Where Blacks, Whites and Orientals Fall on Various Traits

Yeah somehow the "cultural achievements" values don't strike me as being purely objective :P (among other problems)

Yuck. Rushton and I had a few clashes back when I went to college (he taught at the university in the same city)...he tried to explain my anger at his racism by invoking my "Irish temper" (because I have red-hair, that was all he needed to deduce my argument apparently). He's a bit of a local racist nuisance in the city of London, Ontario, but he has tenure (or had it 10 years ago when I was in his vicinity) so the University of Western Ontario couldn't (or wouldn't) touch him.

When his house caught fire he ran inside to save his portrait of Adolf Hitler...made all the local papers.

Legendary terribleness. He appears in one of my textbooks under the heading "Racism in Canada"

Red heads need more sedation, I've heard, when undergoing surgery. So seems there might be some truth to some sort of correlation between red heads and temper. Not that I'd want to anger you, of course. Just saying.

Such perfection! Lined up on every imaginable attribute.

@Colin: Red heads feel more physical pain, and are generally more resistant to sedatives, hypnotics and narcotics. But it is unrelated to behavior. Instead, we lack a certain enzyme that non-red-headed people have....or as we like to call them, "Normies" ;)

Wow... just wow!

But hey, let's be fair... he might not be racist at all. After all Bryan--stop calling me Doctor--Pesta spent a whole hour with the man, and during that quality time they apparently did not attend any White Supremacist meetings and stuff... so, there's that.

Interesting the inexistent cuantification of almost all the traits.

Egads, that's as bad as Morton's attempts to measure crainal capacity with mustard seeds.

Fortunately, I've read The Mismeasure of Man, so I'm well innoculated against this type of "science."

"Orientals"? Leave it to racists to haplessly dredge up terms like that.

I am basically confused how scientists like Rushton, and activists like Sailer, can be warmly invited to participate in collegial activities, and, indeed, even invited to use "well-respected" fora to promulgate ideologically driven, racialist speech. I'm emphatically not referring to peer-reviewed scientific or professional journals, but, rather, publications like major newspapers, magazines, etc.

WTF?

What? No measurements for Height? Basketball Skills? Malt Liquor and Watermelon Consumption? Likelihood of Singing Spirituals? Frequency of Raping White Women? Natural Rhythm? Average Number of Cars Up on Blocks in Driveway? Desire to 'Bust a Cap on Yo Ass'?

Maybe that was all on Chart 2. Or else he's still gathering data, with the same meticulous care that went into THIS chart.

Instead of "frequency of raping white women", it would "ideally" be "frequency of interracial raping", with the emerging racial-realistic disparity of rape against white women by blacks and latinos, compared with rape on black and latin women by white men rarer. Which obviously is due to a biological tendency to the K reproductive strategy on whites, whereas for blacks and latinos it's more r. And it could have some smart and dramatic remark on how "r" of "r reproductive strategy" is the first letter of "rape".

Do whites consume more watermelon than 'orientals'?

As an aside, I recently told my mother (who is 65 years old) that 'Asian' was a preferable term to "oriental" with regard to people (oriental = still fine for rugs). She said she could handle that. But I realized, I really have no idea why oriental was deemed objectionable. Obviously, I'm pretty convinced I shouldn't use it for people, but... why?

I find the Hitler portrait story rather funny.

If I learned something from Pokémon, it is that red headed girls (such as Misty) can have a fiery temper, but she is mostly tsundere. But Misty is soo kawaii because of that.

BTW, what do you think of "human biodiversity?" In that context, I mean type of human biodiversity promoted on Steve Sailer, GNXP, and Half Sigma's blog.

@Epinephrine:

Having read SJ Gould is not much of a vaccination against current research in human evolution. Gould says that Morton put his thumb on the scale, spilled mustard seed on the ground, and so on, apparently making it up. You should read this

@article{1988,
title = {A New Look at Morton's Craniological Research},
author = {Michael, John S.},
journal = {Current Anthropology},
volume = {29},
number = {2},
pages = {349--354},
year = {1988},
publisher = { University of Chicago Press}
}

Gould is apparently the confused one. Speaking of Gould, here is Paul Krugman on Gould:

"I have tried, in preparation for this talk, to read some evolutionary economics, and was particularly curious about what biologists people reference. What I encountered were quite a few references to Stephen Jay Gould, hardly any to other evolutionary theorists.

Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is beloved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon.

Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about â not just the answers, but even the questions â are consistently misleading. His impressive literary and historical erudition makes his work seem profound to most readers, but informed readers eventually conclude that there's no there there."

Von

So I've been thinking 19th C, maybe a Spencer student...so I had to look it up. Holy cr@p. 1995!

I've heard that racial distinctions can be a sensitive matter. But who calls anyone "oriental"?

I think the problem with terms like "Oriental" is that they eventually become so loaded with negative baggage from racism that they become hurtful, when when they were initially fairly neutral. They have to be rejected so that the people they describe can stand on their own without the social stigma of loaded terminology.

For an example of the process in action, few people besides anti-gay activists use the term "homosexual" to refer to persons anymore; in fact, if someone refers to "homosexuals" in their writing, you can be pretty sure what direction they are going to take. Originally, though, this was a plainly descriptive term, as the word "homosexuality" remains.

Becca: Orientalism. Here's a link that can get you started on that:

http://www.exhibitresearch.com/kevin/anthro/orient.html

It is a little like shrew. When i hear "Oriental" I see in my mind old racist movies and I hear in my mind old racist jokes about chinese launderers, etc. But if one does not know why "oriental" is on the list of words to not say it is hard to relate to why to not say it.

By the way, some of the most ardent anti-orientalists come from the University of Chicago. Which is very funny ... considering.

Looking up on Wikipedia (plus a few Google result links) it seems that "Oriental" was/is used to describe anything from countries to the east of Europe. In the beginning it referred to places like the Middle East (apparently), but the references kept changing as more countries to the east became known up until it hit East Asia (China, Korea, Japan, etc.).

I'm guessing since what is/was considered "Oriental" kept changing (and especially since some terms(*) retained the past references), it got deemed offensive by people because it lumped together various (decidedly non-European) cultures together under one misleading label. At least with "Asia" or "Southeast Asia" or "Western Asia"(**), it's clear we're referring to actual regions.

Also, think of how weird it is that Australia is even more to the east than East Asia, but was never considered oriental in the slightest.

Disclaimer: My knowledge is based purely on what I skimmed from the web. My primary experience with the term "oriental" is "Oriental Flavor Top Ramen."

(*) Anyone see any Oriental rugs being handwoven in Japan?
(**) "Western Asia" is apparently the more politically correct way to reference the "Near East" and "Middle East" regions, due to the latter terms being too Euro-centric. Hmm, I learned something there.

Heh. I'm still grappling with the apparent necessity of changing Koran to Qur'an and Peking to Beijing.

Both changes just seem dopey to me - sort of like Prince changing his name to that symbol thingie, and the witless boobs of the entertainment media going along with it. Watching it was like seeing a mouse swing an elephant by the tail.

I have to expose the depth of my geekitude now. Bear with me.

Okay, you know how in RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, where there are multiple races including humans, how the humans seem to have the baseline, average, attributes (e.g. all 9's out of 18 in every category), while other races have modifiers to specific traits (dwarves get +3 to strength, for instance, but -4 to intelligence)? That's what I envision Rushton to be doing here. Pure and simple. Every line smacks of fabrication.

I know the plural of anecdote is not data and all that, but I have yet to find an actual individual from eastern Asia who finds the term "oriental" offensive, and I have heard it used quite extensively as a self-referential term. There are plenty of anti-Asian racial slurs, but I don't think oriental belongs in the list.

And the "watermelon consumption" variable would seriously screw up the chart. I don't think any American ethnic group can hold a candle to SE Asians in watermelon consumption.

*shudder*

I'm still wondering where Steve Martin would fit in his study.

If anyone has a serious interest in the concept of Orientalism I recommend the book "Orientalism" by Edward Said.

The term "orient" simply means "east," while "occident" means west. Which all depends on where you are.

By all means read E.S., but the link I give above is quicker.

@Hank Fox: I don't know about the Qu'ran change but changing from Peking to Beijing was a move prompted by the Chinese and their standardization of how Mandarin is to be Romanized. They adopted Pinyin and if you ever studied Chinese you'll realized that Pinyin is much easier to use than the previous system that gave us "Peking". How an American would say "Peking" is nowhere close to how it sounds in Mandarin. Beijing is much, much closer. China did allow "Peking" to stay when talking about "Peking Duck" and the "Peking Opera".

I found the special abridged version online and read it.

The tone reminds me of Fred Phelps. Ready to twist any data to fit his agenda.

One year, about the same time that the American Anthropologist Association came out with their revised and updated statement on "race," Rusnton (it might have been him through the Bradley Foundation or visa versa, can't remember) purchased the AAA's member distributoin list (a standard thing for publishers to do) and every single member got a free copy of the book.

And another. And another. And another. And another.

Rushton and Jensen include this table in their 2005 paper (30 years of research on race differences...).

The table now reads "East Asians"

page 265

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

Also known as the "Straw man paper"

Nice of him to fix that one label, though.

Wow!Don't the other 'races' have ANY 'undesirable' qualities...looks just a wee bit racist to me. No, I take it back, this is incredibly racist...and in the 1990s, ouch, I would have placed it in the 1950s! I can show that to all of the people who insist, to me, that racism no longer exists.

Interesting.

One thing I've never been able to understand. If larger brains correlate with greater intelligence, and if, according to this table, Whites have larger brains, how do we explain the election of George W. Bush -- a candidate with a constituency composed mostly of White Americans?

And then there's that whole Christian thing. Methinks Mr. Rushton needs to go back and review the raw data.

As an American of Mongolian descent (hence Asian), I was unaware that "Oriental" was offensive until an episode of LA Law, in which Corbin Bernsen's character was scolded for using it (in the "DWO" sense). I never liked Mongoloid, of course, but Oriental never seemed malign to me.

"Asian," of course, does seem more logical and sensible, so I'm OK with that.

As an aside, a fellow math teacher recently called me a "slope," making a joking reference to "rise over run," a topic our classes were in the middle of. I am convinced that she was (and still is) unaware of its pejorative nature, as were several people to whom I have told the story. Of course, my ex-Marine friend, who was stationed in SE Asia for a while, found the story very funny.

Ugh, this jackass again. We spend about 3 weeks looking at various aspects of scientific racism in my anthropological genetics class. Rushton always gets the conversation started, and what is surprising to me is how (perhaps thankfully) ignorant the students are of this type of research. They are aware of overt racism (e.g., KKK) and on-the-ground racism (e.g., bathroom graffiti) but not aware that racism is also practiced by folks with Ph.D.s from respected schools, such as Rushton.

"Law abindingness"...so laughable; he obviously means "petty crimes" otherwise he'd have to include lots of white folks and a few "orientals" for committing genocide and/or organized terrorism, such as Pol Pot, Hitler, various folks in the I.R.A., a few U.S. presidents (from both parties), Serbs, etc. And of course his major problem is that a priori he assumes that there are three and only three groups of people that comprises the human races...what a tired thesis.

"Higher", "lower", "shorter", "longer" - those are all pretty vague terms - I wonder what the actual numbers look like? Plus, how exactly do you measure things like "cautiousness" and "sociability"? I assume that if there were tests they tested something more specific than that.

Plus, how do they define "blacks"? Does it refer to people with any known sub-Saharan African ancestry (the old "one drop rule") or 50% or more of the same ancestry, or what? Similar questions apply to "whites" and "Orientals".

Apart from all of the vagueness, trying to study people by "races" has such a negative and self-serving history that I can understand why people are very sceptical of any claims along these lines.

Finally, haven't studies of actual human genetic patterns found that most genetic variation does not correspond at all to traditional "race" classifications? It seems that ideas about race are based mostly on variations in skin color and bone structure. These two traits by themselves don't have any larger significance, but because most people are very visually oriented, they tend to stand out more than other variable traits, so people have been inclined to greatly inflate their significance in separating different groups of people.

@37
"Higher", "lower", "shorter", "longer" - those are all pretty vague terms - I wonder what the actual numbers look like?

Here is an example on one of the more controversial examples, brain size. A systematic study of over one thousand autopsy records showed the following statistics. (See Ho et al (1980), 'Analysis of Brain Weight: I and II,' Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, 104, 635-645. This is not just a study made up by Rushton, in fact it was done by people completely unrelated to him and years before he published Race, Evolution and Behavior.)

White men, N=416, average brain weight 1,392gm (standard deviation 130)
Black men, N=228, average brain weight 1,286gm (standard deviation 138)
White women, N=395, average brain weight 1,252gm (standard deviation 125)
Black women, N=222, average brain weight 1,158gm (standard deviation 119)

So as you can see, whatever the sex, black brains weight pretty much 100gm less than white brains on average, or 7%-9% less. That translates into millions of neurons of difference, and the difference is even more impressive when you see it's about 3/4 standard deviations. To put it a more familiar way, this is a similar order of difference to the male/female brain weight difference or the black/white IQ gap in America.

And yet women aren't less smart than men. Hmmm.

@39

And yet women aren't less smart than men. Hmmm.

This may be wrong. In the past, studies have sometimes indicated IQ or g differences between men and women, and sometimes shown equality between the sexes. This inconsistency is probably because of problems with the way the studies were run (bad sampling, calculating IQ only not g, testing children not adults, etc), and newer studies with more rigorous methods point to a male advantage in g of about 0.3 or 0.4 standard deviations. This is a smaller difference than the race difference or the brain size difference, which is why it was harder to detect. Still, it seems to be there, so as far as g measures intelligence, it means women are - only on average of course - less intelligent than men.

This is based on Helmuth Nyborg's chapter 'Sex differences in g' from the book The scientific study of general intelligence (2002).

Also, a g difference is only a difference in the general intelligence factor. If I remember the research right, women are still superior in specific abilities like emotional intelligence and vocabulary, and men tend to be better with spatial rotations.

No, a g difference is only a difference in the correlation between tests.

MrGoodAdvice, I couldn't access the Ho et al., study online (via an academic library); do you have a copy of these studies that you can email me: lawlerrr@yahoo.com

The fact that IQ differences do not differ between males and females seems to undermine this brain-size/race finding (even though, from what I understand, some IQ tests are corrected for sex differences). It's also unclear to me if brain size correlates strongly with intelligence...the correlations are usually positive but often around 0.1 to 0.4 and some are not statistically significant. That's not terribly strong in my opinion.

@42

No, a g difference is only a difference in the correlation between tests.

When I write 'g difference' I just mean different groups have different average scores on the g factor picked out by aggregating lots of subtests. As far as I know this is a standard shorthand in the literature.

@43

MrGoodAdvice, I couldn't access the Ho et al., study online (via an academic library); do you have a copy of these studies that you can email me: lawlerrr@yahoo.com

Unfortunately I don't have the whole study. I looked it up at the library back during the Jim Watson outrage, and only photocopied the pages from it with the actual stats and where the sample is described. Still, to prove I'm not bullshitting you and so everyone here can check that I'm not lying about the numbers, I have scanned those photocopies and uploaded them. Here's page 635 and page 636.

The fact that IQ differences do not differ between males and females seems to undermine this brain-size/race finding (even though, from what I understand, some IQ tests are corrected for sex differences).

If you mean that males and females have equal IQs, this depends on how the test is built and isn't a robust result. More sophisticated methods that look at test batteries detect a g difference.

Greg, thanks for showing us so graphically how ridiculous Rushton's ideas are. But, the mystery is - how on earth can he show his face in academia with any credibility at all?

I can understand this spurious spewage of spittle being swallowed by uncritical people happy to legitimise their racism any way they can. But surely this medieval misbegotten muck would not hoodwink anyone with scholarly credentials and training?

@39

And yet women aren't less smart than men. Hmmm.

This may be wrong. In the past, studies have sometimes indicated IQ or g differences between men and women, and sometimes shown equality between the sexes. This inconsistency is probably because of problems with the way the studies were run (bad sampling, calculating IQ only not g, testing children not adults, etc), and newer studies with more rigorous methods point to a male advantage in g of about 0.3 or 0.4 standard deviations. This is a smaller difference than the race difference or the brain size difference, which is why it was harder to detect. Still, it seems to be there, so as far as g measures intelligence, it means women are - only on average of course - less intelligent than men.

This is based on Helmuth Nyborg's chapter 'Sex differences in g' from the book The scientific study of general intelligence (2002).

Go figure, I have a paper on this. Using a paper and pencil test to measure sex differences in IQ is ironic, as these tests are made on purpose to show no sex difference (the point of my article). If any one item on an IQ test shows a sex difference, it's tossed.

By definition, then, IQ scores can't vary by sex.

But, ECT scores can and do...

The difference, if it really exists, is very small (3 iq points) but could still partially explain over or under representations by sex in various professions.

At the US State level, mean temperature correlates -.74 (a huge value in social science) with State IQ.

Sorry, but ... a person who can say this:

The difference, if it really exists, is very small (3 iq points) but could still partially explain over or under representations by sex in various professions.

lives in a very very very isolated cave.

Very isolated. Cave. Holy crap.

At the US State level, mean temperature correlates -.74 (a huge value in social science) with State IQ.

And in Rushton's oringally published sample set of IQ's (across three "races"), the year of data collection explains about a fourth (IIRC) of the variance in IQ data across samples.

Life is a bowl of cherry's, Bryan.

@Hank Fox: A mouse swinging an elephant by the tail? I'll pay to see that! I won't waste time and effort with name changes though - Mumbai/Bombay, Burma/Myanmar, Peking/Beijing - in fact in many places I've been even the locals don't care much about name changes. In some places I've seen signs for places which haven't officially had that name for over a century. I'm OK with name changes if some foreign invader corrupted a name though; there are places in China which have/had English names which bear no resemblance to the historic names.

Scotlyn said "Greg, thanks for showing us so graphically how ridiculous Rushton's ideas are."

I too appreciate the post but I don't get the "graphically" and "ridiculous" parts--seems to me like a simple summary of the way the world is, like it or not.

Von

@47

At the US State level, mean temperature correlates -.74 (a huge value in social science) with State IQ.

That correlation might be partly confounded if there are disproportionally more blacks living in the South and Southern states are warmer, because blacks are a low IQ minority in America.

Vonagan, I am allowing your absurd over the top remarks out of personal respect and colleagueship and our intertwined professional history and all, but either uncloak yourself and get serious or take it down a notch, please.

Jeesh...

(And to think, I almost said something nice and positive about your recent book yesterday in a comment! I still might. We;ll see if it comes up again)

Yuck. Rushton and I had a few clashes back when I went to college (he taught at the university in the same city)...he tried to explain my anger at his racism by invoking my "Irish temper" (because I have red-hair, that was all he needed to deduce my argument apparently). He's a bit of a local racist nuisance in the city of London, Ontario, but he has tenure (or had it 10 years ago when I was in his vicinity) so the University of Western Ontario couldn't (or wouldn't) touch him.

When his house caught fire he ran inside to save his portrait of Adolf Hitler...made all the local papers.

Legendary terribleness. He appears in one of my textbooks under the heading "Racism in Canada"

Any way you can dig up the news story on this? I would sincerely appreciate it.

Here's a comment from Rushton:

TV coverage of my theories juxtaposed photos of me with footage of Nazi storm troops. Editing and voiceovers removed any mention of my qualification that the race differences I had identified were often quite small and could not be generalized to individuals and didn't mention that like any decent human being I abhor Nazi racial policies. Newspapers caricatured me as wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood or talking on the telephone to a delighted Adolf Hitler. The Toronto Star began a campaign to get me fired from my position, chastising my university and stating "This protection of a charlatan on grounds of academic freedom is preposterous." Later, the same paper linked me to the Holocaust saying, "[Thus] there emerged the perverted 'master race' psychology of the 20th century, and the horror of the Holocaust. Oddly, the discredited theories of eugenic racism still are heard, most recently from an academic at an Ontario university." I had no choice but to hire a prestigious law firm and issue notices under the Libel and Slander Act against the newspaper. This brought the media campaign against me to a halt.

If it's true, I will re-think my position on him. If it's not true, I think Greg should delete it.

Thanks sincerely for any link you can provide.

B

Sorry, but ... a person who can say this:

The difference, if it really exists, is very small (3 iq points) but could still partially explain over or under representations by sex in various professions.

lives in a very very very isolated cave.

Very isolated. Cave. Holy crap.

Greg: Stats 101-- have you ever had it?

Imagine two bell curves, both with a SD of 15 and means of 100 and 103, respectively.

Suppose it's a height distribution so we don't even have to discuss IQ.

Go to z = 4.0 (individual scores of 160 and 163, respectively.

Do you want me to whip out a z table and show you how under-represented the 100 group would be relative to the 103?

You are QED wrong here statistically, but I suspect won't admit it.

@47

At the US State level, mean temperature correlates -.74 (a huge value in social science) with State IQ.

That correlation might be partly confounded if there are disproportionally more blacks living in the South and Southern states are warmer, because blacks are a low IQ minority in America.

***

An empirical question! I just ran it, and you're only slightly correct.

The correlation between mean temp and state IQ when partialing out the % of blacks within states is r (45)= -.58.

Still pretty strong.

I agree there's confounds here, as I don't see temperature causing much.

Rut Row

Von's stuff is gonna get deleted!

Bryan, I was not talking about the statistics, you idiot.

The problem is you guys are so blank slate you have a universal quantifier in your world view that's falsified with one white crow. Try some existential ones if you want to be in the same colored-sky world as most adults.

Ask you wife, Bryan, if she thinks society has provided men and women with identical bits of chalk to write on their fucking blank slate with.

@56

The correlation between mean temp and state IQ when partialing out the % of blacks within states is r (45)= -.58.

Still pretty strong.

I agree there's confounds here, as I don't see temperature causing much.

Ditto. I'm a little surprised black population %age only explains a fifth of the correlation, but facts are facts...

Ditto. I'm a little surprised black population %age only explains a fifth of the correlation, but facts are facts...

Why would that be a surprise? It certainly is not what data doctoring racists like Rushton would have predicted, or the rather narrow minded idiot Bryan would have predicted, but given the close association with home conditions, poverty, education and health with the third worldish southern states, this is not at all a surprise.

Wait. Is this the same Bryan who was never going to trust another comment to the evil, censoring Greg? He's back? It doesn't have anything to do with another scientist tearing great big chunks out of his study somewhere else, does it? He's going back to address that criticism, isn't he?

Hey, wait, Stephanie, are you trying to steal Bryan back to your blog? He's mine! Mine I tell you! Especially after this horrendous sexist misogynist remark he just made!!!!

(He'll probably threaten to sue me for that. But whatever he does, I just hope he does not complain to the Scienceblogs Overlords!!!!11!!)

@62

Why would that be a surprise?

Two reasons. First is the black/white IQ difference of about 1.1 standard deviations among adults, which means that differences in black population %age might account for several IQ points worth of variation in state IQ. Second is the 'close association' between black Americans and the poor social conditions you mention, which means that a state's black population is a proxy (but obviously not a perfect one) for IQ lowering features of the Southern environment, and so adjusting for blackness partly adjusts for those too.

Incidentally Greg, what specific data has Rushton doctored?

Mr. GoodAdvice, you are missing the key point. THE cause of the effect is poverty and lousy conditions, not skin color. Shall I call it the confunding variable? Yes, yes, I think I will. I will indeed call poverty and other features of home environment, persistant intergenerational lousy education, etc. that makes low-IQ people. And, if one insists on always starting with race as the presumed indy variable, then these other conditions are going to be the confounding variable and one is going to get it wrong. But not care because if you start off with a racist model you'll do whatever you need to do to keep the conclusions racist.

.... Accusations of OT PC coming in three ... two ... one ...

Mr Good Advice, I'll get back to you on that. If you are patient.

I've adjusted the meds and am back!

If this is a problems, let me know.

So as you can see, whatever the sex, black brains weight pretty much 100gm less than white brains on average, or 7%-9% less

Autopsy data is notoriously poor. This study in particular did not account for effects known to affect brain size. Race-based data collected by racist scientists for the purpose of demonstrating a presumed racial phyical model are highly suspect.

The brain size difference is real (see this: http://www.davidduke.com/race-information-library/racial-differences/br…) and it is not a surprise given what we know about the differences between races.

@67 & @68

Mr. GoodAdvice, you are missing the key point. THE cause of the effect is poverty and lousy conditions, not skin color.

I don't believe anyone seriously thinks skin color is the main cause in itself, me included. Except the melanin theorists, who actually are pretty clearly racist, and I'm guessing you're not thinking of them so much.

And, if one insists on always starting with race as the presumed indy variable, then these other conditions are going to be the confounding variable and one is going to get it wrong.

Very true, race isn't the fundamental cause of everything. But when I was wondering about Bryan's correlation between temperature and State IQ, the CAUSES of lower black IQ were irrelevant to the main question that's interesting about that correlation: is the correlation a confound, or real? As long as blacks in this country have a lower average IQ, however it's caused, their different concentration around the country can confound Bryan's correlation.

But not care because if you start off with a racist model you'll do whatever you need to do to keep the conclusions racist.

I can understand why someone who reaches a wrong conclusion from a crude starting model could irrationally want to hang on to that conclusion. I don't understand how you know that someone who starts with a so-called racist model will do 'whatever to keep the conclusions racist' (whatever THAT means).

Mr Good Advice, I'll get back to you on that. If you are patient.

Alright. This should be interesting.

@70

Autopsy data is notoriously poor.

If so, I'm not sure why any journal would ever bother to publish it.

This study in particular did not account for effects known to affect brain size.

Which effects are you thinking of? The male-female ratio is about equal between the races in this study, and so are the average ages. If I remember right, body size differences don't explain much of it either, although I don't have that part of the study to check that.

Race-based data collected by racist scientists for the purpose of demonstrating a presumed racial phyical model are highly suspect.

How do you know the scientists behind this study are racist? How do you know they did it to demonstrate some 'presumed racial model?' Going by the tone of the abstract, it looks to me like they just cared about getting accurate norms for judging if a dead person's brain is weirdly big or small.

@71

Your link looks to be broken. Did you mean to link to the David Duke website?

If so, I'm not sure why any journal would ever bother to publish it.

Mr Good Advice is seemingly unfamiliar with the nature of academic publishing and the history of racist publication. Or is pulling legs.

Steve Hsu has set out the basis for why groups differ.

1. There are readily identifiable clusters of points, corresponding to traditional continental ethnic groups: Europeans, Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. (See, for example, Risch et al., Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268â275, 2005.)

2. This clustering is a natural consequence of geographical isolation, inheritance and natural selection operating over the last 50k years since humans left Africa.

3. Two groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to group differences.

4. There is no strong evidence yet for specific gene variants (alleles) that lead to group differences (differences between clusters) in behavior or intelligence, but progress on the genomic side of this question will be rapid in coming years, as the price to sequence a genome is dropping at an exponential rate.

What seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster -- we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.

In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters ("races") during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html

5. Of the recent changes a fair fraction are neurological and likely to affect behavior in some way. For example, you see new versions of SLC6A4, a serotonin transporter, in Europeans and Asians. Thereâs a new version of a gene (DAB1) that shapes the development of the layers of the cerebral cortex in east Asia.

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.00300…

Thomas,

Regarding brain size, there is a recent review in International Journal of Neuroscience here:

Rushton, J. P., & Ankney, C. D. (2009). Whole-brain size and general mental ability: A review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119, 691-731.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2009%20IJN.pdf

Have a look at Rushton's bibliography. Many of his numbers (at least when I last checked) came from 19th century compilations by "An Army Surgeon" (anonymous). Not the most reliable data source...

M Perle

That clustering study you cited was done by Harvard profs. Harvard is notorious for racist scientist pushing their crappy data to advance their racist agenda.

Can you cite something from a less biased source?
Also, I think they graduated someone we know here, so consider that too before further citing them.

Mr. GA:

I don't think the temperature / iq / skin color correlations are all that surprising. I have a paper on State IQ (go figure) and State well-being.

We have 30 or so variables mostly coded from the US census. They were scaled into subdomains of well-being, including: IQ, religiosity, income, health, education and crime.

Much like IQ, a single number for each state very accurately measure its level of well-being relative to other states.

Our global well-being measure explained 67% of the variance in all our measures and had an alpha reliability of .90.

The point is that all important variables at the state level are inter-correlated: income predicts crime predicts health predicts religiosity (inversely) predicts education predicts IQ.

I'd be surprised if you can find an important "outcome" variable at the state level that doesn't correlate with most any other outcome variable.

I was though surprised by how strong the correlation with temperature was, but I think it just illustrates something well know: States in the south tend to be worse off on many dimensions than states in the North.

I do wish people who were going into population genetics were required to take a bit more world history. They might have fewer embarrassing things to say about isolation.

Speaking of isolation, why does no one ever include the indigenous peoples of the Americas in these studies?

@74

Mr Good Advice is seemingly unfamiliar with the nature of academic publishing and the history of racist publication. Or is pulling legs.

You really see no difference between some nineteenth century craniologist measuring a random collection of mysterious museum skulls to try proving that blacks have smaller heads, and a modern team of pathologists and forensic scientists weighing brains so other pathologists know when a corpse brain has an unusual size?

@78

I don't think the temperature / iq / skin color correlations are all that surprising.

Agreed, what surprised me wasn't the correlation, just that so much of it was left after partialing out black population.

The point is that all important variables at the state level are inter-correlated: income predicts crime predicts health predicts religiosity (inversely) predicts education predicts IQ.

Yes, at the level of states it does sound like there could be a lot of two-way causes going on between different variables.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14742737

***Fortunately, I've read The Mismeasure of Man, so I'm well innoculated against this type of "science."

Posted by: Epinephrine | December 29, 2009 4:07 PM***

Epinephrine,

You need to read more critically.

1. Gould's allegation that Morton had doctored his skull collection was re-investigated by John Michael. Michael found very few errors & those that were found were not in the direction Gould claimed. Michael found Gould was mistaken & that Morton's studies were conducted with integrity. Michael JS 1988. A new look at Morton's craniological research. Current Anthropology 29: 349- 54. In the 1996 edition of his book Gould completely avoids Michael's study.

2. Galton (1888) observed a brain size/cognitive ability relationship. Modern MRI imaging has confirmed a positive correlation. Gould managed to omit a major literature review on the correlation between brain size and cognitive ability by Van Dalen (1974). In his 1996 version Gould simply deleted the whole section as the MRI evidence on brain size & IQ was obviously damaging to Gould's position.

Recently Richard Haier, at Brain Research Institute, UC Irvine College of Medicine, found that general human intelligence appears to be correlated with the volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain.

" By comparing brain maps of identical twins, which share the same genes, with fraternal twins, which share about half their genes, the team calculate that myelin integrity is genetically determined in many brain areas important for intelligence. This includes the corpus callosum, which integrates signals from the left and right sides of the body, and the parietal lobes, responsible for visual and spatial reasoning and logic (see above). Myelin quality in these areas was also correlated with scores on tests of abstract reasoning and overall intelligence (The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 29, p 2212).

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126993.300-highspeed-brains-are…

Also, see this summary of the neurological basis for intelligence by UCLA Neuroscientist Paul Thompson and Yale Psychologist Jeremy Gray.

www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/PDF/nrn0604-GrayThompson.pdf

3. Gould's criticism of factor analysis (and 'g') is flawed: see John Carroll's review Intelligence 21, 121-134 1995 and also Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.

David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has written a textbook on factor analysis, also explains in "Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies" explains where Gould goes wrong in this area.

4. Gould suggests that Jews tested poorly in the 1920's & this lead to the Immigration Act 1924. Both are incorrect.

The idea that Jews tested poorly is actually based on a misrepresentation of a paper authored by Henry Goddard in 1917. Goddard gave IQ tests to people suspected of being mentally handicapped. He found the tests identified a number of such people from various immigrant groups, including Ashkenazi Jews. Leon Kamin in 1974 reported that Goddard had found Jews had low IQ scores. However, Goddard never found that Jews or other groups as a general population had low scores. There is other information that contradicts the idea that Jews did poorly on IQ tests around this time. In 1900, in London, Jews took a disproportionate number of academic prizes in spite of their poverty (C Russell & H.S. Lewis 'The Jew in London' Harper Collins 1900). Also, note that by 1922 Jewish students made up more than a fifth of Harvard undergraduates & the Ivy League was already instituting policies aimed at limiting Jewish admissions (the infamous 'Jewish quotas'). Also, a 1920's a survey of IQ scores in three London schools with mixed Jewish & non-Jewish student bodies - one prosperous, one poor and one very poor - showed that Jewish students, on average, had higher IQ's than their schoolmates in each of the groups (A Hughes 1928).

- see also: G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659-693 (2006).

6. The other misconception is that this contributed to the 1924 Immigration Act. However, Herrnstein & Snyderman found this was not the case (Intelligence Tests and the Immigration Act of 1924' American Psychologist 38, September 1983).

7. Although it was claimed Cyril Burt made up data for his twin studies, subsequent investigations have cast doubt on this. See the book Cyril Burt 'Fraud or Framed', edited by Nick Mackintosh former Chair of Psychology at the University of Cambridge.

8. In 1981 Gould had suggested that twin studies could be useful for considering hereditary factors. Yet in his 1996 version Gould omitted the entire Minnesota Twin Study.

9. Burt's findings regarding hereditary appear to be very consistent with subsequent twin studies. Steven Pinker wrote in the NY Times earlier this year:

"To study something scientifically, you first have to measure it, and psychologists have developed tests for many mental traits. And contrary to popular opinion, the tests work pretty well: they give a similar measurement of a person every time they are administered, and they statistically predict life outcomes like school and job performance, psychiatric diagnoses and marital stability. Tests for intelligence might ask people to recite a string of digits backward, define a word like "predicament," identify what an egg and a seed have in common or assemble four triangles into a square.

The most prominent finding of behavioral genetics has been summarized by the psychologist Eric Turkheimer: "The nature-nurture debate is over. . . . All human behavioral traits are heritable." By this he meant that a substantial fraction of the variation among individuals within a culture can be linked to variation in their genes. Whether you measure intelligence or personality, religiosity or political orientation, television watching or cigarette smoking, the outcome is the same. Identical twins (who share all their genes) are more similar than fraternal twins (who share half their genes that vary among people). Biological siblings (who share half those genes too) are more similar than adopted siblings (who share no more genes than do strangers). And identical twins separated at birth and raised in different adoptive homes (who share their genes but not their environments) are uncannily similar."

www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11Genome-t.html

Obviously the fellow never heard of the lost cities of Africa. Zimbabwe (the city) was a thriving metropolis with all the amenities that implies whilst wattle and daub was considered nouveau chic!

As far as the name Peking vs Beijing, it has to do with a combination of the evolution of the language we now call Mandarin. There are several cities in China that have ancient names (and some not so ancient) that are fairly different from what they are now. The Chinese languages are substantially different from place to place, even within a single dialect. The province where my wife is from has three very distinct dialects of mandarin, to the point where she even has trouble conversing with locals in these places. However, most people can understand standard mandarin (PÇtÅnghuà), even the people who do not usually speak it.
Tones are reversed, "p" becomes "b", "z" becomes "ch". Compliments become insults (where my wife went to graduate school a common term of endearment to a cool person, is one of the worst insults you could call someone in her hometown).

In reference to another comment someone made, we often call countries by different words than they call themselves. For instance Germany (Deutschland). Or more inline with my other comments: China. We call China by that word for a couple reasons related to Persian words for the country, possibly because of the name of the first emperor. However, the name of the country has changed literally dozens of times, generally with each imperial dynasty. However today it is called ZhÅngguó (ä¸å½... ä¸ means middle or center, and å½ means country, kingdom or nation). And the reverse of this is what China calls the US. We are MÄiguó (ç¾å½), which seems to follow the pattern of taking a foreign word and applying a chinese word that sounds similar, but has a meaning that relates (perhaps idealistically) to the word they are reproducing... MÄiguó literally means "beautiful country".

Observer, there isnât something that IQ and intelligence tests can accurately measure. Different tests can give widely different numbers for the same individuals. In this paper they talk about how in some well-documented tests people with autism can have scores that are different by as much as 70 percentile points.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17680932

As your quote said: âTo study something scientifically, you first have to measure itâ.

If you canât measure it, you canât study it. A test that canât get an answer closer than 70 percentile points is pretty useless for understanding what it pretends to be measuring.

Also, the arguments over brain size are really just an analog for the argument over intelligence. So the unspoken assumption is that large brains -> higher intelligence when really more complex brains lead to higher intelligence, but brain complexity can't be simply measured.

This argument also ignores other reasons other than intelligence for which a large brain would evolve. For example, large brains could be a way of storing fat, or storing essential nutrients like alpha-linolenic acid and linolenic acid, or just a way to keep the brain warmer.

Ah! I'd forgotten about Zhongguo. Or how the 'ethnic Han' Chinese view the "barbarians". If orientalism is the flaw of "otherizing" the geographically distant, I'm not too sure it's a distinctive characteristic of the West.

"Mr. GoodAdvice, you are missing the key point. THE cause of the effect is poverty and lousy conditions, not skin color."

I think this is wishful thinking. It is analogous to the soviet unions policies on lysenkoism. During lysenkoism they thought they could ignore genetics and focus on "training" the plants to give increased output.

People have been trying to improve environmental factors in order to boost IQ scores. No one wants african americans or africans to have a lower IQ score on average. The average IQ score in Japan is 105 and the world is much better off due to this fact. We enjoy many japanese engineering feats. It doesn't pay for us to permanently keep a whole class of people with a lower IQ score. The world would be much better off if african americans or africans had an IQ of 100 or better. People are so adverse to discussing IQ that they many won't even consider environmental factors in improving african IQ (like iodized salt).

Remember too that your genes help to construct the environment around you. Running water, electricity and all the amenities of a modern society are the result of intelligence and labor. These things are highly dependent the average IQ of the population.

John, the things you mention are much more dependent on colonial history, both the classic and the corporate version. Seriously, world history = required subject.

John: BINGO!!!!

As in I just filled in my racist colonialist apologist BINGO car. Thanks.

Yes everyone you disagree with is a racist. The heretics must be liquidated in your eyes I'm sure.

John, maybe--if by "liquidated" you mean mocked as the ignorant, self-serving whiners they are.

Well some countries in Africa were never colonized but are still not doing well. Hong kong was colonized but it has one of the highest gdp per capita in the world. So I think there is counter evidence to the colonization causing the poverty talking point.

As for lysenkoism I would at least read the wikipedia article about it. Basically the leaders of the Soviet Union killed a lot of people based on the idea that you could train crops and ignore genetics.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Neo-Lysenkoism is the same for people who want to ignore the possibility that genetics has any role in human intelligence differences and everything is enviromental.
No one considers it racist to say that african americans have darker skin than whites and that this may have a genetic factor.

The colonialist apologist slur doesn't make sense. You seem to be implying that we shouldn't do anything to help africans (like giving them aids medicine or preventing diseases), because the colonists also thought they were helping natives by taking over their land. Should we just leave them totally alone and do nothing because it would be better than this "neo-colonialism" and forcing or our societal wishes on them? What's wrong with preventing iodine deficiency in africans?

John @ 88: "It doesn't pay for us to keep a whole class of people with a lower IQ score."??? What do you advocate doing, then? Mass genocide except for "Oriental" people? How do we not "keep people" since we all live on the same planet? And since when is IQ an actual measure of productivity or actual contribution to society?

I would also clarify that I don't really agree with Rushton.
Steve Hsu writes some good posts on race;
infoproc.blogspot.com/2007/01/metric-on-space-of-genomes-and.html

Not it doesn't pay for us to keep them down. Some people believe that modernized countries in the west are keeping poor countries from reaching their full potential on purpose. See the theendofpoverty.com/ which is typical of this viewpoint. The end of poverty film is arguing that the west keeps these countries in poverty in order to make ourselves richer.

Who is talking about genocide? Are you serious?

Greg Laden and all the other commenters constantly resort to calling people ad hominems.

Science Blogs itself hosts the gene expression blog and that blog is "notorious" for promoting racial IQ differences.
scienceblogs.com/gnxp
So "science blogs" must be a racist institution.

John, I think you heart may kinda almost be sorta in the right place but you are a butt head. You know nothing about colonial history, and people are not calling each other ad hominems. That's not how that term works. And I am pretty certain that science blogs is not one blog, it's a collection of many different blogs.

Actually lysenkoism did work (after a sort). Plants could be trained to produce more grain. The trained plants actually did produce more grain. It turns out the "producing more grain" phenotype was a result of the training environment the plant was grown in.

That "producing more grain" phenotype wasn't heritable unless the grain was grown in the "producing more grain" environment, when it was completely heritable.

The problem the Soviets had was that they were unwilling or unable to provide the proper environment for the âproducing more grainâ phenotype to occur.

Sort of like how the racists are unwilling or unable to provide the prenatal care, the prenatal nutrition, the good daycare, the good education, and all the other things that produce the environment that results in the high intelligence phenotype in humans.

No one expects good prenatal care, prenatal nutrition, good daycare, good education and all those other things to change the genetics of people. It might change some epigenetic programming, but that might take a couple of generations to have the full effects.

daedalus2u,

That paper is specifically about autistics. For the non-autistic ("normal") part of the population results on well-designed IQ tests tend to predict outcomes pretty well.

Also, as I noted above - there are a number of neurological correlates in terms of cortical thickness, grey matter volume and myelination integrity.

"The UCLA researchers took the study a step further by comparing the white matter architecture of identical twins, who share almost all their DNA, and fraternal twins, who share only half. Results showed that the quality of the white matter is highly genetically determined, although the influence of genetics varies by brain area. According to the findings, about 85 percent of the variation in white matter in the parietal lobe, which is involved in mathematics, logic, and visual-spatial skills, can be attributed to genetics. But only about 45 percent of the variation in the temporal lobe, which plays a central role in learning and memory, appears to be inherited."

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22333/page2/

Again, I would encourage you to read this paper by UCLA Neuroscientist Paul Thompson and Yale Psychologist Jeremy Gray.

www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/PDF/nrn0604-GrayThompson.pdf

Just in terms of the 3 way relationship identified in the original post, Daniel G. Freedman and Nina Freedman, then Jerome Kagan, observed differences in the behaviour between Asian and Caucasian newborns:

"Shaken, perhaps [by the results of the Guatemalan study], but Kagan, like the rest of the psychological profession , continued to believe in the environment as the most important molder of personality. His epiphany came fifteen years later, when he was working in Boston on a longitudinal study of infants, observing them from seven to twenty-nine months, with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of day-care. The group was made up of fifty-three Chinese-American infants and sixty-three Caucasian children. Part of the entire group had from the age of four months attended an experimental day-care center set-up for the study, part had attended other day-care centers, and part had been raised at home.

In the course of the experiment, Kagan noticed something unanticipated. The Chinese children, little more than babies, whether attending day-care or raised at home, were consistently more fearful and inhibited than the Caucasians. The differences were obvious. The Chinese children stayed close to their mothers and were quiet and generally apprehensive, while the Caucasians were talkative, active, and "prone to laughter". These characteristics were confirmed by the mothers as typical of their children's behavior at home as well. In addition, the researchers discovered that the Chinese tots had less variable heart rates than the Caucasians. Kagan could not avoid the clear evidence of an innate difference between the two groups of infants. It is ironic that this scientist's conversion to a biological-genetic view came along the lines of racial differences. Kagan was a political liberal who only three years earlier had been one of the most vociferous critics of Arthur Jensen's theories on the heritability of IQ, theories that he and most everyone else denounced as racist. Now he was publishing his observation of fundamental personality differences between racial groups. When we conversed in Harvard office many years later, I asked Kagan if there had been an uproar similar to the one Jensen provoked.

He smiled. "We got no flak on the Chinese paper All the reports of the book were about our day-care findings. Everyone ignored the fact that the Chinese children were different. I think it was because they were Asians, and Asians do well. If they would have been black we probably would have gotten flak."

Asked if it was dismaying for him, an unwavering liberal, to observe inherent racial differences, Kagan snapped, "Nature doesn't care what we want." More reflectively, he added, "I wasn't so much dismayed at my observations of the Chinese kids. . .I was a little bit saddened to see the power of biology." Born That Way by William Wright

Bernstein & Nash, Essentials of Psychology, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999:

"Traces of early temperamental characteristics weave their way throughout childhood (Buss, 1995a). Easy infants usually stay easy, and difficult infants often remain difficult (Riese 1986). Timid toddlers tend to become shy pre-schoolers, restrained and inhibited eight-year-olds, and somewhat anxious teenagers (Shwartz, Kagan, & Snidman, 1995)"

"...Consider the temperament patterns of Chinese-American and European-American children (Kagan et. al., 1994, Smith & Freedman, 1983). At birth, Chinese-American babies are calmer, less changeable, less excitable, and more easily comforted when upset than European-American babies. . .These temperamental differences between children in different ethnic groups illustrate the combined contributions of nature and nurture. Mayan infants, for example, are relatively inactive from birth. The Zinacantecos, a Mayan group in southern Mexico reinforce this innate predisposition toward restrained motor activity [3] by tightly wrapping their infants and by nursing at the slightest sign of movement (Greenfield and Childs, 1991). This combination of genetic predisposition and cultural reinforcement is culturally adaptive. Quiet infants do not kick off their covers at night, which is important in cold highlands where they live. Inactive infants are able to spend long periods on their mother's back as she works. And infants who do not begin to walk until they can understand some language do not wander into the open fire at the center of the house. This adaptive interplay of innate and cultural factors in the development of temperament operates in all cultures."

John / Observer. Welcome to my world. Leave now; trust me...

Observer, do you know anybody who is not white? Have you ever cared for an infant in its' first four months of life? Bryan? You? Do you realize how utterly clueless you both sound?

Observer, all the testing data says is that there is a good correlation. That correlation could be a spurious artifact.

The result on people with autism shows that the correlation is a spurious artifact. What ever the tests are measuring, they canât be measuring the same thing if the same individuals can get such different results.

What that means is that the two tests are not measuring the same thing; they are measuring at least two different things. In neurologically typical individuals, the (at least) two things the two different tests are measuring correlate. In ASD individuals the two things do not correlate.

As Bryan informed us earlier, the way that these tests are made is to remove questions that do not correlate with other tests. It is then circular to claim that the correlation between tests indicates that the two tests are measuring the same thing.

The tests are designed to correlate; the ASD results show that the correlation is an artifact.

[99]

"Sort of like how the racists are unwilling or unable to provide the prenatal care, the prenatal nutrition, the good daycare, the good education, and all the other things that produce the environment that results in the high intelligence phenotype in humans."

Unwilling or unable to provide for who? Themselves?

***The tests are designed to correlate; the ASD results show that the correlation is an artifact.

Posted by: daedalus2u | December 31, 2009 8:45 PM***

Right, but if it's solely an artifact why do you get different brain characteristics in people with different scores?

The reason that g is meaningful is that the real-world correlations are all positive, which is by no means what you'd expect from random chance.

I'd recommend Steve Hsu's post here on it.

"Q2: Does the resulting quantity have any practical use?

In my opinion reasonable people should focus on the second question, that of practical utility, as it is rather obvious that there is no unique or perfect answer to the first question.
...

To summarize, g is the best single number compression of the N vector characterizing an individual's cognitive profile. (This is a lossy compression -- knowing g does not allow exact reconstruction of the N vector.) Of course, the choice of the N tests used to deduce g was at least somewhat arbitrary, and a change in tests results in a different definition of g. There is no unique or perfect definition of a general factor of intelligence. As I emphasized above, given the nature of the problem it seems unreasonable to criticize the specific construction of g, or to try to be overly precise about the value of g for a particular individual. The important question is Q2: what good is it?

A tremendous amount of research has been conducted on Q2. For a nice summary, see Why g matters: the complexity of ordinary life by psychologist Linda Gottfredson, or click on the IQ or psychometrics label link for this blog. Links and book recommendations here. The short answer is that g does indeed correlate with life outcomes. If you want to argue with me about any of this in the comments, please at least first read some of the literature cited above."

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/11/iq-compression-and-simple-models.h…

"Observer, do you know anybody who is not white? Have you ever cared for an infant in its' first four months of life? Bryan? You? Do you realize how utterly clueless you both sound?

Posted by: Greg Laden | December 31, 2009 8:02 PM"

Greg,

Yes, I do. I haven't had fulltime care of an infant in its first four months. Do you find the results of Kagan & Freedman implausible?

Rushton also documents differences in maturation in the paper he co-authored with Jensen.

"Around the world, the rate of dizygotic (i.e., two-egg) twinning is less than 4 per 1,000 births among East Asians, 8 among Whites, and 16 or greater among Blacks (Bulmer, 1970). Multiple birthing rates have been shown to be heritable, based on the race of the mother, regardless of the race of the father, as found in East AsianâWhite crosses in Hawaii and WhiteâBlack crosses in Brazil (Bulmer, 1970).

"1970). On average, Black babies are born a week earlier than White babies, yet they are more mature as measured by pulmonary function, amniotic fluid, and bone development. In the United States, 51% of Black children have been born by week 39 of pregnancy compared with 33% of White children. Black African babies, even those born to mothers in the professional classes, are also born earlier than White babies (Papiernik, Cohen, Richard, de Oca, & Feingold, 1986). They are not born premature but sooner, and they are biologically more mature. After birth, Black babies continue to mature faster, on average, than White babies, whereas East Asian babies average an even slower rate. X-rays show a faster rate of average bone growth in Black children than in White children, and a faster rate in White children than in East Asian children (Eveleth & Tanner, 1990, pp. 154â155). Black babies at a given age also average greater muscular strength and a more accurate reach for objects. Black children average a younger age of sitting, crawling, walking, and putting on their own clothes than Whites or East Asians. The average age of walking is 13 months in East Asian children, 12 months in White children, and 11 months in Black children (Bayley, 1965; Brazelton & Freedman, 1971).

Blacks average a faster rate of dental development than do Whites, who have a faster rate than do East Asians. On average, Black children begin the first stage of permanent tooth growth at about 5.8 years, whereas Whites and East Asians do not begin until 6.1 years (Eveleth & Tanner, 1990, pp. 158â161)." (page 264)

Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. (2005). Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 235-294.

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

The commentaries and replies are contained here.

Sternberg, R. J. (2005). There are no public-policy implications: A reply to Rushton and Jensen (2005). Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 295-301.

Nisbett, R. E. (2005). Heredity, environment, and race differences in IQ: A commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005). Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 302-310.

Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true? Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 311-319.

Suzuki, L., & Aronson, J. (2005). The cultural malleability of intelligence and its impact on the racial/ethnic hierarchy. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 320-327.

Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R (2005). Wanted: More race realism, less moralistic fallacy. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 328-336.

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/

Have you read the link to three toed sloth on âg a statistical mythâ? Do you have an answer to that? g is supposed to be a linear combination of all these non-linear things. But it is indeterminate. There are more degrees of freedom than there are equations to specify them. How do you address that?

âRight, but if it's solely an artifact why do you get different brain characteristics in people with different scores?â

The problem is that you donât have an independent measure of what ever it is that g is supposed to measure. All you have are these tests, which are chosen to correlate with all the other tests. The only correlation you have is with other tests. It isnât for me to explain your artifactual results. What you have is artifact.

âThe reason that g is meaningful is that the real-world correlations are all positive, which is by no means what you'd expect from random chance.â

g can be a lousy measure without it being totally random. What if the intelligence vector isnât N, but is instead 100N or 1000N? If your tests are only sampling 0.1% of the actual intelligence space, you might get good correlations if everyone was stamped out of a cookie cutter. If some of the intelligence vectors are non-linear (which actually we know that they all are), your linear combinations result in great distortion.

The Wechsler doesnât test the intelligence that people with autism have. What else doesnât it test? You donât know because you donât know what you are testing. You have no way to independently verify the number that your intelligence tests produce. You simply assert that if the test doesnât measure it, then it isnât important. The autism results show that the Wechsler doesnât test things that are important. What else isn't it testing?

Daed: Your comments re the autism study puzzled me so I went back and dug a little deeper.

The authors show the WAIS versus the Raven's differ by as much as 70% points. They recommend using the Raven's.

Score differences across IQ tests will always exist. What about the rank ordering of individuals across the tests (that would be purer test of whether g exists, at least for autistics)?

The WAIS has many sub-tests (some involve arranging blocks; putting together comic strips; repeating digits backwards, etc). It takes something like 2 hours to complete.

The ravens is 30 or 40 minutes.

I wonder about attention and compliance issues re giving autistics the WAIS.

Was the WAIS standardized for clinical populations? I doubt it. The Raven's wasn't either, but it's the same type of test items and much shorter. Do you think taking a 2 hour WAIS could be an issue, given the symptoms of autism?

John said:

People have been trying to improve environmental factors in order to boost IQ scores. No one wants african americans or africans to have a lower IQ score on average.

And yet conservatives have been fighting tooth and nail to stop all this "socialist nonsense" of wanting to help the underprivileged.

Regarding comment #2 and #54 here, a colleague suggested I forward them to Dr. Rushton.

Do you still want to not delete it, or provide a link to the news story?

This is a scienceblog, right?

B

Wow Bryan, just wow. So in just a few weeks you have read and understood enough of the breadth and depth of the anthropology literature to conclude that anthropology might not be a science?

We are supposed to take you seriously when you say shit like that? What it tells us is that we can take nothing that you say seriously. What is also says is that when you donât understand or donât know something, you dismiss it as either wrong, or not worth knowing or not science. You wish to see the scientific progress of 100 years just so you can gloat over the people you now perceive to be working down dead ends? If that is what is driving your "quest for knowledge", you are going to remain ignorant for a long time.

And you believe there is some kind of zero-sum game going on between genes and anthropology? I guess that explains the mindset of the âauthoritiesâ you hangout with and respect in your field. They are not concerned with scientific accuracy, or with describing reality as it actually exists, they are concerned with turf.

If your âauthoritiesâ are so concerned with âturfâ in one area, that explains their racism and why they canât address fundamental flaws in their field, such as the myth of g. They cling to their beliefs so as to cling to their turf, to avoid the narcissistic injury that comes from admitting one was wrong.

I just came across this clip of Bertrand Russell from 50 years ago over at Skepchick. You should check it out.

He makes quite a good case for only believing in things because they are true, not because they are useful.

Oh, I posted this yesterday with a link to youtube and it didnât make it out of moderation so I am posting it without the link.

D2U: "What if the intelligence vector isnât N, but is instead 100N or 1000N? If your tests are only sampling 0.1% of the actual intelligence space, you might get good correlations if everyone was stamped out of a cookie cutter. If some of the intelligence vectors are non-linear (which actually we know that they all are), your linear combinations result in great distortion."

It's obvious from this paragraph you don't really understand the first thing about compression, linearity, vector spaces.

If you bothered to read Gottfredson's work or other highly cited work on intelligence you'd know that IQ predicts things like ability to navigate a restaurant menu, trainability of soldiers (the US military is one of the largest users of IQ testing), and relative earnings of siblings raised in the same family. If you think IQ is not a useful cognitive observable it's because you are heavily biased against understanding the actual research results.

***Have you read the link to three toed sloth on âg a statistical mythâ? Do you have an answer to that? g is supposed to be a linear combination of all these non-linear things. But it is indeterminate. There are more degrees of freedom than there are equations to specify them. How do you address that?...

What else doesnât it test? You donât know because you donât know what you are testing. You have no way to independently verify the number that your intelligence tests produce. You simply assert that if the test doesnât measure it, then it isnât important. The autism results show that the Wechsler doesnât test things that are important. What else isn't it testing?***

If you look at his post on on g, Shalizi accepts that intelligence, as operationalized by IQ tests, is very important for economic development (footnote 13). So he isn't really disagreeing with Gottfredson or Hsu above in terms of its practical usefulness.

Shalizi accepts that intelligence, as operationalized by IQ tests, is very important for economic development (footnote 13). So he isn't really disagreeing with Gottfredson or Hsu above in terms of its practical usefulness.

No one is arguing with its practical usefulness in some settings. We're arguing over what it is. Slavery was useful for economic development at one point too. However, we've decided, looking at the question in the clear light of day, that its problems outweighed its usefulness.

If you haven't figured out that gaining a clear picture of the costs of using IQ is what this entire argument is about...well, I can't help you.

***No one is arguing with its practical usefulness in some settings. We're arguing over what it is. Slavery was useful for economic development at one point too. However, we've decided, looking at the question in the clear light of day, that its problems outweighed its usefulness.

If you haven't figured out that gaining a clear picture of the costs of using IQ is what this entire argument is about...well, I can't help you.***

I didn't think that was what the argument was about. My understanding was that this thread was about Rushton's 'law of three': that any important difference (be it physical, mental, developmental, temperamental,or behavioral) that can be found between Asians and Europeans, a similar relationship will most likely be found between Europeans and Africans.

daedalus2u has been addressing whether psychometric tests were useful for measuring cognitive abilities.

You say the argument is about what *it* is, but then go on to say it is about the costs of using IQ. Which is a different argument. What do you see as the costs?

Observer: the "cost of using IQ", at least of using it in the way the people you continue to quote are doing - to perpetuate pessimism about our ability to put an end to "racial-identity" based discrimination, is that we are all forced to continue living in a "den of inequity" with no visible way out.

What are the costs of using IQ? They are the costs of building a permanent underclass. To see those costs, compare the U.S. to other nations on various standard of living scales. They are the problems of excluding diverse viewpoints. To see those, check out the dismal state of U.S. innovation. They are the problems of asking the wrong questions. For just one example, try to figure out how an IQ-based process could ever have resulted in a successful program like this (via Terra Sig).

Yes, that is a major cost of using IQ. Another cost is the dishonesty. This comes in two forms, annoying and truly evil.

The annoying form: Every published study from a certain segment of the research community shows the same thing, but these studies can be shown to be dishonest (and I'm defining dishonest as hiding mitigating evidence and worse) to some degree or another in many cases. But on the surface they all look fine. So, we have a community of researchers who include liars like Rushton and dupes like Bryan Pesta who are engaged in the largest academic circle jerk ever contrived, funded by corporate entities that want there to be an underclass because it suits them. Is THIS this the source of knowledge we want to entrust for the basic information needed to

TOUCHDOWN!!!

make this sort of social decision on?

Second, the truly nefarious part of this is this: It isn't just that IQ reliance will build an underclass It is that the IQ model that all these people are using has three elements:

1) Variation in IQ is mostly inherited ... .it is genetic.

2) Variation in IQ is explained mainly by what race someone is in. Skin color predicts IQ

3) The difference between one race and another is far greater than the difference among members of any one given population, which is far far beyond the level normally needed for a trait to assume it separates populations at the level usually assumed for SPECIES.

None of these three things are true. Throughout this extended conversation on this blog and at Almost Diamonds and Quiche Moraine, I have repeadedly given Bryan Pesta and others a chance to denounce this highly objectionable and scientifically incorrect model, but all I get is either ranting about how it is true from anonymous commenters or avoidance of the issue, refusal to denounce what is a multi-species argument.

So, it isn't even the problem of creating an underclass. It is creating an undercaste, or even slavery class (that's where the different species part for those of you who are ignorant of history). And, doing it on the basis of bad information.

Does any one know the point of the Bell Curve? Anyone?

It is this ... There already is an underclass, and it woudl cost to much to undo that. Bryan Pesta has already assented to this position in a comment over at Almost Diamonds.

The pro-IQ lobby is deeply racist, and racism left unfettered always leads to one thing and one thing only: A holocaust.

Not only will I argue against that, but I will literally fight against that if it comes to it.

OK, now let's stop these guys and get another touchdown.

Geesh. Is this crap ever going to be put to bed. I got nothing, except to express disappoint over OSU winning the rose bowl.

And, I have a new signature line for all message boards where one can be included, thanks to my experiences here:

"Those who can do science, do; those who can't, blog about it." BJP.

What do you think?!

Bryan Pesta, you still have not answered the substantive questions I've put to you. Unless you count ignoring the questions and/or playing the victim as answering.

There is hope for you, maybe. But not until you start to question your working assumptions like real scientists do all the time. Unlike many in your field, who are politically motivated to work towards a new world order that involves corporate control of our lives, the formation of an underclass, a fake democracy run by lobbiests, etc. etc., ou seem to be politically more aware and advanced. You just have to stop letting them lead you and your 'science' around by the nose.

OH, and ...

.... TOUCHDOWN!!!!

This: "The pro-IQ lobby is deeply racist, and racism left unfettered always leads to one thing and one thing only: A holocaust. " may sound extreme to many people but it has been demonstrated in history to be true again and again.

"...funded by corporate entities that want there to be an underclass because it suits them."

This tells you all you need to know about whether Greg Laden is an objective scientist or someone with a very biased viewpoint. For example, is James Flynn (of the Flynn Effect) a corporate flunky? Because he thinks these issues are worth exploring and, I believe, would give the same answers to questions 1-3 below that I list. Flynn is, in my opinion, an objective scientist and not a corporate flunky.

IQ as a psychometric observable is completely independent of issues of genetics, race, etc. As long as IQ scores are relatively stable by adulthood, it doesn't matter whether the score was 100% determined by environment or genes or by interactions between them. The point is that the scores are still useful as predictors of ability or success.

So you have a set of logically independent questions:

1. Is IQ a useful construct? Yes, if it is relatively stable in adulthood and predicts important outcomes. Research results clearly support this result.

2. Does the distribution of adult IQs vary by group? Yes, we have very large statistics measurements of this result.

3. Are the group differences caused by genes? Maybe, but we don't know for sure. We do know that *individual* differences in IQ are at least partly caused by genes, for people raised within a certain range of humane environments.

The groups here don't have to be completely disjoint. The boundaries can be fuzzy as long as one simply uses conditional probability. That is, if I condition on the fact that an individual self-identifies as "black" or traces much of their ancestry to Africa, does that imply something about the *probability* that that person has favorable or unfavorable genes for intelligence? Ultimately we are talking about distributions of genes in different groups. Since we don't know which genes affect intelligence we don't know whether *specifically for those genes* there is more variation within or between groups. Further, a .5 STDV difference in average IQ between two groups does not contradict the claim that IQ varies more within than between groups, yet it leads to important social problems.

In the same way we can talk about whether the Dutch are on average taller or shorter than Japanese or Italians (or whether a randomly chosen Dutchman is more likely to be over 6 ft tall than a randomly chosen Japanese). It's incorrect to claim that because classification boundaries are fuzzy that there isn't anything meaningful to be said. I doubt there is much controversy that the height question given above is meaningful and has meaningful answers and that genes are partly responsible for the results. There is no logical difference between the height and IQ questions.

Galton, it is not necessary that every single researcher be funded by a corporation for there to be a problem with this. Your accusations that I am biased and that my remarks were inappropriate are nothing more than a smoke screen, and one that I find offensive and that you need to apologize for.

Your comments about height are similar to comments I've made before. Yes, indeed. If we use the same logic that the IQ fetishizers used for height, then the shifts we see in human stature would all have to be explained as the effects of natural selection. Which, of course, they can't be.

Oh.. and ...

....

TOUCHDOWN!!!!

I'm not funded by any corporations. They only thing I've gotten is free Wonderlic tests for research, but they do that for any researcher.

My consulting has been as an expert witness in employment discrimination cases.

My last three case-- one for a company, but it was age discrimination, and my report resulted in summary judgment for the company.

Gottermeyer v. Norstan if anyone's interested in the decision (NDO).

The other two were for the victims on race discrimination. In one case, my report helped the vic win almost a million dollars in damages. In the other; we lost. It was appealed to SCOTUS (I'm pretty sure at least one justice had to read a report with my name on it!). Cert denied.

That's it!

I was at ISIR two years ago. Flynn asked me a question when I presented and I had no idea what the hell he was asking me. Fortunately, someone in the audience rescued me and answered.

My take on Flynn is he would not all agree that races even exist let alone differ on IQ for any reside beside something environmental.

Even moreso for Sternberg.

Not all this research can be dismissed as quackery-- certainly not Flynn's (though I've never been impressed with Sternberg).

Sorry-- "not at all ....for any reason". Damn multi-tasking.

I'm not funded by any corporations. ... My consulting has been as an expert witness in employment discrimination cases.

... for corporations.

Holy crap, Bryan.

Bryan Pesta, you are such a moron:

Not all this research can be dismissed as quackery

No kidding. Who did? Do you even HAVE an IQ? Jeesh. Is this just you being stupid or is this a very poorly executed approach to deflecting the arguement?

You and galton are morons.

And I remind you, galton is on notice.

Oh.

...

and ....

..... FIELD GOAL!!!!!!!!

Oh ..... and ....

TOUCHDOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh and ................

FIELD GOAL !!!!!!!!!!!!!

We do know that *individual* differences in IQ are at least partly caused by genes, for people raised within a certain range of humane environments.

Which genes? Which alleles encode for higher IQ scores?

No one is saying that IQ is not malleable. However many leftists who take the environment route only want the "environment" to mean specific things like more education. If I give a child a neurotoxin when they are a year old, then obviously it is going to alter their brain development (an environmental effect). If I were to inject a neurotrophic protein in a child's brain when they were young and that caused them to grow more brain cells (and have a higher IQ later in life), is that an "environmental" effect? No, that is probably tampering with nature too much. If I were to give a nutritional supplement to poor children (for free) that also increased that neurotrophic protein, however, then that would might be OK in most people's eyes. So there are only a very small amount of "politically correct" environmental factors that can be manipulated. Education and some nutrition are "politically correct". Genetic engineering is not politically correct. If I were to suggest that poor parents should genetically select babies with genes that could give them a higher IQ, I would be compared to a Nazi. I'm not arguing that we should do that. I just argue that environmental factors are highly politicized and there is no clear distinction between environmental factors and genetics. Giving a supplement that increases a protein in the brain and introducing a gene (through gene therapy) that also upregulates the same protein might have equal effects on increasing intelligence. The supplement route is much more "politically correct", though.

Scientists are fairly ignorant as to how the brain develops over time currently, but we are learning more about our minds at an exponential rate. Most "politically correct" environmental factors may not have a huge effect on the brain. I think something like iodized salt is less "politically correct" than even education. Trying to increase iodized salt in poor populations acknowledges that the poor have reduced brain function due to lack of nutrients. That is why it is not as "politically correct" as education which assumes that their brains are exactly the same as ours but they don't have the same educational opportunities.

In the next ten years we will likely have a connectome wiring diagram of the brain. We will have a better understanding how intelligence develops. So we may be able to develop (hopefully) "politically correct" therapies that actually improve people's IQ's significantly (pharmaceutical drugs for cognition or brain development).

If you want to completely ignore IQ and think that the most politically correct thing "education" will fix all IQ deficits then you are just consigning poor people to live in poverty. I think increasing IQ in poor countries is one of the best ways to alleviate poverty.

John, care to point to anyone around here who has argued that education is the defining factor in either intelligence or IQ? You're roasting a straw man.

leftists who take the environment route

holy crap. wow. you sure won that arguement...

Greg: Before you make me disappear, can you at least give us your answers to questions 1-3 I listed?

Stephanie: it was known that atoms existed long before their detailed properties were deduced. From twin and adoption studies it is well established that individual variation in IQ is influenced by genes, although we don't yet know which specific ones. IQ is probably much like height: influenced by many genes, each of small effect. In the case of height researchers, using a technique called GWAS, have only recently succeeded in finding a few specific alleles which affect height, controlling a few percent of total variance. But there is no reason to doubt that genes do influence height or IQ.

Galtan ... um .... the vast majority of variation in height we see in human populations in the west (where almost all the data in question come from) is not influenced by genes at all. It is not established that variation in IQ beyond a very small percentage is determined by genes, with us just waiting to find out what genes are involved.

You have both of those things wrong.

PS On whether Flynn thinks the BW IQ difference is a "well posed question" (i.e., whether "race exists" or not), see the entire book he wrote on the subject.

http://books.google.com/books?id=KaY9AAAAIAAJ

If Flynn agreed that the whole question could be dismissed with a wave of the "race does not exist" wand (or the "IQ is meaningless" wand) he surely would not have devoted this much effort to the question.

For some simple pictures that might (or might not) clarify things for you, see
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/11/human-genetic-variation-fst-and.ht…

GL: "the vast majority of variation in height we see in human populations in the west (where almost all the data in question come from) is not influenced by genes"

This is totally incorrect. Within Western societies the heritability of height is very high, like .8 or so. Almost all the variation between individuals is genetic.

If you are referring to secular increases in average height of a population, taking place over a generation or more, yes, that is due to environmental causes like nutrition. This effect is similar in many ways to the Flynn Effect, but it doesn't in any way suggest that height is not significantly influenced by genes.

"politically motivated to work towards a new world order that involves corporate control of our lives"
"fucking blank slate with"
"racist colonialist apologist"
"utterly clueless you both sound"
"funded by corporate entities"
"TOUCHDOWN!!!!"
"Do you even HAVE an IQ?"
You're obviously winning the argument. Did you read what I said at all? Even people who agree with Greg have to admit it's hard to talk to him if he disagrees with you. I've never heard anyone mention that the IQ researchers are in bed with corporate entities, even among people who disagree with those results and call them racist. I'm sorry but that sounds kinda paranoid. Don't you mean they are funded by racist organizations like the pioneer fund? At least that argument makes sense and I can agree with it. Are you watching too much Alex Jones or something?

Stephanie Z, I think that is what Greg said.
"THE cause of the effect is poverty and lousy conditions, not skin color"
Even if it is due to poverty, manipulating the environment to a desired end point is not easy thing to do. You could argue that going in to africa and trying to fix the environment is analogous to colonialism too. So how exactly are you going to fix the environment there to help them? Do you mean we should go in and start building infrastructure? Or is that neo-colonialism?

Lsynkoism failed because they though there were ONLY environmental factors. Obviously there are environmental factors to crop output. They just took it too far and ignored genetics.

I could just as easily say that Greg seems like the type who if he was in the government of the Soviet Union, he would kill people with dissenting (genetic) opinions (just as easily as you could call people on this thread instigators of the holocaust). I don't see how that has any value to "winning" the argument.

I've never heard anyone mention that the IQ researchers are in bed with corporate entities,

You have not been paying attention.

Don't you mean they are funded by racist organizations like the pioneer fund? and the bradly foundation.

Which grows their money on trees? Church collection boxes? From behind the couch cushion?

Oh, and your smoke screen is obnoxious.

Within Western societies the heritability of height is very high, like .8 or so.

Yes, I get, and already knew, that you don't understand the difference between "heritability" and genetics.

This is one of the main things that you "Genes = IQ and My Genes are better that Their Genens" pushers don't understand and refuse to address.

Galton-- concede the point re Flynn. I have not read any of his books.

That was just my subjective impression after seeing him interact at the conference.

I'm working an a call out to some heavy hitters. It won't be here though, but I will send you the link. History shall record much lolz and exposure of extreme ignorance (prediction on my part...).

Galton: Within Western societies the heritability of height is very high, like .8 or so.

GL: Yes, I get, and already knew, that you don't understand the difference between "heritability" and genetics.

Greg, are you suggesting that the similarity in height between twins separated at birth and raised by different families is due to something other than their shared genes? Similarly, the heights of adopted children do not correlate with those of their adoptive parents but do correlate with those of their biological parents. (Ditto for IQ.)

Bryan: please archive this page (comments) so Greg can't erase the evidence.

galton, you need to do some reading on GWAS and its limitations. Start here.

Now, if you read the introduction to Flynn's book, you'll see why he felt the need to write it--and his reasons are social. If you read the whole book, you'll see he was arguing against a genetic causation of IQ differences and doing it fairly cautiously. I wouldn't expect any argument about the social construction of race from someone who was carefully staying in his field. And none of us are saying IQ is meaningless. The question is what it measures.

As for your pretty picture, let me just say that if you're careful enough in sampling your wavelengths, you can argue with pretty graphs that yellow, orange and red are all distinct colors rather than part of a spectrum.

John, figure out what you're arguing and say it. The combination of "We should fix things for them," "We shouldn't meddle at all," and "Greg is eeeeevil" are pointless to deal with.

Greg, are you suggesting that the similarity in height between twins separated at birth and raised by different families is due to something other than their shared genes?

Genes contribute, but you have this wrong in two ways (or more) One is that there are almost no twins separated at birth and raised in different environments in any study. The other is that secular variation in attained stature is much much much greater than it genetic variation in almost all cases. Therefore something ELSE is working here, and maternal body size or stature is probably the mediating factor.

When you talk about height, it is little more than winged monkeys flying out of your ass. You are making assumptions based on bad high school texbook knowledge. Stop now before you embarrass yourself more, please.

Bryan, please keep your heavy hitters away from my blog. Please! Please!

Stephanie: I'm not claiming that GWAS is going to solve the problem. You asked whether we could identify specific alleles and my answer is not yet, but that does not imply lack of genetic causation. We *are* starting to be able to identify alleles that affect height.

Re:Flynn, he clearly believes the BW IQ issue is a legitimate scientific question -- it has to be answered by data; it cannot be answered a priori. Flynn has the highest respect for Jensen. He doesn't characterize him as a corporate flunky or dishonest scientist. Here is what Flynn said recently about whether this issue should be studied by scientists:
http://network.nature.com/groups/naturenewsandopinion/forum/topics/3871…

"As for your pretty picture, let me just say that if you're careful enough in sampling your wavelengths, you can argue with pretty graphs that yellow, orange and red are all distinct colors rather than part of a spectrum."

Is that supposed to be a scientific argument?

"Therefore something ELSE is working here, and maternal body size or stature is probably the mediating factor."

Aha! Finally a scientific statement.

So if one did an IVF study with surrogate mothers, the child's height would correlate much more strongly with the surrogate mother's size than that of the biological mother and father?

There is probably sufficient data already accumulated to test this.

Oops, sorry. I guess your hypothesis is already ruled out because father--child correlations in height are pretty strong. (Consistent with the genetic model.) How do you explain that?

Greg, you would achieve wood if Rushton posted here, and you know it.

Galton

As one who went through this and blew literally 10 days over the obsession, I suggest to you that consider whether this is worth your time.

Feel free to send me an email: bpesta22@cs.com

What is this wood you speak of?

Lols

ED is treatable!

We can help; it's purely an environmental thing!

People of much higher status than Rushton have posted on this blog, Bryan, if I am not mistaken.

galton, someone may have identified alleles that correlate with height, using a technique that needs to be well-controlled in ways that aren't being done consistently yet and which is fundamentally susceptible to producing false positives. That's the point of suggesting you read up on GWAS.

Flynn's statement that you link to is entirely consistent with what I've already said. He thinks the question should be studied because it is one of social importance.

And the light is a methodological argument. Methodology is a rather important piece of science. Did you not know that? Hmm, maybe you didn't. You did, after all, just use results from studies that don't control for environment to argue that there's no need to control for environment.

Ah... sorry, Bryan Pesta, I don't live in the particular gutter you inhabit, with your 7th grade humor and your pimp hat and cigarettes.

Let me put it even more simply.

If height is mostly genetic, and hight has increased over several concurrent generations in most European populations in Europe and the US (as immigrants) from the late 19th century to recent times, then ....

... where did they hide the bodies of all the dead short people! WHERE!!!!????

Yes, height and IQ are similar. Hmmm....

John, if you think Lsynkoism failed because they thought there were only environmental factors, then you donât understand Lsynkoism. With Lsynkoism, they thought that environmental factors would influence heredity and so make the phenotype independent of the environment in future generations.

Greg is not suggesting, no liberal is suggesting that by providing a particular black person with an environment that fosters intellectual growth and development, that all descendents of that person will be intellectuals in the absence of an environment that fosters intellectual development.

However, those who state that height is mostly genetic, implies they do believe in Lsynkoism because it was those short Europeans who came to the new World and in that new environment improved their genes such that their children are now taller.

***Does any one know the point of the Bell Curve? Anyone?

It is this ... There already is an underclass, and it woudl cost to much to undo that. Bryan Pesta has already assented to this position in a comment over at Almost Diamonds.

The pro-IQ lobby is deeply racist, and racism left unfettered always leads to one thing and one thing only: A holocaust.***

1. I thought the point of the Bell Curve was that society, for better or worse, is becoming more stratified due to differences in cogntive ability. As I said in my comment on Stephanie's summary of iq literature, I don't believe that means governments shouldn't ensure people get decent pre-natal care services & access to educational opportunities.

2. The pro-IQ lobby claim that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest group average of anyone. About 2/3 of a standard deviation above other whites. The pro-IQ lobby claims that East Asians (those of Chinese, Japanese or Korean ancestry) average about 5 points above the european average.

Note that Hitler banned IQ tests because Jews performed above average on them. Stalin banned IQ tests because he thought they were bourgeoisie tests. How many people were exterminated by regimes with environmentalist ideologies? There was Stalin's 'dekulakisation' Pol Pot's 'Year Zero', & Mao's 'Cultural Revolution'.

Also, virtually all the victim groups of genocide in the 20th century had relatively high average levels of achievement (e.g., German Jews, educated Cambodians, Russian Kulaks, Armenians in Turkey, Ibos in Nigeria).

By denying IQ differences you then have to assume some kind of unfairness when groups are more successful. And as the examples above show, that leads to resentment & persecution too.

Observer, do you by chance have a particularly large IQ?

By denying IQ differences you then have to assume some kind of unfairness when groups are more successful.

A wonderful conflation of the naturalistic fallacy and reverse political correctness. If I understand your point.

www.azacaz.com you can like this only check ^^

A wonderful conflation of the naturalistic fallacy and reverse political correctness. If I understand your point.

This is just more psycho babble propaganda conceived in some smoky room over drinks by both republicans and democrats who take turns doing each other's dirty work hurting poor people. Like making deals with mexican cartels to ALLOW cocaine in to enslave poor people with addiction in exchange for guns and bullets to KILL poor people in Mexico AND give them the excuse to try and restrict access to guns and bullets so poor people can't defend themselves back in the USA! remember the Katrina ball field roundup people? Maybe Black folks were right about the CIA all along! YEP I believe so.

the growing split in both the left and right is driving more and more intelligent people to the independent tea party for real independent cooperation in creating JOBS not the same ole racism,hatred,going to take our guns,gonna take our rights,cut medicare shi.....!!!!

they give us every freaking excuse for no jobs .ALL LIES! Does anyone remember Rumsfield admitting to 2.3 trillion dollars missing the day before 911? Then obama care? Pelosi must be pleased to pass laws nobody reads ..come on now.

Heck where are their cuts and sacrifice???? both parties are still riding around in 1ST class eating steak while our children starve? Funny how there's millions of people and ideas in america yet only two parties who tell you who you can vote for.

Why would they be afraid of 48% of the people voting tea party this year anyway? hummmmm

the growing split in both the left and right is driving more and more intelligent people to the independent tea party

Hahahaha.... ah, no.

I do have to wonder what the search string was that landed the appropriately named Pawn on this particular post.

Alas, nothing interesting.

"growing split in both the left and right is driving more and more intelligent people to the independent tea party"

G-d that's funny. Really F-ing funny.

John, here's a biscuit if you are still hungry: Whereas the pro-IQ folks are indeed racist, and yes, that form of racism ALWAYS leads to holocaust, you really cannot forget their counter-parts: the sexists who explain the need to send men off to war after war after war,by telling folks that men are "stoopid."

Which many of them are, running off to fight other peoples battles and all...

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/06/women_are_smarter_than_men_we…

They work hand in hand with each other--so "Pawn" you're actually, kind of right in a real un-educated way.

We call these two the right and the left wing, respectively.

But Tea Party people are smart? Um....no. Big fucking no.

So I guess "creating every genre of 20th century American music*" is a low cultural achievement for black people, then?

* Yes, even country.