Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo

[liberalbiorealist]

It also comes before your failure to explain why you hypothesis explains variance over and above proximal factors like SES, parental and personal education, differences in opportunities.

Not particularly to whore my own blog (but not particularly to avoid it either), I think you might take a look at this post of mine which addresses this issue. The bottom line here is that the children of blacks of some of the highest educational and economic levels are outperformed by the children of whites of some of the lowest such levels.

It's a really hard result to explain away by environmental accounts of IQ.

[Lazar]

It also comes before your failure to explain why you hypothesis explains variance over and above proximal factors like SES, parental and personal education, differences in opportunities.

Not particularly to whore my own blog (but not particularly to avoid it either), I think you might take a look at this post of mine which addresses this issue. The bottom line here is that the children of blacks of some of the highest educational and economic levels are outperformed by the children of whites of some of the lowest such levels.

It's a really hard result to explain away by environmental accounts of IQ.

um this was not a general comment as much as it was a direct challenge to enigma to actually put up some evidence for his nonsense theory.

It is true that controlling for some environmental does not reduce this gap to zero. However, this is NOT the only source of potential bias* which might account for these differences. See my post for other potential sources of bias.In any case it is equally the case that research suggests gaps in IQ have closed from 15 point down to single figures in recent years and that gaps in achievement tests have gone from 1.1 SD to .65 SD.

In addition, the research on herditability of IQ is advancing rapidly (see here). The old models of linear combinations of inheritance, shared environment, and unique environment have been found to be lacking. In essence it seems more likely that inheritance and environment and their effect on IQ is non-linear. Indeed, in the model I pointed to the results suggest that the herditability of IQ may differ wildly depending on SES. "The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero; in affluent families, the result is almost exactly the reverse." - from linked article. This makes the whole idea of assigning causes for IQ differences to inheritance alone extremely dubious.

All of this however, is hand waving over the biggest problem of all. That is that variance in IQ is far greater within groups than between groups. As many have said already, race is a socially constructed phenomena and individuals within 'racial classes' are NOT homogeneous. It seems to me that until research can show group differences predict differences in IQ AFTER controlling for the individual level (and can construct a meaningful definition of race) it should be treated as a statistical artifact ONLY. As yet I have failed to find any research that provides such data.

Indeed the whole process of testing group differences as it stands is highly dubious.

By Zuckerman, Marvin
American Psychologist. Vol 45(12), Dec 1990, 1297-1303.
Abstract
The scientific premises for looking for statistical differences between groups designated as races (on somewhat arbitrary grounds) are questionable. The explanation of such differences in strictly biological-evolutionary terms is even more dubious. Studies of temperament, basic personality traits, disorders (such as antisocial personality), and specific genetic markers show that there is much more variation within groups designated as races than between such groups.

[Delvo]

Why does the "no biologically inherited difference" side keep harping on the "more difference within races than between them" theme? It doesn't support the conclusion you keep bringing it up as supposed support for. We all know that the existence of differences that are not due to biological inheritance does not indicate the non-existence of differences that are, or in other words that there's no reason why the two things can't coexist. We all know that the fact that
x>y does not mean y=0. We all also know that practically nobody who says that there are biologically inherited differences in intelligence has claimed that it's the only factor that exists or even that it's bigger than all others combined, which is the ONLY kind of claim that would actually be countered by this within/between thing you keep trotting out.

Yes, I know it's true, but what's the point of badgering on and on about it? It's like responding to someone who says that properly working freezers keep their contents below the temperature at which ice would melt, by protesting "No, no, no! They use electricity!" Truth alone doesn't mean it actually has anything to do with anything.

[liberalbiorealist]

Let me try to go down the list of issues you raise, although I do rather wish you would focus your objections to a particular point instead of the scattershot you've offered up.

You say at the beginning,

It is true that controlling for some environmental does not reduce this gap to zero. However, this is NOT the only source of potential bias* which might account for these differences. See my post for other potential sources of bias.

Now it would have been nice had you stuck with that point, and attempted to explain yourself. In any case, while you characterize my original point about SAT scores for whites vs blacks at different economic and educational levels as only controlling for "some environmental", it hardly does justice to the force of point I was making (made more fully in the post on my blog I linked to). Let me state it most starkly here: the children of white parents who make only $10K-$20K per year outperform on the SAT the children of black parents who make over $70K a year. Likewise, the children of white parents who have only a HS education outperform on the SAT the children of black parents who have a graduate degree. The environmental advantages of the black children here aren't just some smallish factors. They are the very heart and soul of the environmental explanation as its usually set forth. Seriously, are we to think that a child whose parents have graduate degrees, and all the sophistication that implies has no important advantage over a child whose parents who, in this day and age, have only a HS diploma? And yet the children of these quite sophisticated blacks can't do as well as the children of these quite unsophisticated whites? What kind of sense does that make, if environment is the ultimate explanation of performance? And, with regard to the issue of bias, shouldn't the far wealthier or far better educated black parents be providing a much, much richer environment for their children than the disadvantaged white parents, which would set any biases in their favor, if there really are relevant biases at all? (Consider even that classic example of supposed bias from the SAT -- an example that gets used again and again most likely because no other example seems particularly convincing -- in which knowing the meaning of the word "regatta" is required for the correct answer to a question. Is it really more likely that a child of white parents who make only $10K-20K will know the answer to that question than the child of black parents making over $70K a year? Or more likely that the child of white parents who have only a HS diploma would know the answer than the child of black parents with a graduate degree? What's left of the claim of "bias" against blacks after one reflects on what these advantages might really mean for these black children?)

Many of the same points apply to the research you link to from Turkheimer. Even granting the point (which others dispute) that genes contribute much less to differences among low SES children than to high SES children, how, still, does one account for the very facts I just mentioned about black children of parents with high incomes or high levels of education? Shouldn't these children particularly be enabled to excel, not suffering any environmental influence to depress their scores uniformly as with low SES children? How can they possibly fail to outcompete, and easily, white children with the very disadvantages that are supposed to make such an enormous difference?

In any case, I think a good summary of some of the objections to Turkheimer's work might be found in a comment that just appeared on my blog, which quotes from a paper from Jensen and Rushton.

You end by talking about how race is just a social construct, etc. I have to say, I find that line of talk -- I won't call it reasoning -- impresses me as just pure obfuscation. Whites, for the relevant purposes, are those whose ancestors are almost entirely (let's say 90%+) from Europe. Blacks, for the relevant purposes, are those whose ancestors are dominantly from Africa (let's say 70%+ -- a bit more generous since blacks in America apparently have 20-25% white ancestry on average). Evolution works along lines of descent, and it's clear that, for tens of thousands of years, the group of humans who occupied Europe have had very little crossbreeding with the group of humans who occupied Africa. How that gets cast out genetically in detail is mostly irrelevant to the point that there's every reason to believe that the two groups have gone their separate genetic ways over those tens of thousands of years. Given these separate paths, it would have been quite a miracle had such a crucial item such as brain functioning developed in exactly identical directions and speed in both groups. All the SAT scores are demonstrating, in my opinion, is that there was no such miracle.

And the point regarding the fact that there are greater differences within groups than between them certainly doesn't mean we can't measure or expect differences between groups. Indeed, I'd say that the very best reason to believe their might be differences between the groups is that there is an omnipresent variability within each group. That variability within a group is exactly what evolution requires in order to select for the more useful version of a trait. If the group of human beings in Africa were being selected for cognitive functioning at an ever so slightly slower rate than the group of human beings in Europe, then one would expect that the European group would have higher cognitive functioning on relevant dimensions over the course of tens of thousands of years.

[GodwinGrey]

LiberalBioRealist wrote - The bottom line here is that the children of blacks of some of the highest educational and economic levels are outperformed by the children of whites of some of the lowest such levels.

It's a really hard result to explain away by environmental accounts of IQ.

The bottom line here is that some of the children of whites in some of the highest educational and economic levels are outperformed by some of the children of blacks in some of the lowest such levels.

It's a really hard result to explain away by genetic accounts of IQ.

[Lazar]

Why does the "no biologically inherited difference" side keep harping on the "more difference within races than between them" theme? It doesn't support the conclusion you keep bringing it up as supposed support for. We all know that the existence of differences that are not due to biological inheritance does not indicate the non-existence of differences that are, or in other words that there's no reason why the two things can't coexist. We all know that the fact that
x>y does not mean y=0. We all also know that practically nobody who says that there are biologically inherited differences in intelligence has claimed that it's the only factor that exists or even that it's bigger than all others combined, which is the ONLY kind of claim that would actually be countered by this within/between thing you keep trotting out.

Yes, I know it's true, but what's the point of badgering on and on about it? It's like responding to someone who says that properly working freezers keep their contents below the temperature at which ice would melt, by protesting "No, no, no! They use electricity!" Truth alone doesn't mean it actually has anything to do with anything.

Note that there is no "no biologically inherited difference" side. Only a side which says that the genetic component of IQ does not account for the differences between 'racial' groups. Importantly, as I have posted before this is what the evidence to date suggests.

As for your complaint, the point is to show that groups are heterogeneous and thus it is quite possible that defining them as a inherent group may simply be false and thus group differences are merely be an artifact of the way an individual arbitrarily decides who goes where and who they exclude from analysis. That is that typically we would want groups to maximise in-group similarities and out-group differences. This is clearly not happening in the case of race and IQ and thus one wonders whether it makes any sense to talk about such groups at all.

CJ will have another perspective on this than me but from where I am sitting I am asking your side of the debate to show that after controlling for individual level differences there is ANY significant different left to account for. That is those who are saying these are real groups that really differ from each other need to show that a significant percentage of variance is explained in IQ after controlling for the individual level. Do that and we can start having a debate on what group differences mean.

Again this is the problem I have been harping on about. The moment you do an ANOVA or T-Test type analysis you as the researcher make a decision that the group level is and implicitly (or explicitly as the case may be) suggest it is the most important level at which to conduct analysis - in all the group differences I have seen to data these a-priori assumptions are the ones being made. Essentially this means that any group level analysis squashes individual level variance (or sweeps it under the rug). We can however, empirically test the percentage at which individual and group level account for the variance in a construct. As yet I have found no evidence that this has been done and thus no evidence on which to say that the group level explains anything AT ALL. I have, however, placed calls for this data to which no one on this thread has responded. As such I will continue to respond that there is more variance between groups than within groups until such evidence is forth coming. Want me to stop saying it, well bring on the evidence (random effects model is what I am after thanks - that is something that explores individual and group level variance).

[Delvo]

What do you mean by "control for individual differences"? "Controlling", in every instance I've seen, is a group issue. For example, you can "control" for parental income by making sure that you only compare people whose parents had equivalent incomes, or "control" for education by making sure that you only compare people with the same level of education. But then that's creating other groups: income level groups and education level groups. What is "controlling" when it isn't about some kind of group?

[Lazar]

What do you mean by "control for individual differences"? "Controlling", in every instance I've seen, is a group issue. For example, you can "control" for parental income by making sure that you only compare people whose parents had equivalent incomes, or "control" for education by making sure that you only compare people with the same level of education. But then that's creating other groups: income level groups and education level groups. What is "controlling" when it isn't about some kind of group?

It refers to analysis in which both individual level and group level contributions to X are simultaneously calculated. Similarly, one could look at the effect of SES on IQ at both the individual level and the group level. I use control for individual differences to make it easy to understand (clearly it was not). What it means in essence is that you can empirically determining the relative contributions of individual level and group level rather than deciding a-priori which level to focus on.

[nac]

What has this got to do with my point? If you wish we can take it down to just two groups - those who left Africa at that time and those who did not . Show me statistics that demonstrate that the contemporay progeny of those left behind
have done better in IQ tests in the USA than the progeny of those who migrated.

For a systematic study, we'll need dozens of individuals from each group, all raised in the same culture and environment, plus control experiments.

[Darkchilde]

MOD NOTE

liberalbiorealist has been banned for racist bigotry, as seen in the only 3 posts in this thread. Please continue the discussion, as before this individual joined.

END MOD NOTE

[enigma]

What has this got to do with my point? If you wish we can take it down to just two groups - those who left Africa at that time and those who did not . Show me statistics that demonstrate that the contemporay progeny of those left behind
have done better in IQ tests in the USA than the progeny of those who migrated.

For a systematic study, we'll need dozens of individuals from each group, all raised in the same culture and environment, plus control experiments.

Do you not think that college and high school students in the USA more or less share the same culture and environment in the broader sense? We are talking in broad terms and not specifics.

The environmental stress of migration into colder climes and unchartered territory(euphemistic metaphor) was one of the reasons intelligence was selected for. As the climate and topography changed the effect of intelligence became more visible to natural selection - man became more inventive, productive and resourceful. Those who did not adapt quite so well perished.

Certain genes related to intelligence in the genome would have been switched on epigenetically and if the phenotype proved to be successful this sucessful version would eventually be selected for by means of natural and cumulative selection. I believe the reason north-eastern asians and northern europeans topped the SAT charts was because the evolution of intelligence peaks in the environment of a temperate climate zone where intelligence is most visible to natural selection. Go above and intelligence visibility becomes more opaque.

[paddy_rice]

MOD NOTE

liberalbiorealist has been banned for racist bigotry, as seen in the only 3 posts in this thread. Please continue the discussion, as before this individual joined.

END MOD NOTE

A bit harsh, since it doesn't give us a chance to argue with the guy!

[Topsy]

MOD NOTE

liberalbiorealist has been banned for racist bigotry, as seen in the only 3 posts in this thread. Please continue the discussion, as before this individual joined.

END MOD NOTE

A bit harsh, since it doesn't give us a chance to argue with the guy!

I don't think Darkchilde is saying that you can't respond to or argue with his posts. I think it means you're free to carry on with the rational discussion as you were before.

[Darkchilde]

MOD NOTE

liberalbiorealist has been banned for racist bigotry, as seen in the only 3 posts in this thread. Please continue the discussion, as before this individual joined.

END MOD NOTE

A bit harsh, since it doesn't give us a chance to argue with the guy!

I don't think Darkchilde is saying that you can't respond to or argue with his posts. I think it means you're free to carry on with the rational discussion as you were before.

Topsy is right about what I meant with the comment, and apologies if it was confusing, that was not my intention.

[paddy_rice]

Topsy is right about what I meant with the comment, and apologies if it was confusing, that was not my intention.

No, no, I thought your decision was right (not that I know anything!). It's no fun reading through that kind of racist BS, of course. I just meant to say it would have been fun watching his arguments get torn to shreds!

[Madmaili]

Do you not think that college and high school students in the USA more or less share the same culture and environment in the broader sense? We are talking in broad terms and not specifics.

Nope, do you? Have you looked at the variation of secondary school education in the US. A large amount of the funding for public schools are funded by local property taxes which are in turn a percentage of property value. Which means that schools in richer neighborhoods have more money at their disposal than schools in poorer neighborhoods.

The environmental stress of migration into colder climes and unchartered territory(euphemistic metaphor) was one of the reasons intelligence was selected for. As the climate and topography changed the effect of intelligence became more visible to natural selection - man became more inventive, productive and resourceful. Those who did not adapt quite so well perished.

Your still making this an assertion with no actual evidential backing, I could make an equivalent argument for why remaining in a densely populated ,over foraged and hence more competitive environment resulted in natural selection for higher intelligence. It would be equivalently ridiculous.

Certain genes related to intelligence in the genome would have been switched on epigenetically and if the phenotype proved to be successful this sucessful version would eventually be selected for by means of natural and cumulative selection.

It would have been but the premise that you are basing it on is bonkers.

[Pandora toothpaste]

I just meant to say it would have been fun watching his arguments get torn to shreds!

It's really not that simple though in some ways : / his arguments appear reasonable to many people and they're hard to disable unless one rejects notions of race and generalised intelligence (as people should ). David Beckham is much more intelligent than me because he earns 5 billion pounds a year and can kick a football into a wastpaperbasket from 100m away. Mike Tyson is much more intelligent than me because he has managed to create a reputation whereby nobody challenges him and he always gets his own way - If I was clever I'd have worked out like that perhaps and been a millionaire too. Twister is much more intelligent than me because he can rap faster than anybody else in the world.

As soon as he said "blacks" and "whites" (implying racial segregation) it was only a matter of time until he was shown the door and the sooner the better. Nice job mods IMO.

[Geraint]

I just meant to say it would have been fun watching his arguments get torn to shreds!

It's really not that simple though in some ways : / his arguments appear reasonable to many people and they're hard to disable unless one rejects notions of race and generalised intelligence (as people should ).

Well, rejecting those notions sort of begs the question, so I think that's why you talked past each other.

[enigma]

The environmental stress of migration into colder climes and unchartered territory(euphemistic metaphor) was one of the reasons intelligence was selected for. As the climate and topography changed the effect of intelligence became more visible to natural selection - man became more inventive, productive and resourceful. Those who did not adapt quite so well perished.]

Your still making this an assertion with no actual evidential backing, I could make an equivalent argument for why remaining in a densely populated ,over foraged and hence more competitive environment resulted in natural selection for higher intelligence. It would be equivalently ridiculous.

OK,OK,OK but, but please let me finish! Presumably by a densely populated, over-foraged and hence more more competitive environment you mean an equatorial or sub-tropical environment like that when our ancestors split in Africa? Now that sort of environment would not be favourable for the evolution of higher intelligence. I used to live in the tropics, the environment invites indolence- heat invites indolence and apathy:" Mad dogs an englishman out in the noonday sun". Ever heard of that? Noel Coward. That phrase highlights the reason why intelligence is barely visible to natural selection in the tropics - everbody is asleep all the time - nothing gets done - even in a mediterranean climate like Spain, "Manyana" or whatever is the order of the day! The "siesta" is a national convention!

All humans are equal in intelligence potential - black, white, yellow whatever. All humans have virtually all the mutations required in their genepool for top-notch intelligence . But in terms of the blacks and suchlike some of the genes associated with intelligence in their genome are switched off by the environment . In noway are blacks inferior to anybody else in intelligence; its just, its just that pressure from the environment is required in order for them to reach their true potential which is exactly the same as everyone else or perhaps even more.

60 or 70 thousand years is peanuts in terms of the evolution of intelligence. I believe that the necessary mutations were already in the genepools when Man went "Out of Africa". Natural selection in terms of intelligence started eyeing up primates as soon as they became capable of manipulating the environment - as soon as they developed proper hands
millions of years ago and that is why 60 thousand years is peanuts. Without hands, extremely intelligent animals such as dolphins will never make it big in terms of humanlike intelligence. Its the manipulation of the environment that catches the attenion of natural selection in terms of intelligence

Thats my take on it anyway for what it's worth.

[Delvo]

What do you mean by "control for individual differences"?

It refers to analysis in which both individual level and group level contributions to X are simultaneously calculated... empirically determining the relative contributions of individual level and group level rather than deciding a-priori which level to focus on.

But then what do you mean by "individual level" as opposed to "group level"? What are these "levels"?

Everything that defines an individual also defines a group of people who have that trait in common. If the smartest guy in the neighborhood got that way because he's the only one whose parents regularly took him outside the neighborhood where he could see how others act and live, then, in statistics, he's a member of the group "people whose parents showed them environments different from the immediate local one". If the smartest woman around got that way because she drank lots of grape juice at age 9, then, in statistics, she's a member of the group "people who drank lots of grape juice at age 9". If 9 of the top 10 smartest people in a company have a certain gene for intelligence, that makes them members of the group "people who possess this particular gene". Demographic statistics is ALL about groups. There's nothing else it can even see.

Of course, sometimes you can't tell whether each person in a study is a member of one group or another, or don't even know what all of the groups would be, and any given study can only handle so many groups at a time, so some variations between individuals will be left over that aren't addressed by that study. Is that what you mean about the individual "level"?: variation left over that isn't explained by the particular group(s) that a study addresses, affected by factors that the study can't account for?

[Lazar]

Delvo I just lost a post I spent 20 minutes composing to explain this. I will post again at lunch. As a quick note I would quickly say that the group examples in your post are different to those we are talking about in that they make groups of high and low intelligence and then look for things that discriminate between those groups. We are talking about a-priori groups. The logic behind these two forms of grouping is completely different.

[Pandora toothpaste]

I just meant to say it would have been fun watching his arguments get torn to shreds!

It's really not that simple though in some ways : / his arguments appear reasonable to many people and they're hard to disable unless one rejects notions of race and generalised intelligence (as people should ).

Well, rejecting those notions sort of begs the question, so I think that's why you talked past each other.

I'd take my hat off, only my new avatar is somewhat attached to it. All I know is i'm great at chess but frequently leave my 12 hour lenses in.

[Lazar]

Ok lets hope this does not crash this time. In relation to levels (individual/group etc.) which I have been talking about you need to understand that participants in a study exist within a nested structure. To explain I will the concept of students, who are nested within classrooms, who are nested within schools. Now importantly, each of these levels, (student, class, school) can be considered as a source of variance which explains differences in eg. achievement tests. Thus, differences in test scores might be due to differences between kids (different life experience etc.), due to difference between the classes the kids are in, and/or due to differences between the schools in which the classes are in. Typically research does NOT consider all of these levels rather they choose that which they think is most important for answering the question and then carry on at that level. What this means is that information at the levels not choosing is lost from the analysis.

For example, supposing a researcher thinks differences in achievement tests are due to differences between schools, so he gathers data from 37 schools and low and behold finds that there is substantial differences between school. However, is this result not misleading? Is it not possible that most of the variance is driven by difference in school classes? Perhaps school A happens to have a really cohesive and hardworking set of classes in grades 7, 9, and 12 but normal 8, 10, and 11 classes. In such a case isn't the result largely due to the variance explained at the class level. Well unless we use the appropriate stats we would never know and as such the researcher could go around the country telling people that schools make all the difference to your child's education, when it is possible it is actually your child's school class that makes all the difference, or perhaps all the variance is really at the child level and class and school have nothing really that important to do with it.

This is the problem with the IQ race differences thing. In that researchers arbitrarily define groups and then suggest that this is important as it is where the variance resides, and typically they find a difference. However, who is to say this is not misleading and that the individual level or SES level or any other nested level actually explains the differences between people. We can of course use empirical methods to determine how much variance is explained at what level but I have been unable to find such research and as such I don't think we can even have a discussion on what drives group differences until we actually know that group differences explain anything at all. My guess is that given most intra psychic concepts tend to vary predominately at the individual level, that variance between individuals in IQ is greater than between groups, and given race is such a woolly concept anyway we will find that race groups do not account for a significant portion of the variance when compared to other nested levels.

We know for instance that levels of inheritance vs levels of environment in intelligence differ among individuals and across SES. We also know that there are differences in the way individuals take tests and what they consider to be important. We also know that individuals differ in the pressure they feel under when taking tests, what they feel is expected of them, and what it means for their self-worth. We also know that individuals differ in the way they learn whether they do deep or shallow learning and whether they think being better than/not worse than, is most important or whether learning for the sake of learning is most important. Finally we also know that people vary on whether they think intelligence is fixed or malleable and thus whether an IQ tests is a measure of them as a person or whether it is merely useful feedback information on the need to try harder, learn more, or try different strategies. ALL of this information is lost the moment we focus our attention on the group rather than what drives achievement at the individual level. Importantly, this is why I keep saying that individuals vary from each other far more than groups vary from each other.

[ThinkStephen]

hEllow

Me name is stephen nd ie am white. i fnd the whole thing enlightening bcs I was truely takenaback by the title an all that. The apostrophe made me shudder in its' brilliant presence and the conttennt made me laff bcaus it was in HD.

---

Seriously now, race was never pre-requiste to anything - a few alleles in a phenotype make no difference to anything of tangible substance in modern society.

So please, modern society -

GET OVER IT (Race), I am literally fed up of hearing about it in our headlines and pseudo-philosophical debates.

[Lazar]

hEllow

Me name is stephen nd ie am white. i fnd the whole thing enlightening bcs I was truely takenaback by the title an all that. The apostrophe made me shudder in its' brilliant presence and the conttennt made me laff bcaus it was in HD.

---

Seriously now, race was never pre-requiste to anything - a few alleles in a phenotype make no difference to anything of tangible substance in modern society.

So please, modern society -

GET OVER IT (Race), I am literally fed up of hearing about it in our headlines and pseudo-philosophical debates.

Yes I agree. A great article on the problems of this whole issue can be found here or here Titled "Some dubious premises in research and theory on racial differences: Scientific, social, and ethical issues".(not sure which link works for everyone). In the paper he outlines research that shows that 84% of the genetic variance is accounted for by individual differences within so called racial groupings.

There is also a quote in the article which particularly applies to enigma "All of this reconstruction of evolutionary history is totally speculative, unverifiable, and post hoc".