Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo

[CJ]

This is what we're not permitting, while still providing an opportunity to discuss the science (and TV programmes like the subject of this thread) for those who genuinely want to discuss all the various studies on all sides of the arguments about race.

Believe it or not, it's very difficult to discuss "all sides" of an argument when you ban the people taking one of the sides.

I absolutely agree with Warren Drew. I am thankful that I arrived at the conclusion that I did because I feel that if I hadn't I would have been labelled a racist and deemed a pariah by all and sundry. The pressure was such that I felt obliged to use the word "group" instead of "race" in case it upset somebody.

The irony is we are talking about a group of talented people with everything going for them, who excel in terms of sport, in terms of music and entertainment, in terms of physique, in terms of practically everything relevent to the youth of today - even politics!

Its a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions that one should feel frightened and inhibited thus and feel obliged to watch one's step so closely. RD should know all about this judging by the way he complains about libel and science. Race and science is even a worse nightmare!

Race is a horrific minefield. There was a debate here a while ago stimulated by by the book The Bell Curve. It got horribly acrimonious. The safest way is to stand beside (or behind) data and let the data take the beating!

[hotshoe]

... to conceal the fact that they in the HapMap Project are actually cataloging human genetic diversity according to racial groups (they call it "human populations" which is just their euphemism for "racial groups"--"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."...a race by any other name would STILL BE A RACE!).

Define "race".

Rigorously, please.

[Lazar]

OK, I get you now. I didn't think of the nesting thing because it doesn't apply to race unless you want to try to subdivide races down into tribes and clans, or divide them according to political units dominated by the same race (nations, counties...), or group them up (like combining eastern Asians with Europeans & western Asians as "Eurasians"), or something like that.

If you are using the term racial groups you are implying nesting at the very least because individuals are nested within those groups.

But this wouldn't matter for studies from which inferences about races are drawn anyway, because the IQ test scores and other such data are already about individuals, so there's no information about individuals being lost here. Anything to be said about race is not the original data but some kind of aggregation of data about individuals. The very same study will thus "see" the variation between individuals of the same race, AND between individuals of different races, AND between the races' averages.

It sort of does in that group analyses a based on SS within groups and the SS between groups but such an analysis is essentially set up not to test how much different level contributes but rather to test whether groups are different. Thus the tests are focused on the group level.

Yes, which is why it's better to start not from data about those 37 schools but about their 259 classes, or about their 7194 students.

But is that really how you think studies on race and intelligence have proceeded? Since almost no race study has multi-layered nesting effect as with classes and schools and districts and states, I can't even picture what you think the original raw data would have been without having individual data built in. Average IQ test score for any group is an average, obtained by taking individual scores and averaging them. Average income is an average of individuals' incomes as well. Crime rate is more simply a number of criminals or crimes or victims divided by a number of general population, but the ratio is just an easily-reportable summary which comes from lists of identified and detailed individual cases too. If the raw data were really just at the race "level", there'd be no more than 7 data points instead of hundreds or thousands, and no sociologist anywhere does that. Working with so few data points would be pointless.

And not only is there no absence of data about those individuals, but other relevant information about the very same individuals, such as their parents' incomes or their own incomes or their diets or what school they went to or what grades they got, can all be included together so the various factors' effects can be not just seen but even compared directly to each other, all based on the same individuals' details.

Most such data is collected at the individual level as I don't know how you could collect data on IQ for a group (do they take a question each ). That is not the important thing. The important thing is how the data from the individuals is structured by the researcher. I am not actually talking about group averages per say but it is a good example. Can you not see that averaging individual scores to obtain a group score loses all individual level information.

First of all, since the data is already individual, it can't be missing anything that would be revealed if they'd just take a look at the individuals, because they already are; it's not some additional level getting ignored below the level that attention is exclusively being paid to. It's THE level.

No that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that the moment the research chooses to structure his/her data in a certain way, unless they use appropriate techniques, the structuring of that individual level data results in the lose of information.

For example most of burnout (long term stress)theory suggests it is the group level (organisation people are in) that is most important. This view has existed for some time with lots of research conducted by looking at difference between organizations on burnout factors. However, recent research has found, using techniques described above, that less than 10% of the variance in burnout is described at the group level. Thus researchers had been unwittingly benefiting from the fact that group level analysis loses the individual level variance to make claims about burnout that on closer reflection cannot be substantiated.

Second, you've departed from the concept of "levels" here anyway by bringing up Socio-Economic Status. Race and SES can not both be levels in the same stack like classes, schools, and school districts are, because the nesting you described earlier doesn't apply to them. (Every class fits into a school, and every school can be described as a list of classes... but no SES is entirely within one race, no race is entirely within one SES, no SES can be described by a list of included races, and no race can be described by a list of included SESes.)

My mistake. I did not mean to put SES and am not really sure why I did. I thought I put ethnic group or cultural group. It was not meant to say these levels exist but rather whether there was another level that might contribute. In any case you still have individuals nested within groups - which is what I have been interested in from the start.

The third thing I was going to say to that would make this post a lot longer and take me more time, and I wanted to at least put something up here before too much time passed. To sum it up, though, since these studies are done with individual-level data, and that data includes ancestry and SES and other things like education all about every single person in the data set, there are methods of analyzing the data to isolate the contributing factors and determine which ones are bigger or smaller, which ones are merely irrelevant illusions, and which ones retain how much of an effect in another one's absence. And this has already been done over and over with a bunch of independent data sets, and found that the other quantifiable explanations offered, such as SES, as the cause of racially different test score averages (as well as other racially different outcomes like wealth and education), just don't hold up. The only question that leaves is what other potential explanations that leaves us. (Biology/genetics is one, but not the only one...)

Again just to emphasis it is not that the data is not coming from individuals. It is that researchers are deciding how to structure their data and in turn what level to focus on. These decisions are not of insignificant interest but can have meaningful implications for what is emphasized by results and in turn what is missing from those results.

[Made Of Stars]

... to conceal the fact that they in the HapMap Project are actually cataloging human genetic diversity according to racial groups (they call it "human populations" which is just their euphemism for "racial groups"--"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."...a race by any other name would STILL BE A RACE!).

Define "race".

Rigorously, please.

Galtonian,

Please also provide your argument for why "race" is the appropriate level to differentiate between groups. For example, why "race" (eg. "East Asian", as you put it), and not some other population subset (Phillipinos vs. Japanese vs. Korean), or superset (all 'Asian').

Without a rigorous definition of race, and evidenced argument as to the appropriate level of differentiation between populations, this smacks of cherry-picking.

PS. Appeals to authority do not constitute a valid argument.

[Madmaili]

... to conceal the fact that they in the HapMap Project are actually cataloging human genetic diversity according to racial groups (they call it "human populations" which is just their euphemism for "racial groups"--"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."...a race by any other name would STILL BE A RACE!).

Define "race".

Rigorously, please.

Good luck getting a definition.........

[Geraint]

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.

Just to dive in at random here, I first want to say I'm forced to sympathise with your 'side' since it seems to me that that's the side with the weight of expert opinion, which I have no qualifications to go against. But this argument in particular seems a bit strange to me.

One of my fields is galaxy formation: a messy subject where you study a whole variety of different objects with many properties that lie on a continuum. When you're exploring data you might quite often split objects into fairly arbitrary groups and see how their properties vary. A grouping with a lot of history is the split into morphological 'late-type' and 'early-type' galaxies. But it's a fairly arbitrary split with lots of messy cases in between. What's more, if you look at a property like mass, you see a huge range within each of these populations. But there are differences in the average mass of late-type and early-type galaxies: not as big as the range of mass within each group, but certainly statistically significant. It's a legitimate question to ask why there's a difference in the mean mass. You wouldn't want to try and predict the morphology of a galaxy given its mass; indeed, that would be ridiculous. And the split into morphological types is messy and somewhat arbitrary. But the mass difference is something you might want to try to explain and account for.

Maybe some day there will be a fantastic, physically well-motivated scheme for classifying galaxies that will clarify where all the differences come from (in mass, metal content, star formation history, colour, local environment...) but until we have one, don't we just have to work with what we've got, even if it's messy?

Presumably any analogy with the current topic breaks down at some point, but it would be a shame if it broke down only because one subject is more emotive than the other. Sorry if this post seems like OT wibble.

[hotshoe]

No, thanks for the information.

Looks like a good demonstration of both the pitfalls and benefits of aggregating data by "population".

I suspect that any emotive break down is due to the race-believers so desperately wanting their categories to be true. After all, how many astronomers are personally upset when further research concentrates on the in-between cases that are the worst fit to existing "arbitrary" groups ? None, probably, because it's OK with them to just acknowledge that the groupings have an arbitrary aspect ...

[dougal]

And I've even read articles that link inbreeding (I don't know if the situation in the Jewish community was such that this would be a widespread practice) to reduced cognitive performance.

For proof that inbreeding does reduce cognitive ability look no further than here:

The Pudding.

[Galtonian]

... to conceal the fact that they in the HapMap Project are actually cataloging human genetic diversity according to racial groups (they call it "human populations" which is just their euphemism for "racial groups"--"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."...a race by any other name would STILL BE A RACE!).

Define "race".

Rigorously, please.

Galtonian,

Please also provide your argument for why "race" is the appropriate level to differentiate between groups. For example, why "race" (eg. "East Asian", as you put it), and not some other population subset (Phillipinos vs. Japanese vs. Korean), or superset (all 'Asian').

Without a rigorous definition of race, and evidenced argument as to the appropriate level of differentiation between populations, this smacks of cherry-picking.

PS. Appeals to authority do not constitute a valid argument.

I see race as a scalar descriptor designating a group of people who share common descent similar to family, clan, ethnic group etc. Race usualy refers to large subgroups (often with origin from all or a large part of a continent) which may include several ethnic groups. In population genetics of non-human species, "subspecies" or "breed" may refer to subdivisions that are analogous to race or ethnic group, and "strain" and "substrain" might be analogous to clan and family.

Size increases as follows:

Individual < Family < Clan/Tribe/Caste < Ethnic Group < Race < Human Species

Examples-

Family: Kennedy, Bach, Mondavi, Huxley

Clan/Tribe/Caste: Campbell, Ibo, Yoruba, Hopi, Apache, Brahmin, Vaishyas,

Ethnic Group: Han Chinese, Korean, Bantu, Spanish, English, German, Slav, Jew, Hispanic

Race: white, black, East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, Australian Aborigine, American Indian

By a process of studying human genomics, anthropology (physical and cultural), and languages (see work of L.Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Stephen Oppenheimer, Noah Rosenberg, Mark Shriver, Richard Klein, Spencer Wells, Bryan Sykes, and many others) it has been possible to trace the ancestry of peoples (races, ethnic groups, tribes, castes etc.) and to determine the patterns of genetic similarities, intermixing, and differences. On this basis it has been possible to determine group categories that have meaning and utility.

Despite efforts to obfuscate matters by falsely claiming that races and ethnic groups are meaningless categories, it is never the less clear that these groupings do have deep meanings and utility--otherwise why would political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, human geneticists, cognitive psychologists, economists, literary authors, education achievement testing experts,and many others all use the same basic categories? Of course these categories are not meaningless, they are only claimed to be meaningless when it helps Boasian egalitarians to try to dismiss the fact that there are important innate mental and physical differences between ethnic groups and races.

[Made Of Stars]

... to conceal the fact that they in the HapMap Project are actually cataloging human genetic diversity according to racial groups (they call it "human populations" which is just their euphemism for "racial groups"--"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."...a race by any other name would STILL BE A RACE!).

Define "race".

Rigorously, please.

Galtonian,

Please also provide your argument for why "race" is the appropriate level to differentiate between groups. For example, why "race" (eg. "East Asian", as you put it), and not some other population subset (Phillipinos vs. Japanese vs. Korean), or superset (all 'Asian').

Without a rigorous definition of race, and evidenced argument as to the appropriate level of differentiation between populations, this smacks of cherry-picking.

PS. Appeals to authority do not constitute a valid argument.

I see race as a scalar descriptor designating a group of people who share common descent similar to family, clan, ethnic group etc. Race usualy refers to large subgroups (often with origin from all or a large part of a continent) which may include several ethnic groups. In population genetics of non-human species, "subspecies" or "breed" may refer to subdivisions that are analogous to race or ethnic group, and "strain" and "substrain" might be analogous to clan and family.

Size increases as follows:

Individual < Family < Clan/Tribe/Caste < Ethnic Group < Race < Human Species

Examples-

...

By a process of studying human genomics, anthropology (physical and cultural), and languages (see work of L.Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Stephen Oppenheimer, Noah Rosenberg, Mark Shriver, Richard Klein, Spencer Wells, Bryan Sykes, and many others) it has been possible to trace the ancestry of peoples (races, ethnic groups, tribes, castes etc.) and to determine the patterns of genetic similarities, intermixing, and differences. On this basis it has been possible to determine group categories that have meaning and utility.

An interesting response Galtonian, thank you. However, it did not answer my request: "Please also provide your argument for why "race" is the appropriate level to differentiate between groups."

Despite efforts to obfuscate matters by falsely claiming that races and ethnic groups are meaningless categories, it is never the less clear that these groupings do have deep meanings and utility--otherwise why would political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, human geneticists, cognitive psychologists, economists, literary authors, education achievement testing experts,and many others all use the same basic categories?

Social convention. Just because that's the way it's always been, doesn't make it right.

Of course these categories are not meaningless, they are only claimed to be meaningless when it helps Boasian egalitarians to try to dismiss the fact that there are important innate mental and physical differences between ethnic groups and races.

Back to my question - what is the level of population grouping that provides heuristic power when it comes to differentiating phenotypes, and why? What is the rigorous basis for designating 'East Asian' a priori as a meaningful group, rather than Philippino/Korean/Japanese/..., or 'all Asia'.

[Delvo]

it did not answer my request: "Please also provide your argument for why "race" is the appropriate level to differentiate between groups."

Nobody has asserted that it is "the" one. It's just one of them. It doesn't need to be the only possible grouping, or even the most important one, in order to simply exist in reality. And its real existence is what was being argued against a while ago, not its importance or its lack of alternatives.

Appropriateness, as with any other categorization, is contextual. If you're studying something that it's correlated with, it's an appropriate categorization (which says nothing about how many others there might be). If you're studying something that it's not correlated with, then it's not.

What is the rigorous basis for designating 'East Asian' a priori as a meaningful group, rather than Philippino/Korean/Japanese/..., or 'all Asia'.

Something I'll have to get back to when I have more time, but for starters, it isn't always. That's why not all sociological studies do it that way...

[Galtonian]

Back to my question - what is the level of population grouping that provides heuristic power when it comes to differentiating phenotypes, and why? What is the rigorous basis for designating 'East Asian' a priori as a meaningful group, rather than Philippino/Korean/Japanese/..., or 'all Asia'.

By "East Asian" I am refering to a racial group that mainly comprises three ethnic groups (Han Chinese, Korean, and Japanese). Filipino usually refers to a people whose ancestors were the main indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines. The performance of Filipino-Americans on cognitive tests is similar to that of whites (Euro-Americans). The performance on cognitive tests of Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, and Japanese-Americans (i.e. American East Asians) is far higher than that of whites.
For data in graphic form see Supplemental Figure 1 in this pdf http://precedings.nature.com/documents/2862/version/1/files/npre20092862-1.pdf. For extensive amounts of raw data on ethnoracial differences in cognitive test performance see this website http://star.cde.ca.gov/.

The population gene allele frequency data in the SNP data base (you can access thru HapMap, Entrez or Ensemble sites) indicates that Han-Chinese and Japanese are genetically very similar, thus on a gene allele frequency basis it appears to be appropriate to group some large Asian ethnic groups into a race designated as East Asian. South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Kashmiris, Persians, Afgans) are not genetically similar to East Asians and so should not be lumped into the same racial group. Southeast Asians (Malays, Indonesians, Filipinos,Thais, Hmong/Miao, Lao, Cambodians, Viets) are somewhat more genetically similar to East Asians than are South Asians, but still in my opinion they are not similar enough to warrant grouping them together with East Asians. If people want to have an overall "Oriental Asian" supercategory that includes both Southeast Asians and East Asians I guess that is fine but then this larger group will be more heterogeneous. As far as Mongolians and Manchurians, I am not sure, perhaps they should be grouped in with East Asians. There are various other small ethnic groups in Asia that appear to be quite distinctive such as the Ainu of Japan.

In the Philippines the majority of people are ethnic Filipinos but interestingly the Han Chinese constitute a small elite market dominant minority who control the vast majority of the wealth within the Philippines (for ref see the book World on Fire by Yale Law prof Amy Chua). In my view, the most likely cause for why certain ethnoracial groups tend to easily assume the role of "Market Dominant Minority Group" is because those groups (e.g. Han-Chinese, Jews, Parsees, High-Caste Indians, etc.) tend to have higher than average innate IQ-type intelligence. It would be interesting to know if the Ibo, a Nigerian people who traditionally dominate the educated professions, tend to have higher IQs than other Bantu peoples.

[I'm With Stupid]

And I've even read articles that link inbreeding (I don't know if the situation in the Jewish community was such that this would be a widespread practice) to reduced cognitive performance.

For proof that inbreeding does reduce cognitive ability look no further than here:

The Pudding.

I dunno. The stupidest royal is the one that doesn't appear to have any genetic link whatsoever*.

*allegedly.

[I'm With Stupid]

By "East Asian" I am refering to a racial group that mainly comprises three ethnic groups (Han Chinese, Korean, and Japanese). Filipino usually refers to a people whose ancestors were the main indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines. The performance of Filipino-Americans on cognitive tests is similar to that of whites (Euro-Americans). The performance on cognitive tests of Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, and Japanese-Americans (i.e. American East Asians) is far higher than that of whites.

It's interesting you seperate the Philippines, because that's one of the few countries in the region not to be influenced in any great way by the philosophies of Confucius.

[paddy_rice]

The stupidest royal is the one that doesn't appear to have any genetic link whatsoever*.

*allegedly.

*cough cough*

[Lazar]

In the Philippines the majority of people are ethnic Filipinos but interestingly the Han Chinese constitute a small elite market dominant minority who control the vast majority of the wealth within the Philippines (for ref see the book World on Fire by Yale Law prof Amy Chua). In my view, the most likely cause for why certain ethnoracial groups tend to easily assume the role of "Market Dominant Minority Group" is because those groups (e.g. Han-Chinese, Jews, Parsees, High-Caste Indians, etc.) tend to have higher than average innate IQ-type intelligence. It would be interesting to know if the Ibo, a Nigerian people who traditionally dominate the educated professions, tend to have higher IQs than other Bantu peoples.

*My Bold*

A read of the excellent "Guns, Germs, and Steel" presents a fantastic and compelling counter to this claim.

[Galtonian]

In the Philippines the majority of people are ethnic Filipinos but interestingly the Han Chinese constitute a small elite market dominant minority who control the vast majority of the wealth within the Philippines (for ref see the book World on Fire by Yale Law prof Amy Chua). In my view, the most likely cause for why certain ethnoracial groups tend to easily assume the role of "Market Dominant Minority Group" is because those groups (e.g. Han-Chinese, Jews, Parsees, High-Caste Indians, etc.) tend to have higher than average innate IQ-type intelligence. It would be interesting to know if the Ibo, a Nigerian people who traditionally dominate the educated professions, tend to have higher IQs than other Bantu peoples.

*My Bold*

A read of the excellent "Guns, Germs, and Steel" presents a fantastic and compelling counter to this claim.

Dear Lazar,
I am dubious about your vague claim for the existence of "fantastic and compelling" evidence from Jared Diamond that counters my claim. Can you be specific about exactly what Jared Diamond wrote regarding whether or not these Market Dominant Minority Groups have higher IQs? I read the book a few years ago and then lent my copy to a coworker who never returned it so I can not check it right now. I recall the book as mainly concerned with offering excuses for why black Africans and Native Americans never did develop the same degree of sophisticated cultures and advanced technologies as did peoples in Europe and Asian. As Richard Lynn has astutely pointed out, it might actually be necessary to invoke such esoteric excuses (the Native Americans only had corn instead of wheat...they had no horses...Africa did not have any really optimal wild grains...the shapes of American and African continents went north-south instead of east-west...blah blah blah...) if black Africans and Native Americans actually did have average IQs that were similar to those of the peoples who built the more advanced European and Asian civilizations; but in fact all the evidence indicates that black Africans and Native Americans actually have substantially lower average IQs and thus this simple fact alone can much more plausibly explain the differences in cultural attainments and technological achievements. I do not remember anything in Guns, Germs, and Steel specifically about Market Dominant Minority Groups and their IQs, so please Lazar, tell us exactly what Diamond wrote about that topic.

In 1994 in an essay entitled "Jewish lysosomes" (published in Nature) Jared Diamond hypothesized that natural selection for intelligence might be the cause for the extremely high number of mutations involving lysosomal enzyme genes (e.g. Gaucher and Tay-Sachs diseases). Diamond wrote "A second hypothesis is selection in Jews for the intelligence putatively required to survive recurrent persecution, and also to make a living by commerce, because Jews were barred from the agricultural jobs available to the non-Jewish population." So contrary to your vague and unsubstantiated claim, it appears that Jared Diamond actually does believe that it is possible that Jews have undergone genetic selection in order to gain their well known higher average IQs that helps them "to make a living by commerce".

[Elderito]

In the Philippines the majority of people are ethnic Filipinos but interestingly the Han Chinese constitute a small elite market dominant minority who control the vast majority of the wealth within the Philippines (for ref see the book World on Fire by Yale Law prof Amy Chua). In my view, the most likely cause for why certain ethnoracial groups tend to easily assume the role of "Market Dominant Minority Group" is because those groups (e.g. Han-Chinese, Jews, Parsees, High-Caste Indians, etc.) tend to have higher than average innate IQ-type intelligence. It would be interesting to know if the Ibo, a Nigerian people who traditionally dominate the educated professions, tend to have higher IQs than other Bantu peoples.

FFS the Han Chinese are descendants of Chinese merchants who immigrated to the Philippines in order to establish a trading center to trade with the Spanish from South America. They came as merchants, knowledgeable in trade, educated in market principles, to trade manufactured good of relatively high quality for silver from the conquest of South America. The Spanish came across the South Pacific on their famous galleons and did quite well themselves.

Comparing these Chinese descendants of a self selected, adventurous, and educated group with the indigenous Filipinos is ridiculous. In fact it supports the claim that cultural values, not genetics is most important in determining achievement.

What evidence exists to counter my proposition that a group of 100 Bantu children if raised from birth in in high income, professional homes , by educated and loving Jewish parents in New York would not do just as well as the ethnic Jewish children themselves? Using "comparative" IQ tests when cultures vary so much in their valuing of education is silly. Many cultural stereotypes provide great fodder for comedy, especially the chance to laugh at oneself, but some of the stereotypes do represent a bit of the truth about different cultures. If some groups value education more than others why wouldn't they score better on IQ tests without having any demonstrable genetic superiority in cognition?

[Delvo]

I don't recall JD commenting on inordinately successful minority groups at all in either of his two major books on eco-sociology & history. Certainly, it's not something he made a major theme and wrote chapters filling in piles of details about, as he did with his chosen subjects of emphasis. But he could have mentioned it in passing a few times that I'm not recalling right now, especially in an introduction. In GG&S's introduction, he did comment briefly about intelligence, only to say that it's generally either equal or close enough for differences to be hard to find and hard to justify using to explain the differences in different populations' historical outcomes... with a few sentences actually suggesting that intelligence might even be higher in primitive societies than in modern technological ones, but due to cultural factors (like children spending more time with adults instead of other children) rather than genetic ones.

Anyway, the ancient history of the development of agriculture & civilization has nothing to do with intelligence, because environmental factors aren't just "excuses"; they're facts that really do make some places predisposed to host such a transition and other places not so. Even if the local humans' average intelligence did play a part, the fact that they weren't in the same environment makes this kind of comparison simply impossible. And even if it didn't, history would go somewhat against the idea of different races having different levels of intelligence anyway, since, for example, agriculture and civilization started earliest in the Middle East but not at all in other regions that are close by and also occupied by caucasoids just like the Middle East was. (And the Middle East is not currently exactly a hotbed of cultural development and the advancement of human knowledge.)

Worse yet for your argument that historical developments were made in the places they were made in because of the intelligence of the people who lived there, it contradicts the timing of some of the genes that are candidates for possible causes of the geographically-distributed intelligence differences that you seem to be trying to use the historical argument to support (which means both things can't be true/applicable). Some such genes, like ASPM's newer and apparently advantageous version, originated and started their rapid spread throughout the population since the developments you're talking about, not before. So if there's a causal connection at all, it has to work the other way (the environment created by agriculture and civilization could be what made the new version of ASPM advantageous).

[Galtonian]

What evidence exists to counter my proposition that a group of 100 Bantu children if raised from birth in in high income, professional homes , by educated and loving Jewish parents in New York would not do just as well as the ethnic Jewish children themselves? Using "comparative" IQ tests when cultures vary so much in their valuing of education is silly. Many cultural stereotypes provide great fodder for comedy, especially the chance to laugh at oneself, but some of the stereotypes do represent a bit of the truth about different cultures. If some groups value education more than others why wouldn't they score better on IQ tests without having any demonstrable genetic superiority in cognition?

Actually a similar experiment has already been done! Black children, Black-White inter-racial children, and White children were adopted at young ages into upper middle class White homes in Minnesota.

Here are the facts regarding Weinberg and Scarr’s famous Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study:

1) Black children with two black parents (BB cohort) were adopted at a young age (average age at adoption was 2 yr 8 mo) into upper middle class white homes.

2) A mixed-race group of children (BW cohort) were also adopted at a young age (average age at adoption was 9 mo) into upper middle class white homes.

3) White children (WW cohort) were also adopted at a young age (average age at adoption was 1 yr 5 mo) into upper middle class white homes.

4) The biological birth children (Biol cohort) of the upper middle class white adoptive parents were also followed.

IQ testing results (data reported by Waldman, Weinberg and Scarr in 1996 as cited from page 185 of Robert Sternberg’s Handbook of Intelligence):

IQ average at Age 17: BB 83.7, BW 93.2, WW 101.5, Biol 105.5


With the study you propose, I would predict that the biological children of the NY Jews would have higher average IQs at age 17, perhaps at least in the 115 range. Otherwise the results would probably be similar with no significant effect of exposure to the upper class White home environment on raising the black children's IQs as measured at age 17. But I would certainly welcome such a study as you propose, you see the results of well-designed research studies nearly always conform to the predictions of our Galtonian (hereditarian) theory since our theory conforms with hard natural facts rather than conforming merely with liberal egalitarian wishful dreams. I say bring on more studies since they will only serve to prove that I am correct. However, I predict that when the environmental intervention fails to cause a prolonged increase in the black IQs, then as we have seen on many past occasions, in the face of even more proof of the innate ineradicable nature of ethnoracial group IQ differences, you Boasians will be very creative in coming up with ever more exotic excuses and far-fetched theories for why ethnoracial groups continue to invariably show substantially different levels of IQ-type intelligence. In science, the simplest explanation is usualy the correct explanation, this is known as the principle of parsimony or "Occam's Razor". The simplest and most parsimonious explanation for why certain ethnoracial groups always appear to differ in a highly heritable trait such as IQ, is that they simply do possess heritable differences in the trait. This is all the more compellingly obvious when a 50:50 genetic mixture (see BW data above) results in an intermediate midway phenotype (i.e. BW 93.2 is approximately midway between BB 83.7 and WW 101.5).

Elderito, you see most Boasian egalitarians, like yourself, appear to be woefully ignorant of the results of the past twenty years of research in the subfield of developmental cognitive psychology called Behavioral Genetics. In numerous studies these researchers have shown that the home environment effects (what experts call “shared environment” effects) are only important in young children. They find that older adolescents and adults are almost completely unaffected by their past history of exposure to different childhood home environment (i.e. "better" versus "worse" parenting). The research has shown that IQ in adolescents and adults is nearly all determined by heredity and the nonshared environment (the surrounding peer group culture and community environment). The home environment effects that you assume are so important actually have virtually no effect beyond the age of childhood. These facts have been discovered and described by numerous behavioral genetics experts including Sandra Scarr, David Rowe, Tom Bouchard, Nancy Segal, Ian Deary, Steven Petrill, Dorret Boomsma, Nick Martin, and Robert Plomin. Some of this information about the extremely weak influence of parenting (that is "parenting" other than transmitting genes--of course the genes transmission aspect of parenting is very important in determining IQ and other highly heritable mental and physical traits) is discussed in the lay-press book The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris.

[aspire1670]

[ These facts have been discovered and described by numerous behavioral genetics experts psychologists including Sandra Scarr, David Rowe, Tom Bouchard, Nancy Segal, Ian Deary, Dorret Boomsma, Nick Martin, and Robert Plomin.

Fixed that for you. Anyone with the time to check will discover that these psychologists all accept the very strong influence of parenting on IQ. Notice how Galtonian tried to imply the opposite by linking these psychologists to his following statement He's a very naughty boy. Now who do we know who employed similar dodgy tactics. Hmmm.

Some of this information about the extremely weak influence of parenting (that is "parenting" other than transmitting genes--of course the genes transmission aspect of parenting is very important in determining IQ and other highly heritable mental and physical traits) is discussed in the lay-press book The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris.

Anyone with the time can read a review her book here. http://www.psychpage.com/family/library/harris.html. Similar debunkings of her arguments and conclusions may be found by googling.

[Galtonian]

[ These facts have been discovered and described by numerous behavioral genetics experts psychologists including Sandra Scarr, David Rowe, Tom Bouchard, Nancy Segal, Ian Deary, Dorret Boomsma, Nick Martin, and Robert Plomin.

Fixed that for you. Anyone with the time to check will discover that these psychologists all accept the very strong influence of parenting on IQ. Notice how Galtonian tried to imply the opposite by linking these psychologists to his following statement He's a very naughty boy. Now who do we know who employed similar dodgy tactics. Hmmm.

Some of this information about the extremely weak influence of parenting (that is "parenting" other than transmitting genes--of course the genes transmission aspect of parenting is very important in determining IQ and other highly heritable mental and physical traits) is discussed in the lay-press book The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris.

Anyone with the time can read a review her book here. http://www.psychpage.com/family/library/harris.html. Similar debunkings of her arguments and conclusions may be found by googling.

Wow, aspire1670 is either very ignorant or very mendacious, I will be charitable and assume the former.

As I explained, Behavioral Genetics is a subdiscipline of academic psychology, all of the authorities I listed are both academic psychologists and well known experts and researchers in behavioral genetics.

The late David C. Rowe wrote a book The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior

Here are some quotes from some reviews of this book listed on the Amazon site:

"Rowe has exposed the flimsy foundation that underlies our current (mis)understanding of family socialization processes. No matter where you stand on the nature-nurture controversy, you owe it to yourself to grapple with the provocative thesis that is the title of this book. The Limits of Family Influence will revolutionize thinking about how families function--should be required reading for all who seek to understand the psychological development of children." --Matt McGue, Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota [Matt McGue was a protege of Tom Bouchard at U Minn, I am sure that Bouchard would agree with McGue's remarks here]

"David Rowe, in The Limits of Family Influence, argues that 'Socialization Science' (in which he would include a good deal of the activity of sociologists, criminologists, social anthropologists, child developmentalists, and the like) has got itself into serious hot water by attributing to family influence effects that are in fact mostly due to the genes. Not all sociologists, criminologists, etc., will want immediately to shut up shop, but it surely behooves them to find out what it is that Rowe is saying, and on what evidence he is saying it. This energetic and readable book should provide a good place to start towards a fundamental reevaluation of some of the most cherished dogmas of the social sciences." --John C. Loehlin, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin

"David Rowe challenges one of the most deeply held assumptions of our culture--that family rearing differences in the normal range affect the development of personality, psychopathology, and intelligence. He argues from behavioral genetic research, much of which Rowe himself pioneered, that nature (genetics) largely prevails over nurture (family rearing). His message is that the emporer of environmentalism has no clothes. Rowe reviews the weak case for rearing effects in the socialization literature, and contrasts it with genetic research on personality, psychopathology, and intelligence. He shows that genetic influences are important. And so is the enviroment. But the environment works, not on an family-by-family basis, but rather on an individual-by-individual basis. The book is provocative in the best sense of the word. Anyone interested in in children's development must come to grips with Rowe's clarion call about the nature of nurture." --Robert Plomin, Ph.D., Director, Center for Developmental and Health Genetics, Pennsylvania State University

"Do socialization practices influence individual differences? David Rowe argues that they do not. In this provocative and accessible book, he presents the argument in favor of a view, widely shared among contemporary behavior geneticists, that environmental influences shared by individuals reared in the same family have a vanishingly small effect on individual differences in such psychological characteristics as intelligence, personality, and psychopathology. Those who disagree, and I suspect there will be many, should read the book if only to discover why behavior geneticists fail to believe in what Rowe calls 'the myth of family influence.'" --Nathan Brody, Professor of Psychology, Wesleyan University

"Rarely does a scholar come along to shake the very foundation of a large scientific enterprise -- in this case, the multi-million dollar research establishment that studies the alleged effects of family environments on children's development. Research on the ubiquitous correlations between home environments and children's outcomes has simply assumed that differences among homes caused differences among the children, and assumed that the home differences were purely environmental. Rowe challenges both assumptions. He shows that differences among homes are better understood as genetic differences among parents and that differences among children's personalities and intellects are better explained as genetic differences transmitted by parents. The theory and research in this given book will be hard for many psychologists to swallow, given their exclusive diet of naive environmentalism. But, I assure them, it will be good for their intellectual health, and may even help them to produce more nutritious research fare in the future." --Sandra Scarr, Ph.D., Commonwealth Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia, Department of Psychology

"The Limits of Family Influence is a thorough and provocative critique of the vast majority of research that seeks to 'understand how children acquire traits from their families and cultures' (p.1). By arguing that most studies of family influence on behaviors and outcomes are fundamentally flawed, this book is sure to challenge the research orientations and convictions of a large and diverse group of social scientist. I would strongly encourage sociologists who study the family to give serious consideration to Rowe's contention that family socialization experiences have few direct effects on important individual outcomes relative to hereditary and nonfamily environmental factors." --Contemporary Sociology

"....Exciting and provocative....Rowe has compiled a wide range of behavior genetic studies into an argument that childrearing has little effect on children's individual differences in intelligence, personality, and psychopathology. The argument is persuasive, and will present a serious challenge to those who assume the primacy of the family in children's development....The book is well written, with many useful and sometimes piquant anecdotes and illustrations woven in and out of the data and the argument. Although the argument is a challenging one, the tone is affable....The contents of the book will make many people outraged--all to the good....An excellent selection for a graduate level or upper-level undergraduate course on the family, included alongside family texts that present the assumptions more typical of the field. Even for readers well versed in behavior genetics, this book will provide a handy reference and be an enjoyable read." --Family Relations

"A thorough and provocative critique of the vast majority of research that seeks to 'understand how children acquire traits from their families and cultures.' By arguing that most studies of family influence on behaviors and outcomes are fundamentally flawed, this book is sure to challenge the research orientations and convictions of a large and diverse group of social scientists. I would strongly encourage sociologists who study the family to give serious consideration to Rowe's contention that family socialization experiences have few direct effects on important individual outcomes relative to hereditary and nonfamilial environmental factors." --Contemporary Sociology

"....challenges many long-held assumptions about socialization....Rowe begins his assault on the bulk of social science research by identifying weaknesses in the psychological theories that undergirded many research efforts--namely, Freudianism, early behaviorism, and social learning theory. He then carefully sets out the behavior genetics research paradigm. The chapter, 'Separating Nature and Nurture,' is probably as lucid a treatment of this paradigm as can be found anywhere....does an excellent job of explicating the behavior geneticist's position on environmental influences...."
--Journal of Marriage and the Family

Amazon's description of the book and chapter titles:

Challenging firmly established assumptions about the influence of child rearing on the development of children's personalities and intelligence, this book contends that there has been too heavy an emphasis on the family as the bearer of culture. It draws from behavior genetic research to reveal how environmental variables such as social class, parental warmth, and one- versus two-parent households may be empty of causal influence on child outcomes.The book examines the theoretical basis of socialization science and describes, in great detail, what behavior genetic studies can teach us about environmental influence.

1. The Primacy of Child Rearing in Socialization Theory 2. Separating Nature and Nurture 3. As the Twig is Bent?: Families and Personality 4. Limited Rearing Effects on Intelligence (IQ) 5. Uniting Nature and Nurture: The Genetics of Environmental Measures 6. Gender Differences 7. Why Families Have Little Influence Index

[aspire1670]

Wow, aspire1670 is either very ignorant or very mendacious, I will be charitable and assume the former.

As I explained, Behavioral Genetics is a subdiscipline of academic psychology, all of the authorities I listed are both academic psychologists and well known experts and researchers in behavioral genetics.

Mendacious, what would a pukka behavioural geneticist attribute as the origin of that suggestion, I wonder?

Thanks for ignoring my exposure of your dodgy association of the work of your listed psychologists with your pet HBDer. (HBD [Human Biodiversity] is apparently and unsurprisingly the preferred acronym of those who insist on race based explanations of IQ difference these days) Thanks also for your very kind offer but I don't need your charity. I do you need you to stop conflating psychology with genetics and cherry picking from your favourite HBDists. David C. Rowe? Behavioural genetics is the field of biology that studies the role of genetics in animal (including human) behaviour. Often associated with idea of "Nature versus nurture" the scientific field is an overlap of genetics, ethology, and psychology. (Note behavioural genetics is a scientific field of biology which overlaps psychology it is not and never has been a sub discipline of psychology. Although I understand perfectly why you need to misrepresent it as such.)

Classically, behavioural geneticists have studied the inheritance of behavioural traits, often using the twin study or adoption study as a tool in humans, or breeding in animal genetics. While animal breeding involves genetics, and much of the material covered in behavior gentics has been realised as needing, at least in part, genetic explanations since the founding of Evolution as a field, Behavior Genetics per-sé is generally considered to have been established with the publication in 1960 of Fuller and Thompson's text Behavior Genetics (Wiley, New York). Scientists in this field include David Fulker. Relevant journals include Genes, Brain and Behavior, Twin Research and Human Genetics, and Behavior Genetics. Cognate journals include outlets such as Molecular Psychiatry in psychiatric genetics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_genetics

The late David C. Rowe wrote a book The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior


David C. who? Has he published in any of the above journals or is he yet another of your cherry picked authors?

[hotshoe]

The late David C. Rowe wrote a book The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior

Here are some quotes from some reviews of this book listed on the Amazon site:

"Rowe has exposed the flimsy foundation that underlies our current (mis)understanding of family socialization processes. No matter where you stand on the nature-nurture controversy, you owe it to yourself to grapple with the provocative thesis that is the title of this book. The Limits of Family Influence will revolutionize thinking about how families function--should be required reading for all who seek to understand the psychological development of children." --Matt McGue, Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota [Matt McGue was a protege of Tom Bouchard at U Minn, I am sure that Bouchard would agree with McGue's remarks here]
<snip etc. etc. >

Wow, argument from Amazon book review.


I must say, that's very persuasive.

[Galtonian]

@aspire1670,

I suspect you are not very familiar with the field of Behavioral Genetics. You appear to be a British person who wants to debate me on issues of behavioral genetics, yet you do not even realize that Robert Plomin is a highly prominent behavioral geneticist working in London (for several years now Plomin has been head of a major behavioral genetics institute at King's College and he is the leading behavioral genetics authority in the UK, furthermore Plomin is the lead author on the major modern introductory textbook of behavioral genetics, now in its fifth edition). Boomsma is considered one of Europe's most distinguished behavior geneticists. The people I listed have probably published more papers in the journals that you listed (and I suspect have been more frequently represented on the editorial boards of those journals) than anyone else in the world.

As I explained, Behavioral Genetics is a subdiscipline of academic psychology, all of the authorities I listed are both academic psychologists and well known experts and researchers in behavioral genetics.

You did not know who David C. Rowe was. Here are references to some of his papers related to behavioral genetics:

1: Rowe DC. Do people make environments or do environments make people? Ann N Y
Acad Sci. 2001 May;935:62-74. PubMed PMID: 11411176.

2: Rowe DC. The nurture assumption persists. Am Psychol. 2001 Feb;56(2):168-9.
PubMed PMID: 11279807.

3: Neiss M, Rowe DC. Parental education and child's verbal IQ in adoptive and
biological families in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
Behav Genet. 2000 Nov;30(6):487-95. PubMed PMID: 11523707.

4: Rowe DC, Stever C, Giedinghagen LN, Gard JM, Cleveland HH, Terris ST, Mohr JH,
Sherman S, Abramowitz A, Waldman ID. Dopamine DRD4 receptor polymorphism and
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Mol Psychiatry. 1998 Sep;3(5):419-26.
PubMed PMID: 9774775.

5: Jacobson KC, Rowe DC. Genetic and shared environmental influences on
adolescent BMI: interactions with race and sex. Behav Genet. 1998
Jul;28(4):265-78. PubMed PMID: 9803019.

6: Rowe DC, Stever C, Gard JM, Cleveland HH, Sanders ML, Abramowitz A, Kozol ST,
Mohr JH, Sherman SL, Waldman ID. The relation of the dopamine transporter gene
(DAT1) to symptoms of internalizing disorders in children. Behav Genet. 1998
May;28(3):215-25. PubMed PMID: 9670597.

7: van den Oord EJ, Rowe DC. Effects of censored variables on family studies.
Behav Genet. 1997 Mar;27(2):99-112. PubMed PMID: 9145548.

8: Rowe DC, Clapp M, Wallis J. Physical attractiveness and the personality
resemblance of identical twins. Behav Genet. 1987 Mar;17(2):191-201. PubMed PMID:
3606540.

9: Rowe DC. Biometrical genetic models of self-reported delinquent behavior: a
twin study. Behav Genet. 1983 Sep;13(5):473-89. PubMed PMID: 6686763.

10: Rowe DC. A biometrical analysis of perceptions of family environment: a study
of twin and singleton sibling kinships. Child Dev. 1983 Apr;54(2):416-23. PubMed
PMID: 6683621.

11: Rowe DC, Plomin R. A multivariate twin analysis of within-family
environmental influences in infants' social responsiveness. Behav Genet. 1979
Nov;9(6):519-25. PubMed PMID: 263637.

Now as to the HBDers on my list of behavioral geneticists (and I gather you mean people who think that IQ, genes and race are integrally linked), David Rowe was an HBDer and possibly also Bouchard and Scarr, but most of the others have remained rather coy about their beliefs on that issue. To my knowledge, the author Judith Rich Harris has never endorsed the IQ, genes and race connection theory.