Sex, Race And IQ: Off Limits?

So tell me why does the starting lineup for the 100 meters look so homogeneous!

Statistical racial and sexual differences are irrelevant. What counts is individual intelligence and what can be done to encourage intellectual development.

"That is especially true now that discoveries in neuroplasticity have shown that brains of any age can change their structure and function in response to experience. Even the visual cortex, which you'd think is pretty hard-wired"

Wait a Sec! If that statement turns out to be true, then the racial differences on brain size and brain scan results can be explained by enviromental factors?

Frankly, I have no idea why anyone cares about IQ at all. All it has ever measured is a concept called IQ, which is a a human constructt. What matter after all is academic achievement, and if that is gained through biology, perserverence, or learning strategies it really does not matter. To debate which group has the highest IQ is silly.

Instead, I argued that even if heritable differences in intelligence between groups DID exist, it makes no sense to attempt to rank groups as groups, given that they vary in ability so widely within themselves and have nearly complete overlap between them over the range of their variation. Suppose it could be shown that of the category of "supraintelligent people" in the entire world, a highly disproportionate number were Basque, or Jewish, or whatever, and that the difference was due to heritable genetic traits. It wouldn't MEAN anything, because there would still be all those supraintelligent people who were non-Basque, non-Jewish, non-whatever. It would, as I said in the second sentence of my first post, just be a sorta interesting factoid.

Ben017, I think you would do well to avoid citing Jensen in support of your position, largely because Jensen himself does not claim and in fact specifically disavows any such belief in his own writing--see below:

(http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html) "Nor have I ever claimed that the well-established heritability of individual differences in IQ within races proves the heritability of differences between races." and "The "hereditarian fallacy" (p. 156) is described by Gould [in the Mismeasure of Man] as (1) the implication that" heritable" is equated with "inevitable," and (2) the assumption that if genetic factors explain a certain proportion of the individual differences variance within population groups, they explain the same proportion of the mean differences between various populations, such as racial groups. This" hereditarian fallacy" constitutes a strawperson if ever there was one. I cannot recall a single living "hereditarian" who has ever expressed either of these beliefs, though I know of many who have noted their inherent logical fallacy. I myself [???] have attempted in several publications from 1969 to 1982 to explicate the illogic of trying to prove the heritability of mean differences between groups from a knowledge of the heritability of individual differences within groups."

Regarding Edwards' work, yes, we can sometimes determine an individual???s "racial" background in his or her genes. It would be amazing if we couldn't, given that we can often do so at a glance without scientific equipment of any kind. However, that race itself is still a completely artificial category. As noted elsewhere, human genetic variation in Africa is greater than all the variation outside it and within Africa itself people can often tell tribal origin at a glance. Most Americans, not having considered the matter, would simply consider them all black. England and Ireland have local variations as well, albeit to a lesser extent. What exactly constitutes a separate race is almost always a slippery concept, although you could probably make the case for some (though not all) populations of pygmies.

Finally, you asked why I said I don't believe in heritable differences in intelligence between groups. To be perfectly honest, I've no proof one way or the other. I've not looked into it because 1) it's not my field, 2) it is the large differences in ability between individuals that interest me and seem worthy of intense study, and 3) no one is arguing that Irish-German-English-Scottish-Gypsy Americans like me are more or less smart than the general population. I've got no dog in this fight. Even more to the point, though, is that I didn't argue for my belief. Instead, I argued that even if heritable differences in intelligence between groups DID exist, it makes no sense to attempt to rank groups as groups, given that they vary in ability so widely within themselves and

IQ is 80-85% heritable in industrialized countries. Yes, it is genetics. No, not a single social variable can be found in the IQs
of adults.

It predicts various life outcomes that are used as measures of external validity. Spearman's g is extracted from IQ by factor analysis and accounts for 95 to 100% of the predictive validity of IQ tests.

"That score is typically overdetermined by aptitude at certain mental abilities, while ignoring others completely. Add in cultural biases, and tests like that start looking really useless."

The National Academy of Sciences reviewed race related findings* reported in the massive book: Jensen, A.R. (1980). Bias in mental testing. New York: Free Press. Did the National Academy of Sciences find that Jensen was correct in those findings or that he was in error?
* The findings in question were that standard IQ tests are not biased against blacks.

The National Academy of Sciences confirmed Jensen's findings.

re: The Flynn Effect:

The FE is a secular change seen in raw IQ scores. It is necessary to renorm tests to correct for this drift. The drift happens in the up and down directions, depending on the time and place. If the FE is g loaded, it means that people are getting smarter. If it is not g loaded, it means that raw scores are changing on the s factor and not the g factor. Flynn himself is unsure whether the changes are g loaded.

Of course, it is well documented that the FE happened in some places, then stopped. It is going in reverse in some places and just getting started (showing about a 20 year lag) in South Korea (as compared to Japan). The B-W gap has not changed as a result of the FE. So far, most studies that were designed to test the g loading of the FE have shown no g loading. Ted Nettlebeck in relation to his study of two nearly identical groups of school children, spaced by 20 years found the FE as expected and found no improvement in their inspection time measures. There was no nutritional difference either.

"That calls into question what studies of intelligence actually measure, and whether it's too easy to choose and massage data to produce desired results."

Researchers look for general ability or 'g'. This iis measurable and predicts academic performance & occupational performance (particularly on more complex tasks - hence why the Army uses standardised tests to screen people, it is basically information processing/trainability).

Also, there are a number of biological correlates such as cortical thickness, mylination, & neuro efficiency on EEG studies.

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

"Worse, "race" in the sense of Caucasian, Asian and African is too broad to capture anything biological, including genetic differences. Only smaller groupings based on geographic ancestry"

This is a lie. See the paper by Risch et al (Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268???275, 2005). Self described ethnicity corresponds with genetic clusters in 99% of cases.

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

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

This leads us to two very distinct possibilities in human genetic variation:

Hypothesis 1: (the PC mantra) The only group differences that exist between the clusters (races) are innocuous and superficial, for example related to skin color, hair color, body type, etc.

Hypothesis 2: (the dangerous one) Group differences exist which might affect important (let us say, deep rather than superficial) and measurable characteristics, such as cognitive abilities, personality, athletic prowess, etc.

Finally, it is important to note that any group differences are statistical in nature and do not imply anything about particular individuals. Rather than rely on the scientifically unsupported claim that we are all equal, it would be better to emphasize that we all have inalienable human rights regardless of our abilities or genetic makeup.

What is most exposed by this heavily biased article is the politicization of science. She advocates that people who believe one thing should sponsor studies to "prove" their argument before some others can "prove" theirs.

Science has become just another way for the people in power to ram their agenda down our throats. If you sponsor 100 studies to try to prove something, one of them inevitably will provide evidence toward your predetermined conclusion. Most Americans are truly incapable of understanding "scientific" studies, so you can inject as much bias into your methods as you want.

All I see here is a political correctness tactic of last resort - closed-minded denial won't work any more, we have to fund "studies" to provide pseudo-scientific weight to our opinions.

I could not care less what the outcome would be, if a final verdict could be issued on the subject. But the unfortunate reality is that politicized science never leads to the truth, just to a "battle of experts" which convinces no one and only gives the partisans on both sides more conviction about their preconceived beliefs.

When we close our minds and refuse to examine things objectively, we are doomed to fall behind those who open their minds to all possibilities. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that there are nearly no trustworthy sources on controversial politicized issues here in the US.

Is this our "honest discussion about race"? The truth scares people who wish to engineer equality in all measurables. The fact is, there are winners and losers in nature. Physically, intellectually, spiritually and morally. It is always so interesting to see people dance around the cold hard facts. Occam's razor comes to mind.

It is interesting to see everyone dance around the real question -- who is afraid of this reaearch and why? I suggest that the answer is liberals who do not want to try to explain away some obvious conclusions the research generates. It isn't womens' groups or Samoans who line up to attack any type of genetic research. It is black intellectuals and their useful idiots who want to squash this avenue of embarrassment for them. These cowards cry that all intelligence tests are culturally biased against everyone but whites. Why then do tests with no cultural content, pure math, increase the margin between white and black scores? The answer is that questions with a cultural content gives hints to those who are guessing at answers. I defy one of these racial fear-mongers to show me how an algebra problem is biased against black people. Anyone got the stones to try?

It is