Stephen Metcalf offers up a great rejoinder to Will Saletan on race and IQ. Read the whole thing. But seriously, read it -- I wound up learning a lot. In particular, I hadn't realized the full extent of the problems with the famous Minnesota twin study. His piece on Jens Lekman is good, too.
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Metcalf Strikes Back
04 Dec 2007 10:58 am
Comments (130)
"Stephen Metcalf offers up a great rejoinder to Will Saletan on race and IQ."
Yup. It is indeed a very good piece.
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Debating this topic is tedious for the same reason that debating the estate tax is tedious: folks with an interest in clouding the issue have sponsored a large amount of pseudo-research that provides lots of ammo to the mouth-breathers out there.
A preemptive pox on everyone who comments on the substance of this thread!
More Sail(er) bait.
Awesome.
It is an absolute disgrace that that racist piece of shit Saletan still has a job. If there was any justice in the world, his career would be over and he would be reduced to digging ditches to make a living.
Metcalf is highly critical of Arthur Jensen, one of the top proponents of the "heredity" theory, calling him and his co-author J.P. Rushton "two highly biased researchers." Metcalf approvingly cites "environmentalist" proponent James Flynn, whose views are diametrically opposite of Jensen's. He would probably be most surprised to find out that Flynn believes Jensen is unbiased and intellectually honest:
I never suspected Arthur Jensen of racial bias. Over the years, I have found him scrupulous in terms of professional ethics. He has never denied me access to his unpublished data. His work stands as an example of what John Stuart Mill meant when he said that being challenged in a way that is "upsetting" is to be welcomed not discouraged. Before Jensen, the notion that all races were genetically equal for cognitive ability had become a dead "Sunday truth" for which we could give no good reasons. Today we are infinitely more informed about group differences. Equally important, the debates Jensen began are revolutionizing the theory of intelligence and our understanding of how genes and environment interact.
"It is an absolute disgrace that that racist piece of shit Saletan still has a job."
I actually feel bad for Saletan. I don't get the sense that he's racist - more that he's gullible and has been taken in by the psuedo-research being peddled by actual racists.
That doesn't really excuse his piece - he gets paid to be smarter than that - but it doesn't necessarily make him as despicable as the Sailers of the world.
On a more substantive note (sorry southpaw), the following paragraph from the linked article sets forth in clear language a very basic point which often gets lost in the "debate:"
"Furthermore, the APA task force lays out—finally!—the real heart of the conflict. To understand what is really being fought over when we fight over the IQ gap between blacks and whites, its authors explain, you must think through an analogy. Imagine two wheat fields. Now imagine two genetically identical sets of seeds. (The analogy was first made famous by the Harvard evolutionary biologist and geneticist Richard Lewontin.) Now imagine each field is planted with these two identical seed stocks. Field No. 1 is given the best possible inputs: sunshine intensity, rain, soil nitrates, etc. Field No. 2 is given much less of all of the above. Within each field, inputs are kept uniform. Inevitably, the first field grows a healthier supply of grain than the second. But here is the rub: Within each field, the variation in outcomes is entirely hereditary. Between the two fields, the variation in outcomes in entirely environmental."
Peter -
That is hardly a ringing endorsement of Jenson.
"I never suspected Arthur Jensen of racial bias."??????????
Thanks for the giggles!
Petey,
Ah,m you feel bad for the poor little racist? Do you have any idea how much harm that article will do among people who really are "gullible," and who aren't paid to do even the basic the research that Saletan is paid to do?
The fact is that a person of good faith could read the Saletan article and come away with the believe that there is some truth to his libel against blacks. But could a person of good faith, with (ironically) an IQ above 90, who actually reviewed the research, even cursorily, have WRITTEN that article? Absolutely not.
If I was in Saletan's social circle, the next time I met him in a social setting, I would spit in his face. I encopurage Matthew or any other readers who have such an oportunity to take advantage of it.
"Great rejoinder" = "says what I wanted to hear".
The fact is that the damage that the Sailers of the world do is far less than the damage that people like Saletan do, partly because Saletan has a more prominent platform, but mainly because his racism, though deep and obvious to anyone who knows much about the subject in question, isn't displayed as clearly on the surface.
And where were his editors in all of this?
Of course, the Minnesota Twins study is a ongoing study of adopted identical twins, not a study of transracial adoption. Perhaps Metcalf meant to refer to the Minnesota Transracial Adoption study.
That is hardly a ringing endorsement of Jenson.
"I never suspected Arthur Jensen of racial bias."??????????
It's a pretty good response to Metcalf's bias claim, though written before Metcalf's article appeared. Flynn does not say that he agrees with Jensen's conclusions, but that he respects Jensen's thought process.
I wonder if LarryM could answer even basic questions about the field he is criticizing. His posts are the prototypical example of emotional rant/ignorant criticism...He may be right about the 'harm' that Saletan's article is doing in exposing the body of work that inconveniently contradicts his priors but it is a big leap from that to concluding that Saletan is some sort of moral vacuum. In fact, the more these issues are discussed the better in my opinion.
Steven Metcalfe however loses all credibility when he says he has never heard of Jensen and lumps him in with Rushton as an ethically questionable researcher. Jensen has much evidence behind his claims and even Flynn admits that they are legitimate science, though he disagrees with Jensen's interpretation of the data. Anyway, his arguments need to be addressed and not in the hysterical "Pioneer Fund is bad" kind of way...
Of course, the Minnesota Twins study is a ongoing study of adopted identical twins, not a study of transracial adoption.
I thought the Minnesota Twins study referred to the dirt Hank Steinbrenner's PIs are even now trying to dig up on Bill Smith.
v,
I actually have, from an admitted layman's perspective, but a well read layman with a good knowledge of statistics and research methodology, studied the issue pretty closely. Closely enough to have concluded that the "science" of the racialists is shoddy enough that no intelligent person of good faith (i.e., a non-racist), could buy into the swill.
That being said, and the ONLY reason why my anger may be a little over the top, is that there is a possibility that Saletan, and some others who believe that poison, rather than being racists, just have an incredibly weak understanding of statistics and legitimate scientific research methodology.
What I like about the article is that he deals with the substance of the issue, rather than trotting out the nonsensical "there's no such thing as race" or "there's no such thing as intelligence" objections that drive me up the wall.
As he said, its a debate of science vs. science. I also agre that the analogy of objectors with creationists is way over the top. I still think there's a decent likelihood that part of the group IQ gap will be due to genetic differences, but we'll see.
Sure blacks may be genetically inferior! I have no evidence for this but... I'm sure the science will confirm my suspicions. After all, its not like whitey has been trying to prove dark skinned people are dumber for hundreds of years...
Steven Metcalfe however loses all credibility when he says he has never heard of Jensen and lumps him in with Rushton as an ethically questionable researcher.
Not too hard to understand, especially since he explains it:
Jensen began claiming that black mental inferiority was intractable a mere five years after the Civil Rights Act, four years after the Voting Rights Act, and four years after Head Start was created.) Since the late '60s—i.e., since the heyday of civil rights and the inception of such "compensatory education" programs as Head Start—blacks have made huge gains vis-à-vis whites on a wide range of standardized tests. For obvious reasons, Rushton and Jensen refuse to acknowledge these gains.
Is this part of the "much evidence" that Jensen has, or did he misplace it?
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"And where were his editors in all of this?"
The editors probably thought their readers were adult enough to read a survey of current science on the topic without resorting to apoplectic cries of racism. When they realized they were wrong, they forced Saletan to recant with part 4, and then they commissioned Stephen Metcalf to squirt some squid ink over the uncomfortable facts.
"blacks have made huge gains vis-à-vis whites on a wide range of standardized tests."
They have? Have the gaps in SAT scores, MCAT scores, LSAT scores, etc. narrowed significantly? This seems like a spurious claim on its face. If it were true, there would be no need for affirmative action in higher education. It's the yawning gap in standardized test scores (which correlates closely with the widely documented IQ score gap) that presents the biggest obstacle to a color-blind admissions policy that lets in black applicants.
Harry-
It only seems like a 'spurious claim on its face' if you are a complete moron and/or racist. Its actually-gasp!-TRUE that black people are being more educated and thus doing better on IQ tests relative to whites.
It is urgent that we connect discussions of race & IQ (with a focus on the supposed natural inferiority of African Americans) with the Palestinians, if we intend to push the comments section into the 1,000's. Maybe that super-topic could then be combined with teachers unions, but I'm not sure about the value-added by the last.
The editors probably thought their readers were adult enough to read a survey of current science on the topic without resorting to apoplectic cries of racism.
In that case, I look forward to discussing their upcoming series of articles on the "Holocaust" hoax.
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Rickm,
If you have a link to data showing that the gap between average black adult IQ has narrowed to less than about one standard deviation from the average adult white IQ, please share. That would be great news. Unfortunately, from the reading I've done on this, it appears that while a few studies have shown black children's IQ going up by a few points relative to whites, the average black IQ reverts to about ~85 at adulthood.
Since the standard deviation of IQ scores is 15 points, this means that only one in six black Americans has an IQ as high as the average white American (100).
"In that case, I look forward to discussing their upcoming series of articles on the "Holocaust" hoax."
Well they did publish an article about Kevin MacDonald's theories about Jews. MacDonald doesn't deny that the Holocaust occurs, but he does imply that the Jews had it coming -- and he did defend the historian David Irving, who did deny the Holocaust.
In previous research, a substantial gap in test scores between white and black students persists, even after controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics. Using a newly available data set (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), we demonstrate that in stark contrast to earlier studies, the black-white test score gap among incoming kindergartners disappears when we control for a small number of covariates. Real gains by black children in recent cohorts appear to play an important role in explaining the differences between our findings and earlier research. The availability of better covariates also contributes. Over the first two years of school, however, blacks lose substantial ground relative to other races. There is suggestive evidence that differences in school quality may be an important part of the explanation. None of the other hypotheses we test to explain why blacks are losing ground receive any empirical backing.
On the effects of educational experience, see Steele. Like the Japanese Burakumin, constantly being told that you won't do as well has a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Harry-
Defending David Irving is not all that vile an act. Defending David Irving's views on the Holocaust IS. But most serious historians recognize that Irving knows more about WWII than all but a handful of people and has made significant contributions to the scholarship of WWII.
All Rushton does is propagate race theories.
From the Dickens and Flynn link:
Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen (2005) state that the IQ difference between black and white Americans stands at 1.1 standard deviations (SDs) and is as large today as it was nearly 100 years ago. No one really knows the history of the black/white gap. Estimates for 1917 and 1943 are based on military data subject to a host of biases. Estimates since 1945 are based almost entirely on averaging studies, none of which compare nationally representative samples taking the same test administered at two different times (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). Flynn (1987) analyzed military data and found that blacks gained 3 points on whites between 1940 and 1960 but the estimate is tentative.
So, if the data are that shoddy, then why all these arguments about a historically intransigent difference in intellectual ability that shows genetic differences in intelligence?
Oh, right.
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Well they did publish an article about Kevin MacDonald's theories about Jews.
You mean the one titled Evolutionary Psychology's Anti-Semite ? Doesn't sound like the article treats McDonald's work the same way Saletan treats Jensen's.
More from Steele (via Frontline):
In another experiment, Steele brought in white and Asian men who were strong in math. He told them the math test they were about to take was one in which Asians do slightly better than whites. The white men performed less well when they were told this, than when they were not. Another experiment showed that stereotype threat also brought down the performance of strong female math students.... hence my comparison to the Burakumin of Japan. .
"It is urgent that we connect discussions of race & IQ (with a focus on the supposed natural inferiority of African Americans) with the Palestinians, if we intend to push the comments section into the 1,000's. "
Ain't it the truth.
Stupid people are weird.
One of the interesting sub-topics here is the question of "What is racism?" Petey opines that Saletan isn't a racist. One could take a pretty reductionist view (as I do) and say that if you impute genetic intellectual inferiority to a race, you are, by definition, a racist. But Petey (and perhaps Flynn) are nice guys who don't want to throw a nasty word at someone else. Still, even in the most charitable reading of Saletan he is:
1. Proposing something that is definitionally racism. and
2. Doing so with disregard to logic and factuality.
Try this: Imagine you are conversing with a black friend and you bring up the topic of black genetic inferiority. Let's further suppose that you tell him that people who don't agree with your view on this are similar to creationists. Is there some conceivable way for your black friend to conclude that you are not a racist?
White people tell each other some amazing things about what is, and is not, racism.
Grand Moff, it won't work. There are two utterly d*mning strikes against the Bell Curvists:
1) They blow off proof after proof of massive confounder after massive confounder.
2) After insisting that things are genetically determined, they also blow off massive single-generation changes (which, surprise! are correlated with massive confounder changes).
Seeing this again and again and again on the net has brought me to the position that there are only two explanations for this attitude: stone ignorant racism, and delibere conscious, highly dishonest racism.
The racists don't like having their racist argument called racist. How very sad. And yet, here we are discussing their racist argument politely (for the most part).
How staggeringly coincidental and convenient that blacks, who white Europeans have argued for centuries are inferior to whites, actually are inferior to whites! Science (in the form of a few statistical surveys performed by people with ties to a racist organization) has proven it. We should not quibble about their ties to a racist organization. Guilt by association is unfair. And besides, science has borne out the racist organization. The white supremest hypothesis has been proven true!
In fact, though there might be some data on this, it is far to early to draw any ridiculous conclusions about racial difference in intelligence. Due to the history of this issue, anyone arguing for black racial inferiority has an extremely heavy burden of proof. To rush forward and declare the issue decided based on the highly contested evidence that exists is clear evidence of racism. Some people want this to be true so badly that they can't wait to trumpet the news from the rooftops.
To those defending Saletan, please note that his defense boils down to he's stupid. Two junk science-manufacturing racists with a combined 60-year history of fraud publish a paper, and poor little internet magazine editor couldn't figure out something was fishy?
Well, Barry, it's not like I'm surprised. These supposedly scientific inquiries ask questions concerning a distinctly American and contemporary notion of race that has little to do with history and biology, concerning measures of intelligence for which there seems to be no consensus.
Backformulating from the question, even if I'd never seen it before, I would be able to reconstruct the identity of the questioner. This is presentist, American, right-wing predispositions, dressed up as science. Come up with some new way to say "n----r," stick it next to a sigma, and call it "science."
Feh.
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This thread is going to die soon if we don't get some halfway crafty trolls on here.
To start:
Megan McArdle said that the fact that all the people doing 'race science' are racists shows that public stigma prohibits real scientists from doing research in the field. This is stupid. Discuss.
"One of the interesting sub-topics here is the question of "What is racism?" Petey opines that Saletan isn't a racist. One could take a pretty reductionist view (as I do) and say that if you impute genetic intellectual inferiority to a race, you are, by definition, a racist. But Petey (and perhaps Flynn) are nice guys who don't want to throw a nasty word at someone else."
I'll stand behind the argument that Mussolini was less evil than Hitler.
There are gradations of evil.
As Barry notes:
To those defending Saletan, please note that his defense boils down to he's stupid.
That's where I am.
Instead of rehashing the same arguments and accusations of racism, how about actually looking at certain facts, which Metcalf decides to omit?
There are three glaring problems with Metcalf's article:
1) He claims Rushton is a "white supremacist" even though Ruston claims that asians, as a group, have the highest IQs in the world.
2) He insinuates that the Minnesota adoption study was biased because it was partially funded by the pioneer fund. Problem is, if it was biased at all, it was the other way - the researchers Scarr and Weinberg, were steadfast egalitarians and when the early results of the study (at age 7) suggested no difference in B/W IQs, they proudly publicized the results. Ten years later, when the results went the other way, they very quietly published the results and Weinberg tried to distance himself from it.
3) Metcalf also criticizes the study because the Black children were "adopted at a later age" than white children. But the black children were adopted at age 2 while the whites at age 1. Is this really enough to cause a whole standard deviation difference in IQ?
4) Like 99% of anyone else trying to discredit Rushton and Jensen, Metcalf tries to fall back on the old 1945 study on the children of army servicemen. But he dances around the fact that at that time, about 30 percent of blacks, as compared with about 3 percent of whites, failed the preinduction mental test and were not admitted into the armed services (so the black soldiers who fathered the children were the 'cream of the crop', so to speak) (2) Nearly all the children were tested before adolescence, which is when you get a much less accurate measuring of IQ, (3) EVERY serious study since that time has come to a completely different conclusion. Truth is, this study wouldn't be mentioned so much today, because it is so old and unscientific (by today's standards), if it were not for the fact that it is the only one that suggests there isn't a racial component to IQ. So by the law of supply and demand, a study that researchers normally wouldn't even bother with anymore suddenly has become as valuable as the Holy Grail to the environment/IQ crowd, because they have nothing else to grasp onto.
5) He asks why every hereditarian researcher takes money from the pioneer fund - but the problem is, no liberal institution will fund race/IQ studies anymore because they are all afraid of the results! If you don't believe me, try setting up a study yourself. See if any Ivy league school will touch it. Good luck!
Finally, a couple bonus questions to chew on:
1) If IQ is not hereditary, then why can't we teach apes, dogs, or any other animals to learn what we learn?
2) Since we know that physical characteristics are hereditary, why should mental characteristics be a complete exception to this rule?
Finally, however, keep in mind that IQ is NOT the same thing as intelligence. Certainly, it measures one component of it, but IQ tests cannot measure things like creative talent, navigation ability, and many other factors. It's not the be-all, end-all of intelligence testing.
Petey, I'll grant that racism describes a lot of different things, and that some of those things are much, much worse than others. Because Saletan has chosen to hold forth with such vehemence on a subject he knows so little about, I think it's reasonable to put him on the nastier end of the racist spectrum.
Heck, Michael Richards was just calling people names in the heat of the moment. I don't think he's as bad as Saletan, and what he did was unambiguously racist. Like a lot of white people, you seem to have trouble labeling something racist unless it's super-overtly hostile.
"Like a lot of white people, you seem to have trouble labeling something racist unless it's super-overtly hostile."
No. I'm just willing to make distinctions between Mussolini and HItler.
I've often felt that our language needed another word aside from 'racist,' as 'racist' connotes 'bigoted fuckhead' rather than 'person prejudiced toward and/or against a race.' As the Avenue Q song goes, everyone's a little bit racist sometimes, but (fortunately!) not everyone's a bigoted fuckhead.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out which category Saletan falls into, but I'm glad Slate published such a strong, sourced rebuttal.
Rickm, I'm tempted to use the old reliable 'it's stupid because everything Megan McArdle says is stupid' reasoning...
Annnnnnnnd Rickm's prayers have been answered.
If IQ is not hereditary, then why can't we teach apes, dogs, or any other animals to learn what we learn?
Because they're different fucking species? I dunno, it's possible we could teach an ape or a dog to replace you, it's not much of a stretch.
Since we know that physical characteristics are hereditary, why should mental characteristics be a complete exception to this rule?
Because analogizing from the concrete to the abstract means you just might be stupid enough to be a racist. Maybe someone should study you?
Anyone dumb enough to think that "black" and "white" are distinct categories outside our own cultural obsessions should probably be sterilized to prevent their inferior genes from weakening our species.
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I'm just willing to make distinctions between Mussolini and HItler.
And I'm going to insist on calling them both fascists.
"And I'm going to insist on calling them both fascists."
Fair 'nuff.
And yet, Mussolini was Hitler's model in the early years, so saying that the Italian was less evil than the German (mostly for lack of resources) is kinda ahistorical.
If only Mussolini had remained a pacifist. Then, I would never have had to learn what castor oil does when mixed with gasoline.
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John Rohan-
Its quite obvious you are ignorant of the most basic principles of statistics. You wrote "Since we know that physical characteristics are hereditary, why should mental characteristics be a complete exception to this rule?"
Mental characteristics are hereditary. However, the fact that something is hereditary has no bearing at all on whether it is genetic.
And I love this alleged reasoning:
"He asks why every hereditarian researcher takes money from the pioneer fund - but the problem is, no liberal institution will fund race/IQ studies anymore because they are all afraid of the results! If you don't believe me, try setting up a study yourself. See if any Ivy league school will touch it. Good luck!"
Hah! SEE! Ivy League Universities won't fund my dumbass study! They must be biased! Do you have any idea---ANY IDEA---how hard it is to get funding for research, how competitive the process is? Guess not.
Grand Moff--My prayers are not answered. I asked for a somewhat crafty troll. John ain't it.
Grand Moff--Don't try and change topics here. I want to play whack-a-racist.
It turns out John was wrong about this, too:
He claims Rushton is a "white supremacist" even though Ruston claims that asians, as a group, have the highest IQs in the world.
Uh, no. And just what the hell does "Asians" even mean? That's 3.7 million people. South Asians? East Asians? Central Asians? China alone has more than a dozen DIFFERENT ethnic groups.
Metcalf was quoting Saletan:
In a semi-retraction, labeled "Regrets," Saletan writes, "The thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited," and goes on to describe how that author is pretty clearly a white supremacist. This Clintonian admission is technically true—Saletan did cite the work of J. Philippe Rushton, and and some may consider Rushton, based on his comments and connections, to be a dyed-in-the-wool, old-fashioned racist.
I'm smarter than everyone here--even Matt. I'm smarter than everyone at the Atlantic combined. I'm smarter than everyone reading this. However, Einstein is smarter than me.
I'm not intellectually arrogant, am I John?
Amazingly, at the Corner, John Derbyshire makes it official: conservatives are racist . The embrace of "our Steve" - he means David Duke's stand in, Steven Sailor - pretty much sews up the conservative racist controversy. Now the question is: are conservatives racist because of a gene? Did they inherit some xenophobic genetic property? Since, of course, the root of the racist notion of genes is Lamarckian science, I suppose that, from a Lamarckian standpoint, it should be easy to see how this gene spread in rightwing circles. Your Rush's marry your Coulters, and their children marry other inbred members of the militia nation, and before long, you have a pale, pointy headed racist crew - pointy heads because, of course, their heads evolve to fit the hoods. But they are such big heads!
What is amazing is that decades ago, the National Review would write leading articles denouncing, say, William Shockley. They've come a long way, baby - all the way to fascism.
Okay, I've contributed more heat than light to this, but let me make amends in one regard. There is one particular area where the ignorance runs particularly deep among non-experts on both sides of the issue.
People tend to conflate two different questions:
(1) What role, if any, does genetics play in explaining differences in intelligence between individuals? and
(2) What role, if any, does genetics play in explaining differences in IQ between groups?
While not denying that there is some interplay between those two questions, it is pefectly possible to believe that there is a significant genetic role in IQ differences between individuals, but that genetics plays zero role in explaining differences between groups. Not only is this POSSIBLE, it is, in terms of the scientific consensus, likely.
Now for some reasons non experts on both sides of the issue seem to think that if genetics plays a significant role in determining IQ among individuals, it must also explain group differences. This leads to two types of silly, silly "arguments," both on evidence here. On the one hand, you see many non-racists whose hearts are in the right place denying that IQ has a genetic component, a mistake the experts do not make (the environmentalists tend to believe that genetics plays a smaller role than the racialists believe, but they don't deny the likelihood of a genetic component).
OTOH, the racists seem to believe that the fact that IQ has a significant genetic component by itself "proves" that group differences are caused by genetics. But even the shoddy research of the "experts" on the racialist side of the debate don't make that elementary mistake.
"genetics plays zero role in explaining differences between groups. Not only is this POSSIBLE, it is, in terms of the scientific consensus, likely."
Why is it likely? Why is it likely that, whatever genes determine higher intelligence, whites have more of those genes than blacks? Aren't the genetic differences between races something like less than 99.999%?
I could, btw, go on for pages explaining why the above is true. But let's try a simple example. Let's look at height. Now, no one denies that there is a large genetic component to height (parenthetically, this is an area where, unlike intelligence, there is also some evidence of genetic differences between groups, but that is irrelevant to my specific example). Let's take two groups - Norwegian citezens today, and Norwegian citezens 100 years ago. Norwegian citezens todays are on average 10 cm taller than they were 100 years ago. Does anyone believe that genetics explains that difference? No, of course not. It's 100% environmental.
rickm,
Normally I limit myself to invective and insult in comment threads, because I don't think that they are well suited to reasonable discussion of complex issues. My above comments were an exception to his. Your response, while well meaning, and even, at some level reasonable under the circumstances, provides an example of why I usually don't go there - because a full response would take pages.
But I'll limit myself to this: the short answer is that there is a huge body of evidence supporting my conclusion that anyone who has an honest interest in the issue can find for themselves. But let me ask you this: in the ABSENCE of conclusive evidence one way or the other, what should one's starting assumption be? I'm not even talking about researchers, I'm talking about the average man in the street. The starting assumption, given the MASSIVE evidence of environmental differences, should logically be that there are no group genetic differences. What concerns me, and what makes me happy to assume that 99% of the people disagreeing with me are racists, is that it is apparent that, for many people, the starting assumption seems to be that there ARE such differences, and they expect people like myself to prove the negative. Now, believing in genetic differences int he absence of REAL evidence of same, as a starting assumption, is, BY DEFINITION, racism.
And just to forstall the most obviously ignorant rejoinder, evidence of group differences in test scores does not, by itself, provide any evidence of a genetic component. Again, even the "expert" racialists don't make that claim.
Actually rickm, rereading your post, I may have misread your point, though in fairness it was because I think you misread MY point. That is, I think we are saying the same thing - if I'm understanding you now.
Grand Moff Texan says:
Because they're different fucking species? I dunno, it's possible we could teach an ape or a dog to replace you, it's not much of a stretch.
It's funny some people call me a troll, when they are the ones resorting to personal attacks. But if it make you feel like a big man, go ahead.
Uh, no. And just what the hell does "Asians" even mean? That's 3.7 million people. South Asians? East Asians? Central Asians? China alone has more than a dozen DIFFERENT ethnic groups.
What does that have to do with anything? The point is, how can Rushton be a "white supremacist" (Metcalf doesn't exactly disagree with that characterization) when he puts asians (east asians) at the top of the IQ ladder? Answer that please.
If you want to argue whether Asians can be considered a group, that's another argument. I didn't say whether I agreed with that.
Rickm wrote:
Its quite obvious you are ignorant of the most basic principles of statistics. You wrote "Since we know that physical characteristics are hereditary, why should mental characteristics be a complete exception to this rule?"
Mental characteristics are hereditary. However, the fact that something is hereditary has no bearing at all on whether it is genetic.
Well, I agree that it's hereditary, but did you know that most University professors would put you in Rushton's camp for saying that? I have argued this point with more than one Anthropology department, and most of them are vehemently against the idea of IQ as hereditary, even if you take race out of the equation (they only grudgingly concede that certain mental illnesses like schizophrenia have been proven to be hereditary). I guess they are worried about a slippery slope to race if they concede even the possibility of children inheriting IQ from their parents.
As for being "genetic", I think you misunderstand. Certainly, one way or the other, it's genetic. The only debate is how. AFAIK, no specific gene for IQ has been identified (yet), although many researchers think IQ is determined by additive genes.
"Well, I agree that it's hereditary, but did you know that most University professors would put you in Rushton's camp for saying that? I have argued this point with more than one Anthropology department, and most of them are vehemently against the idea of IQ as hereditary"
As someone who spends too much time around Profs., I'm calling BS on this one.
When I wrote that whether something was heridtary has no bearing on whether it was genetic, you responded with "you misunderstand...its genetic. the only debate is how."
In what nonsensical, idiosyncratic way, do you define 'misunderstand'?
LarryM wrote:
The starting assumption, given the MASSIVE evidence of environmental differences, should logically be that there are no group genetic differences. What concerns me, and what makes me happy to assume that 99% of the people disagreeing with me are racists, is that it is apparent that, for many people, the starting assumption seems to be that there ARE such differences, and they expect people like myself to prove the negative. Now, believing in genetic differences int he absence of REAL evidence of same, as a starting assumption, is, BY DEFINITION, racism.
I hate to put labels on people, but this eloquent, reasonably (at first) sounding statement is actually a prime example of liberal bias. Wouldn't true science dictate that there be NO starting assumption for anyone researching the relationship between Race & IQ?
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black - your starting assumption is ok, but others are not?
Isn't it just as absurd to automatically assume all racial groups have the exact same abilities and expect the "racists" to prove otherwise? True, there is "massive" evidence of environmental differences, but there is also "massive" evidence of genetic differences as well, even beyond skin pigmentation: body size, body shape, fat content, longevity, cancer rates, specific ailments (like sickle-cell), testosterone level, rate of dizygotic twinning, lactose tolerance, etc, just to name a few.
The point is, how can Rushton be a "white supremacist" (Metcalf doesn't exactly disagree with that characterization) when he puts asians (east asians) at the top of the IQ ladder? Answer that please.
I already did. Would you like the flashcard version, now? I'm not personally abusing you to make myself feel better, I'm personally abusing you because ignorance disgusts me and because shame is an important part of civil society.
If you want to argue whether Asians can be considered a group, that's another argument.
No, it's not an argument at all. "White," "black," and "Asian," are not races in any meaningful historical or biological sense. Each term takes in huge swathes of humanity, each is thoroughly heterogeneous, and there is substantial overlap. As words, they lack utility because they do not usefully distinguish one thing from another nor do they adequately describe their objects. As terms of racist abuse, they are well established.
It is for this reason that the starting point of the racists reveals their racism, no matter how much pseudo-scientific jargon they throw around. In framing the issue, they have reconstructed their own mythologies and bigotries, nothing more.
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"Wouldn't true science dictate that there be NO starting assumption for anyone researching the relationship between Race & IQ?"
You are dumb. Let's refresh you on the scientific method shall we? One of the first steps is to develop a hypothesis--presumably not a vacuous one. This could be, say, genetic differences account for the racial differences in IQ, or the opposite. What you are advocating, is that in this hypothesis stage, one just recite zen koans and have no positive judgment on what they are researching.
As someone who spends too much time around Profs., I'm calling BS on this one.
Actually, his "most University professors" line isn't just BS, it's pathetic.
Professors of what? In what field? Why? And why do we care?
Makes it sound like the Superfriends™ Hall of Justice or something.
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Rickm,
"Harry: Here is the link.
Look again (assuming you've looked at it already) at Figure 3 from your link (last page). It shows that the average IQ for black adults remains about 85; since the average white IQ is about 100, the gap remains about 15 points, or one standard deviation.
Recall what I wrote initially:
"If you have a link to data showing that the gap between average black adult IQ has narrowed to less than about one standard deviation from the average adult white IQ, please share. That would be great news. Unfortunately, from the reading I've done on this, it appears that while a few studies have shown black children's IQ going up by a few points relative to whites, the average black IQ reverts to about ~85 at adulthood."
"Defending David Irving is not all that vile an act."
I didn't say it was.
Matt: You're just humiliating yourself by trumpeting Stephen Metcalf's article:
Stephen Metcalf: Giving Dilettantes Called "Steve" a Bad Name
Backtracking rapidly from a brave (but brief) show of character by its human sciences correspondent William Saletan in his defense of legendary scientist James Watson, Slate has now published a "Response to 'Liberal Creationism'" by Stephen Metcalf, who writes a column for Slate named "The Dilettante: Reading and lounging and watching." Slate describes him as their "critic at large. He is working on a book about the 1980s."
His article confirms my comment over the weekend that "Metcalf's only qualification to write about this topic is that he's named 'Steve.'" (As this cartoon sent to me by Steve Pinker points out, a ludicrously high proportion of the people who have regularly written about genetics and behavior are named Steven or Stephen: Gould, Rose, Jones, Levitt, Olson, and so forth.)
The key questions in the controversy are:
- Was the firing of James Watson for making politically incorrect statements about African intelligence justified?
- Were Watson's comments "utterly unsupported by scientific evidence" (to quote the head federal genetics bureaucrat, Francis Collins)?
Metcalf simply ignores the treatment of Watson.
What's striking is not how ignorant Metcalf is, but also how hate-filled, making him the epitome of the many pundits who have weighed in with so much more rage than reason this fall.
His favorite mode is character assassination, devoting much of his "Dilettante" column to trying to smear scientists who argue that genetics plays some role in IQ gaps such as Richard Lynn, J.P. Rushton (a VDARE.COM contributor), and Arthur Jensen.
Metcalf admitted in his 2005 article on IQ in Slate, a screed against Charles Murray's article "The Inequality Taboo," that "Rushton and Jensen came to my attention" from reading Murray's Commentary article. In other words, he'd never heard of Arthur Jensen, the leading figure in IQ research since 1969, until he started working on his essay for Slate!
Let me focus here on Jensen.
Metcalf sneers:
"Does it feel as though researchers like Jensen and Rushton, the so-called "race realists," have spent their careers examining a range of competing hypotheses for the black-white IQ gap, and carefully scrutinizing the quality of the research at their disposal? Or have they been attempting, at all costs, to prove a single hypothesis—that blacks are congenitally dumber than whites?"
Having spent a month in 1998 reading Jensen's 649-page magnum opus, The g Factor: The Science of Mental Abilities, which I would bet heavily that Metcalf has not read, I can answer Metcalf's question:
Jensen's career, serenely carried out despite hooting from angry fools like Metcalf, and even under threats of violence, represents the very model of the disinterested scientist.
But don't take my word for it. Metcalf cites James Flynn as one of the two leading scientists on his side. Here's what Flynn had to say on Sunday in an interview with the Gene Expression blog:
[GNXP] "Over the decades, you've carried on an extensive correspondence with Arthur Jensen, the controversial and enormously influential intelligence researcher at UC Berkeley. You summarized some of your early thoughts about Jensen's work in your 1980 book Race, IQ, and Jensen, a book that, in my opinion, sets the standard for how do discuss this controversial topic. What have you learned about Jensen over the years, and what have your interactions with him taught you about the nature of scientific research?
[Flynn] "I never suspected Arthur Jensen of racial bias. Over the years, I have found him scrupulous in terms of professional ethics. He has never denied me access to his unpublished data. His work stands as an example of what John Stuart Mill meant when he said that being challenged in a way that is "upsetting" is to be welcomed not discouraged. Before Jensen, the notion that all races were genetically equal for cognitive ability had become a dead "Sunday truth" for which we could give no good reasons. Today we are infinitely more informed about group differences. Equally important, the debates Jensen began are revolutionizing the theory of intelligence and our understanding of how genes and environment interact."
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/stephen-metcalf-giving-dilettantes.html
this eloquent, reasonably (at first) sounding statement is actually a prime example of liberal bias.
Thank you for admitting that sound reasoning has a liberal bias.
Unless there is evidence for a causal relationship, there is no reason for our starting assumption to include one. Likewise, I have no evidence that there is an enormous purple elephant in the next room. Should I begin talking in a way that shows I have assumed that there is an enormous purple elephant in the next room, people would rightly regard me as mentally compromised.
That's just basic epistemology there. Thank you for admitting that not being an idiot is a shortcut to liberalism.
Since racists assume something without evidence, we rightly regard them as mentally compromised.
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Eh, all squick and no light.
John, consider the long sad history of people glomming onto slight "average differences" and using them as justification for outright discrimination. That's why the most cautious assumption is to start from the opposite, and see what the data shows.
Always work against the stereotypes--it's the social scientist equivalent of trying to get rid of the placebo effect--i.e., work against one's own unconscious biases.
(And why is it that now all the people thumping the drum for "race-based differences" happen to be pasty white males with lives of little accomplishment? Methinks they're looking for anything to make them feel good about themselves.)
Harry-
My comment was a rebut to this: "Have the gaps in SAT scores, MCAT scores, LSAT scores, etc. narrowed significantly? This seems like a spurious claim on its face."'
My mention of Irving was a response to this: "MacDonald doesn't deny that the Holocaust occurs, but he does imply that the Jews had it coming -- and he did defend the historian David Irving, who did deny the Holocaust."
Obviously, you are trying to reproach MacDonald for defending David Irving. I replied that defense of David Irving is not ipso fact vile. You replied "I didn't say it was." Well you certainly suggested as much.
Matt:
You should read and promote James Flynn's work. He's by far the best anti-hereditarian IQ scientist. Don't tarnish yourself by endorsing the ignorant writings of non-entities like Metcalf.
To start your education in Flynn's work, here's my review of Flynn's latest book:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070903_flynn.htm
Stephen Metcalf: Giving Dilettantes Called "Steve" a Bad Name
Some of them, apparently, don't need his help.
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" White," "black," and "Asian," are not races in any meaningful historical or biological sense. Each term takes in huge swathes of humanity, each is thoroughly heterogeneous, and there is substantial overlap. "
So there's no way that I could run a DNA sample through an Affymetrix chip and, say, distinguish someone Japanese from Irish every single time.
Except that I can, of course. For that matter, I can distinguish Ashkenazi Jews from Poles in almost every case. I could run those tests on the typical Mexican and tell you what fraction of his ancestry was Spanish, Amerindian, and sub-Saharan: not just the average among all Mexicans, but what _his_ ancestry was..
If I did cluster analysis, I'd find some groups were genetically close to another while others are not, and that the clusters they fall into map pretty well onto traditional notions of race.
There are gene variants that essentially everyone in China has (>99%)and that are effectively nonexistent (
Rickm wrote:
When I wrote that whether something was heridtary has no bearing on whether it was genetic, you responded with "you misunderstand...its genetic. the only debate is how."
In what nonsensical, idiosyncratic way, do you define 'misunderstand'?
No offense, but am I in the middle of a junior high-school discussion here? I am rather stunned at this response actually (and you call me "dumb"! LOL) so I'll probably just cut it off right here for the day; I don't think this particular group is up to my standards. But I'll give you this small bit of advice: if you really think that inherited traits have "nothing" to do with genetics, then I suggest a few basic primers on the subject. You can start by putting down your copy of Trofim Lysenko's books Lamarkism and read something by a man named Gregor Mendel instead. It's good stuff. Or alternately, you could read something by James Watson, who discovered the nature of DNA - ironically, the "racist" who started this whole recent debate in the first place.
P.S. Some free advice for "Grand Moff": I said "Anthropology" departments. Please read before criticising, and please figure out that most english speakers would know that its impossible for someone to be both an Asian and White supremacist at the same time. Just ask around.
Incidentally, here's an example of one professor's long argument against the heritability of IQ. I can find dozens more for you if you are unconvinced. But if you figured out how to find this site, you probably can learn how to use Google too. Grow and learn.
Oh, dear. Sending a literary critic up against scientific data. Metcalf, a 'man' who would have been more adapt at finding the limnal meaning of 50-cents latest CD, is thrown up against his intellectual betters (including Saletan, but he's such a f-ing pussy I hate to write that).
I wonder if Mr. Metcalf is familiar with the concept of statistical control? Variance, Regression, Regression to the mean (two different things, LarryM!). Does he know what an allele is? Does he know who Bruce Lahn is? Is he familiar with Cluster Analysis, the distance matrix, factor analysis, principal components analysis? Lewontin's fallacy?
I know, I know, it all makes the head spin. So Let's just go back to calling names and naming Nazi's -- you know, like the Pioneer fund board (who almost to a man served in the military-- for the US of A ). And did you know that John M. Harlan, voter on the Brown v. Board Supreme Court, was also on the Pioneer Fund board. Kinda of confuses things, huh?
But back to mr. Metcalf. He writes
"Why is it that every researcher I can find who supports the heredity-only thesis takes money from the Pioneer Fund? "
Well, let's have this dickhead produce *any* researcher that supports "heredity-only".
Here is the very first sentence of the 'abstract' -- LarryM, that is a summary of the background research for and new findings of a scientific paper -- of the Rushton-Jensen review article.
"The culture-only (0% genetic, 100% environmental and the hereditarian (50% genetic- 50% environmental) models of causes of mean Black-White differences in cognitive ability are compared across 10 categories of evidence ..."
So where is this full heredity guy or gal, mr. metcalf.
Really, couldn't Slate have found someone, anyone more capable. Probably not, because the debate is so over, its not even a debate anymore, and nobody wanted to be the intellectual whore that Metcalf is. You can tell that by one of the titles of the critiques of Rushton-Jensen. "There are no public policy consequences". That may very well be true, but unfortunately for the aging hippies and pampered gen-x liberal arts grads that seem to make up the audiance here, the debate about the very real difference in IQ between Blacks and Whites is over.
Anyways, the papers are linked here. Make sure to read R&J's rebuttal to the critiques. They kick ass.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/
""And I'm going to insist on calling them both fascists."
Fair 'nuff.
Well, I never! In the context of this heady debate regarding the in’s and out's of the "IQ" and "race" issssseewwwees, where it's important to know your Lamarckians from your Karphulhoodinfudens, your geneti from your herediti, your endowments from your accoutrements, and your scholarleae from your stupidae, I'm going to insist and say that I insist you add Joan Crawford to your list of fascists. Suck on that sour pickle, Mabel! harumph, harumph, harumph...
John Rohan--
Once again, as an exhibit of your ignorance, you cite Cosma Shalizi's use of the word 'Heritability' to support your point. Shalizi, a brilliant statistician, is using the STATISTICAL CONCEPT of heritability! The statistical concept of heritability HAS NOTHING to do with genetics. Shalizi is saying that statistical heritability models of IQ say nothing about genetic. He writes that "The best estimate I can find puts the narrow heritability of IQ at around 0.34 and the broad heritability at 0.48." So, if his evidence is wrong, where's yours?
If I did cluster analysis, I'd find some groups were genetically close to another while others are not, and that the clusters they fall into map pretty well onto traditional notions of race.
As in "white," "black," and "Asian"? Uh, no. In fact, the examples you gave were a lot more sophisticated than just "white," "black," and "Asian."
That was the point.
Your example of a Mexican's ancestry is particularly apropos. People who talk about "blacks" or even "African Americans" as if they are a race are strikingly ignorant. "African Americans" are a stew of African, European, and east Asian ancestors.
Finally, when you try to map these actual racial groups against intelligence, it fails.
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"And yet, Mussolini was Hitler's model in the early years, so saying that the Italian was less evil than the German (mostly for lack of resources) is kinda ahistorical."
Mussolini was a role model for a lot of people in the 1920s, because his form of government seemed a better bulwark against Communism than weak European democracies. This view was common among elites in America.
That said, Hitler's genocidal policies were sui generis, and were in fact initially opposed by Mussolini, who derisively called anti-Semitism "the German disease". Your implicit conflation of the genocidal policies of Nazism with Fascism is common, but it is ahistorical. Genocide was unique to the Nazism, and wasn't a policy of Fascism in Italy prior to the Pact of Steel alliance with Hitler, and it also wasn't a policy of post war Fascist governments in places like Taiwan and South Korea.
Hitler did have something in common with today's liberal Creationists though: he ignored data that contradicted his biases. When Jesse Owens demonstrated black superiority over Aryan German sprinters at the Olympics, Hitler famously turned his back on him; when German Jews outperformed German non-Jews on IQ tests, Hitler had them banned.
In particular, I hadn't realized the full extent of the problems with the famous Minnesota twin study.
By "Minnesota twin study," he apparently means the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. The fact that Metcalf can't even get the names of his sources right should give you some idea of his familiarity with the research.
What Metcalf fails to mention is that Scarr and Weinberg, the authors of the study, were fully aware of the confounding factors Metcalf mentions. They conceded that such factors preclude an unambiguous interpretation of the study's findings, but nevertheless concluded that it is "implausible that these [racial] differences are entirely environmental based." In other words, the authors concluded that the most plausible interpretation of the study is that there is some genetic component to black-white differences in IQ. Gee, I wonder why Metcalf never mentions that?
When Jesse Owens demonstrated black superiority over Aryan German sprinters at the Olympics ...
Sample size: one.
Number of phony races cited: two.
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And why is it that now all the people thumping the drum for "race-based differences" happen to be pasty white males with lives of little accomplishment?
Yeah, being a Berk prof. is a life of little accomplishment. Go back to whacking off to Exploited Black Teens grumpy!
In the unlikely event that anybody here is interested in actually learning some of the basics of how to think about IQ, here's my new FAQ on the subject:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/071203_iq.htm
The fact that Metcalf can't even get the names of his sources right should give you some idea of his familiarity with the research.
The fact that you recognized his casual reference to the study and were able to wave around Its Properly Capitalized Title means that his term of convenience was effective, even on someone grasping at straws.
Gee, I wonder why Metcalf never mentions that?
Because acknowledging the limitations of their study doesn't magically make them go away? Thought it was obvious. You know, as in "an argument from silence is a logical fallacy" kind of obvious?
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Mixner-
Gee, so some racists scientists acknowledged the fact that their study "held neither race nor expected IQ constant; the black children were adopted at a later age than the other children, which the study's own authors note is associated with depressed IQ; the black children's mothers had lower educational levels than those of the white children; the "quality of placement" for the white children was higher than for the other children; and as the study's own authors have noted, the black and mixed-race children experienced severe adjustment problems as they grew up" but nevertheless concluded their study as evidence that there is some genetic component to black-white differences in IQ. And you think that's a reasonable inference from the data?
By the way, Matthew Yglesias's endorsement of Stephen Metcalf's smackdown of Arthur Jensen (!) just makes it more likely that his recent string of postings on IQ are a malicious prank he's pulling on his own liberal readers to demonstrate how much ignorance and mindless rage lies within the politically correct breast.
Rickm,
"Harry-
My comment was a rebut to this: "Have the gaps in SAT scores, MCAT scores, LSAT scores, etc. narrowed significantly? This seems like a spurious claim on its face."'
That's great, but you didn't rebut it. You didn't give any evidence that the black-white gaps in scores on any of those tests have narrowed. Instead, you pointed a link to a scientific paper you apparently hadn't read.
"Obviously, you are trying to reproach MacDonald for defending David Irving."
Actually, I wasn't trying to do anything of the sort, just refuting Grand Moff's claim that Slate editors wouldn't address Holocaust skeptics (the article on Kevin MacDonald only did so tangentially, but there was a long, related correspondence between Slate's Judith Schulevitz and a professor which covered the topic in greater detail).
refuting Grand Moff's claim that Slate editors wouldn't address Holocaust skeptics
I made no such claim, I was merely mocking your rhetoric of "resorting to apoplectic cries of racism" by invoking a similarly heated topic.
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Harry-
Here is the abstract of the paper: "It is often asserted that blacks have made no IQ gains on whites, despite relative
environmental gains, and that this adds credibility to the case that the black/white IQ gap
has genetic origins. Until recently, there have been no adequate data to measure black IQ
trends. We analyze data from nine standardization samples for four major tests of
cognitive ability. These suggest that blacks have gained 5 or 6 IQ points on non-Hispanic
whites between 1972 and 2002. Gains have been fairly uniform across the entire range
of black cognitive ability."
Give it a rest, Rick. We've already dealt with this and Harry is just going to keep asking the same question over and over again. As I've already pointed out, arguments for changes in "racial" IQ's founder on the fact that we do not have very good data over time.
The fact that some people continue to try to make such arguments when they know this tells us much about what they're after.
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"Sample size: one.
Number of phony races cited: two."
Feel free to put scare quotes around "Aryan", since that was Hitler's term, but I think Jesse Owens himself would have called you an idiot for thinking "black" described a phony race.
By the way, you have some serious chutzpah picking an argument with Gregory Cochran on race and IQ. Do you even know who he is?
Linda Gottfredson, professor of psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society reviewed the evidence regarding the causes of racial IQ differences in her 2005 paper What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true? She concludes:
In summary, Rushton and Jensen (2005) have presented a compelling case that their 50%–50% hereditarian hypothesis is more plausible than the culture-only hypothesis. In fact, the evidence is so consistent and so quantitatively uniform that the truth may lie closer to 70%–80% genetic, which is the within-race heritability for adults in the West. The case for culture-only theory is so weak by comparison—so degenerated—that the burden of proof now shifts to its proponents to identify and replicate even one substantial, demonstrably nongenetic influence on the Black–White mean difference in g.
This directly contradicts Metcalf's assertion that "if you explore the subject in any depth ... you find" that the research tends to support an environmental or cultural explanation.
It's entirely obvious that Metcalf doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
Feel free to put scare quotes around "Aryan", since that was Hitler's term ...
I did no such thing, I just referred to it as a mythical race.
I think Jesse Owens himself would have called you an idiot for thinking "black" described a phony race.
Actually, in Jesse Owens' day, they weren't called "black." In fact, even among African Americans, calling someone "black" was fighting words.
Is it possible that you know anything about race? So far, it seems unlikely.
By the way, you have some serious chutzpah picking an argument with Gregory Cochran on race and IQ. Do you even know who he is?
Do you know who I am?
Yes, Gregory Cochran is a physicist who thinks homosexuality is a disease. He objected to something I said by changing the terms. I pointed out that he had changed the terms, and then I picked out a point where he had essentially agreed with me.
You don't read very well, do you?
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American blacks have, on average, 83% sub-Saharan ancestry. The rest is European, with very little Asian or Amerindian ancestry (well under 1%). I'd say that four-fifths African ancestry is not exactly a potpourri.
The Plomin study you quote didn't look at individuals from different races, so has nothing to say about any genetic influence on the observed racial differences in average IQ. What they do say is that they haven't found single genes whose different forms account for much of the variation in IQ in the groups they looked at. It looks as many genes each have a small effect on IQ - in that population.
"Here is the abstract of the paper"
Rickm,
Considering that I've already referred you to a specific figure in this paper (Figure 3), wouldn't it be safe to assume I've read the abstract? The very data cited in the paper show that the average adult black IQ is about 85; since the average white IQ is about 100, and the standard deviation is 15, the average adult black-white IQ gap remains about one standard deviation. Look at the figure. The way Flynn claims that black adults have narrowed the IQ gap is not by claiming the one standard deviation gap has narrowed; instead he claims that the gap was even larger in 1972 and has now narrowed to about one standard deviation (he's got a projected average IQ of about 80 for black adults in 1972).
If you want to hang your hat on this as evidence that there is no genetic component behind the one standard deviation black-white adult IQ gap, feel free, but at least understand what you are arguing: that only one in six black adults has an IQ as high as the average white person today, but, according to James Flynn, an even smaller ratio of blacks had an IQ equal to the average white 35 years ago.
BTW: any luck in finding data showing a narrowing in the black-white gap on SAT, MCAT, or LSAT scores?
Harry-
You are citing two difference sources--and thus two different methodologies--then claiming that because they claim the same IQ for blacks at two different times, they do not show a convergence. Yet the paper I linked to--using a consistent methodology--does show a convergence. They use four tests from 1972, 1989, and 2002. The results show a convergence of black-white IQ scores over time.
Grand Moff,
You can insist on being picayune, but the point stands: Jesse Owens was black/Negro/African American. If you had told him that "Negro" (to use the common term then) was a "phony" race, you would have sounded just as daft as you do now. You're better off sticking with one of the flimsy arguments for why the black-white IQ gap is nearly all environmental than offering these tired semantic arguments that "black" (as we use it in the U.S) is a meaningless racial category.
By the way, Matthew Yglesias's endorsement of Stephen Metcalf's smackdown of Arthur Jensen (!) just makes it more likely that his recent string of postings on IQ are a malicious prank he's pulling on his own liberal readers to demonstrate how much ignorance and mindless rage lies within the politically correct breast.
Awwww. I love that comment. No matter how bitter the betrayal, no matter how callously dismissive the rejection, he just can't let go of his mancrush.
And I never thought that anything Steve Sailer wrote here could move me to say "I love that comment." So hang on in there, Steve, miracles do happen!
What they do say is that they haven't found single genes whose different forms account for much of the variation in IQ in the groups they looked at.
... which means you can't map race onto it. That was my point, but I admit I wasn't clear.
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You can insist on being picayune, but the point stands: Jesse Owens was black/Negro/African American. If you had told him that "Negro" (to use the common term then) was a "phony" race, you would have sounded just as daft as you do now.
I'm sorry, did you think you had a point? The fact that a sprinter might have been confused about it doesn't mean a damned thing. I mean, I could tell Henry VIII that he wasn't actually anointed by God, but the fact that he'd be pretty pissed off doesn't mean squat.
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I'd say that four-fifths African ancestry is not exactly a potpourri.
But that, as you yourself said, is just on average.
Some "blacks" are almost as white as me. What "black" and "white" mean changed drastically in the mid-20th century, with formerly non-white groups being added to "white" and the gradations of African ancestry disappearing into the vague and useless "negro," "white," and "African American." And, since "African Americans" are a mix, which genes went where (assuming we can map intelligence in the genome, which we can't ... yet)? Is the black athlete successful because of his African ancestry or because of his European Y-chromosome?
Telling me that someone is African American tells me that they are 83% from some tribe or other on the southern coast of west Africa ... on average. That's it. This vague notion of race is supposed to predict a similarly vague notion of measurable intelligence, underneath a layer of environmental influence (which can compound over time as a faux-heredity influence) which we cannot remove and then be useful as a predictor?
You can see why, even as a mere humanities Ph.D., I'm skeptical. The terms, means, and provenance are all crap. If a racist organization funds research that just happens to recapitulate the traditional race hierarchy, color me unimpressed.
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See? I told you Harry was going to keep on asking the same question even though he knows the data aren't reliable for a historical comparison.
That's teleological thinking: Harry already knows the end he wants and doesn't care how he gets there.
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"The fact that a sprinter might have been confused about it doesn't mean a damned thing."
How can you expect anyone to take what you write seriously when your arguments are so specious? If black/Negro/African American weren't a valid categorization of Jesse Owens and nearly every other American who self-identifies as black, there wouldn't be any studies of the black-white IQ gap, there wouldn't be any affirmative action, there wouldn't be a Congressional Black Caucus, etc.
Of course you know that; your descent to this level of sophistry is compelled by the weakness of your position in denying any significant hereditary component to IQ.
Reading through these comments over the past few weeks makes me wonder if my misanthropy is genentic or environmental in origin.
Fred,
Race is meaningful when they want it to be (the congressional black caucus, race-based affirmative action, racial profiling, etc.), but somehow becomes meaningless when the issue is racial differences in intelligence.
"That's teleological thinking: Harry already knows the end he wants and doesn't care how he gets there."
That's called projection, Grand Moff. Now pipe down and let the grown-ups talk for a moment.
"Yet the paper I linked to--using a consistent methodology--does show a convergence. They use four tests from 1972, 1989, and 2002. The results show a convergence of black-white IQ scores over time."
Rickm,
Are they using the same cohorts? Studies using the same cohorts (e.g., black and white 18 year olds taking the text in 1972; black and white 18 year olds taking the test in 1989, etc.) don't show this convergence. It appears that Flynn is able to show some convergence by mixing in IQ scores from black children; for some reason, black IQ scores seem to decline with age.
If a given gene variant reaches a frequency of 100% in a given population, it no longer explains any of the variation. It may have an effect, but the effect is the same on everyone in the population.
If there was a variant that had a frequency of 100% in group A and 0% in group B, it wouldn't explain variation _within_ either group, but it might well explain variation _between_ them.
One of Plomin's people asked me about this just this week.
Are there neurological gene variants with that kind of distribution? Yes. Do they affect IQ? We don't know yet, but we do know that they had significant effects on fitness, since they're managed to become common in a few thousand years.
As for knowing which gene variants explain superior black athletic performance, we know something. I've seen a report that particular Y chromosome variants _do_ have an effect on running ability, but I don't think it's convincing yet.
On the other hand, the alpha-actinin-3 variants probably _are_ part of the explanation for black success in sprint events.
"Race is meaningful when they want it to be (the congressional black caucus, race-based affirmative action, racial profiling, etc.), but somehow becomes meaningless when the issue is racial differences in intelligence."
"If black/Negro/African American weren't a valid categorization of Jesse Owens and nearly every other American who self-identifies as black, there wouldn't be any studies of the black-white IQ gap, there wouldn't be any affirmative action, there wouldn't be a Congressional Black Caucus, etc."
Apples and oranges, Mixner and Fred. Those examples deal with race as a sociological construct and as a social identity. Remember, Blacks in this country are not genetically pure, because of the good ol' one-drop rule. People as varied as Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are both classified as Black by our society, despite the obvious surface differences in their genes. Since Blacks in our society contain a varying admixture of genes from people of African, Native American, and European descent, it is fallacious for research into genetic differences between races to lump all people socially identified as Black as being members of the same biological race/breed/subspecies.
Until you hereditarians actually control for differences between the racial IDENTITY of people and the actual racial GENETIC MAKEUP of people (particularly Blacks), your assertion that IQ differences between societally defined (not biologically defined) races is due predominantly to genetics, with environmenal playing a neglible role, will remain suspect.
"Of course you know that; your descent to this level of sophistry is compelled by the weakness of your position in denying any significant hereditary component to IQ."
Fred,
Nobody is denying any significant hereditary component to IQ; on the contrary, it is you hereditarians who are denying any significant environmental component to IQ.
You and Steve Sailer and Harry may be eager to consign Blacks to the ashheap of history, and have our society cease doing anything to improve the plight of African-Americans. The rest of us are not. We reamined convinced that environment plays a key role in determining IQ (along with genetics), and that attempts to improve the plight of African-Americans are not inevitably consigned to failure. Moreover, the research conducted so far in this question has not proven definitively that genetics are the only thing that matters in determining IQ. At best, it has raised the possibility that genetics are of more significance than environment; it has not shown that environment is of no significance. You hereditarians have made a compelling case that genetics determines the range of possibilities in an individual's iQ, but the enviromentarians have shown that environment affects where in that range an individual's IQ will actually fall.
Until you can prove that genetics entirely precludes the possibility that Black and White IQs will converge, even if Blacks adopt the social mores about education that Asians and Jews display, we will not join you in abandoning all attempts to help raise the educational attainment of the Black community.
"Posted by gobineau | December 4, 2007 5:12 PM
"Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (July 14, 1816 — October 13, 1882) was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-1855). . . .
. . . He came to believe that race created culture, arguing that distinctions between the three "black", "white", and "yellow" races were natural barriers, and that "race-mixing" breaks those barriers and leads to chaos. He classified the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa and southern France as racially mixed.
Gobineau believed the white race was superior to the others. He thought it corresponded to the ancient Indo-European culture, also known as "Aryan"(Indo-Iranian race). Gobineau originally wrote that white race miscegenation was inevitable. He attributed much of the economic turmoils in France to pollution of races. . . .
To Gobineau, the development of empires was ultimately destructive to the "superior races" that created them, since they led to the mixing of distinct races. This he saw as a degenerative process. According to his definitions, the people of Spain, most of France, most of Germany, southern and western Iran as well as Switzerland, Austria, northern Italy and a large part of Britain, consisted of a degenerative race arising from miscegenation. Also according to him, the whole of north India consisted of a yellow race. Gobineau saw Jews as intelligent people who were very much a part of the superior race and who, if anything, stimulated industry and culture. Hitler and Nazism borrowed much of Gobineau's ideology, though Gobineau himself was not particularly anti-Semitic. . . . "
Hey, like they say, wait long enough and everything will eventually come back into style. All this talk about Polish and Spanish and Jewish and Irish races, it seems so strangely familiar.
"for some reason, black IQ scores seem to decline with age"
Harry,
Could it be remotely possible that this reason or reasons are environmental factors? It seems odd that a trait like IQ, which allegedly is determined by genetics alone, would display the characteristics of a trait shaped by environment.
"There are three glaring problems with Metcalf's article:
1) He claims Rushton is a "white supremacist" even though Ruston claims that asians, as a group, have the highest IQs in the world."
Ah, but you see, it's more complicated than this. In Rushton's world (one show you should never, never, let little kids watch!), blacks have teeny brains and great big genitals, which is bad, but asians, while they have pretty big brains, have little genitals. But white is just right: brains not too big or too small, and genitals not too big or too small. As he was quoted in Rolling Stone (he insists it's a fabrication), " "It's a trade off, more brains or more penis. You can't have everything."" Whites, in his view, have struck the best balance - one might say he imagines they are "supreme"".
Yes, it's Goldilocks (how very Aryan of her) and the Three Racist Fuckwit Bears, the favorite bedtime story of little white supremacists everywhere.
If anybody is actually interested in knowing anything about IQ, here is a highly informative web version of a lecture by James Flynn, of Flynn Effect fame, the leading anti-hereditarian IQ researcher:
http://www.thepsychometricscentre.co.uk/publications/BeyondTheFlynnEffect.asp
Please, read Flynn, not Metcalf!
As he was quoted in Rolling Stone (he insists it's a fabrication), " "It's a trade off, more brains or more penis. You can't have everything.""
In Rushton's defense, he was pleading with an ex-girlfriend when he said this.
Please, read Flynn, not Metcalf!
Sure, of course an expert in the field is going to have more insight than a self-professed dilettante.
I think in this area people on both sides have unrealistically high expectations of what journalists are capable of delivering. Both Saletan and Metcalf seem like reasonably intelligent people doing their best to report on a field they didn't know much about beforehand. What more can you really expect from either of them? They're journalists.
As I said before, I congratulate Metcalf on at least addressing issues of substance, rather than logical nonsequiters based on definitions of race and intelligence, about which I've seen so much wasted (virtual) ink.
The debate is over. Some seriously smart asians designed a new test for cognitive functioning. Guess who won.
Eltoro,
Why do you keep repeating the straw man argument that those who believe there is a genetic component to IQ differences believe that there is no environmental component? Who is arguing that?
El Toro writes: "You and Steve Sailer and Harry may be eager to consign Blacks to the ashheap of history, and have our society cease doing anything to improve the plight of African-Americans."
El Toro, please cite Sailer saying African-Americans shouldn't be helped anymore. The idea isn't to stop helping African-Americans. The idea is to understand reality better, so that the ways we are trying to help people are actually compatable with reality and thus actually work.
See here and here for why ignoring reality for race and IQ stops the world from solving micro-nutrient deficiencies in africa, which could boost african IQ's greatly:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/national_iq.htm
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/06/make-poverty-history-constructive.html
But I suppose claiming that IQ is meaningless, or that the tests are biased against africans makes a lot of people feel better on the inside, despite the bad consequences for the Africans that could be helped by a massive push for micro-nutrient supplementation.
That example is about fixing something environmental (micro-nutrients), as opposed to genetic, but there may be ways in the future to fix that too (genetic engineering?), but accurately understanding reality is the first step.
Fred,
Why did you raise the straw man argument that environmentarians believe there is no genetic component to IQ differences? Nobody here advocating the enviromentarian position has argued that; they have only argued that the hereditarian position isn't as strong as it claims to be. Moreover, I can't point to a single hereditarian commentator here ever incorporating the role of enviroment in any of their arguments; it's all genes all the time with you, Steve Sailer, and Harry. On the other hand, the enviromentarians here have incorporated the role of genetics in their arguments; I certainly have taken great lengths to do this, by stressing that genes most likely play the role of setting the range of possibilities, while environment determines where in that range an individual's IQ will actually fall.
On the other hand, not a single one of you hereditarians has done anything similiar in your arguments. Your default argument in any aspect of this issue is genes, genes, genes, even when the evidence points to a significant enviromental influence. I wouldn't be able to say that you guys discount any significant role for enviroment, if you guys didn't repeatedly do so in the actual arguments that you present. My so-called straw man wouldn't exist if you guys didn't supply the hay.
"for some reason, black IQ scores seem to decline with age"
Malt liquor?
"El Toro, please cite Sailer saying African-Americans shouldn't be helped anymore. The idea isn't to stop helping African-Americans. The idea is to understand reality better, so that the ways we are trying to help people are actually compatable with reality and thus actually work."
PJGoober,
When does Steve ever get around in these threads to actually advocating solutions that would better help African-Americans? His sole concerns tends to be to convey the idea that Blacks are inherently inferior to whites in terms of intelligence, and to draw traffic to his website . He never gets around to the next step within these threads, by saying "here is what we can do to solve this appalling state of affairs." He would get far better reception if he would take the time to do these simple things.
"But I suppose claiming that IQ is meaningless, or that the tests are biased against africans makes a lot of people feel better on the inside, despite the bad consequences for the Africans that could be helped by a massive push for micro-nutrient supplementation.
That example is about fixing something environmental (micro-nutrients), as opposed to genetic, but there may be ways in the future to fix that too (genetic engineering?), but accurately understanding reality is the first step."
Nobody is claiming that IQ scores are meaningless; the criticism aired against the hereditarian position is that a genetic explanation of IQ that discounts enviroment's role is an inadequate one for understanding reality. Understanding reality requires not using genetics as the default explanation for all aspects of this issue, even when the evidence tends to favor enviroment more. If you folks wouldn't go to such tortured lengths to discount enviroment, the enviromentarians would see that you are arguing in good faith.
In addition, if people like Steve, Fred, and Harry actually would make the effort to present positive solutions within these threads like you just did, your arguments would receive a far better hearing. It would demonstrate that you hereditarians are using IQ scores in the way originally intended by Binet, the creator of the IQ test.
Binet, who was a hereditarian, ntended to use IQ tests are a means of identifying individual school children who were having problems with learning, so that these individual children would receive the remedial instruction they needed to overcome these difficulties. He never intended for IQ scores to be used as a measure of social worth. Unfortunately, most hereditarians who followed Binet and made use of his tests treated IQ as a measure of social worth. Moreover, the arguments that tend to be conveyed here by Steve, Harry, and Fred have overtones relating to social worth, giving the impression that they are not hereditarians in the humane mold of Binet.
PJGoober,
In addition, the enviromentarians have long advocated improving the nutrition of people in Third World countries, including Africa. Enviromentarians have repeatedly pointed out to hereditarians that nutritional deficiencies, an ENVIRONMENTAL factor, adversely affect cognitive abilities.
It takes a lot of chutzpah for you hereditarians to claim that you came by this understanding due to your insights about genetics. We enviromentarians have only pointed this out to your folks since the beginning of the 20th century. Actions like taking credit for other people's ideas is what gives hereditarians a reputation for arguing in bad faith.
"When does Steve ever get around in these threads to actually advocating solutions that would better help African-Americans?"
Sailer has written about this for years, when will ever get around to reading what he's written? Here are some of Sailer's ideas on helping lower-IQ Americans, both black and non-black: "How to help the Left Half of the Bell Curve"
"Sailer has written about this for years, when will ever get around to reading what he's written?"
Fred,
My comments are not directed toward what Sailer has written on his web site; they are directed at what he writes HERE. Steve never actually presents those arguments and solution within the threads he posts here (a link to his website doesn't count). For a man so outspoken about his beliefs that blacks are genetically inferior to whites in terms of intelligence, he is shockingly reticient to present his humane solutions here as well.
When's Steve going to get around to actually presenting these positive solutions within the comments he posts here? If he's actually concerned about arguing here in good faith (and not just generating traffic for his web site), then he needs to do more here than present arguments about the genetic inferiority of Blacks. That goes for you too, Fred.
"(a link to his website doesn't count)"
Why not?
I've written tens of thousands of words carefully documenting how realism is better for humanity in general than lies, ignorance, or wishful thinking. I come here, posts links to my voluminous writings on the subject, and, somehow, it's my fault because _you_ won't click on the links?!?
For example, here's my 2000 word article from 1995 on how to improve race relations on college campuses:
http://www.isteve.com/armyrace.htm
Here's a long 1996 National Review article by me on how black's could use their particular cognitive talents to make more money:
http://www.isteve.com/blackath.htm
And here's a 2005 VDARE.COM article by me proposing a large new government program to help the 30% of youths whose IQs are below 92 and thus are unlikely to be allowed to enlist in the military even though they could benefit from military training and culture.
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/050911_new_orleans.htm
I see that Metcalf has just posted a correction to his piece. He falsely claimed that the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (MTAS) by Scarr and Weinberg was subsidized by the Pioneer Fund. It wasn't. Not an important error, but suggestive of Metcalf's own ideological bias: his tendency to attribute any support for a hereditarian explanation to racism.
But looking into Metcalf's piece further I see a serious factual error in his discussion of the same study. He falsely asserts that in their review of the MTAS Rushton and Jensen ignore (never even mention, in fact) a number of confounding factors: racial differences in age of adoption, mothers' educational attainment, and adjustment problems after adoption. The truth, as Metcalf might have known if he had bothered to read the paper he's critiquing, is that not only did R&J mention these differences, but they cited evidence from other researchers indicating that the differences are unlikely to account for the study's findings. In particular, they cite several studies that found that age of adoption has no effect on IQ scores after age 7, and they quote the conclusion of one of the study's authors (Weinberg) that "[b]iological mothers’ race remained the best single predictor of adopted child’s IQ when other variables were controlled."
Most of Metcalf's piece doesn't address the scientific evidence at all. It's the usual guff about motives and funding. And when Metcalf does try to respond to Saletan's empirical arguments, he screws up royally.
I've read that Saletan will be publishing a reply to Metcalf on Monday. I look forward to it.
Steve Sailer urges us to read his work on these subjects, and presumably puts his best foot forward when proffering links. I followed those links and found them quite edifying. His above-mentioned NR article contains the following how-to-get-ahead advice for black men. Excuse the long excerpt, but this is just too rich:
Since distinctions between groups are inevitable and often long-lasting, one strategy for economic advancement is to look for new markets for a group's traditional strengths. For instance, centuries of rabbinical disputes over the Talmud seem to have paved the way for many contemporary Jews to prosper as lawyers. Similarly, how could black men with competitive advantages in creative improvisation and manly charm better exploit them in the job market? Well, it's easy to first identify an entire class of jobs that don't particularly reward black men's strong suits: paper-pushing assignments in stagnant government, corporate, charitable, and educational bureaucracies. Unfortunately, those are exactly what affirmative action programs most often proffer. Although critics often note that affirmative action does little for underclass blacks, few fully understand its ill effects on better educated blacks. The affirmative action worldview insists that blacks simply cannot get ahead the way every other community does -- by mastering some well-chosen fields -- and therefore the highest potential African-Americans must fritter away their strengths across the entire economy. There is astoundingly little in common between the genteel, memo-writing staff positions often filled by quotas and the rough and tumble careers where black men have most succeeded -- like sports, entertainment, the Army, the numbers rackets, store front preaching, and big city politics.
This contrast is especially graphic in the not-for-profit sector. For example, few organizations are more ideologically committed to affirmative action than elite universities' English Departments, especially those trendy ones obsessed with Deconstructionism, Gender Studies, and Queer Theory. Yet, it's hard to imagine an employer less suited to an African-American man's typical strengths (e.g., persuasive speech rather than jargon-drenched writing), ambitions (e.g., becoming a leader of men and making some serious money rather than burnishing one's sense of cultural and moral superiority), and even romantic styles (e.g., watch out for sexual harassment charges!).
Comments closed December 18, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Oh, dear lord, here it goes again.
Posted by El Cid | December 4, 2007 11:10 AM