Racists Polluting My Race Science!

I'm a little bit confused by Will Saletan's mea culpa here:

For the past five years, J. Philippe Rushton has been president of the Pioneer Fund, an organization dedicated to "the scientific study of heredity and human differences." During this time, the fund has awarded at least $70,000 to the New Century Foundation. To get a flavor of what New Century stands for, check out its publications on crime ("Everyone knows that blacks are dangerous") and heresy ("Unless whites shake off the teachings of racial orthodoxy they will cease to be a distinct people"). New Century publishes a magazine called American Renaissance, which preaches segregation. Rushton routinely speaks at its conferences.

I was negligent in failing to research and report this. I'm sorry. I owe you better than that.

Saletan, basically, is apologizing for having cited a racist's work in penning his column. Which would be a reasonable thing to do, except that the thesis of Saletan's column was that one of the key empirical claims of white supremacism is true. In particular, calling on whites to "shake off the teachings of racial orthodoxy" is exactly what Saletan was doing in his own article. Similarly on the crime front. It's well known that African-Americans commit violent crimes at a higher rate than do white Americans. And if the Saletan Thesis of intrinsic African-American genetic intellectual inferiority is true, extending the analysis to explain the observed gap in violent crime rates seems like an obvious move.

Saletan was busy trying to have his cake and eat it, to, and when confronted with Rushton's rhetoric suddenly finds himself choking on it. But of course the research "proving" blacks' genetic inferiority to whites is shot through with racism; what else would the race-science paradigm possibly be infused with? Somehow, Saletan was so busy with his counterintuitive pirouettes that he didn't notice what side he'd landed on.

Comments

OT OT OT

Pardon the completely off-topic post.

This morning's paper brought word that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert was worried about Israel devolving into South African-style apartheid. A great big block of people owe Jimmy Carter an apology.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 30, 2007 8:05 AM

"Somehow, Saletan was so busy with his counterintuitive pirouettes that he didn't notice what side he'd landed on."

Kinda like you coming out against universal healthcare?

Posted by Petey | November 30, 2007 8:15 AM

I am zhocked, zhocked, to hear zat zere are rrrracists among za IQ obsessives.

Posted by El Cid | November 30, 2007 8:17 AM

But Saletan's racism is racism with a human face!

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 8:19 AM

So, having employed faulty logic throughout this debacle, Saletan is now backing away from it because of guilt-by-association, which is itself faulty logic. I would prefer it if he rejected the racist arguments themselves.

Part of the embarrassment of this debacle stems from the fact that so many people arguing Saletan's point-of-view are making exactly the same arguments unabashed racists made 150 years ago. However, they only understand "racist" as a perjorative and don't really grasp that the word has a literal meaning, too. Their further hide their racism by adopting the contemporary language of human population genetics, which rejects the notion of "race" altogether, and instead refers to "populations". However, even thought these people claim to be referring to "populations", what they are really referring to is "race".

Posted by Whispers | November 30, 2007 8:20 AM

I understand your point, but your post (and the comments) indicate the obvious problem: How does anyone look at this sort of thing without being accused of racism? It seems like the fear and antipathy of racism is putting these sorts of questions (which can be asked for legitimate reasons) outside of rational discussion and scientific inquiry. If someone like Saletan writes about this, or if an objective scientist looks into differentiating racial IQ's, then automatically he is a racist (and without a doubt there will be "guilt by association").
I think the charges of racism are overblown, and I think people should get thicker skin. If there are genetic aspects to IQ, including racial distinctions, that is a valid question to be answered by scientific analysis.
To put it another way, what if some of the conclusions of The Bell Curve is right? (I am not an advocate for the book and have never read it.) Do we have to pretend such a discussion is off limits? Science is not about preventing people from being offended, it's about research, and it can lead to directions which go against the sensibilities of the majority.

Posted by so what should we do? | November 30, 2007 8:44 AM

Re Matthew's comment " It's well known that African-Americans commit violent crimes at a higher rate than do white Americans "
------------
Gee, I dunno. Was it Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who launched an unnecessary war to steal Iraq's oil deposits -- an armed robbery which has killed 3700+ Americans, 100,000+ Iraqi civilians, has crippled thousands of US soldiers for life --and has cost us $1 Trillion??

On the other hand, instead of serving life in prison, Dick Cheney bought a $4 Million estate on the Chesapeake Bay last year -- and is entering retirement with roughly $40 Million?? courtesy of the oil companies.

So maybe there's something to this IQ business after all.

Posted by Don Williams | November 30, 2007 8:55 AM

Don, I think that Matthew's comment was aimed at violent crimes like murder, rape, and assault that take place in the U.S. There is no question that African-Americans commit these crimes at a far higher rate than other Americans. (Usually their victims are black as well.)

Posted by comment to Don | November 30, 2007 9:01 AM

But of course the research "proving" blacks' genetic inferiority to whites is shot through with racism; what else would the race-science paradigm possibly be infused with?

Matt,

Where do you think the problem lies:
-asking an offensive question
-applying science to answer the question
-coming up with uncomfortable results

You seem to be saying that all three are out of bounds. I think the real problem is:
-thinking rationally about the results (people are inflating the significance)

I don't think the race/IQ question has been conclusively answered. If it ever is, the next logical question is "so what?". Even if true, this race and IQ stuff would give you almost no useful information for evaluating a stranger since there would still be so much overlap in the distributions.

Posted by froom | November 30, 2007 9:04 AM

How does anyone look at this sort of thing without being accused of racism?...Science is not about preventing people from being offended, it's about research, and it can lead to directions which go against the sensibilities of the majority.

One way to do it is to deal with the research on a case-by-case basis. In this particular case, the methodology is obviously sketchy (just for starters, it uses extremely nebulous definitions of "race" and "intelligence.")

Should some future researcher with real intellectual rigor come to a similar conclusion using methods that aren't so laughably biased, I may take his findings seriously. But I'm not especially worried about that happening anytime soon.

Posted by James Gary | November 30, 2007 9:04 AM

So what should we do -

You assume that these issues have not already been reviewed and analyzed during the course of legitimate scientific inquiry. They have been, and the conclusion that "race" can be correlated to intelligence has been rejected.

Those who continue to push the race/IQ "evidence" know this (at least the ones with the training and expertise to make such judgments) and rely on the natural uncertainty involved in statistical analysis and the lack of scientific training amongst the general population to continue to mislead the less informed. They wrap their discredited ideas in an aura of what I call "scientism" to make it appear as if there is some sort of legitimate study involved and then pretend the "bias" against their personal beliefs results from an unreasonable political correctness rather than an honest questioning of the methodologies they use to reach spurious conclusions.

Finally, as Whispers suggests, "racist" is a definitional term that has been given pejorative connotations. One need not be a "bad" person in order to practice racism, one only needs to be ignorant of the truth.

http://m-w.com/dictionary/racism

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 9:07 AM

How does anyone look at this sort of thing without being accused of racism?

Why, one doesn't look at this sort of things, that's all there is to it.

One doesn't research idiotic subjects like 'are the Jews more greedy', 'are the Italians more lazy', 'are the Anglo women more bitchy' or 'are the Polacks really that stupid'.

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 9:17 AM

But abb1, there's a difference between the examples you named, and examining IQ differences between various races, unless you reject IQ altogether.
Rihilism, by your definition, isn't affirmative action inherently racist?

Posted by ard | November 30, 2007 9:23 AM

"Saletan was so busy with his counterintuitive pirouettes that he didn't notice what side he'd landed on."

You can replace "Saletan" with "Slate.com" and you'd still be right on. The whole enterprise seems much more concerned with making bizarre, contrarian arguments than being right.

Posted by CJH | November 30, 2007 9:32 AM

Anyone wanting to see for themselves just how methodologically bad Rushton's work actually is need look no further than his book Race, Evolution and Behavior. His organization distributed copies to anthropology departments some years back, so one ended up in my inbox. Its just magnificently, horribly inept. To characture: Orientals are smarter than everyone else because their energy doesn't get used up in as many orgasms as it would in white folk (more often) or black folk (most often), but Orientals include both Chinese and Indians (see the comment on expanding farming populations below and recall the geography of central Asia)...etc.

The question is not one, however, of whether we can or cannot study the dynamics of genetics and inheritance and so forth in human beings or in other species. There are ways to study phenotypic development: genes are inherited by children from parents living in specific environments (physical, technical and cultural) and that the physical development of any given individual is roughly the way those genes manifest over the course of a life time in the specific environment of a given human being. Any such study would have to bear in mind what arachaeology might suggest about the expansion of farming population over the last 10,000 years or so (sequences being variable) and the concomitent retreat of hunting/gathering/herding populations; much of what gets called race doesn't fit well with what we know about these expansions and in any case 10,000 years isn't really more than about 500 generations. It would also have to bear in mind the ubiquity of art and ceremony. And of course it would have to bear in mind the interfertility of our species and the degrees of endogamy. And finally it would have to attend to the degree of avriation within populations as opposed to the degree of variation between populations. Only after throrough study of this sort and no doubt with various other elements could it even be proved that races have some biological reality, as opposed to family lines or populations which are more or less open or closed to their neighbors over extended period of time and numerous generations and so on. Without that kind of proof or the existence of races, and of very specific races at that, all we'd have are various kinds of historically emergent clusters of people with indeterminant relations to one another.

In short, any such study could not be limited to IQ testing of say current North American populations, even if the results correlate well with numbers of orgasms per week.

Nor as the development of perception is part of human phenotypic development and that perception of optical illusions may very depending on the sorts of houses folks live in, for example, or the sorts of moral distinction they learn over the course of a life time (moral distinctions also being forms of perception) is it clear that tests which require certain forms of perception in the measuring of what gets called IQ are actually nuetral measures.

Another way of putting this is that if I'd been born in Britain (I was born in 1956) I would have flunked the 11+ and been sent to trade schools because I'm dyslexic. But I was born in the US, so I have a PhD from UVa in anthropology and publish stuff in scholarly places, mostly on the history of anthropology and its attempts to understand the unity and diversity of our single species, even though I'm a dyslexic.

Posted by djeri | November 30, 2007 9:48 AM

You accept the IQ for what it is - a rough screening device for individuals. And you reject the concept of 'race' as a meaningful concept.

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 9:51 AM

abb1: "You accept the IQ for what it is - a rough screening device for individuals. And you reject the concept of 'race' as a meaningful concept."

Thank you for letting us know what is acceptable.
What if I consider 'race' to be a meaningful concept? (Incidentally, I'm in a mixed-race marriage.)

I have many friends from Taiwan. Their 'race' is very different, and they themselves believe that as well.

Posted by dsl | November 30, 2007 9:55 AM

"Rihilism, by your definition, isn't affirmative action inherently racist?"

Well,..., no. Affirmative action assumes (correctly) that people have been and continue to be deprived of equal opportunity based on the color of their skin. It recognizes racism and attempts to redress the injustice that has resulted from that racism.

In addition, up is not down, left is not right, east is not west, and altruism is not a sin.

"You accept the IQ for what it is - a rough screening device for individuals. And you reject the concept of 'race' as a meaningful concept."

Please define IQ and "race" and provide a hypothesis that would demonstrate how "race" can influence IQ...

Oh, and very well said djeri.

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 10:09 AM

I think what Saletan is getting at in his mea culpa is that he should have told the readers about Rushton's questionable past and associations. This is true in the same way that, if a researcher finds that second-hand smoke is really not harmful but is funded by tobacco companies, this is a fact that should be disclosed. It doesn't mean the result is false, just that it should be taken with a grain of salt.

Matt's point that studying racial differences is inherently racist is patently ridiculous. What about medical researchers studying differences in hypertension or sickle-cell anemia? Are they racists too?

And, they've miraculously made progress despite race not being a "meaningful concept". As for IQ, if IQ is a "rough screening device", that must mean it correlates with what we commonly think of as intelligence. But if it correlates with intelligence. Oh no!

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 10:12 AM

"What if I consider 'race' to be a meaningful concept?"

I would say there are a great number of meaningful concepts that have no scientific relevance.

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 10:13 AM

Sorry, in my post above, I accidentally but the name "abb1". My bad.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 10:13 AM

Jeez, what a messup. I also meant to conclude with: "But if it correlates with intelligence, that must mean its a measure of intelligence. Oh no!"

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 10:16 AM

"What about medical researchers studying differences in hypertension or sickle-cell anemia? Are they racists too?"

Well,..., no. They are studying genetic differences within sub-populations that resulted from historic proximity and environmental influences. They are not trying to correlate an artificial construct with a vague measure in order to demonstrate one or more groups superiority over another group.

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 10:24 AM

abb1 misses the point in his medical references. Sickle-cell anemia is found in a number of populations including in much of the Mediterrean basin where the populace is of a different so-called race from the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. A study of sickle-cell anemia might consider genetic inheritance without considering what gets called race. At best in this case and in many others race becomes not a population out there in the world but an analytic category of convenience or shorthand used to aggregate data, and a very broad shorthand at that. Lots of categories of analysis which appear in statistical studies are of this sort. The problem is proving that the statistical entity is also a real world entity and further a real world entity with the capacity to cause or influence. Given the real world problem of false-correlation (say hat sizes in Ogden, Utah and orange crops in SoCal--don't laugh its a real example, happened for about 30 years I understand) proving a statistical entity is also a real world world entity is not as easy as it looks.

Posted by djeri | November 30, 2007 10:28 AM

Rihilism,

My undertanding is that the commonly used racial categories, however imperfect they may be, do correlate with these medical conditions. I'm sure that once you delve into it, more precise categorizations can be done to make the correlation stronger. So, if a medical researcher or a journalist uses the common categories in describing these correlations (which is what has been done in articles I've read), the conclusion seems to be that, by not being as precise as possible, they are being racist.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 10:32 AM

Atrios called Saletan a 'stupid racist fuckwit' and regrettably I have to agree. Let alone his dubious sources, what the hell was his point? He claims on an ‘average’ asians are smarter than whites, who in turn are smarter than blacks. But apparently individual IQ (or subgroup IQ) cannot be predicted by race. So he cautious whities everywhere – don't preen becuase your black co-workers could be as smart. Among policy measure he proposes- more miscegenation, more breast milk… How can a serious commentator come up with such nonsense!

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | November 30, 2007 10:35 AM

Re: "And if the Saletan Thesis of intrinsic African-American genetic intellectual inferiority is true, extending the analysis to explain the observed gap in violent crime rates seems like an obvious move."

Its so obvious, James Q. Wilson and Richard Hernstein (Bell-Curve co-auther) already wrote a book about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Human-Nature-James-Wilson/dp/0671541307

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 10:36 AM

I think 'stupid racist fuckwit' is a bit strong. To me, Saletan comes across as a bit sloppy, naive, and foolish. The lesson here is that, to publish about such a touchy subject, one really needs to understand the science and history. But what do you expect? Saletan is only a journalist.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 10:49 AM

James Watson was wrong. Africa's problems are all because of Western imperialism. The race and IQ of its inhabitants have nothing to do with the continent's current and everpresent situation.
Just look at South Africa, and how well its been doing since the end of apartheid.

Posted by smart liberal | November 30, 2007 10:57 AM

Jim W -

I refer you to djeri's discussion. Also, I would suggest that you read up on the difference between correlation and causality.

"I'm sure that once you delve into it, more precise categorizations can be done to make the correlation stronger..."

It is not a matter of precision, it's a matter of demonstrating causality. Categories can be useful to discern if differences exist but that is not equivalent to explaining the observed differences. The social sciences have provided a wealth of useful information and societal benefits, but unfortunately the the subjective nature of some the social science methodologies can be abused in order to peddle nonsense such as "The Bell Curve".

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 11:07 AM

I don't think Watson deserved to be treated the way he was, and I do think there is a decent likelihood that there are differences in the mean intelligence between racial groups (although the data don't seem at all conclusive to me).

Having said that, I think for Watson to tie this possibility to the problems in Africa was really stupid. I agree that the legacy of imperialism is probably a big factor. Another factor that is often overlooked is geography. South Africa is nicely situated, but much of Sub-saharan Africa just lacks the type of climate and physical conditions to be conducive for economic growth.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 11:08 AM

We've already got 29 comments and there's no word from Steve Sailer. I find that kind of worrisome. Someone should go check on him. He might have slipped and knocked himself unconscious or had a stroke or threre's a gas leak or something.

Posted by cw | November 30, 2007 11:11 AM

Rihilism,

Our understanding of the link between genetics and intelligence is so weak at this point that there is no way we can demonstrate a causal relationship in the way that I presume we can with these other medical conditions.

Manzi has a good two-part essay on this (linked to from Douhat's site). All we can do is narrow down what the correlations are in order to come up with provisional guesses as to what we think the causal relationships are. This is why I think the data are inconclusive at this point.

I do think that correlations alone can be sufficient to get a good guess as to what the causal relationships are.

Here's an analogy: we have absolutely no idea how or why millions of neurons firing in certain patterns in the brain cause conscious experiences. We probably never will really know. Yet, scientists routinely draw causal inferences about which groups of neurons produce which conscious experiences based on correlation alone.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 11:20 AM

How does anyone look at this sort of thing without being accused of racism? It seems like the fear and antipathy of racism is putting these sorts of questions (which can be asked for legitimate reasons) outside of rational discussion and scientific inquiry. If someone like Saletan writes about this, or if an objective scientist looks into differentiating racial IQ's, then automatically he is a racist (and without a doubt there will be "guilt by association").

Boo hoo! Poor William Saletan! He has to read a bunch of angry emails and reader comments and blog postings!

This hair pulling about how difficult it is to have discussions on touchy subjects is ridiculous coming as it does in the midst of a comment thread discussing the touchy subject itself.

So Saletan was accused of racism. Big deal. People who want Israel to leave the Palestinians alone know that when they approach that subject they will (much more unfairly) be accused of antisemitism.

And the fact is, this country had a huge discussion of the horrid Bell Curve when it came out. The book was widely discussed in the mainstream media and its racist conclusions were aired repeatedly and taken quite seriously. The debunking came months later and received hardly any coverage at all.

And as for Saletan--he wasn't fired from his job. He wasn't arrested or run out of town in tar and feathers. He posted a half-hearted apology. BFD.

Posted by Rob Mac | November 30, 2007 11:20 AM

Back in July, there was a nice article in PLOS Genetics by Price et al that showed how you can distinguish Ashkenazi Jews from other Europeans by looking at their genes - in almost every case.
Look at the alleles that vary most between the populations and the Ashkenazim form a distinct cluster.

For populations with greater geographic and time separations, this is even easier.

Another point: I remember hearing now and then that are no 'race genes', which I guess would mean gene variants that have 99-100% frequency in one population and are nonexistent or nearly so in other groups. There are, though. Back in June, Williamson et al, also in PLOS Genetics, found roughly 100. They found such local variants in pigmentation pathways, components of the dystrophin protein complex, clusters of olfactory receptors, genes involved in nervous system development and function, immune system genes, and heat shock genes. These 'race genes' include but are not limited to those influencing appearance.

And of course there are hundreds of functional variants that exist in one population at a frequency above 20% but below 100% but are essentially unknown in other distant populations. Look at the Voight-Pritchard study in PLOS Biology or the Wang-Moyzis study in PNAS.

Now if any of these regional variants turns out to have any noticeable effect on behavior you care about - for example a cluster of variants in serotonin receptors and transporters in Europeans, or a different version of a gene affecting the layers of the cerebral cortex (DAB1) that essentially everyone in China has but no one in Europe or Africa - and you _acknowledge_ that effect exists, you're a racist, as I understand it. But if you don't acknowledge it, you're still cool.

It looks as if all of these local variants are the products of recent natural selection selection, so they _do_ have effects, effects that evolution cared about (typically with effect sizes on fitness on the order of 5% or more each) even if they don't matter to you.

Posted by gcochran | November 30, 2007 11:24 AM

"It looks as if all of these local variants are the products of recent natural selection selection, so they _do_ have effects, effects that evolution cared about (typically with effect sizes on fitness on the order of 5% or more each) even if they don't matter to you."

What effects do they have? How do these local variant affect IQ? They don't? You don't know? Then you can't use them to "suggest" that there are racial difference in IQ, as I have seen this information used.

Posted by cw | November 30, 2007 11:30 AM

cw,

I think his point was that there are known genetic differences between populations that correspond to what we commonly call racial or ethnic groups. Its not that these particular differences have anything to do with IQ, but just to make the point that its valid to invoke the concept of race, or ethnic group, or whatever, when discussing genetic differences between populations.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 11:39 AM

"I think his point was that there are known genetic differences between populations that correspond to what we commonly call racial or ethnic groups."

We already know that. All my life I've noticed that Black people have darker skins and different hair. I've always assumed this was genentic. We know there is some genetic differences. But these new "race genes" that they are finding are not just brought up casually. It's not like some aquaintence at bar turns to you and says, hey, they found some previously unknow genetic differences between the races. It's brought up in the context of Saelatins articles about race and IQ. And I've seen it bought up several times in that same context, and as evidence of anything, it's absoloutly worthless. So why bring it up in this context.

Posted by cw | November 30, 2007 11:54 AM

Now if any of these regional variants turns out to have any noticeable effect on behavior you care about - for example a cluster of variants in serotonin receptors and transporters in Europeans, or a different version of a gene affecting the layers of the cerebral cortex (DAB1) that essentially everyone in China has but no one in Europe or Africa - and you _acknowledge_ that effect exists, you're a racist, as I understand it. But if you don't acknowledge it, you're still cool.

Not quite, gcochran.

If you speculate wildly about possible genetic explanations that might be for racial differences in IQ scores then, well, let's say you might be a racist.

And, yeah, not being a racist is still cool.

Posted by Rob Mac | November 30, 2007 12:13 PM

Jim W wrote:

I think his point was that there are known genetic differences between populations that correspond to what we commonly call racial or ethnic groups.

Put the emphasis on "what we call" and what you find is an analytic category which may or may not correspond very well to a biological population which is not also somehow historically contingent. I may have the map of Ireland on my face, but my ancestors haven't lived there in several hundred years. So I'm like some Irish folks, real Irish folks from Ireland, in one way and like other folks who are not Irish, even by convention or ancestry, in others. The point is not as gcochran seems to think that clusters of one or another gene or sets of genes proves the existence of races, it simply means that some populations can be distinguished from others in a given historical context; this is hardly surprising. Get some intermarriage going and these clusters shift; get populations moving in space and time and these clusters shift. Proving the real world existence of biological entities which correspond to those we call races or ethnic groups requires that one also look at the similarities of genetic frequencies across such clusters...so Tay Sachs clusters among Azkenazi, but red hair or blue eyes or something else can join Azkenazi to other northern European social groups or, for that matter, Middle Eastern social groups. So Azkenazi are different in some ways and similar in others to their neighbors. This is a long way from proving races exist.

gcochran potentially makes another theoretical mistake in discussing natural selection. Because whole beings (i.e. folks like me or gcochran who are clusters of genes) live, reproduce and die any given gene may actually neither help nor hinder fitness (living to reproduce) yet still become characteristic of a population. Even then a condition like sickle cell may be really problematic in one place (say NYC) but beneficial (relatively) in another region(parts of Africa and the Mediterrean Basin) but never come about in still other places (like SEAsia) where one also finds malaria. Perhaps a better example would be innies and outies, yeah the benefits of belly button types, or ear lobes that are more or less separated from the side of the head. Fitness is well nothing more than living to reproduce, so I'm not fit (no kids, that I know of) but lots and lots of other folks are. Further, there are three sorts of selection involved: natural, sexual and cultural. So something that might be naturally beneficial in some circumstances could be selected against sexually or culturally among human beings living under those circumstances.

Posted by djeri | November 30, 2007 12:18 PM

Are beautiful people better than ugly people?
Are happier people better than unhappy people?
Are smart people better people that poorer people?
Are shorter people better than taller people?

What makes a person good or bad?
What makes a person worth more (not in money terms) than another?

I discriminate all the time.

when I was dating, I completely excluded something like 99+% of the world. If you weren't female; if you weren't close to my age; if you didn't live near me; etc.

So how did I end up with a woman who is 18 years younger than me and lives more than 7,000 miles away? I have no idea.

What is wrong with saying "White men can't jump"? What is wrong with saying that smart parents produce smart offspring? What is wrong with sticking your head in the sand and saying that there are no significant genetic differences between races?

I ain't smart enough to know how significant any of these differences are but I doubt we will see 10 white guys on the floor at the same time in the NBA.

Posted by neil wilson | November 30, 2007 12:32 PM

djeri,

Come on. You seem to think that when other people use the term "race" that they don't understand the subtleties you allude to. Also, that they don't understand that genetic fitness of traits can vary under different conditions.

We understand. Different people just have a different level of fastidiousness that they think is required in everyday writing.

The point is not as gcochran seems to think that clusters of one or another gene or sets of genes proves the existence of races, it simply means that some populations can be distinguished from others in a given historical context; this is hardly surprising.

I don't think it proves the existence of races. I don't think gcochran does either. There is a common conception of what races are (corresponding roughly to what box you check off on one of those forms). There are also many correlations between different populations of people and clusters of genes. The only point I'm making is that, no surprise, there are correlations between the racial categories and these populations. Does this mean races exist? Who cares?

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 12:43 PM

My understanding is that black Africans in Southern Africa don't have high rates of sickle-cell anemia. If black Africans are supposed to be the type of monolithic group where some type of near-uniform "black African" gene is so powerful that it determines one's intelligence, the fact that sickle-cell anemia throws a monkey wrench into the whole issue does bring up questions for how they are used. Racial categories are more useful as social labels for how people are categorized and thus treated because we are living in a world that has been very much shaped by Western theories of race and identity. "African" as a concept of identity was very much imported from Europe, where such broad labels were deemed useful. Africans before European imperialism had little use for "African" as an identity, so it was weak to non-existent (the same could be said of "Asian," which was derived from the Greek word for Turkey, so as Alexander marched east, he just called everything Asia).

This points to the problem with such broad labels. Sure, Zulus don't look like Norwegians, but Zulus don't look like Ethiopians either. Koreans may not look like Hausa-Fulani, but they don't look like Japanese people either. The British and Irish are as genetically the same as any two can be, yet the Irish are still subject to racism in Britain. We also aren't that far removed from the times when race science told us that the Irish, the Japanese and Koreans were genetically pre-disposed to poverty because of an inferior intellect. However, the proponents of "race science" have worked backwards from a deeply held belief - whites have to be genetically superior, especially to blacks - and then crafted nonsensical arguments in favor of such a proposition. I also love how none of them have answered the point that Ezra Klein brought up in which when IQ test questions are translated from standard English to Ebonics (which some linguistics, such as McWhorter, think should be classified as its own language because it has the proper levels of standardized syntax and such), the differences in IQ melt away. IQ tests are really a test about how well one fits into a society's pre-conceived notions of intelligence.

Racial politics become tricky things once you wade into it. Someone brought up Taiwan earlier. However, Taiwanese politics are highly racially charged after decades of what can rather fairly be called a mesh of Leninism, corporatism and apartheid. There is a large extent to which those who call themselves Taiwanese and consider themselves distinct from China also consider the descendants of the GMD members who fled to Taiwan to be a separate people. To a large extent, party politics in Taiwan are based on a self-perceived racial identity. All of these groups also crowded out the Taiwanese aborigines, who now make up less than 5% of Taiwan's population.

"Orientals are smarter than everyone else because their energy doesn't get used up in as many orgasms as it would in white folk (more often) or black folk (most often), but Orientals include both Chinese and Indians (see the comment on expanding farming populations below and recall the geography of central Asia)"

For a moment, just leave aside the racist aspect of this argument. How would anyone think up this argument in the first place, watching too much pixelated Japanese porn? This isn't just some counter-intuitive argument that turns out to have some truth, like Ricardo's argument in favor of free trade. This is just fucking weird. Why would you even put your name on it. It feels like the stuff you hear militias in the Pacific Northwest say about the US government, the UN, fluoride in the water, the end of the gold standard and Steven Speilberg trying to control our brains. Think of how many people in China and India are farmers. Think of how tiring farming is. Think of how much more relaxing sex is compared to farming, especially for the effort you put into it (especially if you're a guy). I would probably feel more relaxed being a French guy working in an office who got laid every night than a farmer in Uttar Pradesh or Guizhou that spent that same amount of energy farming and got laid less.

Posted by Reality Man | November 30, 2007 12:51 PM

Neil Wilson, you completely ignore historical context. When was the last time that you saw a team of all-black hockey players? If Africans were purely physically gifted more than whites based purely on genetics untouched by history, then Kenya would win the gold all the time at the Winter Olympics. You know why a lot of basketball players are black? Because a lot of basketball players in the NBA are American and basketball is also a possible (if unlikely) path out of the ghetto for many poor black males. You're making a Bill O'Reilly pseudo-common sense argument without even bothering to show that race and IQ are useful scientific concepts that are linked by causality. That is just lazy thinking.

Posted by Reality Man | November 30, 2007 12:57 PM

"Yet, scientists routinely draw causal inferences about which groups of neurons produce which conscious experiences based on correlation alone."

Yes, and at the opposite end of things is very easy to demonstrate significant correlation between two well-defined variables that are not in any way related. It's quite interesting stuff, science and statistics, but I'm not completely clear on the relevance of your analogy.

"I do think that correlations alone can be sufficient to get a good guess as to what the causal relationships are."

"Now if any of these regional variants turns out to have any noticeable effect on behavior you care about - for example a cluster of variants in serotonin receptors and transporters in Europeans, or a different version of a gene affecting the layers of the cerebral cortex (DAB1) that essentially everyone in China has but no one in Europe or Africa - and you _acknowledge_ that effect exists"

Well, I guess that settles it, huh?

May I suggest your guesses assume a great deal without proving anything. Also, I don't recall suggesting there weren't genetic differences between populations. Finally, if you wish to associate "race" with IQ perhaps you should define "race" first rather than trying to fit it to IQ "measurements" after the fact.

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 1:07 PM

Jim W

Then why use the term race, given its history?

For someone like Rushton races are biological entities, so the question is do such entities exist and how could one demonstrate it one way or the other? If such entities don't exist biologically, then all the rest of the malarky about intelligence or what have you is well dangerous nonsense. If such entities can't be shown to exist biologically, then what slese might they be but categories, potentially very dubious, dangerous but sometimes convenient ones which have arisen in the course of specific histories. Then the questions have to do with varieties of usefulness over and against varieties of danger.

Now I'm an academic, an anthropologist to be specific. If other folks want to think in sloopy ways, they'll do so even if folks like myself, pedants if you will, seek to get them to think more crisply and thoroughly. But in this case, the discussion is about so-called race science and the pertient issues are scientific, i.e. the sorts of matters where pendantry is methodologically necessary on occassion.

Posted by djeri | November 30, 2007 1:17 PM

Here's something else that bothers me with the "race scientists" and their approach to intelligence. If you went to Nigeria's Middle Belt and gave a mostly illiterate merchant an IQ test, he would probably do poorly. However, there would also be a good chance that he would speak around 3-5 languages fluently and use them everyday while doing business. Meanwhile, a white kid from Wyoming who graduated from an American high school would probably score higher, but would most likely lack the very useful attribute of being multilingual. Who is actually more intelligent in this situation?

Posted by Reality Man | November 30, 2007 1:19 PM

The point of my analogy is that, if you establish a strong enough correlation between different variables and rule out other potential causes of the correlation, then you can become confident that the correlation represents a causal relationship. I agree that this is difficult. The huge environmental effects on intelligence, let alone on IQ testing, makes it extremely difficult to do this in practise.

My final comment is that I actually don't think the term "race" is significant to this discussion. For the sake of argument, suppose it was scientifically proven that a certain gene was present in a different frequency among Norwegians and Swedes, and that this difference was the cause of an average difference in intelligence between these groups (with Norwegians, of course, being the more intelligent group).

Would you object that this couldn't be true because Nowegians and Swedes do not belong to different races? Of course not.

The term "race" is just a crude shorthand for designating different populations. To the extent that we can talk about populations with more specificity with regard to whatever differences in gene frequencies or phenotypes or whatever that are at issue, then of course we should.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 1:21 PM

I was making the point that there are significant population differences in the frequencies of strongly selected neurological genes. Lots of people have said that human common ancestry is too recent (~50,000 years) for such genetic differences to exist, but they are wrong. We've found them. So that line of argument, which has been used by a lot of people - S. J. Gould for example - is no longer viable.

Since, for example, there are known and easily observable differences in the behavior of kids from different racial groups who are only two days old (Dan Freedman's work, also Jerome Kagan's), we know that behavioral differences between racial groups can be caused by genetic differences - I'm pretty sure that culture hasn't really kicked in very hard at 48 hours.

The question is, to what degree.

Posted by gcochran | November 30, 2007 2:07 PM

Gcochran, any two individuals have genetic differences, unless they are identical twins.

The range of differences within what you call a 'race' is wider than the difference between averages of different 'races'.

It's all nonsense, it's illusory, it's not real.

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 2:28 PM

"Re: "And if the Saletan Thesis of intrinsic African-American genetic intellectual inferiority is true, extending the analysis to explain the observed gap in violent crime rates seems like an obvious move."

Its so obvious, James Q. Wilson and Richard Hernstein (Bell-Curve co-auther) already wrote a book about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Human-Nature-James-Wilson/dp/0671541307"

And this is where we come full circle, Jim. Acknowledgments are made that even if "race" can somehow be correlated to the nebulous IQ (I don't accept this as true), supposedly everyone agrees the "effect" is minor and is confounded with other variables that make it impossible to establish causality. Promises are then made that future genetic research will confirm this hypothesis regardless of the lack of robust definitions and measures. Eventually, we'll manage to "tweeze" this "race" effect out of the noise and we'll demonstrate the "link" between these "independent variables".

Despite this uncertainty, authors of this junk draw conclusions and make categorical statements regarding still other "factors" which they then correlate back to the poorly understood and weak (I'd say non-existent) relationship between "race" and IQ. Its garbage piled upon garbage and these bogus arguments are turned into a money-making enterprise that enriches no one except the authors.

Yet when someone is smart enough to point out that the only reason to continue to adhere to these beliefs (since they have no demonstrable value) is to convey a sense of superiority based on surficial physiology, they are labeled as immoderate. Accusations are made that those who will not accept an unproven hypothesis are stifling the scientific process and disregarding the "truth".

It's a silly game, Jim that serves no other purpose than to confuse the uninformed and to provide fodder for those who wish to perpetuate discrimination (or make a healthy profit off of both).

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 2:31 PM

The fact that the distance between two tail points of a normally distributed variable is wider for population A than the distance between the mean points of population A and population B, does not prove that the two populations are in fact one.

Posted by henry evans | November 30, 2007 2:36 PM

...does not prove that the two populations are in fact one...

Any two random groups of people will have different distributions and thus, according to your logic, are two different populations. Which is fine as far as it goes, but what does it have to do with 'races'? Absolutely nothing.

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 2:43 PM

Since, for example, there are known and easily observable differences in the behavior of kids from different racial groups who are only two days old ... we know that behavioral differences between racial groups can be caused by genetic differences - I'm pretty sure that culture hasn't really kicked in very hard at 48 hours.

You may be sure but you are surely wrong. If the mother's cultural heritage resulted in drinking while pregnant, it may have kicked in very severely indeed.

Posted by Kevin Donoghue | November 30, 2007 2:46 PM

Random samples drawn from the same population will tend to have the same distribution, not different distributions.

Posted by henry evans | November 30, 2007 2:46 PM

Rihilism,

Hey, I never said the Wilson/Hernstein book was good. In fact, I read it a long time ago and remember some bad karma emanating from it.

Similarly, if the stuff about Rushton that people have written is true, then he's just an embarrassment to the Psychology profession.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 2:47 PM

Sorry, should have said "independent & dependent variables"

Posted by Rihilism | November 30, 2007 2:49 PM

to have the same distribution

Not exactly the same. Take a thousand Floridians of European ancestry and a thousand Minnesotans of European ancestry and I bet you'll get two distinctly different distributions - of anything: hight, weight, IQ, eye color, shoe size. Are they two different races?

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 2:53 PM

If you did find a statistically significant difference between the two groups, you could conclude that they represented two different populations. That conclusion would be stronger if repeated sampling showed the same results.

Whether we call Floridians and Minnesotans "races" or "populations" is of no importance to science.

Posted by henry evans | November 30, 2007 2:58 PM

Then the word 'population' is completely meaningless - any two people are two different populations, unless they are identical twins. Or, in fact, even if they are identical twins, because identical twins don't have the same IQ.

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 3:02 PM

there are known and easily observable differences in the behavior of kids from different racial groups who are only two days old

Okay, I'll bite. What are the races and what are the "known and easily observable differences?" Because I'd love to know how eating, sleeping, crying and pooping varies at 48 hours.

Posted by Persia | November 30, 2007 3:04 PM

abb1,

Imagine if instead of Minnesota vs. Florida, you just randomly selected two groups of Minnesotans. As the number in each group increased, you should find the difference in the mean going to zero. There should be no statistical significance in the differences between the groups. In other words, whatever differences you find are just do to random chance in which individuals you selected.

Due to different European origins (on average) between Floridians and Minnesotans, on the other hand, you may find stat. sig., albeit small, differences.

I think the meaningfulness of the term "population" will depend on the magnitude of the differences that you're looking for.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 3:10 PM

It is incorrect to say that every individual is a population. A population is by definition a group characterized by a particular distribution with respect to a variable. If two groups (of a sufficient sample size) exhibit a different distribution with respect to that variable, it is proper to conclude that they are not from the same population.

Posted by henry evans | November 30, 2007 3:11 PM

...randomly selected two groups of Minnesotans. As the number in each group increased, you should find the difference in the mean going to zero.

Right. And the same will happen if you randomly select two groups of earthlings. Right?

But suppose you take a group of urban Minnesotans and a group of rural Minnesotans (both European ancestry) - then you'll see a difference. I bet the magnitude of the difference (shoe size, weight, IQ) is not going to be smaller than the one between dark-skin and pale-skin people from the same socio-economic environment. So, what now? Do the rural and urban Minnesotans of European ancestry represent two different races?

Posted by abb1 | November 30, 2007 3:23 PM

It's funny watching the tide of ignorance pause briefly when somebody who actually knows what the hell he's talking about -- namely, "gcochran" -- interjects some facts from the cutting edge of genetics. But then the tide goes right back to being smugly ignorant.

"gcochran" is Gregory Cochran, who may be the most brilliant human evolutionary theorist working today.

Here's a New York Times article on one of his papers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 30, 2007 4:06 PM

Let's say I have the following, decidedly racist views:

-Whites are, on average, genetically taller than Asians.
-Therefore, Asians should not be allowed to vote or own property.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with agreeing with my empirical claim (about height.

There is something quite wrong about agreeing to my normative claim, partly because it's inconsistent (if a specific Asian is taller than a specific white, shouldn't he get to own property? If blacks are taller than whites, shouldn't they get property and not whites?) and partly because almost it's absurd to base someone's legal rights off his height. The parallels with intelligence are, I hope, obvious, though I don't claim to know which group, if any, has better intelligence genes.

There may or may not be a racial difference in IQs. There probably is, because the odds that separate populations ended up with completely identical intelligence-related genes seems low. Of course, this difference could be incredibly low, as in less than a point. Or it could be larger. It could be in any direction for any race, as cultural and social pressures alter it enough that most claims about genetic differences take a lot of guesswork.

There is nothing wrong with supporting an empirical claim. There is something wrong with supporting an empirical claim with flawed or unreliable data. And there is something very wrong with using such data when that data has been created as propaganda for an evil cause. Saletan was irresponsible for doing this.

There was nothing wrong, with his attempt to use evidence to try to determine an empirical issue. What was wrong is that he used terrible evidence being put forward by people with an evil cause.

Posted by Psychohistorian | November 30, 2007 4:07 PM

Essentially, race is about who your relatives are.

If anybody actually wants a to possess a simple, broadly useful definition of what a racial group is, here it is: "a partly inbred extended family."

It's explained in detail here:

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

This definition meets all the old chestnut objections trotted out here in the comments.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 30, 2007 4:11 PM

What if I consider 'race' to be a meaningful concept? (Incidentally, I'm in a mixed-race marriage.)
I have many friends from Taiwan. Their 'race' is very different, and they themselves believe that as well.
Posted by dsl

Quite true. IF you spend time in Asia, and have friends who speak openly, race is huge in Asia.

And in Asia, it is apparantly acceptable to openly talk and debate about race and ethnicity (as race), even as graduates from top schools. All I have encountered believe significant differences in aptitude and behavior exist between Han and Thai, Han and Hakka, the Malays, everybody and the Vietnamese, real Asians and the negrito/micronesian stocks. They see Australian aborgines as a primitive, fossil race that contributed to the Malays but not the Northern Migration that produced Caucasions, Mongolian, Han, Korean, Yamoto peoples orginally on the Steppes.

This is not to say they are right about everything. The Japanese Yamoto "superior" race concept emerged in isolation and has evolved begrudgingly with objective science and test results, to accept Koreans, Han, most Caucasians, and perhaps Vietnamese as roughly equal in aptitude and ability. But the Asian concepts of race came from thousands of years of ethnicities close observation of themselves and other races - seeing themselves as unique subraces with traits and abilities inherent to their race, or inherent to others.
And operating off workable stereotypes. And the Hap-Map and other DNA research into the Southern and Northern migrations into Asia out of Africa, how they blended, perhaps with earlier proto-races, the origin of the modern Caucasian and Mongoloid races - fits the traditional Asian stereotyping of race theory fairly well. But Asians have been open enough to be shocked and pleased at DNA links between "races". Many that they thought no kinship existed with.

Asians who attended American universities are amused at PC notions of race there. And sort of liked being cast in the Lefty university narrative as the innocent good non-whites beset upon by evil white oppressors. Paraphrasing one Han mainland Chinese guy I know - "We have a right to be pissed for 100 years of humiliation by whites, and we will soon rise above them with an even greater civilization - but what whites did is nothing compared to what the Mongols, Japanese, or degenerate Malay pirate races did to us over the years. Malays are as barbarous as your black problem people."

(Asians -and Indians - are quite proud of contrasting their behavior to the behavior of NOLA blacks after Katrina. "No looting in the Tsunami, the Tingshan earthquake, the Kobe Earthquake - we remained civilized and required nobody to save Asians, or rebuild. Of course we understand that white peoples also behaved exemplarily in the Tsunami, the Mumbai floods, and when tornados hit white areas of America. Your Mexicans too, we hear..")

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

Since, for example, there are known and easily observable differences in the behavior of kids from different racial groups who are only two days old (Dan Freedman's work, also Jerome Kagan's), we know that behavioral differences between racial groups can be caused by genetic differences - I'm pretty sure that culture hasn't really kicked in very hard at 48 hours.
The question is, to what degree.
Posted by gcochran

And that area, differences in childhood development between races, is where Phillippe Rushton, who had some odd notions in other fields, did good science in his studies..Others, like Freedman, have confirmed his childhood development scales are valid models..which covers areas like motor coordination, problem-solving, spatial perception, aggression, impulse control, anger, toilet training, abstract thinking. Black infants walk first, have better motor skills earlier, and more agression and impulsiveness striking at weaker, less developed infants. Early in development, they lead other races in problem-solving. Whites and Asians physically develop later, as a rule, never develop the extent of the impulsiveness and aggression of black infants, and surpass them in problem-solving by age 4.
White infants are better problem-solvers than Asians, but Asian infants age 4 or better lead them in spatial perception and abstract thinking. Both race's infants surpass black infants, as a general rule, in mental performance by age 4.
Black infants and children retain higher aggression and impulsiveness levels compared to other races - up to and including adulthood, with "high-scoring" black infants in those 2 categories tracked into adulthood far more likely to be enganged in criminality than more docile black testees, or Asian or white kids.

The childhood development models are not needed to prove significant differences as racial generalities - but to guide parents, educators, and physicians that their child is progressing normally...and alert those groups to a child lagging in their peer race group. To reassure a Chinese-American parent seeing most of her child's peer black infants walking and being the first to take charge of toys or other attractants, then white infants - does not mean her mongoloid race child is deficient - because they are evaluated on a different scale. And to tell black parents that their children lagging on mental ability tests after age 4 is not abnormal...When individual problems are identified early - educators and doctors can do a lot more. Get the white kid lagging other white kids in motor skills up to his peer group of whites, work on unusually high aggression in an Asian child, get the black performing on mental skills well below peer black infants in special ed...and so on..

Posted by Chris Ford | November 30, 2007 4:15 PM

Steve! There you are! When you didn't show up earlier I was worried about you.

Posted by cw | November 30, 2007 4:17 PM

By the way, I realize that commenters here seldom read the Science section of the New York Times (or they wouldn't be so ill-informed about the genetics of race), but there should be a lot of news in the elite press (e.g., the NYT and The Economist) forthcoming about a new blockbuster paper co-authored by Cochran and a Murderer's Row of top genetics researchers that may revolutionize how we think about history and human nature.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 30, 2007 4:18 PM

At the risk of adding to the tide of ignorance, let me note the following from the above cited nytimes article:

A second suggestion, wrote Dr. Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles, in a 1994 article, "is selection in Jews for the intelligence putatively required to survive recurrent persecution, and also to make a living by commerce, because Jews were barred from the agricultural jobs available to the non-Jewish population."

This is the same Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs, and Steele fame! This reminds me of a point I have made before (sorry if I'm repeating myself). The appeal for me of theories relating genetics to intelligence is similar to the appeal of Diamond's wonderful book, which relates meta historical outcomes to geography: namely, the appeal of reductionism. The ability to explain complex data based on relatively simple physical causes.

As Derbyshire noted recently, some of us are interested in this stuff because we're science geeks, not out of racial motives.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 4:22 PM

Claims race is an artificial construct is ideological - not scientific.
Similar to claims there are "absolutely no differences in gender in any ability or behavior", just society imposing it's concepts of gender through nurture.

Bullcrap to both.

Posted by Chris Ford | November 30, 2007 4:28 PM

Jim W

Are you saying that Derbyshire is not, at least, a tad bit zenophobic (to use a less inflamatory term).

The problem with guys like Derbyshire, Rushton, and Steve Sailor is that they have made racist comments. It's difficult to trust them on this issue.

Posted by cw | November 30, 2007 4:30 PM

Derbyshire is a complete nutjob when it comes to politics. If he's talking about science or math, or even certain cultural issues, he can be quite lucid. Its strange.

Posted by Jim W | November 30, 2007 4:34 PM

"Are you saying that Derbyshire is not, at least, a tad bit zenophobic (to use a less inflamatory term)."

That would come as a big surprise to Mrs. Derbyshire:

http://www.olimu.com/Photographs/Yosemite.htm

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 30, 2007 4:34 PM

Yeah, I guess zenophobic is the wrong word. I'll just go back to racist (making an exception for asian women).

Posted by cw | November 30, 2007 4:37 PM

It's worth quoting Derbyshire:

" Q: Is this stuff interesting to anyone but white supremacists?

A: I bet it is interesting to white supremacists, though it should — see above — be even more interesting to yellow supremacists. I know a lot of people who find it interesting, though, and I don’t think any of them is a white supremacist. (Which I take to mean: A person who desires special legal/constitutional privileges for white p