William Saletan and the Editors of Slate Demonstrate that They Are Not Members of the Genetic Elite

The average IQ score of America's "white" population today is 100. According to Ulric Neisser, America's "white" children in 1932 had an average today's-test IQ score of 80. Dutch army conscripts in 1952 scored 30 IQ points lower than conscripts in 1982. Dickens and Flynn (2006) estimate that the African-American IQ test average rose by 6 points relative to the "white" average between 1972 and 2002. According to Brierley (1970), in the 1960s African-Americans from Ohio had an average IQ score greater than that of whites from Arkansas by 10 points. Thomas Sowell reports that in Northern Ireland the Catholic average lags the Protestant average by 15 IQ points.

What do William Saletan and his editors at Slate do with this? Here:

Race, genes, and intelligence. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights... -- Declaration of Independence."... I wish these assurances were true. They aren't. Tests do show an IQ deficit, not just for Africans relative to Europeans, but for Europeans relative to Asians. Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern.... It's time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true.

If this suggestion makes you angry... you're not the first to feel that way. Many Christians are going through a similar struggle over evolution. Their faith in human dignity rests on a literal belief in Genesis.... But this time, the threat is racial genetics, and the people struggling with it are liberals.... [I]f you choose to fight the evidence, here's what you're up against. Among white Americans, the average IQ, as of a decade or so ago, was 103. Among Asian-Americans, it was 106. Among Jewish Americans, it was 113. Among Latino Americans, it was 89. Among African-Americans, it was 85. Around the world, studies find the same general pattern: whites 100, East Asians 106, sub-Sarahan Africans 70. One IQ table shows 113 in Hong Kong, 110 in Japan, and 100 in Britain....

[T]here's a mountain of evidence that differential evolution has left each population with a balance of traits that could be advantageous or disadvantageous, depending on circumstances. The list of differences is long and intricate. On average, compared to whites, blacks mature more quickly in the womb, are born earlier, and develop teeth, strength, and dexterity earlier. They sit, crawl, walk, and dress themselves earlier. They reach sexual maturity faster, and they have better eyesight. On each of these measures, East Asians lag whites and blacks. In exchange, East Asians get longer lives and bigger brains.

How this happened isn't clear. Everyone agrees that the three populations separated 40,000 to 100,000 years ago. Even critics of racial IQ genetics accept the idea that through natural selection, environmental differences may have caused abilities such as distance running to become more common in some populations than in others. Possibly, genes for cognitive complexity became so crucial in some places that nature favored them over genes for developmental speed and vision. If so, fitness for today's world is mostly dumb luck. If we lived in a savannah, kids programmed to mature slowly and grow big brains would be toast. Instead, we live in a world of zoos, supermarkets, pediatricians, pharmaceuticals, and information technology. Genetic advantages, in other words, are culturally created.

Not that that's much consolation if you're stuck in the 21st century with a low IQ...

Let's turn the microphone over to the impeccably right-wing Thomas Sowell to deal with this:

Thomas Sowell on Race, Genes, and IQ: Vol. 28, American Spectator, 02-01-1995, pp 32: [They] seem to conclude... that... biological inheritance of IQ... among members of the general society may also explain IQ differences between different racial and ethnic groups.... Such a conclusion goes... much beyond what the facts will support....

[T]he greatest black-white differences are not on the questions which presuppose middle-class vocabulary or experiences, but on abstract questions such as spatial perceptual ability.... [the] conclusion that this "phenomenon seems peculiarly concentrated in comparisons of ethnic groups" is simply wrong. When European immigrant groups in the United States scored below the national average on mental tests, they scored lowest on the abstract parts of those tests. So did white mountaineer children in the United States tested back in the early 1930s. So did canal boat children in Britain, and so did rural British children compared to their urban counterparts, at a time before Britain had any significant non-white population. So did Gaelic-speaking children as compared to English-speaking children in the Hebrides Islands. This is neither a racial nor an ethnic peculiarity. It is a characteristic found among low-scoring groups of European as well as African ancestry.

In short, groups outside the cultural mainstream of contemporary Western society tend to do their worst on abstract questions, whatever their race might be....

Perhaps the strongest evidence against a genetic basis for intergroup differences in IQ is that the average level of mental test performance has changed very significantly for whole populations over time and, moreover, particular ethnic groups within the population have changed their relative positions during a period when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of these groups.

While [Herrnstein and Murray's] The Bell Curve cites the work of James R. Flynn, who found substantial increases in mental test performances from one generation to the next in a number of countries around the world, the authors seem not to acknowledge the devastating implications of that finding for the genetic theory of intergroup differences, or for their own reiteration of long-standing claims that the higher fertility of low-IQ groups implies a declining national IQ level. This latter claim is indeed logically consistent with the assumption that genetics is a major factor in interracial differences in IQ scores. But ultimately this too is an empirical issue--and empirical evidence has likewise refuted the claim that IQ test performance would decline over time.

Even before Professor Flynn's studies, mental test results from American soldiers tested in World War II showed that their performances on these tests were higher than the performances of American soldiers in World War I by the equivalent of about 12 IQ points. Perhaps the most dramatic changes were those in the mental test performances of Jews in the United States. The results of World War I mental tests conducted among American soldiers born in Russia--the great majority of whom were Jews--showed such low scores as to cause Carl Brigham, creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to declare that these results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent." Within a decade, however, Jews in the United States were scoring above the national average on mental tests, and the data in The Bell Curve indicate that they are now far above the national average in IQ.

Strangely, Herrnstein and Murray refer to "folklore" that "Jews and other immigrant groups were thought to be below average in intelligence. " It was neither folklore nor anything as subjective as thoughts. It was based on hard data, as hard as any data in The Bell Curve. These groups repeatedly tested below average on the mental tests of the World War I era, both in the army and in civilian life. For Jews, it is clear that later tests showed radically different results--during an era when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of American Jews.

My own research of twenty years ago showed that the IQs of both Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans also rose substantially over a period of decades. Unfortunately, there are many statistical problems with these particular data, growing out of the conditions under which they were collected. However, while my data could never be used to compare the IQs of Polish and Italian children, whose IQ scores came from different schools, nevertheless the close similarity of their general patterns of IQ scores rising over time seems indicative--especially since it follows the rising patterns found among Jews and among American soldiers in general between the two world wars, as well as rising IQ scores in other countries around the world.

The implications of such rising patterns of mental test performance is devastating to the central hypothesis of those who have long expressed the same fear... that the greater fertility of low-IQ groups would lower the national (and international) IQ over time. The logic of their argument seems so clear and compelling that the opposite empirical result should be considered a refutation of the assumptions behind that logic....

A man who scores 100 on an IQ test today is answering more questions correctly than his grandfather with the same IQ answered two-generations ago, then someone else who answers the same number of questions correctly today as this man's grandfather answered two generations ago may have an IQ of 85.

Herrnstein and Murray openly acknowledge such rises in IQ and christen them "the Flynn effect," in honor of Professor Flynn who discovered it. But they seem not to see how crucially it undermines the case for a genetic explanation of interracial IQ differences. They say:

The national averages have in fact changed by amounts that are comparable to the fifteen or so IQ points separating blacks and whites in America. To put it another way, on the average, whites today differ from whites, say, two generations ago as much as whites today differ from blacks today. Given their size and speed, the shifts in time necessarily have been due more to changes in the environment than to changes in the genes.

While this open presentation of evidence against the genetic basis of interracial IQ differences is admirable, the failure to draw the logical inference seems puzzling. Blacks today are just as racially different from whites of two generations ago as they are from whites today. Yet the data suggest that the number of questions that blacks answer correctly on IQ tests today is very similar to the number answered correctly by past generations of whites. If race A differs from race B in IQ, and two generations of race A differ from each other by the same amount, where is the logic in suggesting that the IQ differences are even partly racial?... It is a question of the validity of the conclusion that differences between genetically different groups are due to those genetic differences, whether in whole or in part. When any factor differs as much from Al to A2 as it does from A2 to B2, why should one conclude that this factor is due to the difference between A in general and B in general?...

A remarkable phenomenon commented on in the Moynihan report of thirty years ago goes unnoticed in The Bell Curve--the prevalence of females among blacks who score high on mental tests. Others who have done studies of high- IQ blacks have found several times as many females as males above the 120 IQ level. Since black males and black females have the same genetic inheritance, this substantial disparity must have some other roots, especially since it is not found in studies of high-IQ individuals in the general society, such as the famous Terman studies, which followed high-IQ children into adulthood and later life. If IQ differences of this magnitude can occur with no genetic difference at all, then it is more than mere speculation to say that some unusual environmental effects must be at work among blacks. However, these environmental effects need not be limited to blacks, for other low-IQ groups of European or other ancestries have likewise tended to have females over-represented among their higher scorers, even though the Terman studies of the general population found no such patterns.

One possibility is that females are more resistant to bad environmental conditions, as some other studies suggest. In any event, large sexual disparities in high-IQ individuals where there are no genetic or socioeconomic differences present a challenge to both the Herrnstein- Murray thesis and most of their critics.

Black males and black females are not the only groups to have significant IQ differences without any genetic differences. Identical twins with significantly different birthweights also have IQ differences, with the heavier twin averaging nearly 9 points higher IQ than the lighter one. This effect is not found where the lighter twin weighs at least six and a half pounds, suggesting that deprivation of nutrition must reach some threshold level before it has a permanent effect on the brain during its crucial early development.

Perhaps the most intellectually troubling aspect of The Bell Curve is the authors' uncritical approach to statistical correlations. One of the first things taught in introductory statistics is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten, and one of the most widely ignored facts in public policy research. The statistical term "multicollinearity," dealing with spurious correlations, appears only once in this massive book.

Multicollinearity refers to the fact that many variables are highly correlated with one another, so that it is very easy to believe that a certain result comes from variable A, when in fact it is due to variable Z, with which A happens to be correlated. In real life, innumerable factors go together. An example I liked to use in class when teaching economics involved a study showing that economists with only a bachelor's degree had higher incomes than economists with a master's degree and that these in turn had higher incomes than economists with Ph.D.'s. The implication that more education in economics leads to lower incomes would lead me to speculate as to how much money it was costing a student just to be enrolled in my course. In this case, when other variables were taken into account, these spurious correlations disappeared. In many other cases, however, variables such as cultural influences cannot even be quantified, much less have their effects tested statistically....

Comments

[nu]

"Even critics of racial IQ genetics accept the idea that through natural selection, environmental differences may have caused abilities such as distance running to become more common in some populations than in others."

real scientists would tell you that certain populations because of their environement have develloped abilities that happen to be usefull in distance running..

but how does that relate to the vague american concept of race ?

[green apron monkey]

Let us now turn the microphone over to statistician Cosma Shalizi.
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html

[terence]

Steven Rose sinks the race based heritability of intelligence idea over at the Guardian:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/steven_rose/2007/10/iq_and_genetics_-_again.html

[terence]

drat: here's the link tinyurled:
http://tinyurl.com/384cjn

[Eric Crampton]

There's a pretty decent debate over at Cato Unbound. Flynn has the opening essay, with responses by Gottfredson, among others. http://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/the-iq-conundrum

See also the discussion over at Gene Expression on heritability of IQ, with reference to the Watson controversy.

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
(triple click the link to get the bit that goes past the border...the link should end with _296.php)

I think it's more than a bit quick to dismiss as idiots the folks who think there's a strong heritable aspect to IQ...

[JonF]

Re: Everyone agrees that the three populations separated 40,000 to 100,000 years ago.

Except that they were not isolated from one another. Europe and Asia were connected by the steppe-lands in which various nomadic peoples like the Scythians and later the Turks and Mongols acted as a conveyor belt transporting goods, ideas and, yes, genes back and forth across the length of Eurasia. As for Africa, the southern peoples (the Khoi-San) were fairly isolated for a long while, until the Bantu showed up, but the West African people were not particularly isolated from Europe, especially during regular periods when the Sahara was not a desert but a lush grass land allowing people to migrate back and forth across it with ease.
The only large human population which was completely isolated for a long period of time were the Australian Aborgines. The land bridge with New Guinea went under water c. 10000 BC and thereafter, apart from a very few rare exchanges across the Torres Strait, Australia was genetically isolated from the rest of the world.

[idlemind]

1/2 sigma forgets to mention that the lowering of SAT scores is explained by the larger fraction of the population taking them.

[John H. Morrison]

I hope that this exercise illustrates how unlikely it is that IQ or IQ variability has actually been shown to be genetic. Imagine creating a "musicality quantity" (MQ) that would measure the inherent musicality of an individual independent of his upbringing.

Consider a set of quintuplets (five identical twins) raised in five different ways. Twin one starts at age two on the violin or piano with the Suzuki Method, and music of all types infests her upbringing.

Twin two is surrounded by CDs of music from her birth. At age six or seven, she begins piano lessons which continue through her childhood and youth.

Twin three takes ordinary music classes in elementary school, and begins band in fifth grade on clarinet.

Twin four grows up listening to various forms of popular music. She sometimes dances socially, and parties quite a bit in her teens.

Twin five grows up in a cave, with virtually no exposure to the outside world.

Now, give the five twins at age fifteen the test that measures their respective MQs. Up to statistical fluctuations, all their MQs should be the same.

Imagine trying to come up with such a test. It would have to be musical and independent of the environment of a person's upbringing -- a contradictory pair of requirements. Most likely, the test would try to estimate the subject's background and discount for that. Then verifying the MQ test would be a project of monstrous proportions.

The problem is that intelligence is at least as nebulous a thing as musicality. Producing and verifying an IQ test is at least as difficult as producing and verifying the hypothetical MQ test. It would have to account for differences in education and family attitudes towards being smart, to begin with.

Yet the IQ tests account for only one factor: age.

Stephen J. Gould in "The Mismeasure of Man" described the horrendously bad initial research in establishing the notion of IQ. In the very early 1900s, why did blacks in the north have higher IQs than southern blacks? Certainly not because of better educational opportunities. No, the smarter ones went north.

Why did IQ correlate with amount of schooling? Not because schooling increased IQ, but because the smarter ones stayed in school longer.

If an immigrant hot off the boats in 1915 didn't know about the Brooklyn Dodgers, that was a negative point in his intelligence. Immigrants from 20 years earlier in New York knew about the Brooklyn Dodgers (after living there for 20 years); that was because they were smarter than the new immigrants.

One of the researchers at that gave a test to a new immigrant, using an interpreter. The interpreter objected that he wouldn't have been able to do that test 20 years ago, but "we persuaded him that the boy was defective."

I can think of only two valid uses for IQ tests: First, they might identify individual areas where a child needs help. Second, IQ may correlate with certain environments. If being hit on the head and seeing one's father beat up one's mother correlate negatively with IQ, that clearly exposes damage. If IQ varies inversely with corporal punishment, this suggests (but doesn't prove) that corporal punishment damages IQ.

[RLE]

1/2 sigma also neglects that the scores of subgroups have gone up despite what happened to overall scores. Not only has the fraction of the population taking the tests increased, but the composition of that fraction has changed as well See
http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/EDDRA30.htm

[John H. Morrison]

The lowering of SAT scores might be an example of Simpson's paradox in statistics. It is possible that white SAT scores increase, black SAT scores increase, yet the overall average of scores of whites and blacks decrease because blacks score lower than whites and more blacks take the test now.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-sat.htm

Alternatively, the explanation could be that more people are taking the test. If only the top ten percent of Mississippi students take the SAT but the top ninety percent of Massachusetts students take them, that would probably make Mississippi's SAT average higher than Massachusetts's average. But that wouldn't mean that Mississippi's students are better educated than Massachusetts's.

[Pinko Punko]

john, genes control the development of our entire bodies. Certainly, some variation in cognitive ability has a genetic component, but given the massive noise-to-signal in deeply imprecise measures of intelligence it really doesn't make sense to proclaim that the existing evidence supports a massive geographical fixation in every population for alleles supporting big cognitive differences (not that you necessarily are, but this is the argument at hand).

[gcochran]

The Voight-Pritchard study in PLOS Biology found around 200 sweeping genes in each of the three HAPMAP populations, that is to say gene variants that have recently gone from a single individual to high frequency over a region as large as Europe or China. The typical age was about 6600 years.
Most (> 70%)of the sweeping genes were regional, not shared. On the relevant time scale, which is on the order of ten thousand year or less, Europe and China are largely isolated from each other. Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and the Americas are as well.

For that matter, there are a number of regional alleles that have risen to fixation or near-fixation, some very recently. Look at the recent Williamson-Nielsen paper in PLOS Genetics. Fixation means 100% frequency in that population.
They found regional sweeps affecting
"genes in pigmentation pathways, components of the dystrophin protein complex, clusters of olfactory receptors, genes involved in nervous system development and function, immune system genes, and heat shock genes. "

In general they found that recent adaptation - almost all regional - is strikingly pervasive.

For example, they found essentially all their the people in their Asian sample have a version of DAB1 that is extremely rare or nonexistent in other populations. DAB1 plays a role in establishing the laminar organization of the cerebral cortex.

[bigTom]

Assuming for the sake of discussion that such a thing a g exists, we can perform a thought experiment about its potential distribution.

(1) There is clearly a strong component concerning good pre-natal, and early age nutrition.

(2) There is almost certainly an effect of the environment surrounding the infants and toddlers.

(3) There is likely an effect concerning early education, and attitudes towards education.

(4) There is likely also a genetic component.

In an ideal world we would be able to seperate these factors. Clearly the evidence so far is that across most of these groups the noise from the first three makes any determination of group differences problematic. That doesn't mean at some time in the future we won't have sufficient controls on the first three to draw conclusions about 4, just that any conclusions drawn from available data today contain so many biasing effects as to be nearly useless.

[James T. Smith]

bigTom said, "Clearly the evidence so far is that across most of these groups the noise from the first three makes any determination of group differences problematic."

What evidence is that? That's certainly not what twin studies show.

[Reginald Fessenden]

There is a lot more variance in the amplitudes of the signals imposed on my carrier waves than between the carrier waves themselves.

Your AM radio does work and does have lots of different stations though all across the dial.

[Edwin H. Armstrong]

My dear friend Reggie knows what he is talking about. I would add that there is more variance in the frequency of the signal imposed on my carrier waves than between the carrier waves themselves.

Your FM radio does work and does have lots of different stations though all across the dial.

And it has less static than Reggie's!

[Robert Waldmann]

I think it might be time to decide to never take anything Salaten says seriously again. Following Atrios (I think) I would say that his problem seems to be the curse of cursing both houses. Since the right refuses to consider scientific questions scientifically, he has to argue that the left does it too. He chose a case in which lefties lose their calm. He also chose one (of many) in which lefties lose their calm, because the arguments of righties are non sense.

On the other hand, I do have one objection to Sowell's absolutely convincing arguments. He says there are no genetic differences between men and women !?! What he seems to mean is that any genetic differences between, say, races, are not correlated with sex. This proves nothing. The effects of genetic differences need not be linear. For example, there is strong evidence that the risk of breast cancer has a genetic component -- female relatives of women who have had breast cancers are more likely to have breast cancer. This is not true for male relatives of women with breast cancer. Very few men get breast cancer (not no men last I checked there were about 70 cases a year of breast cancer in men in the USA).

By Sowell's argument there can not be a genetic component of risk of breast cancer.

Just one little slip. The fact is very interesting. The change in IQ by gender in disadvantaged groups is further strong evidence against a genetic basis for intergroup differences in IQ just as Sowell argued.

Of course a very strong pattern of IQ in the USA is that red state IQ is lower than blue state IQ. This means that conservatives are eager to argue that people in red states are just born dumb and doomed to stay that way, while liberals argue that they have been poorly served by their educational systems.

Nonetheless they still vote for the Republicans because they are convinced that Democrats think they are dumb. This demonstrates utter, complete, mouth breathing, knuckle dragging stupidity poor service by their educational systems.

[robertdfeinman]

Two remarks:
What if we could demonstrate that right wingers had a lower IQ than average. Could we then prohibit them from being pundits and political advisers?

It has been widely known since at least the 1940's that the IQ tests don't test "intelligence". They test how well people know the details of their culture. Mathematician Banesh Hoffmann made a minor career in the 1950's and 1960's showing examples of cultural bias in the questions used in standardized tests. Claims by the testing agencies that they have corrected this are not credible.

So if you live in a different sub culture from the one creating the test you will not do as well those who do. Krugman titled one of his blog entries yesterday "Premature anti-Bushism". How many people will get the reference to premature anti-Nazism? You have to be of a certain age and have been paying attention to certain political discussions during the red baiting period to pick up the allusion.

Racists continually bring up phony genetics and evolutionary arguments. It worked for Hitler, why not try it in the US (again).

[RedCharlie]

I used to like Saletan and Slate. I used to read Saletan and Slate. Stuff like this reminds me why I don't anymore.

"All men are created equal" is one of the most abused and distorted statments of the last 50 years. The founders were speaking of rights, not abilities. Saletan even quotes "unalienable rights" but misses it. It's the republican dilemma: stupid or lying?

We no more need "to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true" than we need to prepare for the possibility that the neighbor's kid will turn out to be smarter than yours.

The liberal point is that each individual has the right to be judged upon their own individual merit, not because there is no difference between races, but because each individual has the right to be treated fairly.

Genetic differences between races has no relevance to the liberal position of equality, as it is an equality of rights, and equality before the law, that is at issue here. Intelligence is inherited? sure, sounds reasonable. Privilege and rank inherited? No. That's not right.

[jerry]

Physicists understand there is no centrifugal force, and yet, the majority of people find it a useful concept and may not understand their lack of precision or accuracy.

I don't think you have to claim people are racists because for whatever reason they do not understand their lack of precision or accuracy in discussing race.

IIRC, if you believe the wikipedia, it seems the majority of anthropologists up until 1995 thought race was a real and useful concept. Change happens slowly.

On a daily basis we are reminded that one organization after another does not discriminate on the basis of race. So like centrifugal force, it may not be real, and yet, the lay person still finds it to be meaningful and useful concept.

I object to calling people racist over this, I think that people in good faith should be able to discuss this.

And if I understand from my surfing last night what Lewontin's fallacy is, it may be that the concept of race makes one or two more appearances as a real and valid concept before either disappearing like a Cheshire cat's smile or the 24th chromosome, or becoming real like Neptune after being observed and not recognized by Galileo and discovered later on.

Calling people racist isn't useful here except for shutting down valid discussions.

(I didn't get the reference to premature anti-nazism, so I do thank you for that.)

[James Wimberley]

Notice that Saletan just assumes that the alleged genetic IQ lag in African Americans is the result of differential evolution from a supposed fork 40k-100k years ago. The other genetic hypothesis would be that it results (if it exists, which I doubt) from the perverse selection pressure of the crime of mass slavery 300-150 years ago, with the high mortality especially of new slaves from rebellion, suicide, and disease potentiated by depression. Slaveowners never succeeded in breeding a population of docile slaves, but they tried. It's far more likely of course that the damage to African-Americans was cultural and economic; and that if there was a selection effect, it would apply to personality traits rather than IQ.

It's surely no accident that neither Barack Obama nor Tiger Woods have slave ancestors, and that Colin Powell descends from Jamaican slaves freed a generation before American ones. There are of course many descendants of slaves of high achievement, but we are talking about the odds here. The ship is righting itself, but very slowly.

Robert Waldmann: you appeal to g, but isn't its existence a part of what's in dispute? SFIK g is defined as the common component of the *variance* in IQ scores in a given population. Change the population observed, and you change g. Logically g must increase with similarity in environments, decrease with difference. It's a residual; and the more you chase it, and identify environmental causes, the more it fades away like Lewis Carroll's snark. I don't see how it helps Saletan's bar-room musings.

[JK]

One point that intrigues me about the discussion is the way that Jews and asians are used. There is an interesting double implication going on. On the one hand the supposed greater intelligence attributed to Jews and asians is used to suggest that the speaker is not racist, since they have not put whites at the top of the pile. At the same time it is used to play to the stereotype and right wing anti-intellectual prejudice that they are too clever to be trusted. The inscrutable chinese, etc.

I have some sympathy with jerry's point that it's wrong to necessarily call people racist just because they live in a world where black people - best we can tell due to circumstances rather than genetics - have lower average IQs.

But at this stage I think anyone who has really studied the subject and looked at the evidence and still thinks this is genetic is either foolish or racist. I'm loath to say that because I don't mean to close down anyone's freedom of speech or enquiry, and charges of racism tend to carry that implication today. Myself, I defend free speech for racists. The answer to bad speech is good speech.

[jerry]

JK, I don't know if you meant to insinuate that I am a racist, but it took me a while to find an interpretation of your writing that allowed me to think that you didn't.

According to the wikipedia, it is relatively recent for those that have really studied the subject to become aware that race is a very vague, imprecise, and mostly wrong classification device. If it is so recent to academics and journal authors, I suspect it is reasonable to assume that even well meaning, completely non racist scientists in the field may have their doubts. Presumably A.W.F. Edwards.

If it is only recently that those who have really studied the subject can be expected to believe there is no such thing as race, why would we expect laymen to think that now, or to ascribe their ignorance as a result of racism and bigotry, and just not being unfamiliar with how the field has changed in the 10, 20, 30, 40 years since they left the university?

(the wikipedia, which we all know is never wrong, even states that this is an ongoing controversy.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28classification_of_human_beings%29#Current_views_across_disciplines

"Since 1932, some college textbooks introducing physical anthropology have increasingly come to reject race as a valid concept: from 1932 to 1976, only seven out of thirty-two rejected race; from 1975 to 1984, thirteen out of thirty-three rejected race; from 1985 to 1993, thirteen out of nineteen rejected race. According to one academic journal entry, where 78 percent of the articles in the 1931 Journal of Physical Anthropology employed these or nearly synonymous terms reflecting a bio-race paradigm, only 36 percent did so in 1965, and just 28 percent did in 1996.[11] The American Anthropological Association, drawing on biological research, currently holds that "The concept of race is a social and cultural construction. . . . Race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically," and that, "It is clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. The concept of 'race' has no validity . . . in the human species".[6]

In an ongoing debate, some geneticists argue that race is neither a meaningful concept nor a useful heuristic device,[12] and even that genetic differences among groups are biologically meaningless,[13] on the grounds that more genetic variation exists within such races than among them, and that racial traits overlap without discrete boundaries.[14] Other geneticists, in contrast, argue that categories of self-identified race/ethnicity or biogeographic ancestry are both valid and useful,[15] that these categories correspond with clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data,[16] and that this correspondence implies that genetic factors might contribute to unexplained phenotypic variation between groups.[17]

In February, 2001, the editors of the medical journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine asked authors to no longer use "race" as an explanatory variable and not to use obsolescent terms. Some other peer-reviewed journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, have made similar endeavours.[18] Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health recently issued a program announcement for grant applications through February 1, 2006, specifically seeking researchers who can investigate and publicize among primary care physicians the detrimental effects on the nation's health of the practice of medical racial profiling using such terms. The program announcement quoted the editors of one journal as saying that, "analysis by race and ethnicity has become an analytical knee-jerk reflex."[19]

A survey, taken in 1985 (Lieberman et al. 1992), asked 1,200 American anthropologists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were:

* physical anthropologists 41%
* cultural anthropologists 53%[20]

The figure for physical anthropologists at PhD granting departments was slightly higher, rising from 41% to 42%, with 50% agreeing. This survey, however, did not specify any particular definition of race (although it did clearly specify biological race within the species Homo Sapiens); it is difficult to say whether those who supported the statement thought of race in taxonomic or population terms.

The same survey, taken in 1999 [21], showed the following changing results for anthropologists:

* physical anthropologists 69%
* cultural anthropologists 80%
"

[Ben Brackley]

From Jefferson to the 1960s, the status of blacks in an America theoretically committed to liberal democracy could only be justified with assumptions and assertions of the inferiority of blacks. Such assumptions were internalized by almost all Americans to a greater or lesser degree and unfortunately remain a residual part of our cultural legacy to this day.

American slavery was different than slavery throughout history (including African slavery in the Caribbean) because it had to be justified on a basis other than relative power for important (albeit hypocritical) ideological reasons. In other times and places, slave owners had the power and slaves did not, and not much more was needed to justify the system. African slaves in Jamaica may have been treated more harshly in many respects, but were much less likely to regard their status as a result of any inherent inferiority. The relative success of immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa after the dismantling of most of the U.S.'s legal and social barriers to advancement by blacks provides evidence for this.

While it has finally and fairly decisively addressed many racial issues (both legal and social) over the last half-century, American has still not come to grips with the lingering cultural and crippling psychological legacies created by almost 200 years of ideological hypocrisy.

Given this legacy, it is astounding (and, frankly, shameful) that so many pseudo-contrarians like Saletan are so eager to put forth half-baked and unscientific speculations about a subject they know so little about. Especially, when only a little reading and understanding of statistics would be required to disabuse them of such stupidity.

[JK]

jerry,

In case you care (no reason you should), from what you've written I don't think you're a racist.

"If it is only recently that those who have really studied the subject can be expected to believe there is no such thing as race, why would we expect laymen to think that now, or to ascribe their ignorance as a result of racism and bigotry, and just not being unfamiliar with how the field has changed in the 10, 20, 30, 40 years since they left the university?"

Well that's one reason I have sympathy with your point. My qualification about those who have "really studied the subject and looked at the evidence" was supposed to imply recently.

I actually agree with your point that "Calling people racist isn't useful here except for shutting down valid discussions." But that's a different point from whether or not it's true. Probably it wasn't worth me raising the point (it wasn't useful, however true). I suspect that the definition of racism has anyway become so confused that it can have little meaning in contemporary discussion.

Let me try again: claims about race and IQ are often clearly informed by ideas and prejudices with a life of their own outside of narrow scientific or sociological data. This can be found amongst anti-racists. But perhaps it is particularly clear amongst those who make big deal of elaborating the argument for a connection between race and genetically determined IQ.
(Not that I'm trying to claim that e.g. economics or the rest of social science is all pure objective science either.)

That's horribly long winded, but I hope it makes sense.

btw, I think there are many interesting questions about human genetic diversity that could benefit from more research.

[jerry]

Thanks JK, I had entered a longish and particularly insightful comment, but then my browser crashed. Sigh.

[Wayne]

Quote: "Thomas Sowell reports that in Northern Ireland the Catholic average lags the Protestant average by 15 IQ points"

The Catholics are descended from Ireland's indigenous population while the Protestants are descended from British colonists who started coming to Ireland in the 1600's. Since IQs vary by ethnicity as well as by race it is not surprising that the two populations have different levels of intelligence.

[Skeptic]

gcochran: "More than that - a high proportion of the alleles that vary a lot in frequency between racial groups have been subject to strong selection. They do something significant."

This is important - how do you connect selection to suggested genetic differences in intelligence?

It is reasonable to argue that geographical isolation and genetic drift along with selection produced systematic genetic differences between biological populations. The idea that these genetic differences would produce different levels of cognitive abilities assumes that the environments placed different levels of stress on intellect. But the severest demands on intelligence arise within our social environment, not our physical ones.

Until someone can offer a plausible theory (hypothesis and supporting evidence) for how and why different continents placed different selective pressure on intelligence, my default position is that the science of racism offers a better explanation for Rushton and Jensen's conclusions than the sciences of race or genetics.

[gcochran]

A goodly fraction of those regional sweeping alleles involve the central nervous system. There are, for example, a number that are serotonin transporters and receptors - we see them in Europe, not in the other HAPMAP populations. There's a new variant of the Gaucher gene that is one of the most strongly selected alleles in East Asia.

If one were to show that those new, strongly selected serotonin-related variants
had some effect on cognition or personality, then the effect would exist whether you had an evolutionary explanation or not. Mind you, there would _be_ an evolutionary explanation, but it might take time to figure it out.

You see a much higher frequency of wild-type alpha-actinin-three in sub-Saharan African than you do in Europe or east Asia - and there's evidence that recent selection had something to do with that.

There's no published argument that explains why, but those alleles make a difference in the 100-meter dash whether we understand the evolutionary story behind them or not.

[Skeptic]

"Since IQs vary by ethnicity as well as by race it is not surprising that the two populations have different levels of intelligence."

A hundred years ago, the Irish and the English weren't different ethnicities, they were different races.

In other words, race is a sociological construct which people give various kinds of content, including biological/genetic.

By the way, my understanding is that most of the protestants of Northern Ireland aren't descendents of the Germanic Angles, Saxons, etc. The colonizers were the aristocratic descendents of the Nordic ancestors of William the Conqueror. The introduced protestant population was largely Scottish - which would make them more Celtic, like the Irish.

But of course there's been a ton of admixture, which also supports Sowell's argument.

[Skeptic]

gcochran:
"If one were to show that those new, strongly selected serotonin-related variants
had some effect on cognition or personality, then the effect would exist whether you had an evolutionary explanation or not. Mind you, there would _be_ an evolutionary explanation, but it might take time to figure it out. "

A provocative response - thanks.

In passing let me note that sometimes an evolutionary explanation is a founder effect - an accident rather that the outcome of selection.

I agree that selection for serotonin makes the hypothesis more plausible. I still hold oout for a higher standard of proof requiring explanation as well as evidence.

First, the history of environmental and biological determinist theories shows that they exercise a powerful attraction for those wishing to explain the state of affairs - a higher standard of proof is a reasonable precaution against such a bias.

Second, sometimes different mechanisms or biological pathways can perform the same function. I don't know enough brain chemistry to suggest any alternatives for serotonin. However, if Asian populations have a higher "intelligence" than Europeans but lower serotonin levels, it suggests that an alternative exists.

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

It is surprising to me on what a thin reed many of these strong claims hang. I discuss how fragmentary and contradictory the evidence for a large difference in IQ between Ashkenazi Jews and other Europeans here: http://capitalistimperialistpig.blogspot.com/2007/11/smarty-pants.html

Short summary: there are few large studies and the two largest get contradictory results. What cannot be doubted is the magnitude of Jewish achievement relative to their numbers, but is it genes or culture that is in the driver's seat.

The Cato debate mentioned above is excellent, by the way, especially the article by Flynn. While not disavowing genetic components, it pretty much cuts the legs off of the conventional hereditarians.

[gcochran]

Since the typical sweeping allele is only a few thousand years old, there's no way they can be caused by founding effect: by that time there were millions of people around in these populations, way too many for any noticeable drift.

There may be convergence: the genetic basis of light skin in Asians and Europeans turns out to be completely different. Of course we aren't sure what selective advantage drove that, or even if it was the same advantage in both populations.

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

gcochran, quoting Steve Hsu - "Imagine each individual's genetic code as a point in a space of *very high* dimension."

Greg,

Actually, with 22k genes, it's low compared to many state spaces, especially since most of the genes are the same for all. That said, you don't need to study SNPs to come up with a good guess as to where most of the ancestors of a given person came from.

You state that the state space clusters map directly unto traditional definitions of ethnicity - just how many ethnic groupings are we considering here? Three - I doubt it. Six - maybe. Many more - still more likely.

It seems likely that most persons currently alive have some common ancestors in the last 5000 years, and quite possibly no unshared ancestors from a time only a bit further back. There is pretty good evidence for that claim in the rapid spread of post pastoral adult lactase.

[gcochran]

Three or four captures most of the variance. I'd add at least one more if we _had_ some good Australian Aborigine genetic data, but generally we don't. Politics. But to a decent approximation, you can break the world down into a limited number of regions such that gene flow within them was significant while gene flow with other regions was minimal.
The T–13910 lactase-persistence variant is one of the most widespread of the sweeping alleles. You can find it from Iceland to India, down into Berbers in the Rif: it's even around at a lowish frequency in a tribe in Mali. And it looks to be only 8000 years old. But it took a long time to get to sub-Saharan Africa, so long that the local generated three of their own lactase-persistence mutations first. You see those in the Masai, Tutsi, etc.

Imperfect isolation can be enough to block or slow the spread of sweeping alleles to the point where their frequency is insignificant in a given population. Partly because almost of these sweeps are very recent and small amounts of gene flow have not had time to be amplified by natural selection, probably more because the sweeping alleles are only advantageous in particular circumstances. You won't see T-1390 spreading wildly in a population that doesn't have cows.

[politicalfootball]

The interesting question behind Saletan's work is this: How do we differentiate hostile racism from boneheaded thinking about race? Is Saletan a racist, or merely a dupe?

Saletan says that African blacks score worse on IQ tests than U.S. blacks, and he offers this statement as evidence that environment *doesn't* matter.

His reasoning? If racism in the U.S. caused lower IQ scores, then:

"Why do blacks in the white-dominated United States score 15 points higher than blacks in black-dominated African countries, including countries that have been free of colonial rule for half a century?"

Pardon me, but are you fucking kidding me? There is a point at which we are required to abandon the assumption of good faith. I think Saletan has reached that point, and the facts demand that we simply revile him as an overt racist.

[kharris]

There is an obvious genetic component to intelligence. This can be observed in the simple fact that intellect is associated with brain structure and brain structure breeds true. Humans and lizards have different brain structures and different levels of intelligences. It should not be controversial that there is a genetic component to intelligence.

The argument must be over the level of genetic differentiation at which the inherited component of intelligence operates. That is where Sowell's essay is important. He shows fairly clearly that at the species level (at least in the species under discussion here), intelligence is so highly variable within racial and ethnic groups over time and from place to place and circumstance to circumstance, that assertions of group differences don't hold up. Perhaps some day, we will have refined our efforts sufficiently that we will find real differences between groups. The fact that we cannot do so now, however, is evidence that those differences are not gross or global. The distribution of intellectual performance is quite wide within groups so, as others have pointed out, there is no justification for assumptions of individual superiority or inferiority because of group membership. In our society, that should mean each of us gets a fair shot, without prejudice. That expectation of equal opportunity is what is at the root of this argument, I think.

Saletin is in the business of smug contrarianism for the sake of smug contrarianism. Writing that there are significant intellectual differences between the races is a simple choice when you are in that business. No need to read to deeply into the issue. You tell yourself that getting a debate going is the highest good (as Sullivan has argued when caught publishing crap), knowing all the while that racial debate sells, and then its Miller time. So what if you get the substance wrong?

[jim]

James Watson, the Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, recently got dis-invited from several lectures he was to give in the UK for letting slip some of his thoughts on Africa. He was pessimistic about the future of the continent, he said, because the native population is not very intelligent. And he made an anecdotal reference to the problems one has with Black employees. The uproar was ferocious and he was forced to simply pack up and leave. When he got back to the US he was dismissed from his post at the head of the Coldspring Laboratory that he had created. Evidently he doesn't understand intelligence very well, does he?

[Danny Yee]

apart from a very few rare exchanges across the Torres Strait, Australia was genetically isolated from the rest of the world

Makassan fishermen had regular contacts with Arnhem land as well, going back probably thousands of years.

[wood turtle]

Time to forget about all of this and move on to Level II.

[Sarah]

Jim, Mr. Watson has a lot of controversial beliefs due to the physical appearance of people - which speaks more to his personal prejudices than any scientific understanding. Yes, even "intelligent" scientists can be affected by emotions.

[JonF]

Re: Makassan fishermen had regular contacts with Arnhem land as well, going back probably thousands of years.

True, but did this involve mating or did it only involves sporadic and brief visits for minor trading purposes? Since there was no actual settlement of Indonesian peoples in Australia (unlike New Guinea) I think the latter is more likely.

[ezrah]

1.) Firstly, the so called I.Q test is not developed
enough to measure intelligence. e.g how do you measure
the intelligence of an educated person and a non
educated person using the same test. How do you
measure artistic intelligence, right vs left brain
intellectual functions, emotional intelligence,
artistic intelligence, spiritual intelligence and
physical intelligence.

2.) 'their' recent studies have concluded that human
achievements are not totally dependant on genes, i.e
we are not slaves to genes. Therefore intelligence or
I.Q level is not a constant by can be improved, and
can also be detered from developing due to:
a. poor diet
b. poor upbringing, parenting, environmental
stimulation
c. culture
Taking all this into consideration its obvious that
people at the bottom of social-economic structures
exist in environments not conducive for mental
development. Its that simple...if you live well and
eat well your mind and body will develop to their full
capacity.
-do you think the brain size of a child drinking clean
water will be the same as that of one without access
to clean water and sanitation. How about the child
without access to a library???
In conclusion this shows that "if" its true that black
people's I.Q are lower it should follow to also
conclude that the reason is because the oppression,
poverty, and lack of investment in education,
mental stimulation and training.

3.) Culture and Social engineering:

a. African Americans- Saletan's study said that African
Americans I.Q is generally higher than continental
African I.Q because many African Americans have
European blood. This study is wrong because it failed
to account for the fact that children of African
immigrants in America generally perform better in
school than both white and African Americans.
- The reason why immigrant African children do better
in school than African American children is purely
cultural. African immigrant parents demand more from
their children than African American parents. Another
point of interest is that in my observation the
average intellectual performance of African American
children has deteriorated in the recent years due to
family breakdown and pop culture .
- The reason why Asian children do very well in school
is also because of their culture and parental demands
on the children...well, the study forgot to mention
that Asian children also commit suicides at higher
rates because of the pressure from parents.
- The reason why white children relatively do well in
school is because the parents own and control
everything, the whites generally give their children a
lot of freedom to express themselves and provide them
with all they need,

Many traits amongst races are not DNA based but
cultural, however cultural traits eventually become
genetic if repeated.
Are I.Qs genetic and racial?:-
- African Americans perform better in sports and music
than everyone else around the world. Is this genetic
and racial? No, blacks in Brazil and Congo don't
perform as well as blacks in America in sports,
therefore there is a cultural and social base to it.
- Blacks in Kenya out-ran everyone else in the world
in the marathon, is this genetic and racial? No,
blacks in Ghana, Zimbabwe and America generally can't
run the marathon

b.) Africans
FACT - Poverty, social instability and cultural
stagnation are not good for brain & physical growth
and intellectual development-in my opinion some cultural tendencies in Africa which dont promote acadenic intellectual development but some other kind of intelligences.

Right Brain vs Left Brain
The brain is divided into two major hemispheres, known
as the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The
left brain, in general, is characterized by most
western people (and some Asians), and handles,
sequential and linear processing/thought. The right
brain, in general, is characterized by most African
people (and some Asians) and handles synthesis and
the ability to see wholes. These two 'brains' do not
look at life in the same way.
Left Brain
- Logical
- Sequential
- Rational
- Analytical
- Objective
- Looks at parts

Right Brain
- Random
- Intuitive
- Holistic
- Synthesizing
- Subjective
- Looks at wholes

In general, schools tend to favor _left-brain modes of
thinking_, while downplaying the right-brain ones.
Left-brain scholastic subjects focus on logical
thinking, analysis, and accuracy. Right-brained
subjects, on the other hand, focus on aesthetics,
feeling, and creativity.
http://www.funderstanding.com/right_left_brain.cfm

- Many of the traits of 'intelligence' CAN be improved
upon, these include adaptability to a new situation,
cognitive capabilities, logical thinking, abstract
thinking, originality, alertness, common-sense,
productiveness and creativity.

- IQ test, used to 'validate' the 'war against
Blacks', are based on left brain qualities and
virtually ignore right brain qualities.

- There are certain capabilities which IQ tests can't
measure. They include creativity, non-academic
talents, musical capability, manual dexterity,
interpersonal skills etc.
http://www.personality-and-aptitude-career-tests.com/iq-test-scores.html

- Psychologists have discovered that mood, anxiety,
stress, environment, education, culture and abode may
influence IQ test rating variably.

- [Intelligence] can be developed to the fullest
possible expression with right information, practice
and experience. And IQ test scores can only identify
your current level of mental alertness, not your
constant intelligence factor.

- IQ tests measure, for the most part, what a person
has learned, not what he or she is capable of doing in
the future (his potential).
http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq02.htm

- IQ tests are not very reliable. The scores may vary
as much as 15 points from one test to another, while
emotional tension, anxiety, and unfamiliarity with the
testing process can greatly affect test performance.
http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq02.

'Intelligence' is not static and one way
'intelligence' can be improved is by altering ones
brainwaves

- 'Intelligence' can be improved simply by retraining
a person's brain by using neurofeedback:
http://consciousmedianetwork.com/members/lgerdes.htm

- Brain waves can be enhanced to create conditions for
optimum learning, thinking, studying

- Dr. Siegfried Othmer says that “brainwave training
clearly facilitates the organization of mental
functioning so that the child can exhibit his native
intelligence. The results are so striking that they
must compel us to revisit the whole issue of whom we
are calling mentally retarded.”
http://www.acure-group.com/research/article137.pdf

- '...Significant post-test increases in IQ scores
were observed in 10 EEG-responsive subject...'
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p020268.html

- Psychologoist have identified multiple
'intelligenses' and testing shows that no student was
found to be in the top five on every measure.
http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq02.htm
* Linguistic intelligence (“word smart”)
* Logical-mathematical intelligence
(“number/reasoning smart”)
* Spatial intelligence (“picture smart”)
* Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (“body smart”)
* Musical intelligence (“music smart”)
* Interpersonal intelligence (“people smart”)
* Intrapersonal intelligence (“self smart”)
* Naturalist intelligence (“nature smart”)

[Johnacko]

Re: Makassan fishermen in Arnhem Land.

The fishermen arrived every year and set up camp on the beach for several months while they caught and processed trepang. There was considerable intercourse with the locals, including local women. Makassan words were borrowed into Yolnggu languages, a few locals went back and spent the off-season in the Makassas, and certainly a few genes got handed around while all this was going on.

However, the evidence appears to be that these regular visits took place only during the last few hundred years, after the trepang trade to China got started. During the previous few thousand years, there were no doubt occasional sporadic contacts with folk from Indonesia, that's all.

Trading and other contacts across Torres Strait between southern New Guinea and Cape York were (and are) much more important, and certainly date back thousands of years.

[scribe10]

You guys are missing the point. Who cares about HQ tests.

The real question is why countries like Vietnam and Cambodia which were devastated by war are doing so much better than any country in sub-Sahara Africa except South Africa which has a large non Black population consisting of Indians and Europeans?

Why are there no well known African research institution the way you have in China, Japan, etc.

Where are the great African mathematicians or scientists?

I expect that my question want be answered and instead I will get another lecture on "racism."

[Will]

"The introduced protestant population was largely Scottish - which would make them more Celtic, like the Irish"

The Scots are a mixture of Celts, Norwegian and Danish Vikings and Anglo-Saxons. In other words, there are genetic differences between the Irish and the Scots.

"A hundred years ago, the Irish and the English weren't different ethnicities, they were different races."

Race and ethnicity are biological concepts that can be used interchangeably.

[the exile]

time for the statisticians and logicians to cede some space to actual neuroscientists who understand how the brain works and grows. The idea of Neuroplasticity (roughly, that how you USE your brain directly affects how the brain develops biologically) is now basically undisputed. In other words, unless you administer an IQ test the moment the baby pops out of the womb (or maybe even a bit before), that IQ test will not be measuring innate genetic brain ability, but innate genetic ability PLUS all brain develpment that has taken place over the child's lifetime. Short translation, environment matters from birth, so the idea that IQ tests measure innate genetic characteristics is CRAP.

[scribe10]

"...time for the statisticians and logicians to cede some space to actual neuroscientists who understand how the brain works and grows." Posted by: Will | November 26, 2007 at 10:13 AM

That would still not answer the question posed above:

Posted by: scribe10 | November 26, 2007 at 08:33 AM