about this field have only come to this conclusion within the past ten years.

That's where the essential dishonesty of this thread comes from, from assuming that what would seem to be the historically counterintuitive answer must be adopted overnight by anyone who wants to be considered serious and not a racist.

Posted by huh | November 22, 2007 11:33 PM

So, I'm sure you are going to agree that because species is "malleable" we should just abandon it. You see, it was all just in our imagination, a "social construct" best discarded, because *species don't really exist*.

It is a bit ridiculous that I am repeating this blindingly obvious point but saying something is social construct is not the same as saying it does not exist. This is an incredibly stupid argument that, for some reason, people keep repeating. Please stop it.

Posted by brent | November 22, 2007 11:47 PM

have a couple of baseline questions for those who agree with Saletan, et alia:

1. What is the basis for including everyone with recent subsaharan ancestry within a single group? Have those people been interbreeding significantly? Are the Koi-San closely related to people from the source of the Nile? the Niger delta? For that matter, why are all people from east of the Ural mountains lumped together as "Asians?" Is there some basis for considered, say, Dravidians, as being closely related to the Han?

2. What is the explanation for American Indians' generally poor performance on IQ tests? It is my understanding that they migrated from Asia within the last 20,000 years, meaning they are separated from Asians by about half the time that Europeans were separated from Asians and Africans. Why are their IQ scores so much lower than Asians?

What is the basis for including everyone with recent subsaharan ancestry within a single group?

There is no basis. None claimed. Even in the 18th century, great genetic differences were recognized in subsaharan populations. More variety in subsaharan Africa than elsewhere, as all the rest of humanity is thought to have come from only a few thousand who left Africa.

Have those people been interbreeding significantly? Are the Koi-San closely related to people from the source of the Nile?

No and no. However, colonists introducing business and technology found the native Africans generally unsuitable to the task, and imported Indians, Arabs, Whites, and Chinese for more skilled tasks - no matter what the region or dominant subsaharan genotype.

For that matter, why are all people from east of the Ural mountains lumped together as "Asians?"

The Urals and Asia Minor were considered suitable geographical demarcation points between the West and the Eastern cultures many centuries ago. Even then, they recognized that many people to the East of those arbitary borders were Caucasoid, while they knew that the Mongols and people of Cathay and the Spice Islands were of as different a race as blacks. Hence, from the Horde itself - Mongloid.

Is there some basis for considered, say, Dravidians, as being closely related to the Han?

No, Han and the other more intelligent people of the Orient - the Koreans and Japanese are believed to be from the Northern wave of "Out of Africa" migration that whites arose out of the same ancestor race of the Northern Route slightly earlier.
The Southern route of Migration that followed the coasts out of Africa is of enormous DNA studies interest to see what influenced pockets of Indian population, the Malays, Negritos, Ainu, Polynesians, Australian aborigines - surviving into the present.

The Aussie aborigines may be very much like the earliest humans as they evolved different mental and physiological capacities on leaving Africa. Again, the DNA studies will end speculation very soon as all the data of DNA samples from the Hap Map study comes in.

What is the explanation for American Indians' generally poor performance on IQ tests? It is my understanding that they migrated from Asia within the last 20,000 years, meaning they are separated from Asians by about half the time that Europeans were separated from Asians and Africans. Why are their IQ scores so much lower than Asians?

They aren't, when you get past generalizing "all Asians". The latest "waves", like the Athabascans, are tested to be genetically close to E. Siberian mongoloids, which have IQ tests much lower than Han Chinese, Koreans, or Japanese. The earlier waves of Native Americans came from "ancestor groups" that do not have a close match with present-day mongoloids in Asia, though lots of theories about Ainu, pockets in the Himalayas, remnant tribes living on marginal land not gobbled up by the Han may show closer matches with more testing. Also, when testing "Native Americans" for analogous Asians, a problem is that much of the Native American stock has heavy admixtures of white and black blood that influence IQ testing. "Pureblood" Indians are more common in upper Canada, Mesoamerica, Latin America. The joke at a regional "Indian Casino" of a tribe that is mostly black ancestry (they allow 1/32nd, 1/64th "native blood" to get into the club) is that the only authentic Native Americans are the illegal Mexicans and Guatemalans working as chambermaids and cleaners for the "Brotha Indians".

Further DNA studies may show that some the earliest "Indians" were from white and polynesian precursor peoples. Anthropologists think that is the case from their study of the oldest remains found (5,000 to 11,000 years ago) - like Spirit Cave man and Kennewick Man.

Posted by Chris Ford | November 22, 2007 11:55 PM

JW says: "The effect of genetics via development is analogous to a computer program, so small changes can have large effects."

Is there any evidence that any of the genetic variation in humans has had a "large effect?" leaving out, of course, supositions about intelligence.

Posted by cw | November 22, 2007 11:58 PM

Chris Ford: most of the "races" you mentioned in your most recent post could also be described as cultures. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that cultures could have just as much an impact on IQ as race. If you come from a culture that values subservience to authority (teachers, test makers, test givers, for instance) and academic achievement, it seems obvious to me that you are going to do better on an academic test than if you came from a culture that valued physical bravery and good story telling, or whatever. Why is race the starting point in all these studies and not culture?

Posted by cw | November 23, 2007 12:09 AM

Given the totally moronic name-calling of the ignorant "anti-racists" on this thread, and the huge volume of countervailing scientific evidence they disregard, we're clearly no longer in the "Reality-Based Community."

Maybe I should go over to the rightwing websites, where they're still arguing about whether Saddam's WMDs are actually hidden in Syria...or in Iran.

Posted by x | November 23, 2007 12:19 AM

huh,

I see. Just poor writing on my part. The repeated argument that I meant was the refutation of Saletan's piece.

As far as what you are saying in defense of Sailer/Saletan etc, I think you are certainly giving Sailer too much credit. But more importantly, Saletan is certainly arguing that the evidence is strongly suggestive of the inherent intellectual inferiority, on average, of black populations. Yes, he qualifies this belief in many ways, but in the end, he feels that the data overwhelmingly supports this conclusion.

Posted by brent | November 23, 2007 12:38 AM

"...and the huge volume of countervailing scientific evidence..."

Just because someone cites some study or book doesn't mean that that study or book is correct or that there are not other studies or books that contradict. Also, proponants of an issue are going to only cites works that support their arguments. You got to actually go read the citations and find out something about the authors and then read the contradicting literature befor you can make any claims on way or the other. One thing the internet has proved really good for is the insinuation of bad information into the public consciousness. You literally cannot trust anything you read without researching it. Especially when some guy says: "A study by ________ proves that _______ is ________." Fortuantely, the internet also makes it possible to research things pretty easily.

Posted by cw | November 23, 2007 12:47 AM

1. Racial groups are poor categories with respect to populaton genetics

I'm not sure that I agree with that. Sex is the key to population genetics. You can only have sex with the people you meet. Populations, like politics, are always local. Physical boundaries are required for evolution. In as much as race is a proxy for region, it cannot be argued that genetic variations exist. Take, for example, eye color. The allele for blue eyes is seen much more frequently in the Nordic population the the Asian population. Any individual with blue eyes is not necessarily of Northern European descent, so you must use multiple traits to place the individual into the population. Each loci (location of the gene on the DNA strand) added to the comparison increases your probability to the point that 8-12 loci matches are enough to say with absolute certainty that the individual belongs within a certain population, ie evolutionary location, ie race.

The thing is, we can't identify the loci of the traits which make up intelligence. For the most part, identifying loci is just mapping differences in bits of code with no idea about its function. Surely some allele frequency variation does exist with the traits involved in intelligence, but these variations may have as much or as little benefit as having blue eyes. We don't know the impact; we don't know how it works. The fact of genetic variability does not give the race scientists a club of truth with which to tear down our social welfare and affirmative action programs.

When race science can tell me the location of the street smarts genes and the genes that produce attitude and further demonstrate how those genes impact intelligence, I'll begin to consider the need to adapt social policy to account for the genetic differences between the races instead of the social differences.

Posted by Just Karl | November 23, 2007 1:48 AM

Brett Bellmore,

3 follows logically from 1 and 2. You have to think harder. Try this: size is a rather vague way of classifying things. (When I say "big things" or "small things", you don't really know what I'm talking about.) Interestingness is a very subjective way of talking about things. So it's virtually impossible that there could be a meaningful correlation between size and interestingness -- that a statement like "small things are more interesting than big things" could have any meaning. That's because the classes defined are too fuzzy; we don't know what they're composed of.

This can be the case even for statements that seem intuitively to be true, like "The closer you get to a big city, the more fashionable people are." That might be true, except that we don't know what a big city is (do people in Sao Paolo have better taste than people in Paris?) and we can't really define what we mean by being fashionable. So there's no point thinking about this as a scientific question.

Posted by brooksfoe | November 23, 2007 5:01 AM

Everyone advocating a race-based view of human nature, stop complaining when people accurately refer to your position as 'racist'. It isn't a pejorative, it isn't unfair. It's the 100% dictionary-correct term for your position. If you are uncomfortable with that descriptor, that isn't our fault.

"lack of champion black swimmers is due to swimming pool shortages in black neighborhoods"

People used to say that blacks couldn't play golf and tennis either, other people pointed out that they just didn't have much access to golf/tennis facilities and weren't really much of a golf/tennis culture. The access people were right and the racists (Oh I'm sorry, "racial determinists") were wrong.
You seriously think that blacks are just as good as whites at pretty much every other athletic endeavor, but for some genetic reason they lack the coordination to swim? I'm sorry but that is way more far-fetched than the cultural and access explanation.

"Just say again and again - Race does not exist!
"

What race is my friend's son? She's white, the father is black.

"Differences in civilizational attainment..."

...aren't consistent, vary wildly throughout history, and seem to have more to do with disease and natural disaster than anything innate to the civilizations in question.

"impulsiveness&criminality..."

Has frequently been worse in all-white slums in Russia and Eastern Europe than it is in all-black slums in the US. How do you measure 'impulsiveness' anyway?

"DNA differences affecting metabolism muscles, and bone structure differently are just misleading constructs of the Oppressor Peoples!""

50% of your DNA comes from your black daddy and 50% from your white mommy, it wrecks any DNA-based argument for race. How many time does this basic fact from grade-school level genetics have to be repeated before the racists are going to get it?

Posted by Chris | November 23, 2007 6:54 AM

cw,

I was speaking generally about the effects of genetic differences. What I was primarily thinking of is the drivel you occasionally hear about how, since it was discovered humans and chimps are 98% identical genetically, that this somehow makes us more similar to chimps than people had previously thought.

brooksfoe,

If you think that things like fashionableness, atractiveness, and happiness are too subjective to be studied scientifically, then we might as well just give up social science altogether.

Posted by Jim W | November 23, 2007 7:32 AM

brent,

I wish the #3 point was a ridiculous strawman, but its one I've seen over and over. Just read the Turkheimer column that so many people are raving about. It is complete sophistry.

To say whether the data supports one side or another requires a lot of analysis and knowledge of the subject matter. I honestly don't know enough to say which way I think the data argues.

But, to say that in principle its impossible to come to a conclusion one way or another is completely ridiculous. Its my impression that the preponderance of category errors and illogic in this debate has been on the "anti-racialism" side.

Posted by Jim W | November 23, 2007 7:54 AM

Chris Ford: most of the "races" you mentioned in your most recent post could also be described as cultures. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that cultures could have just as much an impact on IQ as race. If you come from a culture that values subservience to authority (teachers, test makers, test givers, for instance) and academic achievement, it seems obvious to me that you are going to do better on an academic test than if you came from a culture that valued physical bravery and good story telling, or whatever. Why is race the starting point in all these studies and not culture?

The issue is that absolutely no one is saying culture (or environment more generally) does not play a large role.

Another issue that may come into play is reductionism: if its sceintifically easier to explain things based on physical factors (nutrition, then genetics), then these explanations will be tried out first. Culture is more difficult to tackle.

For example, I'm a big fan of Jared Diamond, who tried to explain lots of historical data based on geography. There again, people complain that he didn't pay enough attention to culture. I've even heard people complain that he didn't pay enough attention to human biodiversity. But, why not try to explain as much data as you can in as simple a way as you can, and see how far it takes you?

Posted by Jim W | November 23, 2007 8:15 AM

The problem with racialist arguments is that they are ahistorical. They fail to take into account of history of racial science. If you were to look at racialist studies from the 19th century, one will see that the conclusions are similar to what Saletan, etc are discussing but dressed up in a different language. If there were any awareness of the racial theories of the past, nobody would find Rushton or Watson very convincing. It is a matter of education.

Posted by MGJ | November 23, 2007 8:32 AM

Brooksfoe,

1. Racial groups are poor categories with respect to population genetics.

That's true. About the only reason I think the link is worth addressing is that so much public policy is based on this poor category.

2. IQ tests are poor measures of intelligence.

Yup, just the best we have.

3. Therefore, its inconceivable that different races could have different averages of intelligence.

Not at all inconceivable. If there's a strong link between intelligence and genes, relatively poor measures of both would still show a correlation, though the poverty of the measures would tend to obscure the link.

Maybe you're not as good at this logic thing as you think. Don't worry, having trouble with logic when it doesn't lead where you want to go is a universal human failing.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 23, 2007 8:43 AM

Chris Fraud, I realize, has become the scummiest of scummy racists. Chris Scummy Fraud has surprassed his trainers in racist scumminess. A truly degenerate lying racist.

Posted by Jennifer | November 23, 2007 8:52 AM

There are certain kind of sick-racist people who must spread about their sickness. That is what Chris Fraud and kin are about. Any more diseased ravings, Chris Fraud?

Posted by Jennifer | November 23, 2007 8:57 AM

"If there were any awareness of the racial theories of the past, nobody would find Rushton or Watson very convincing. It is a matter of education."

Let's introduce the elephant in the room.

The awareness of racial theories of the past (and how they were acted on) is one of the reasons why there is so much resistance to the reality of average racial differences today. The idea that there were average differences between groups was obvious to Darwin in 19th Century, and it was the basis of the eugenics movement which was as mainstream 100 years ago as global warming alarmism is today (Michael Crichton makes this exact analogy in his "State of Fear"). Public policies that were enacted based on eugenics in this country included the sterilization of retarded people and, in one program, the use of financial incentives to encourage pilots to have more children (since pilots were considered to be of above-average intelligence).

Most notoriously, the Nazis based their genocide of Jews, Gypsies and others on their (politicized) version of racial "science", but here the scare quotes are apt because the Nazis started with a conclusion (i.e., Aryans are superior; others are inferior) and threw out data that contradicted it (e.g., Hitler banned IQ tests since German Jews outperformed German gentiles; He famously turned his back on Jesse Owens when Owens defeated German sprinters at the Olympics, etc.). So one irony of the current discussions about race and IQ is that the IQ deniers are taking a mirror-image of the intellectual tack of the Nazis: they are starting with an ideological premise (in their case, that there is no difference in IQ between different races) and throwing out data that contradicts this (essentially, all of it).

Posted by Fred | November 23, 2007 9:19 AM

Not that discussion with racists like Sailer has any chance of being productive, but it would be a lot easier if the two or three racists (or is it just Steve) posting here would limit themselves to posting under a single, consistent name.

If he can draw any lesson from the racist arguments, at least if we apply their reasoning, it is that racists tend to swim in the shallow end of the gene pool.

Posted by Aaron | November 23, 2007 9:19 AM

Brett Bellmore nails it above.

If:
a. there is such a thing as intelligence
b. IQ tests correlate with intelligence
c. racial categories correlate with average differences in genetic patterns between population

Then in principle its possible for a correlation between racial categories and intelligence. This is pretty elementary. So, arguments that in principle this is impossible are ludicrous.

Whether in fact this is the case is much harder to determine because we need to know the strength of the correlations in order to rule out the null hypothesis.

Also, the argument that, because the interplay of genetic, environmental, and developmental variables is incredibly complex, that this means there cannot be simple statistical correlations at the macro level between low-dimensional variables that are, in some sense, projections of this high dimensional space, is simply ludicrous.

Posted by Jim W | November 23, 2007 9:42 AM

" So one irony of the current discussions about race and IQ is that the IQ deniers are taking a mirror-image of the intellectual tack of the Nazis: they are starting with an ideological premise (in their case, that there is no difference in IQ between different races) and throwing out data that contradicts this (essentially, all of it).

Posted by Fred | November 23, 2007 9:19 AM"

Umm, no actually. The Nazis were absolutely certain than one group of people were superior to another. To them, the identity of "German" and "Jew" were fixed, which is why they defined Jews as a race (not a religious or cultural group) and made a special star for concentration camp prisoners who were Jehovah's Witnesses but came from formerly Jewish families. The anti-racists on this thread note that 1) race exists only in the sense that people think it exists, 2) IQ do is a poor measurement for a phenomenon (intelligence) that has too many elements to be reduced to a number and 3) such issues are so malleable, like trying to nail jello to a wall, that you aren't going to really get any truly useful data from which you can make any type of broad claim like humanity. Marx made, in a vacuum, a convincing case that dialectic materialism, based on class conflict and on one's relation to the means of production, was the driving force of history. The better Marxist historians filled entire libraries of books that had a consistent narrative with a staggering amount of detailed evidence. However, the narrative turned out to be false. Class conflict mattered... except when it didn't. Race and culture matter... except when they don't.

At least with class you had a true material basis for defining class. Somebody with a lot of money and an educated background was upper class. Management held management positions at work. Capitalists held the capital that financed production. Labor used their hands to make stuff. Racial essentialists, in their focus primarily on white Europeans and black Africans (sometimes with Northeastern Asians thrown in), actually end up leaving out a large chunk of humanity. If you take, for example, India, you have some groups in the Northeast that have features that are easily identifiable as belonging as deriving from East Asians but other features more similar to peoples from farther South in the Indian subcontinent. Where do they fit into racial classifications? Does anything really separate Indian Parsis from Iranian Persians? Are Bengalis, Gujaratis, Tamils and Goans all really part of the same race? Are the Turkic peoples a race? How much ties the people of Turkey to the Uighurs of Xinjiang as opposed to other peoples? What about Latin Americans? A fair number are a combination of various indigenous groups, various Europeans groups and various African groups. Where do they fit into such a racial classification scheme? There were differences in average nose size between Hutus and Tutsis. Does that make them substantially different enough to call them different races and not just class labels that got turned into ethnic labels? Are Southeast Asians part of the same race as Northeast Asians? What are Arabs exactly then anyway? A linguistic group? A race? Are they black, white or Asian? In Sudan, "Arab" and "African" have, through centuries of intermarriage, become more akin to class labels than useful racial or ethnic categories. I don't have the answers to these questions and I don't really care because I don't feel some compulsion to have everyone put into some easily definable box just so my worldview makes sense and I can rest comfortably.

Posted by Reality Man | November 23, 2007 9:51 AM

"So, arguments that in principle this is impossible are ludicrous."

Give that Jim his prize for pointing out the obvious. I can never prove something is impossible. That is a fundamental precept of science.

Another precept is that correlating one variable (the undefined "measurement" labeled as "race") with another variable (the nebulous "IQ") is not equivalent to demonstrating causation.

One need not be a geneticist to understand this, one needs only to understand first principles...

Posted by Rihilism | November 23, 2007 10:14 AM

I'll just add to my above post that showing a correlation isn't sufficient. To show causation you need to show that other variables (like environment) are not the cause of the correlation.

So, the debate really does come down to an analysis of data. It can't be defined away based on simple pronouncements about the problems with racial categorizations or the meaningfullness of IQ tests.

Posted by Jim W | November 23, 2007 10:19 AM

Reality Man,

"Umm, no actually. The Nazis were absolutely certain than one group of people were superior to another."

We're not disagreeing here. I said the Nazis started with the "conclusion" that Aryans (using their term) were superior; Perhaps I should have used "conclusion" in the sentence you quoted as well, instead of "premise". The point is that this wasn't science because the Nazis didn't objectively evaluate the evidence; they rejected evidence that challenged their conclusion/premise that Aryans were superior to non-Aryans. Similarly, the egalitarians here who have been quick to resort to accusations of racism have started with the conclusion that there are no differences in average IQ between different races and rejected evidence to the contrary.

Let me say that your "it's all too complicated" position is an elegant attempt to ignore evidence you find objectionable. That aside, your main points have little merit.

1) That races can be subdivided into numerous ethnic groups doesn't mean that races (Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid) don't exist. Similarly, that there are individuals of mixed-race doesn't mean that races don't exist. We can debate what race the lovely Rashida Jones belongs to (I'd say she's half white and half black; American societal convention is that she's black), but it would be obvious even to a toddler that her father Quincy Jones is black and that her mother Peggy Lipton is white. This would also be obvious to a scientist looking at their respective DNA samples (See "New study links race and DNA material").

2) If IQ were a poor measure of intelligence, the U.S. military wouldn't rely so heavily on its AFQT entrance test; similarly, g-loaded standardized tests such as the SAT wouldn't be used for college admissions. It's no accident that the racial gaps on the SAT mirror those on IQ tests. The reality is that IQ measures something real, and that something has enormous predictive value. If you chose not to call that something "intelligence" that's basically semantics. Universities use de facto IQ tests to predict academic ability; the armed forces use them to predict job performance; and studies have demonstrated that IQ also accurately predicts income potential and other life outcomes.

Posted by Fred | November 23, 2007 10:33 AM

The problem with the brave truth telling side of this disscussion is that, as we currently understand evoloution and genetics, it is impossible for some races to be genetically more "intelligent" than others, because of the Flynn effect. If intelligence varied between the races for genetic reasons in any meaningful way, there is no way that the IQs of racial groups could change in as little as twenty or thirty years, but that is what happened.

So why go on and on about racial IQs being "possibly" due to evoloutionary differences? That avenue is cut off until someone comes up with an explaination for genetic differences that accounts for the Flynn effect.

Posted by cw | November 23, 2007 11:33 AM

"Let me say that your "it's all too complicated" position is an elegant attempt to ignore evidence you find objectionable."

You're ignoring all the successes of communism - the Chinese First Five Year Plan, the early days of Castro's Cuba, etc. - by rejecting evidence that you find objectionable. You can make a narrative about anything with a handful of data points. I've turned in enough bullshit papers in school that have hinged on this and gotten an A to know that it's crap. There is enough data out there to make a convincing case proving anything half-baked notion to an audience that doesn't know better. I know someone who has made a presentation claiming that Bush was behind 9/11 and has it backed up with a lot of facts (and not even the pseudo-scientific facts that you see on a lot of conspiracy websites). That doesn't mean her narrative actually adds up to a cohesive whole. Anti-semites who claim that the Jews control the media, international finance, etc. have a large amount of data that they use (such as Greenspan, Wolfowitz at the World Bank, etc.). That doesn't mean their narrative is true.

I notice you really don't have an answer to what Arabs, Turkics, various South Asians, Southeast Asians and Latinos are supposed to be in your racial triad. Just because you need to put an easy label on everything doesn't mean it really says anything. It's funny that you bring up Rashida Jones when you consider the fact that it's actually rather rare to find African-Americans who are pure African. Think of how many have white and Native American blood. For your narrative to make sense, we would need to cast out all people of a diverse racial background because they would just be noise in the data. However, this would mean that we would have to cast out a large, but impossible to definitely pin down, number of the African-American population's scores. After all, if you have generations of African-Americans with around 30% white blood mating with generations of African-Americans who have around 20% white blood, that still is a lot of white blood still being passed down. The fact that you can

"Similarly, the egalitarians here who have been quick to resort to accusations of racism have started with the conclusion that there are no differences in average IQ between different races and rejected evidence to the contrary."

Wow, what a strawman. The "egalitarians" here have been arguing that IQ is bullcrap to begin with. So what if the US military uses it and colleges use SAT's? Some colleges are starting to phase out SAT's as a major factor in favor of grades, which are a better rule of thumb predicting a student's academic success in college. We use the electoral college in this country to choose the president. That doesn't mean it's not a stupid system.

Posted by Reality Man | November 23, 2007 11:58 AM

I think it is important to keep in mind that even if there is a statistically significant difference, it doesn't mean that the difference in intelligence is actually significant. It probably is not. We don't encounter races, we encounter people.

Posted by Chuck | November 23, 2007 12:03 PM

"I think it is important to keep in mind that even if there is a statistically significant difference, it doesn't mean that the difference in intelligence is actually significant. It probably is not. We don't encounter races, we encounter people.

Posted by Chuck | November 23, 2007 12:03 PM"

Especially when you consider the fact that the racists whole argument depends on the fact that there might be a 15 point difference in IQ (while ignoring the gap has been shifting and assuming the noise in the data doesn't matter) and that this is somehow significant. 15 fucking points. When your worldview of race and identity is so tied up in 15 points, you have issues.

Posted by Reality Man | November 23, 2007 12:08 PM

So as not beat any more dead horses, I will just add a couple of points.

1. Around 1900, the hight point of respectability for "scientific racism," the truly superior race was not the "White race," but the "Teutonic" or "Anglo-Saxon" race who were not just superior to Blacks and Browns, but Italians, Slavs, Spainish, Jews, and of course the Irish. Being Irish, I take that last point personally. There were lots of "scientific" articles that supported this position.

2. Saletan, Sullivan, Douthat, Sailer, Charles Murray, and I would guess "Kismet" and "Fred" are white, likely white males. How flattering find "scientific evidence," endorsed by a Nobel Prize winner, that one is a member of the superior race. Also, since one does not believe in social programs to help one's fellow citizens who have the misfortune of belonging to these "inferior" groups, how handy to find "scientific evidence" that such policies are fruitless. How handy that we can dismiss the "unrequited toil" of the bondsman for 300 years, followed by 100 years of de jure segregation with no inhibition on exercise of the most brual prejudices in hiring and education as having "no effect." Now we can return to the heady days of that wonderful affirmative action program that existed for white males before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So convenient when we can substitute "scientific truth" for "interest and prejudice."

3. When conducting a trial in Germany, of all places, I had a witness who was a local. When asked to identify his race, he responded "German." When asked again, the American concept of race had to be explained to him, so that he could answer "White." Anedoctal, but still revealing about the fact that "race" is a social construct, particular the American concept of "Black" and "White."

4. The mallebility of IQ and the statistics of crime, drug abuse, and lack of educational achievement was brought home to me in my interactions with English and Irish friends in the context of Northern Ireland. The Irish Catholic population in Ulster consistently scores lower in all these indica. Somehow, in the other three provinces (and now once liberated from prejudice in the U.K. and the U.S.) we Sullivans O'Kanes, and McCardles have done all right. I don't know if it is any fairer to judge the potential of Sub-Sahara Africa after 60 years of disorder, chaos, and disease following a regime of exploitative colonialism, then it was judging the potential of the Irish following the Great Famine or of Jewish immigrants from the pogroms a century ago.

4. All though mentioned, for those interested in the flawed science in the intelligence debate and its continued appeal to the bigot, a good place to start is the late Steven Jay Gould at: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html

Posted by Rickster Sherpa | November 23, 2007 12:09 PM

I can never prove something is impossible.

Huh? Of course you can. Perhaps RM, you're the one who needs to better understand how science works.

But you do need to take Gell-Mann into account That which is not forbidden is mandatory and make sure that what you are trying to prove is impossible is in fact forbidden and not just use proof through intimidation, QED.

Posted by huh | November 23, 2007 12:13 PM

Sorry, bad html-fu.

But you do need to take Gell-Mann into account "That which is not forbidden is mandatory" and make sure that what you are trying to prove is impossible is in fact forbidden and not just use proof through intimidation, QED.

Posted by huh | November 23, 2007 12:15 PM

"1. Around 1900, the hight point of respectability for "scientific racism," the truly superior race was not the "White race," but the "Teutonic" or "Anglo-Saxon" race who were not just superior to Blacks and Browns, but Italians, Slavs, Spainish, Jews, and of course the Irish. Being Irish, I take that last point personally. There were lots of "scientific" articles that supported this position."

Very true. Respectable early-to-mid-19th century French writers used to lament the fact that their people just did not have the natural ability to have a functioning democracy without it collapsing, which they saw as purely the domain of the British. Early Jeffersonian writers feared that we would never have anything approaching religious tolerance in this country because they thought only Hindus were capable of that. My personal favorite of this line of thought has to be Weber's book on how the Chinese, Hindu and Jewish cultures were incapable of capitalism, which could only truly be practiced by Protestants. Now you can't get Tom Friedman to shut up about the growth of India and China and somehow I don't think Western Jews have been doing too badly economically since the end of WWII.

Posted by Reality Man | November 23, 2007 12:24 PM

I may have missed it, but as far as I can tell, none of those who advocate on behalf of race science have addressed Saletan's article on its merits. Surely we can all agree that this article abuses science and logic. Can we also agree that falsity, imprecision and illogic are a particularly bad thing when put in the service of controversial issues like this?

Posted by politicalfootball | November 23, 2007 12:37 PM

"This is what you get with a One Drop rule, where anybody at least 1/8th black is called black and told not to marry whites. Now, as interracial marriage increases, the genetic distinctiveness of blacks and whites in the US will diminish, but it will take quite a few more generations than any of us will be alive before there's a big effect."

So here's the answer to our racial problems -- compulsory miscegenation.

Posted by CJColucci | November 23, 2007 12:38 PM

"The "egalitarians" here have been arguing that IQ is bullcrap to begin with. So what if the US military uses it and colleges use SAT's? Some colleges are starting to phase out SAT's as a major factor in favor of grades, which are a better rule of thumb predicting a student's academic success in college."

WRONG. Where are you getting your information? Grades are an inferior predictor of college success compared to SAT/ACT scores (that's why colleges use them). The same goes for the LSAT and probably the MCAT too. You have no idea what you're talking about.

"Especially when you consider the fact that the racists whole argument depends on the fact that there might be a 15 point difference in IQ (while ignoring the gap has been shifting and assuming the noise in the data doesn't matter) and that this is somehow significant. 15 fucking points. When your worldview of race and identity is so tied up in 15 points, you have issues."

15 points is a lot, it's one standard deviation. Are you familiar with statistics? One standard deviation is, like, a lot. It means that the average black scores at the 14th percentile (assuming normal distribution). A site I found via google converts an IQ of 85 to the 17th percentile. So, what that means is that 83% of whites have a higher IQ than the average black. And you haven't even considered the effect of the tails (where blacks will be very overrepresented among the low IQ and very underrepresented among the high IQ).

Posted by Hans Gruber | November 23, 2007 12:51 PM

Gould has been cited several times as a source in this thread. I thought I would cite Paul Krugman:

I am not sure how well this is known. I have tried, in preparation for this talk, to read some evolutionary economics, and was particularly curious about what biologists people reference. What I encountered were quite a few references to Stephen Jay Gould, hardly any to other evolutionary theorists. Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is bevolved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about - not just the answers, but even the questions - are consistently misleading. His impressive literary and historical erudition makes his work seem profound to most readers, but informed readers eventually conclude that there's no there there. (And yes, there is some resentment of his fame: in the field the unjustly famous theory of "punctuated equilibrium", in which Gould and Niles Eldredge asserted that evolution proceeds not steadily but in short bursts of rapid change, is known as "evolution by jerks").

What is rare in the evolutionary economics literature, at least as far as I can tell, is references to the theorists the practitioners themselves regard as great men - to people like George Williams, William Hamilton, or John Maynard Smith. This is serious, because if you think that Gould's ideas represent the cutting edge of evolutionary theory (as I myself did until about a year and a half ago), you have an almost completely misguided view of where the field is and even of what the issues are.

Posted by Hans Gruber | November 23, 2007 1:04 PM

As a well-known blogger pointed out, threads debating the stupidity of black people are consistently the longest in the blogosphere.

Obviously this is an emotionally driven issue. "Environmentalists" and "Hereditartians" alike seem invested in their arguments in a way that clearly transcends the disinterested, scientific ideal that so many of you profess to embody. A little honesty along these lines, particularly from the hereditarian group, would go a long way towards clearing the air and making all of this digestible, rather than ridiculous and off-putting.

Posted by Mark | November 23, 2007 1:13 PM

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/evolute.html

Posted by huh | November 23, 2007 1:13 PM

I really wish that someone would address the how the the idea of gene-based racial differences in IQ can be reconciled with the Flynn effect. How can the genetic structure controling IQ in african-americans (to pick one example of this phenomena) changed over a period of 20 years?

Posted by cw | November 23, 2007 1:14 PM

"You can make a narrative about anything with a handful of data points."

Perhaps, but the data points concerning the average IQs of blacks, white and other races are so numerous that the significance of the data isn't questioned by any serious scientists in the field. The NYLS has literally millions of data points.

"I notice you really don't have an answer to what Arabs, Turkics, various South Asians, Southeast Asians and Latinos are supposed to be in your racial triad. Just because you need to put an easy label on everything doesn't mean it really says anything."

If I needed to "put an easy label on everything", I would have categorized those ethnic groups the first time you asked me to. I didn't because I didn't feel I needed to "put an easy label on everything" and because it was unnecessary to support my larger point, that the existence of numerous ethnic groups doesn't contradict the existence of major racial groups.

"For your narrative to make sense, we would need to cast out all people of a diverse racial background because they would just be noise in the data."

No we wouldn't. We go by individuals' dominant racial background, which is how they tend to self-identify anyway, as the Stanford study I linked to above noted. That's what our racial preference policies are based on: a half black American doesn't get half the affirmative action one with two black parents gets. The truth is that in America, most whites are of 95%+ Caucasoid ancestry and most blacks are of 80%+ Negroid ancestry, so these categorizations make sense.

"The "egalitarians" here have been arguing that IQ is bullcrap to begin with. So what if the US military uses it and colleges use SAT's?"

If IQ wasn't meaningful and if it didn't have such strong predictive value, you, and other commenters, wouldn't be so worked up about this, and this thread wouldn't be as long as it is.

"Some colleges are starting to phase out SAT's as a major factor in favor of grades,"

You're smart enough to know the real reason why some colleges are phasing out the SAT: because of the persistent gap in scores by blacks and Hispanics versus whites and Asians.

"which are a better rule of thumb predicting a student's academic success in college."

This is false. Standardized tests are a better measure precisely because they are standardized; the standards used to award grades in different schools can vary considerably.

"We use the electoral college in this country to choose the president. That doesn't mean it's not a stupid system."

You're smart enough to know how bad this analogy is. You should just concede that you aren't objective enough to be open-minded about this topic. "Reality Man" is an inapt name for you here; "Obfuscation Man" would be more appropriate.

Posted by Fred | November 23, 2007 1:14 PM

Surely we can all agree that this article [by Saletan] abuses science and logic. Can we also agree that falsity, imprecision and illogic are a particularly bad thing when put in the service of controversial issues like this?

I didn't get this impression about the article when I first read it, but based on the blog commentary I've read, this is my impression now. I agree that controversial issues require extra care.

I really wish that someone would address the how the the idea of gene-based racial differences in IQ can be reconciled with the Flynn effect. How can the genetic structure controling IQ in african-americans (to pick one example of this phenomena) changed over a period of 20 years?

The Flynn effect is a big fly in the ointment. It adds weight to the environmental explanation. Its not definitive at this point, though. It doesn't mean the genetic structure has changed, but rather that the modern environment is for some reason conducive to higher IQ scores for all races.

Posted by Jim W | November 23, 2007 2:02 PM

Jim W. I get your point that it doesn't have to signal genetic changes. I'll have to think about what that means.

I still stand by my main point which is addressed to the brave truth-tellers. The Flynn efect and the results of other studies make the assertion that there is a genentic different re IQ between the races unteneble. Many people here have been saying "it's not proven" and then going on about all these differences and their implications both in the future and throughout history, as if it has been proven. I think this behavior shows that these people are way too invested in the idea of racial differences.

Posted by cw | November 23, 2007 2:28 PM

The most interesting thing about these threads on the IQ - race question is the way there is a nearly perfect correlation between the conservatism of the commenter and their fondness for a KKK style racism. Fred and Steven Sailer are not, it turns out, the extremes, but are in the center of this sector.

This does put some teeth in Krugman's contention about the racism factor in the rise of the radical right in the Republican party.

The colonies and then the U.S. were run as, basically, a vast affirmative action enterprise for white men from the early 1700s all the way up to the 1970s. The fear of black superiority, the fear of not being able to compete with blacks, was not the only driver here, of course: racism provides us with a whole petri dish of subconscious neuroses. But certainly there was some hint of that fear in the racist psyche. As affirmative action for whites started to be taken down by the government, it unleashed a panic among those who benefited from it - and whose fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers, etc., all benefited from apartheid, from the slaveholding days all the way up to the use of government guarantees for mortgages for GIs following WWII that systematically denied them to black GIs - and that fear comes out in such crippling hobbyhorses as the compulsion to use pseudo-science to try to stop or limit the downfall of the social correlate of apartheid. Interestingly, the Germans, after World War II, understood they owed reparations to the Jews - but reparation, or even the milder American course of not brutally enforcing past injustices in present circumstances, is a very foreign and fearful idea to that segment of the American population who provide the core of, say, Bush's 30 percent approval rating.

This doesn't, of course, give us a full picture of American racism. The guys who search around for threads on which to proclaim that they got that there scientific proof that the coloreds are dumber than me, god damn it, are probably vanguard racists - the types who make such remarks at work and worry most of their co-workers. But the second tier racists, the genteel Saletan types, still share that worry - the worry that they can't make it in the new world without the comforting prop of apartheid.

Posted by roger | November 23, 2007 2:36 PM

The logic of IQ:

Intelligence exists
Intelligence can be measured
A percentage of intelligence is hereditary
IQ is unbiased measurement of genetic variation among populations.

Of course, we have no idea what percentage of measured difference on the IQ test is due to genetic variation, but don't let the huge leaps of uncertainty scare you. The comparison studies done on IQ are supposed to remove the environmental and socio-economic influences on intelligence and everything left over is termed genetic difference. Unfortunately, this left over "genetic" percentage, 30% say, is really just an other category. It includes all the error in the model. For example, reporting error is when people claim an incorrect race on IQ tests. A genetic screening would have placed them into a different population from the one they claim for the IQ test. In addition to all the sampling error, there are interaction values that are uncertain and included in the category of genetic influence. For example, we know that nutrition influences genetic traits but different alleles for the same genes will respond to the state of malnutrition in different ways. Some people will be more "resistant" to malnutrition than others. This sort of interaction between environmental and genetic influence is also placed in the genetic category though it may have nothing to do about intelligence. In the end you have an IQ measurement that has very little power to determine even the very presence of genetic variation, at all. A weak correlation to the presence of a genetic difference tells us nothing about the difference, where it's located, or it's significance. It's common sense.

The idea to focus on with IQ, when it come to the implications for social policy, is really how LARGE the non-genetic source of variation is.

Posted by Just Karl | November 23, 2007 3:07 PM

"the way there is a nearly perfect correlation between the conservatism of the commenter and their fondness for a KKK style racism."

I hardly see how it could be otherwise, when 'liberals' define "KKK style racism" not, as you might naively suppose, in terms of lynching, discrimination, and the like, but instead as consisting of nothing more than a belief that the races aren't identical in all but cosmetic terms.

It's a tautology, but one that strips "KKK style racism" of everything anyone might reasonably find objectionable.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 23, 2007 5:43 PM

http://www.cjsonline.ca/articles/wahlsten.html

If you are interested in careful dissection false statistical arguements Saletan apparently leapt to as a result of his own bias toward biological determinism, I suggest the above web site. He apparently relied on an article published by the racialist cranks Rushton and Jensen (Jensen being William Shockley's old colleague). I use the term "crank" as it is defined in ordinary meaning: A person who selectively picks data to support a pet idea and will not under any circumstances accept contrary evidence.
Aa for my evidence, I offer what William Wahlstein of the University of Alberta wrote about Rushton's and Jensen's 1995 paper in review in tbe Canadian Journal on Sociology:

"..The obvious differences in environment make all of these data of dubious worth for testing hypotheses about genetic causes of group differen ces. The methods of obtaining the brains were also far from contemporary standards for neuroscience. A report of five black Civil War soldiers from 1865 is given the same weight as a 1934 study of over 300 dead Kenyans. One of the two studies with m ore than one racial group involved the unclaimed bodies of the indigent and executed criminals in the Baltimore area. Those data varied greatly in the time from death to removal of the brain and method of preserving the brains. Numerous factors ca n affect measures of brain size, and valid inferences about group differences can be drawn only if it is certain that members of different groups were treated the same way. In my opinion, most of the data raked into one big pile by Rushton are worth less for scientific analysis and should be excluded. Unfortunately, Rushton has not done the hard work of separating the potentially valuable data from the trash. He misleads unwary readers by claiming that averaging many studies can overcome poor research methods.

Faced with this kind of criticism, Rushton tells us: "My response is that critics have failed to show an opposite predicted ordering in brain size, intelligence, sexual restraint...'' (p. 236). For his critics to succeed, they supposedly must pro ve the null hypothesis that group differences are "randomly distributed around a mean of zero.'' This is a posture I term "chip-on-the-shoulder science.'' The author is an earnest believer in genetically determined race differences, and he vows to cling tenaciously to his world view unless his opponents can provide conclusive proof to the contrary. In my opinion, this is the kind of approach to be expected from religious zealots and politicians, not professional scientists. A rigorous evaluation of the evidence cited by Rushton reveals the methods in most studies were seriously flawed and render the data inconclusive. If the evidence is so poor, the proper action for a scientist is to suspend judgment. In reality, there is not one pr operly controlled study of brain size comparing representative samples of races in the entire world literature." http://www.cjsonline.ca/articles/wahlsten.html

Now Fred, Hans Gruber, Andrew Sullivan and the rest may argure that this requirement of rigor is just more political correctness. But their zeal on seizing on such suspect evidence says someting about them. As for why Saletan based his columns on this pseudo-science rather than this paper which while saying that there much that is still unknown, genetics are not likely to explain the difference between Whites and Blacks. http://cscs.umich.edu/%7Ecrshalizi/sloth/fagan-holland-2007.pdf esaytayeth

Posted by Rickster Sherpa | November 23, 2007 5:43 PM

It's obvious to me that most of those choosing to comment against Saletan, when they aren't making accusations of racism, are making points readily refuted in Saletan's piece. Let's be honest. Sherpa, Mark, CW, Reality Man, did you really read the Saletan piece and carefully weigh its arguments? I didn't think so. Why bother when Saletan's clearly a closet KKK-style racist?

It may suprise you but most people who have studied this issue and come to the conclusion that there might be a genetic component to the IQ gap, didn't want to reach that conclusion. They actually believe the best reading of the data is one where genetic differences explain some of the gap. Again, there's lots of data out there. It's not a matter of just saying the average black scores 85 and the average white 100, which could easily be dismissed as a result of different educational levels or discrimination. The Minnesota twin study is one example, where black and white children adopted into middle class homes showed the standard 1 standard deviation gap, despite sharing nearly identical environments (the biracial kids scored half way in between the black and white children). There is the fact that poor white children outscore affluent black children. Again, all of this is at least mentioned in Saletan's discussion, even though very few of you probably took a few minutes to read it and digest his arguments.

Posted by Hans Gruber | November 23, 2007 7:37 PM

The most obvious objection to declaring Saletan a "KKK style racist", if the term is to mean anything, are his conclusions in the final part of the essay:

1. Individual IQ can't be predicted from race.

2. Subgroup IQ can't be predicted from race.

3. Whitey does not come out on top.

4. Racism is elitism minus information.

5. Intermarriage is closing the gap.

6. Environment matters.

7. IQ is like wealth.

8. Life is more than g.

9. Children are more than an investment.

10. Genes can be changed.

All I can say is, if this is the stuff of "KKK style racism", the KKK has gotten a really raw deal in our history books.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 23, 2007 8:02 PM

I think it's safe to say that the strength of one side's argument is inversely proportional to the number of ad hominem attacks hurled by that side. A cursory glance at the comments here bears that out. Those without facts on their side are the quickest to resort to scurrilous accusations.

Posted by Fred | November 23, 2007 8:27 PM

Brett, I'll just take one of your points - rather pointless to take all of them - the Genes can be changed point. Hmm, you really think it shows a liberating and liberal attitude towards race to propose that doctors intervene on poor black children by making their genes more 'white'? I mean, do you really not see the astonishing racism there? Have you any acquaintance with the history of American medical science 'helping' the black race through eugenics - court ordered sterilization - or perhaps through understanding how VD affects the body through experiments on Black males infected with VD. Here's a link for you, then.

So, just out of curiosity - if I said that you were mentally inferior to me, Brett, but then said that someday we will develop techniques so that your children can be saved from inheriting your mental inferiority - you wouldn't find that all insulting? Rather anti-Brettian? Or would you simply be grateful that the long curse that you carried with you could finally end, and your children would be more unBrettian than not?

Really, what is the point of the sophistry, here? Myself, I doubt that people like Fred were just pleased as punch with their colored neighbors till they read all this science stuff conclusively provin' they was inferior. I imagine he's a racist from the get go. He has all the hallmarks of one. But you are an eminently saner case, or seem to be. So I don't understand why you don't just embrace the racism of your beliefs or try to think a little harder about the absurdities bandied about by these purveyors of subscience. You might want to ask, for instance, about the connection between two disjoint claims. One is a claim about the human genetic structure, the other is a claim about human intelligence. Obviously, if we want to do research on intelligence as a natural property, we have to have a base for it - and that base would be a test that all human cultures could take. It would have to be a test that did not include reading or numbers - these are late developments of some human beings. It would have to be a test that appreciated human beings as social animals - so it couldn't simply be about individuating the whole test on a piece of paer. It would have to test one's organization of collective action. It would have to test symbol manipulation. It would have to test other things having to do with humans as animals - memory, for instance. And one thing is for sure - it would not be based on a test by a French 19th century psychologist who had neither the ethnological background nor the neurological knowledge to create such a test.
So what we have in racist pseudoscience is an antiquated notion of how the brain works combined with a nineteenth century test for 'intelligence' plus claims about genes in which genetic change has no target - so instead, we substitute bigger craniums, which is simply to laugh. It isn't a theory, it is a scarecrow stuffed with disparate old KKK wives tales.

Posted by roger | November 24, 2007 3:39 PM

Actually, it has been scientifically proven, with zero doubts remaining, that dogs and cats are intellectually inferior to (most) human beings. This is why we beat them, torture them, hold them in special "kennel" camps, and will eventually be able to exterminate them, making earth at last a pet-free zone. Anyway, that's what Jesus wanted, isn't it?

Posted by Kenji | November 26, 2007 6:02 PM

I don't know if Jews are smarter than the rest of us (and I can't find the original studies on the subject that everyone likes to quote -- sounds like an urban legend to me). However, from my experience in trying to find more information on the subject, I've concluded one thing....that is Jews love to brag about Jewish intelligence.

To say that any one group is more intelligent than another just based on race is like saying one group is more intelligent based on eye color. Unlike other genes people enjoy using as examples (BRCA1, etc.) intelligence is polygenetic.

The Jewish world is the biggest clique in the world, and the biggest networking group in the world. Personally, I think that explains their propensity in the higher positions. Jews interracially do everything -- marry, work. Once a Jew hits the top of a particular economic ladder, they're going to make sure that other Jews surround them. I don't know a single other race that is prone to do that...and that my friends is my theory about why Jews tend to rise to the top.

I am not a racist, but I think Jews are. I find it quite ironic that a group of people who have suffered so greatly at the hands of racists would be so quickly inclined to view themselves as a "superior race".

Posted by Tee | November 27, 2007 2:36 AM