Its defenders claim to be standing up for uncomfortable truths, but race science is still as bogus as ever.
The Alt Right, Steve Pinker, Steven Molyneux, and even Sam Harris have all jumped in on the pseudoscientific nonsense about race and intelligence. They haven't looked at the facts.
The problem was that most of his identical twins were adopted into the same kinds of middle-class families. So it was hardly surprising that they ended up with similar IQs. In the relatively few cases where twins were adopted into families of different social classes and education levels, there ended up being huge disparities in IQ – in one case a 20-point gap; in another, 29 points, or the difference between “dullness” and “superior intelligence” in the parlance of some IQ classifications. In other words, where the environments differed substantially, nurture seems to have been a far more powerful influence than nature on IQ.
But what happens when you move from individuals to whole populations? Could nature still have a role in influencing IQ averages? Perhaps the most significant IQ researcher of the last half century is the New Zealander Jim Flynn. IQ tests are calibrated so that the average IQ of all test subjects at any particular time is 100. In the 1990s, Flynn discovered that each generation of IQ tests had to be more challenging if this average was to be maintained. Projecting back 100 years, he found that average IQ scores measured by current standards would be about 70.
Yet people have not changed genetically since then. Instead, Flynn noted, they have become more exposed to abstract logic, which is the sliver of intelligence that IQ tests measure. Some populations are more exposed to abstraction than others, which is why their average IQ scores differ. Flynn found that the different averages between populations were therefore entirely environmental.
His finding has been reinforced by the changes in average IQ scores observed in some populations. The most rapid has been among Kenyan children – a rise of 26.3 points in the 14 years between 1984 and 1998, according to one study. The reason has nothing to do with genes. Instead, researchers found that, in the course of half a generation, nutrition, health and parental literacy had improved.
His finding has been reinforced by the changes in average IQ scores observed in some populations. The most rapid has been among Kenyan children – a rise of 26.3 points in the 14 years between 1984 and 1998, according to one study. The reason has nothing to do with genes. Instead, researchers found that, in the course of half a generation, nutrition, health and parental literacy had improved.
But it was on IQ that the paper’s case really floundered. Tests conducted in the first two decades of the 20th century routinely showed Ashkenazi Jewish Americans scoring below average. For example, the IQ tests conducted on American soldiers during the first world war found Nordics scoring well above Jews. Carl Brigham, the Princeton professor who analysed the exam data, wrote: “Our figures … would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent”. And yet, by the second world war, Jewish IQ scores were above average.
A similar pattern could be seen from studies of two generations of Mizrahi Jewish children in Israel: the older generation had a mean IQ of 92.8, the younger of 101.3. And it wasn’t just a Jewish thing. Chinese Americans recorded average IQ scores of 97 in 1948, and 108.6 in 1990. And the gap between African Americans and white Americans narrowed by 5.5 points between 1972 and 2002.
No one could reasonably claim that there had been genetic changes in the Jewish, Chinese American or African American populations in a generation or two. After reading the University of Utah paper, Harry Ostrer, who headed New York University’s human genetics programme, took the opposite view to Steven Pinker: “It’s bad science – not because it’s provocative, but because it’s bad genetics and bad epidemiology.”
The Guardian
Gavin Evans - The unwelcome revival of ‘race science’
Are there genetic differences between the races?
Are there genetic differences between the races?
10 comments:
“I watched a video where Jordon Peterson that Ashkenazi Jews were smarter than most other races.”
For me the notion of “intelligence” is nebulous and problematic. I say that we inevitably display our own biases when we claim that A is “smarter” than B. For example, if we define intelligence as problem-solving ability, then extreme talent in sports (i.e. talent in getting a ball to the goal) is a type of intelligence. If we drop a city-dweller into a wilderness where only bushmen can survive, and the city dweller dies of hunger while the bushmen laugh at his stupidity, is the city dweller still “smarter” than the bushmen? It seems to me that “intelligence” is a relative concept.
Sometimes there are exceptions in which a person is clearly a moron (e.g. Mr. 'F' right here in this blog).
As for Ashkenazi Jews, they tend to be sociopaths, and are therefore mistaken for being superior in intelligence.
“The Alt Right, Steve Pinker, Steven Molyneux, and even Sam Harris have all jumped in in this pseudoscientific nonsense.”
Do they all regard Ashkenazi Jews as superior beings? Sad.
“People, Flynn noted, have become more exposed to abstract logic, which is the sliver of intelligence that IQ tests measure.”
Exactly. IQ tests are limited. They are products of Western urban biases and Western racism. Show me a white person who thinks that Jews are superior to all others, and I’ll show you a white person who thinks that whites are superior to all non-whites.
There is an extremely simple reason for thinking there are in fact differences between the brains of different races, a reason which will be ten miles above the head of Guardian journalists. It’s that there are some very obvious PHYSICAL differences between groups of humans which have basically been separate from each other for tens of thousands of years (Europeans, Orientals, Africans etc). It would therefore be a bit surprising if there were absolutely no differences in the way their brains developed over that sort of period.
I.e. it is to be expected that different groups of humans which are basically separate from each other for a long time will develop in different ways in just the same way as Darwin showed that animals on different Galapogos islands developed in different ways.
Put another way, the onus is on those who think the brains of Orientals, Europeans, Africans etc are all ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to explain their case, rather than for the “IQs are a bit different” to explain their case.
He who despises his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding keeps silent. Proverbs 11:12
You should read the whole Guardian article, Ralph, your issue is addressed.
Put another way, the onus is on those who think the brains of Orientals, Europeans, Africans etc are all ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to explain their case, rather than for the “IQs are a bit different” to explain their case.
The burden of the proof, to be technically precise, falls on the claimants, not on their targets. For instance, someone accused of homicide doesn't need to prove him/herself innocent; the onus probandi falls on the public prosecutor. One is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Much as they would like to, the self-described insurgents in this debate cannot shift that load on the defendants.
Nice try, though.
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About the specific case of Nicholas Wade, mentioned in The Guardian article.
Wade explains the opposition his book found thus:
Social scientists believe that all differences between human groups are due to culture alone, and that to ascribe any part of these differences to genetics would lead to racism.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-wade/five-critics-say-you-shouldnt-read-this-dangerous-book_b_5507633.html
If one were to believe Wade, there are only two possible explanations: his biological speculations or the cultural speculations he is insurging againt.
That is a comfortable story. If one is charitable with Wade it's also an understandable one (the Left having degenerated into the identitarian mess it is today).
(Note that he does not produce any evidence to support this claim: more on this below).
It's a false claim, nevertheless. Marxists explain those differences in largely historical/economic terms. Jared Diamond (author of "Guns, Germs and Steel") explains them in geographical/historical terms (rather compatible with Marxism, btw).
https://www.economist.com/review/1997/07/17/geographical-determinism
But one doesn't need to take those two alternative explanations. Daron Acemoglu rejects them both and explains those differences in terms of "institutions", which for him means essentially property rights.
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In his defense, Wade alleged that his five Huffington Post critics were at sea in assessing scientific expertise and that the book’s central genetic premise, that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional, has not been challenged by any serious scientist.
But on may forgive him for that, because he wrote that before 139 known scholars in that field (many of them quoted by Wade) rejected his book.
Now, that made my day. Evidence is a bitch.
Oopsie!
The link for a Science Magazine blog post with the summary of the brouhaha (with an additional comment by Wade):
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/08/geneticists-decry-book-race-and-evolution
Andrew,
Are you suggesting that anyone who claims some other race has a lower IQ than their own “despises” the other race? If so, do we take it that anyone who claims dogs have lower IQs than human beings “despises” dogs? Because if so, that means that according to your theory, almost the entire human race despises dogs.
Kaivey,
Where exactly does the Guardian article “address” my issue? I can’t find anything. The article (as is blindingly obvious) does deal with numerous weaknesses and problems with IQ tests. But it does not address my basic point that if two groups of a particular species (animal or human) are separated for tens of thousands of years, obvious physical differences appear, thus the most reasonable assumption is that mental differences will appear as well.
Magpie,
The fact that where someone who is accused of a crime, the onus is on the prosecution (quite rightly) to prove their case rather than for the defendant and their lawyers to prove their innocence is wholly irrelevant: in the case of IQs we aren’t dealing with a crime!
Of course the politically correct and the political left like to CLAIM the idea that there are IQ differences between different races is a crime, but then in the eyes of the left, almost ANY disagreement with the left amounts to a crime against humanity.
' A 77,000-year-old piece of red ochre with a deliberately engraved design discovered at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Photograph: Anna Zieminski/AFP/Getty Images
A second plank of the race science case goes like this: human bodies continued to evolve, at least until recently – with different groups developing different skin colours, predispositions to certain diseases, and things such as lactose tolerance. So why wouldn’t human brains continue evolving, too?
The problem here is that race scientists are not comparing like with like. Most of these physical changes involve single gene mutations, which can spread throughout a population in a relatively short span of evolutionary time. By contrast, intelligence – even the rather specific version measured by IQ – involves a network of potentially thousands of genes, which probably takes at least 100 millennia to evolve appreciably.
Given that so many genes, operating in different parts of the brain, contribute in some way to intelligence, it is hardly surprising that there is scant evidence of cognitive advance, at least over the last 100,000 years. The American palaeoanthropologist Ian Tattersall, widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts on Cro-Magnons, has said that long before humans left Africa for Asia and Europe, they had already reached the end of the evolutionary line in terms of brain power. “We don’t have the right conditions for any meaningful biological evolution of the species,” he told an interviewer in 2000.'
My spell checker put 'but ' in instead of not. I didn't notice it.
“But now geneticists have unidentified the genes for intelligence and have found that the lower classes are just as intelligent as the higher classes on average, and yet for years it was believed by many that the higher classes were brighter than the lower classes. It turns that the environment makes all the difference.” ~ Kaivey
Timing also makes a difference. The ancient Egyptians built impressive structures and monuments, but by 785 BC, all the pharaohs were 100% Black Africans. This continued for the next 435 years. Egyptian statues from this period are Negroid.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush
Regarding environment, the so-called “superior intelligence” of Jews is a viewpoint that depends on Jews’ environment. For example, most Gentiles today worship the Jews that despise them, whereas Gentiles during the Middle Ages considered Jews to be subhuman. Recall that English King Edward I expelled all Jews from England on 18 July 1290. Jews were not allowed to come back for 350 years.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion
Jews have been expelled from many nations.
Jews claim that this happens because the filthy Goyim envy Jewish “superiority.”
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