Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo

[Galtonian]

Lazar wrote:

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.

Actually Liberalbiorealist was addressing many of these points when he was unjustly banned by Darkchilde. He pointed out that the racial groups were not "arbitrarily defined" but rather they reflect geographic ancestry (whites = people mainly descended from people who lived in Central Asia and Europe during the past 30 to 50 thousand years, and blacks = people mainly descended from people who lived in sub-Saharan Africa during the same timespan). Liberalbiorealist also directly addressed the SES issue by pointing to data showing that black students from high-SES homes still have cognitive test scores that are lower than white students from low-SES homes. This result is readily explainable by hereditarian theory (involves genetic population differences and regression to the population mean which is a well known phenomenon in population genetics) but is a big problem for environmental theory. LiberalBiorealist's arguments apparently were too much for you environmentalists (including Darkchilde) to handle, you were unable to counter his arguments in a reasoned fact-based intellectually rigorous manner. Instead it was much easier for Darkchilde to call him names ("racist bigot" [but of course she does not provide any quotes or specific points to substantiate this baseless charge]) and slam the door on him (this of course is acting in classic ad hominem attack mode, not really very convincing to any intellectually astute observer).

And as to the "race does not exist" subterfuge that some of you environmentalists want to cling to, why is it that the world's biggest human population-genetics research project (the HapMap project) uses racial categories to delineate the human population groups whose many genetic differences they are carefully cataloging? (see HapMap categories listed below)

[Hints for those of you who do not grasp that these HapMap codes listed below actually designate racial categories: white = CEU + TSI, black = ASW + LWK + MKK + YRI, Hispanic = MEX, East Asian = CHB + CHD + JPT, and South Asian (Indian) = GIH.]

Population descriptors:
ASW (A): African ancestry in Southwest USA
CEU (C): Utah residents with Northern and Western European ancestry from the CEPH collection
CHB (H): Han Chinese in Beijing, China
CHD (D): Chinese in Metropolitan Denver, Colorado
GIH (G): Gujarati Indians in Houston, Texas
JPT (J): Japanese in Tokyo, Japan
LWK (L): Luhya in Webuye, Kenya
MEX (M): Mexican ancestry in Los Angeles, California
MKK (K): Maasai in Kinyawa, Kenya
TSI (T): Toscans in Italy
YRI (Y): Yoruba in Ibadan, Nigeria

[Lazar]

Something smells socky

[aspire1670]

As director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, Tom Hudson helped put HapMap on the road to completion. Here is how he words his rejection of the misrepresentations put forward by the likes of Galtonian. “There is no such thing as race—there’s no boundary in genomics to show that one population is different from another,” he emphasizes. "If anything, the HapMap results go a long way to dispelling myths about human populations, proving that our differences are even less than theorized. The research shows that, genetically, humankind is one big family."

Read it and weep, Galtonian.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:jm ... ent=safari

[Lazar]

As director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, Tom Hudson helped put HapMap on the road to completion. Here is how he words his rejection of the misrepresentations put forward by the likes of Galtonian. “There is no such thing as race—there’s no boundary in genomics to show that one population is different from another,” he emphasizes. "If anything, the HapMap results go a long way to dispelling myths about human populations, proving that our differences are even less than theorized. The research shows that, genetically, humankind is one big family."

Read it and weep, Galtonian.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:jm ... ent=safari

thanks for the link.

[RaspK]

As director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, Tom Hudson helped put HapMap on the road to completion. Here is how he words his rejection of the misrepresentations put forward by the likes of Galtonian. “There is no such thing as race—there’s no boundary in genomics to show that one population is different from another,” he emphasizes. "If anything, the HapMap results go a long way to dispelling myths about human populations, proving that our differences are even less than theorized. The research shows that, genetically, humankind is one big family."

Read it and weep, Galtonian.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:jm ... ent=safari

thanks for the link.

[Topsy]

As director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, Tom Hudson helped put HapMap on the road to completion. Here is how he words his rejection of the misrepresentations put forward by the likes of Galtonian. “There is no such thing as race—there’s no boundary in genomics to show that one population is different from another,” he emphasizes. "If anything, the HapMap results go a long way to dispelling myths about human populations, proving that our differences are even less than theorized. The research shows that, genetically, humankind is one big family."

Read it and weep, Galtonian.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:jm ... ent=safari

Thanks for the link.

In some ways, the HapMap is already being misused—or at least misrepresented—by organizations with their own agenda. “My colleagues have been quoted in articles that are trying to justify racism. Hate groups do exist in this world, and I didn’t realize that before I saw some of these websites,” says Hudson.

For those who are unhappy with this forum banning people for racist bigotry, you need to understand that RD.net won't be used as a platform to promote a racist agenda. Anyone who joins this forum solely (or mainly) to post that blacks are less intelligent than whites, clearly has an agenda and intends to use this forum to promote it. 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. However, if the thread becomes overwhelmed by racist bigotry, it's likely to be locked (but not before full staff discussion and agreement).

[paddy_rice]

Unlucky, Galtonian. Better luck next time. Sockpuppet, perhaps?

[Madmaili]

Why do these threads always get interesting when I'm not online?

[paddy_rice]

Why do these threads always get interesting when I'm not online?

I'm saying nothing.

[Delvo]

“There is no such thing as race—there’s no boundary in genomics to show that one population is different from another,” he emphasizes.

He's lying about the meaning of the word "race", which does not require "boundaries". The nature of this particular lie is identical to the Creationist one about "kinds": pretending that the opposition's position somehow has hard boundaries to cross, which it does not. Evolution in general doesn't work that way, and neither would this particular potential example of evolution, any more than the rest of it ever has.

Denying the existence of intelligence differences between races, or especially that such differences are biologically inherited, is one thing, and denying the existence of human race is another. The former can be done honestly because there really is a mess of data and potential factors to untangle. The latter can not be done without simply lying. The only question is which lie these people will drag out for any given occasion.

I don't get why they keep doing that. Race is undeniable. You CAN'T seriously look at me and a certain co-worker I have in mind and be unable to tell what parts of the world most of our ancestors lived in, or think that culture somehow made our features the way they are. And you KNOW that there's no more to it than that, even when people like the guy in the above quote pretend otherwise. People saying patently silly stuff like that quote are putting themselves in the same position as someone who claims that grass is purple with orange stripes.

Stick to arguing that although races are obviously and undeniably distinguished in some ways, intelligence isn't one of them. At least there's a real case to make there.