Payback!


It seems like retribution is in order: Richard Roberts wants a leave of absence, as his wife claims to live in “a morally upright manner” even while rumors of associations with a 16-year-old boy swirl about.

James Watson’s sold-out lecture in London has been cancelled. I guess making bogus accusations about the congenital stupidity of a whole continent has consequence.

Comments

  1. Michael X says

    While I’m always sceptical about if such repremands will actually change the behavior of such men as Roberts and those who might like to replace him, I’m actually more interested to see if the Watson Bruhaha spills over into yet another thread.

    It’s like watching a Royal Rumble.

  2. uknesvuinng says

    “Last week, we quoted Roberts saying that God told him to stay and fight the allegations,”

    Hmm, Roberts doesn’t seem to have much faith in his god. Can we look forward to a whale/fish swallowing him until he submits to “stay and fight the allegations?” Or will God just smite him right out for disobedience? I hope it’s something creative and not just another meteorological attack.

  3. says

    We’ve got a talk with Watson (and Wilmut) here (in Scotland) next week that appears to still be “go”. If it isn’t already fully booked up, I expect it to be so in the not so distant future.

  4. Richard Harris, FCD says

    Off topic: I’m involved in a debate with someone at the BBC, on the origin of altruism. Am I correct if I say the following?

    A group with the optimum number of members who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of all was at a survival and reproductive advantage compared to groups with too many or too few such individuals. This evolutionary mechanism would ensure that the ‘altruism genes’ exist within a suitable frequency range within a population. I would add, by way of substantiation of the mechanisms for controlling gene frequencies within populations, the well-established science of population genetics studies the different forces that lead to changes in the distribution and frequencies of alleles, that is, (simplistically), different versions of the various genes. The effects on the gene pool caused by natural and sexual selection, and genetic drift, lead to evolution. This includes the evolution of altruism as a human quality, by entirely naturalistic means.

    Does anyone know of any good references regarding this?

  5. Ian H Spedding FCD says

    …Richard Roberts wants a leave of absence, as his wife claims to live in “a morally upright manner”…

    …which, interestingly, does not rule out the possibility that she lives in a physically prostrate manner on occasion…

  6. Hexatron says

    Rat:
    There is no ‘should’ in A group with the optimum number of members who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of all was at a survival and reproductive advantage compared to groups with too many or too few such individuals, or didn’t you notice?

  7. Carlie says

    The altruism thing is usually only seen when behaving altruistically towards relatives. Since they carry your genes, behaving altruistically towards them is almost as good as having children of your own, and ensures that the altruism genes are perpetuated because those relatives you’re helping probably have them as well. Non-kin altruism is only seen in groups that are small and stable over time, have many opportunities for reciprocity, and the helping action is much more beneficial than costly. Oh, and the animals in question can keep track of who owes who and punish freeloaders. There are a few examples; vampire bats are probably the best of those. I use Freeman and Herron’s Evolutionary Analysis text for my evolutioh class, and I think they do a good job of covering the evolution of altruism. Companion website: here

    As for the topic thread, good and good.

  8. says

    Richard – it’s more complicated than you describe. Yes, a group with enough members prepared to sacrifice themselves may be at an advantage, but those doing the sacrificing aren’t. There are a couple of ways in which this can still evolve. One is through kin selection – J.B.S Haldane:

    Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.

    So, you die but enough copies of your altruism gene survive to be passed on.

    The other way this can work is through trait group selection. If groups with more altruistic genes tend to do better, and there’s sufficient mixing between groups, then altruism can spread. This is more difficult though, and whilst there are examples of this (e.g. Bill Muir’s chickens), there aren’t many.

    Just by chance, I was just writing something up about some plans we have to compare kin and group selection empirically.

    Bob

  9. sailor says

    Richard Harris, Others seem to have caught the problem. It is no problem to see that altruistic group A does better than selfish group B (this can be demonstrated by game theory), but gene selection is a selfish process so how do you get there?
    Kin selection is the most obvious way – help your relatives and even if it does not benefit you the genes get passed on. Once we get outside relatives, then the main mechanism would seem to recipricosity – be generous, receive generosity. It would seem to me this could eventually lead to the extreme of someone sacrificing their life for others, though this would not be the norm. But how does that all start? One idea is that you pretty much have to start with very small groups where everyone is pretty much related.

  10. raj says

    Richard Harris, FCD | October 18, 2007 7:22 AM

    Several years ago Scientific American (I can’t recall whether it was in 2000 or 2002, but it was in a July issue), publishsed an article by the now-late Ernst Myer in which he described how altruism can be explained as an hereditary trait in a social species, such as humans. I don’t recall whether there were any references.

  11. Caledonian says

    A group with the optimum number of members who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of all was at a survival and reproductive advantage compared to groups with too many or too few such individuals. This evolutionary mechanism would ensure that the ‘altruism genes’ exist within a suitable frequency range within a population.

    You’re wrong. Your argument is incomplete.

    Sacrificing oneself for the good of the group is, well, good for the group, but it’s very bad for the individual. The trait will persist in the general population only if there are sufficient smaller groups within it and there is a sufficiently-large competition and replacement of subgroups by other subgroups – the replication of groups as opposed to mere individual reproduction.

    If the subgroups were merged into one large group, the trait would die out.

    It’s in many ways the equal and opposite situation to that gene in mice that is homozygously lethal but dominates male sperm production in the heterozygous state. The only reason mice persist is that there are sufficient barriers to create temporarily isolated groups that can replace those groups in which the gene dominates and causes local extinction.

  12. Nan says

    Perhaps Mrs. Roberts is using the wrong defense. She’s not morally upright; she’s altruistic.

  13. James Clinton says

    James Watson’s statement can be reduced to three main hypotheses:

    1) That sub-Saharan African nations have significantly lower average IQs than European nations.

    2) That national differences in IQ have a significant causal relationship with differences in economic development.

    3) That these differences have a substantial genetic component.

    In fact, a popular and expanding research literature in peer-reviewed biology, psychology, and economics journals support all three conclusions. For example:

    http://www.springerlink.com/content/d15x2810855wx085/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.11.002 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.02.003 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0160-2896(02)00137-X http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2005.09.006 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2006.05.005 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpsoc/bjhp/2006/00000011/00000004/art00006 http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6435.00191

    Watson is by no means an outlier among scientists and scholars in his belief that people of African descent average lower native intelligence.

    A 1987 scientific poll published in the American Psychologist of over 1200 relevant scholars (sociologists, psychologists, and geneticists) found that 46% – a plurality of those polled – believed the evidence pointed to genetics playing a role in observed racial intelligence differences, compared to only 15% who thought genetics did not play a role.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyderman_and_Rothman_%28study%29

    And this poll was conducted before the 1990s which introduced novel cross-cultural, anatomical, and transracial adoption data. A 20 year replication of this poll is slated for sometime in the next year and will likely skew even further to the genetic position.

    Watson, one of the most esteemed living biologists, was taking his statements from the science journals, not just parroting empty, discredited prejudices. His treatment has been unfair and reactionary.

    I can’t think of a better term for the curious position of the Science Museum in London that Watson’s statements are “beyond the point of acceptable debate”

    http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3070583.ece

    Is this primitive dogmatism truly representative of the spirit of the scientific community?

  14. Christian Burnham says

    It’s really annoying defending Caledonian, who is three shades crazier than crazy on a good day, but…

    1) Stop it already with the accusations of racism. Name calling is tiresome and boring. If you have a specific example, then ask him/her about it, but general mud slinging is poisonous.

    2) Some people have willfully misunderstood Caledonian’s misanthropy, which appears to me to be quite consistently applied across all races. As the saying goes- he’s not racist- he hates everyone.

  15. Voting Present says

    Them what speaks to Caledonian is speaking to the wall. Separate the signal from the noise. Let the noise buzz along by itself.

    Topic altruism: please consider the possibility that humans could have somewhat different reasons for their altruistic actions than bats, or even than chimpanzees. Biology is destiny for most species. But biology does not drive everything that humans do; that argument rapidly runs into absurdities. The reasoned conclusions of thinking humans can easily run counter to their biological inclinations. Reason is an additional factor here.
    .

  16. raven says

    Clinton:

    1) That sub-Saharan African nations have significantly lower average IQs than European nations.

    Clinton, your long winded “primitive dogmatism” can be reduced even further to, “black people are dumb”.

    Well so what is the purpose of saying that? Does that mean we can enslave them and steal all their land and resources? Or herd them into camps and gas them? Or merely discriminate against them in the myriad ways of the past and present.

    What is your point here assuming you have one more cogent than bigotry?

  17. Voting Present says

    Clarification. Of course our brains are biological. Evolutionary selection drove the development of our reasoning apparatus; it just does not drive the rational conclusions which we obtain by using that apparatus to analyze the world we see around us. This is why our reason might lead us into altruistic acts that would not be justified by evolutionary selection.
    .

  18. John Smith says

    James Clinton,

    You’re wasting your time. On politically correct issues, PZ is every bit as much of a rabid fundamentalist as the ones he routinely ridicules. So are the people who will unthinkingly leap to his defense and accuse us of being racists for merely SUGGESTING that MAYBE there are genetic elements to the incomparably poor economic and intellectual of black people.

  19. John Smith says

    “…incomparably poor economic and intellectual performance of black people”, that was supposed to be.

  20. caynazzo says

    Voting Prez: Then what does drive the rational conclusions that we use to analyze the world around us? We’re a product of our genes and our environment. What part of that isn’t biology?

  21. Stephen Wells says

    Is John Smith seriously claiming that all “black people”- whatever that nebulous grouping is supposed to be- are, genetically, intellectually inferior? I would bet heavily that, say, Dr Charles R. Drew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew) was smarter, and did more for the betterment of humanity, than JS (or I) ever will.

  22. says

    If the argument from authority fallacy wasn’t so readily believed, Watson wouldn’t have had a sold-out crowd in the first place. And then his biased maunderings would be dismissed like any pseudoscientists’ or metaphysician hacks’ drivel would be.

    One thing that seems to be lost on people is that the problem that Watson and Crick solved (with mostly unacknowledged help from others) is the only thing that made their work remarkable. Much equal and some better work, judged by creative and technical standards, has passed largely unnoticed by the public, simply because the problems being worked upon were not ground-breaking as the structure of DNA was.

    By making Watson into a “great scientist”, simply because he happened to find himself at the right time and place to work out DNA’s structure, sets up society for these “shocking statements” which otherwise would be treated merely as droning idiocies by a crank. Why would it be shocking that someone given life-long deification for good, but hardly genius-level, work, might start to believe that he really is an exalted form of life, and understand his unthinking prejudices to be praise-worthy scientific thought which he might rain down upon impoverished intellects?

    The structure of elite prejudices in favor of a “higher class” of individuals has set up society for this particular debacle, is what I’m saying. Class prejudice gave Watson the pulpit for spouting his racial prejudice, and the stupidity of both needs to be addressed.

    Glen D
    http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

  23. Bernard Bumner says

    James Clinton,

    Well, I’ll repeat myself once again, just because there are three threads discussing this. The point isn’t whether or not there is a possibility of heredity being a factor in intelligence, the point is that is not what Watson said. Did you read the article?

    Watson said that “blacks” – a scientifically meaningless term, especially so in the context of of a geneticist using it – have an inherently different intelligence. He clearly implies that this has a genetic basis – and the author of the piece would understand this, given that she is an ex employee under Watson.

    He also, a few years back, claimed that dark-skinned people have a higher libido. Can you spot a pattern?

    I would suggest that you look at the criticisms of the Snyderman and Rothman study too, before trying to pass it off as scientifically meaningful (some are given on that very Wikipedia page you linked to). I would also emphasise that it is a 20 year old study, and that your pre-emption of a repole which may happen at some time next year seems somewhat foolhardy (unless you neglected to mention that you are an expert on the genetic basis of neurological functioning and intelligence?).

    Attempts to define race in genetic terms are complex, ongoing, and unlikely to produce clear-cut results, so the idea that any credible scientific consensus on race, intelligence, and genetics is likely to emerge soon is simply ridiculous.

    As it is, the genetic basis for intelligence (itself a poorly defined quantity), is very poorly understood, and heredity is a step beyond.

    If it is American Psychologist article which is your currency, then try:

    In this article, the authors argue that the overwhelming portion of the literature on intelligence, race, and genetics is based on folk taxonomies rather than scientific analysis. They suggest that because theorists of intelligence disagree as to what it is, any consideration of its relationships to other constructs must be tentative at best. They further argue that race is a social construction with no scientific definition. Thus, studies of the relationship between race and other constructs may serve social ends but cannot serve scientific ends.

    Sternberg RJ, Grigorenko EL, Kidd KK. Intelligence, race, and genetics. Am Psychol. 2005 Jan;60(1):46-59.

    There are also comments on this article in the Feb-March issue, the Jan issue is a special on race, intelligence, and genetics.

    See also, Smedley A, Smedley BD. Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race.
    Am Psychol. 2005 Jan;60(1):16-26.

  24. James Clinton says

    “Does that mean we can enslave them and steal all their land and resources? Or herd them into camps and gas them? Or merely discriminate against them in the myriad ways of the past and present.”

    No. Do you believe these actions are the logical responses to economic inequality? Why?

    “What is your point here assuming you have one more cogent than bigotry?”

    My point is to understand reality. Also to defend intellectual and scientific openness and freedom.

  25. says

    James Watson’s sold-out lecture in London has been cancelled. I guess making bogus accusations about the congenital stupidity of a whole continent has consequence.

    Great. This plays right into the hand of those who complain that people with out-of-the-mainstream views about race are prevented from discussing them.

    The least they could do is have the head of the museum denounce Watson in his introduction, like the president of Columbia did for Ahmadinejad. That’s exceptionally rude, but still not as bad as disinviting him.

  26. windy says

    Richard – I agree with the others who pointed out that group selection is a contested hypothesis. Your scenario is a possibility, but it needs certain additional conditions to prevent “cheaters” from taking over within each group, and it’s unsure whether such conditions are responsible for any of the ‘altruism’ we see in animals. Perhaps you should point out other options that allow helping others to evolve (someone mentioned kin selection, and then there’s reciprocal altruism).

    Bob:

    Just by chance, I was just writing something up about some plans we have to compare kin and group selection empirically.

    Interesting – is any of it going on the web somewhere or is it still “secret”? When you say you plan to compare the two, how would you respond to these guys who say that they are mathematically more or less the same thing? :)

  27. Hap says

    JS: I think comment 191 in the “Eminent Scientist Behaving Badly” had your position down fairly accurately. Without data or support, let alone the ability to meaningfully define any of your terms in a way that would be testable (“race” and “intelligence” being the key two), your hypothesis sounds like something that might come from the “Letters to the Editor” section of a “White Power” porn magazine (or at the least, the Weekly Standard, though that’s much the same without the sex). Since you seem to hold the hypothesis tenaciously, without evidence, one might suspect that your reasons for holding the hypothesis and insisting so strongly on its validity are less than innocent.

  28. Bernard Bumner says

    Epistaxis,

    Watson is still due to speak at other venues, and at least the Bristol University has said that it will go ahead:

    A spokesman for the university said it respected “freedom of speech and the right of people to express their views”. But it expected “some robust questioning of Dr Watson on his ideas”.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7050020.stm

    I think the point is that the Science Museum, as publically funded institution, can’t be seen to associate itself with a proponent of racism. This isn’t a scientific body, but is an educational institution charged with conveying the scientific consensus to lay-persons.

  29. Voting Present says

    Hi caynazzo, sorry if I made my point poorly. Maybe I can come up with an example. For example, I believe that it makes good sense for me to pay payroll taxes that go to support present retirees, in the hope that future workers will support me when I retire. This isn’t a perfect example. You could argue that, in a wide sense, this is similar to what the bats are doing. There is a payoff, and there are ways to detect cheaters, and so on. But, in a narrow sense, I am not supporting these taxes because my ancestors lived by this system. They didn’t. In fact, the survival of the elderly doesn’t tie directly back to selection (although I suppose there are kin selection effects).

    No, I support payroll taxation because I think it makes rational sense to do this. I support many kinds of taxes from which my kin and I will never receive a direct benefit (including, perhaps, some science funding). So that would be an altruistic act without a basis in selective advantage.

    My claim is only that I am taking a brain whose development was driven by one set of purposes, and I am using it for a different purpose. In particular, I am using my senses and reason to understand the world around me for purposes other than immediate evolutionary advantage. So I see plenty of things worth doing that are unrelated to leaving plenty of surviving offspring. This is not an attempt to diss biology. It is merely an attempt to diss sociobiology.
    .

  30. Richard Harris, FCD says

    Thanks for the various comments. I’m trying to respond to a recent statement on BBC Radio 4, that evolutionary biology is confounded by the existence of altruism, wherever it exceeds kin or reciprocal altruism, therefore it must come from a god.

    Caledonian, You said, “The trait will persist in the general population only if there are sufficient smaller groups within it and there is a sufficiently-large competition and replacement of subgroups by other subgroups – the replication of groups as opposed to mere individual reproduction. If the subgroups were merged into one large group, the trait would die out.”

    Isn’t this a description of human society? Groups replace other groups, not necessarily by genocide, but by outcompeting them. Given enough future generations, maybe altruism will become less common?

    Altruism doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing one’s life for others. It can mean just being unselfish.

    As for Ernst Mayr, he was a proponent of group selection, which really is what I’ve advocated.

    Any more comments?

  31. Voting Present says

    CNN has the Watson cancellation on their front page. The cancellation of the talk itself doesn’t bother me. But the wide play this cancellation is seeing in the corporate media does bother me.

    Devaluing the Nobel Prize. Devaluing Al Gore. Devaluing Jimmy Carter. Devaluing the discussion of global climate change. Devaluing science and reality (with it’s “liberal bias”). That’s what this is about. Or is my tinfoil hat showing? Do you really think this is an accident?

    I’m not talking about the details of the articles themselves. I’m talking about their calculated emotional impact. Just think about the taste “Nobel Prize Racist” leaves in your mouth. How long before they start running retrospectives on Shockley?
    .

  32. James Clinton says

    “Watson said that “blacks” – a scientifically meaningless term, especially so in the context of of a geneticist using it – have an inherently different intelligence”

    Phylogenetically, no it isn’t. Sub-Saharan Africans are one of six main world genetic clusters:

    “In one of the most extensive of these studies to date, considering 1,056 individuals from 52 human populations, with each individual genotyped for 377 autosomal microsatellite markers, we found that individuals could be partitioned into six main genetic clusters, five of which corresponded to Africa, Europe and the part of Asia south and west of the Himalayas, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas”

    http://tinyurl.com/33mvca

    People with large amounts of ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa – blacks – average similar low IQ scores no matter what country or world culture they are born and raised in. This includes black children adopted in infancy by white families. They also have relative strengths and weaknesses on the same IQ test items – something that really has no obvious sociological explanation. (why should a Nigerian, a South African and a New York black man, who share no cultural background, excel on the same unique suite of test items, a pattern of performance shared by no other racial group on earth?)

    In many other physiological and behavioral traits people from different parts of sub-Saharan Africa are very different from each other. What ecological conditions were unique to SS Africa, as opposed to the rest of the world is a theoretically interesting question. But the genetic clusters themselves indicate at least some form of ecological coherence.

  33. windy says

    Thanks for the various comments. I’m trying to respond to a recent statement on BBC Radio 4, that evolutionary biology is confounded by the existence of altruism, wherever it exceeds kin or reciprocal altruism, therefore it must come from a god.

    Evolutionary biology is not “confounded” by organisms occasionally doing non-adaptive things. Moths fly to the flame, and in the positive end of the spectrum, lions may adopt antelope young, and dolphins may rescue drowning humans. If we would see lot of consistent, apparently genetic altruism in nature that could not be explained by natural selection or other explanations available to evolutionary biology, then there’d be a problem. For example, clerical celibacy is not a problem for evolutionary biology, since nobody is claiming it evolved as such.

    How about running this past him: alcoholism/drug addiction is not adaptive, therefore it must come from a god. ;) It would also be interesting to know what the person thinks of examples of “animal altruism” like the lion-antelope example above.

  34. Bernard Bumner says

    James, the genetic clustering simply indicates shared heredity, it is fairly obvious that genetic variation is proportional to relatedness.

    Microsatellite variation doesn’t necessarily reflect phenotypic variation, so all you’re providing evidence for is the very well established science of population genetics (which is precisely what is being discussed in that paper). Most notably, race is no predictor of microsatellite variation, and race cannot be distinguished without foreknowledge of microsatellite variation patterns.

    “Black” is a cultural construct, and doesn’t refer exclusively to Sub-Saharan Africans, “Africans” is a generic term for anybody from the continent, and neither term encompasses a genetically homogenous group.

    People with large amounts of ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa – blacks – average similar low IQ scores no matter what country or world culture they are born and raised in.

    This sounds dubious, to say the least. You’ll need to provide primary references for that one! (And they need to be controlled for socio-economic and cultural bias.)

  35. Voting Present says

    Of course I agree that “[e]volutionary biology is not “confounded” by organisms occasionally doing non-adaptive things.”

    But in the case of humans it is more than occasional. We frequently and consistently do non-adaptive things. We do these things for perfectly good reasons that do not come directly out of evolutionary biology. There is an additional explanation. Well, the Jesus freaks say the additional explanation is that God told me so. Let’s set aside the Jesus freaks for now.

    I argue that the additional explanation is the fact that humans have an independent rational thought process. This independent rational thought process is, of course, a product of evolutionary biology. That DOESN’T mean that my conscious decisions and actions are best explained by evolutionary selection.

    E.g., my thought process is independent. I assert that my actions are generally based on my personal observations and deductions. My actions are generally NOT based on the selection pressures my ancestors evolved under, or on the personal evolutionary advantage I may perceive at the moment. Okay, I’m making myself out to be a plaster saint here. But you see my point.
    .

  36. MikeM says

    On the altruism argument, I would argue that being altruistic isn’t determined by genetics; it’s determined by environment. That’s my hypothesis; I haven’t designed an experiment to show that. But that’s my best initial guess. Feel free to prove me wrong.

    The guy who doesn’t lay down his life for his brother, but would do it for 8 cousins, may, in fact, be doing the wrong thing. What if the one who dies to save 8 cousins is carrying some sort of gene that would be so beneficial to every one of his offspring so as to eventually benefit the entire human race? What if one of his offspring was Louis Pasteur, James Randi or PZ Myers?

    Saving 8 cousins would be altruism in the short run, but in the long run could be viewed as purely selfish.

  37. Joolya says

    James Clinton, I actually looked at the PLoS abstract you linked to and guess what I didn’t find? Any discussion of IQ. The paper basically says if you look at enough alleles, you can find genetically similar population clusters in various places. Which is interesting, but does not prove your “point”.

    Nice try. Don’t try to blind me with citations when your argument is bullshit. You’ll never pass peer review.

    Finally, did you read the last paragraph of said cited PLoS Genetics paper?
    Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.” In general, representations of human genetic diversity are evaluated based on their ability to facilitate further research into such topics as human evolutionary history and the identification of medically important genotypes that vary in frequency across populations. Both clines and clusters are among the constructs that meet this standard of usefulness: for example, clines of allele frequency variation have proven important for inference about the genetic history of Europe [15], and clusters have been shown to be valuable for avoidance of the false positive associations that result from population structure in genetic association studies [16]. The arguments about the existence or nonexistence of “biological races” in the absence of a specific context are largely orthogonal to the question of scientific utility, and they should not obscure the fact that, ultimately, the primary goals for studies of genetic variation in humans are to make inferences about human evolutionary history, human biology, and the genetic causes of disease.

  38. raven says

    “What is your point here assuming you have one more cogent than bigotry?”

    Clinton: My point is to understand reality. Also to defend intellectual and scientific openness and freedom.

    Oh, I see. You like to go around saying blacks are dumb. Well, everyone needs a hobby.

  39. windy says

    But in the case of humans it is more than occasional. We frequently and consistently do non-adaptive things.

    Sure, like wearing condoms. But most actions aren’t anti-adaptive like consistent self-sacrifice in the absence of kin selection would be. Most people still manage to have children, so apparently we manage to do adaptive things often enough.

    E.g., my thought process is independent. I assert that my actions are generally based on my personal observations and deductions. My actions are generally NOT based on the selection pressures my ancestors evolved under, or on the personal evolutionary advantage I may perceive at the moment.

    No animal’s actions are based on perceiving “personal evolutionary advantage”. The assumption is that evolution has created general useful heuristics that generally lead to evolutionary advantage (this tastes good, I’d hit that, …) I don’t know if the contribution of these heuristics can be separated from your personal independent observations, or if it should be. They (adaptiveness and thought) aren’t opposites.

  40. sailor says

    Clinton, you can try and support Watson however you wish, but tell me in what way the following statement is not racist and has merit:

    He (Watson) told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

  41. Joolya says

    I’m just going to repeat the key sentences from the paper JClinton so kindly provided:

    Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.”The arguments about the existence or nonexistence of “biological races” in the absence of a specific context are largely orthogonal to the question of scientific utility

    Thanks again, James.

  42. caynazzo says

    Voting Present, it sounds like your arguing for dualism and the transcendent mind. Your thought process is not constrained by biology and yet is a product of biology?

    Humans traded in much of our reliance on instinct for reliance on reasoning. We have a great capacity to learn new tricks, however, our tribalism overrides logic when presented with zero sum tests.

  43. And/but/so says

    Oy vey. It’s the “Bell Curve” debacle all over again.

    With respect to JS, this statement of yours: ” Why should a Nigerian, a South African and a New York black man, who share no cultural background, excel on the same unique suite of test items, a pattern of performance shared by no other racial group on earth?” says it all, my friend. What is a “New York black man”? What if his family tree is more Caucasian than African? How much genetic identity must be shared for your hypothesis to hold true?

    Does intelligence have a genetic component? Sure. Are mean scores on intelligence scales likely to be different between races? Absolutely. But since the genetics of intelligence is by no means understood, and even the measurement of intelligence is a point of great debate, the statement that all “blacks” are intellectually inferior is indeed preposterous, and reflects more the speaker’s bias than any scientific data. And while I agree that poltical correctness is generally stiffling and bad, I also think statements like “”people who have to deal with black employees find this [racial equality] not true” incredibly imprecise, anecdotal, and inflammatory. Even if Caucasians, ON AVERAGE, are slightly smarter than Africans, and slighter less smart, ON AVERAGE, than Asians, there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence that this difference is of a magnitude necessitating different social and political standards and programmes for different races/countries. To suggest this is folly, and is correctly interpretted as racist.

  44. James Clinton says

    Most notably, race is no predictor of microsatellite variation, and race cannot be distinguished without foreknowledge of microsatellite variation patterns.

    I may be misunderstanding you, but this is false, the clusters are detected blindly without any sort of prodding, no matter what sort of genetic markers you look at:

    “The new paper is one of many (you can click on the Clusters label to find more) recent papers that have discovered that no matter what genetic markers you choose: SNPs, STRs, no matter how you choose them: randomly or based on their “informativeness”, it is relatively easy to classify DNA into the correct continental origin. Depending on the marker types (e.g., indel vs. microsatellite), and their informativeness (roughly the distribution differences between populations), one may require more or less markers to achieve a high degree of accuracy. But, the conclusion is the same: after a certain number of markers, you always succeed in classifying individuals according to continental origin.

    Thus, the emergent pattern of variation is not at all subjectively constructed: it does not deal specifically with visible traits (randomly chosen markers could influence any trait, or none at all), nor does it privilege markers exhibiting large population differences. The structuring of humanity into more or less disjoint groups is not a subjective choice: it emerges naturally from the genomic composition of humans, irrespective of how you study this composition.”

    http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2007/04/prediction-of-continent-of-origin-using.html

    “Black” is a cultural construct, and doesn’t refer exclusively to Sub-Saharan Africans, “

    ‘Black’ refers to a social identity significantly decided by African ancestry. One study showed this identity was correctly predicted by genetic data in virtually all cases:

    “Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity–as opposed to current residence–is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.”

    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196372

    “”Africans” is a generic term for anybody from the continent”

    North Africans cluster with Caucasians, not SS Africans.

    “and neither term encompasses a genetically homogenous group.”

    Is there such thing as a genetically homogeneous group? Ancestry is a messy concept, because biology is a messy concept. But this doesn’t mean either can’t be reduced to digestible units for imprecise, but not uninformative, analysis.

    “This sounds dubious, to say the least. You’ll need to provide primary references for that one!”

    Well there is IQ data for blacks in over 30 countries from Africa, Europe, North and South America, and the Caribbean. And we have similar educational type comparison data for over a dozen more. The world patterns are remarkably consistent and, no, to the extent there is a chicken or the egg problem, the differences aren’t reducable to SES (in the US, for instance, white children in the lowest SES group have higher IQ scores than black children in the highest SES group).

    http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/world-of-difference-richard-lynn-maps.php

    Yes I have read most of the individual studies. Yes there is a literature showing the tests in Africa and elsewhere are not biased. There is a well developed protocol in psychometrics for examining this.

    http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2389.2006.00359.x

  45. James Clinton says

    Most notably, race is no predictor of microsatellite variation, and race cannot be distinguished without foreknowledge of microsatellite variation patterns.

    I may be misunderstanding you, but this is false, the clusters are detected blindly without any sort of prodding, no matter what sort of genetic markers you look at:

    “The new paper is one of many (you can click on the Clusters label to find more) recent papers that have discovered that no matter what genetic markers you choose: SNPs, STRs, no matter how you choose them: randomly or based on their “informativeness”, it is relatively easy to classify DNA into the correct continental origin. Depending on the marker types (e.g., indel vs. microsatellite), and their informativeness (roughly the distribution differences between populations), one may require more or less markers to achieve a high degree of accuracy. But, the conclusion is the same: after a certain number of markers, you always succeed in classifying individuals according to continental origin.

    Thus, the emergent pattern of variation is not at all subjectively constructed: it does not deal specifically with visible traits (randomly chosen markers could influence any trait, or none at all), nor does it privilege markers exhibiting large population differences. The structuring of humanity into more or less disjoint groups is not a subjective choice: it emerges naturally from the genomic composition of humans, irrespective of how you study this composition.”

    http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2007/04/prediction-of-continent-of-origin-using.html

  46. James Clinton says

    “Black” is a cultural construct, and doesn’t refer exclusively to Sub-Saharan Africans, “

    ‘Black’ refers to a social identity significantly decided by African ancestry. One study showed this identity was correctly predicted by genetic data in virtually all cases:

    “Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity–as opposed to current residence–is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.”

    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196372

    “”Africans” is a generic term for anybody from the continent”

    North Africans cluster with Caucasians, not SS Africans.

    “and neither term encompasses a genetically homogenous group.”

    Is there such thing as a genetically homogeneous group? Ancestry is a messy concept, because biology is a messy concept. But this doesn’t mean either can’t be reduced to digestible units for imprecise, but not uninformative, analysis.

    “This sounds dubious, to say the least. You’ll need to provide primary references for that one!”

    Well there is IQ data for blacks in over 30 countries from Africa, Europe, North and South America, and the Caribbean. And we have similar educational type comparison data for over a dozen more. The world patterns are remarkably consistent and, no, to the extent there is a chicken or the egg problem, the differences aren’t reducable to SES (in the US, for instance, white children in the lowest SES group have higher IQ scores than black children in the highest SES group).

    http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/world-of-difference-richard-lynn-maps.php

    Yes I have read most of the individual studies. Yes there is a literature showing the tests in Africa and elsewhere are not biased. There is a well developed protocol in psychometrics for examining this.

    http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2389.2006.00359.x

  47. James Clinton says

    “Black” is a cultural construct, and doesn’t refer exclusively to Sub-Saharan Africans, “

    ‘Black’ refers to a social identity significantly decided by African ancestry. One study showed this identity was correctly predicted by genetic data in virtually all cases:

    “Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity–as opposed to current residence–is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.”

    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1196372

    “”Africans” is a generic term for anybody from the continent”

    North Africans cluster with Caucasians, not SS Africans.

    “and neither term encompasses a genetically homogenous group.”

    Is there such thing as a genetically homogeneous group? Ancestry is a messy concept, because biology is a messy concept. But this doesn’t mean either can’t be reduced to digestible units for imprecise, but not uninformative, analysis.

  48. James Clinton says

    “This sounds dubious, to say the least. You’ll need to provide primary references for that one!”

    Well there is IQ data for blacks in over 30 countries from Africa, Europe, North and South America, and the Caribbean. And we have similar educational type comparison data for over a dozen more. The world patterns are remarkably consistent and, no, to the extent there is a chicken or the egg problem, the differences aren’t reducible to SES (in the US, for instance, white children in the lowest SES group have higher IQ scores than black children in the highest SES group).

    http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/world-of-difference-richard-lynn-maps.php

    Yes I have read most of the individual studies. Yes there is a literature showing the tests in Africa and elsewhere are not biased. There is a well developed protocol in psychometrics for examining this.

    http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2389.2006.00359.x

  49. James Clinton says

    “James Clinton, I actually looked at the PLoS abstract you linked to and guess what I didn’t find? Any discussion of IQ.”

    I’m sorry, I can see that how I was responding there (with the quoted text) could’ve been unclear.

    I was challenging: “”blacks” – a scientifically meaningless term, especially so in the context of of a geneticist using it”, by showing that people of SS African ancestry – blacks – were a genetically meaningful group.

    I certainly did not mean to imply that that paper had IQ data.

  50. Voting Present says

    Thanks you for your comments, windy and caynazzo. No, I’m not “arguing for dualism and the transcendent mind”. I think the human thought process is entirely materialistic.

    But I see a useful distinction to be made that hinges on the independence of that materialistic thought process from the equally materialistic evolutionary process that drove the development of the human brain.

    I don’t doubt that some of my behavior is in fact based on what you might call evolved heuristics. My instincts and emotions are good places to look for that kind of behavior. On the other hand, some of my behavior is based on symbolic reasoning, and, yes, I do think it is valuable to separate this type of “personal independent observation” behavior from evolved heuristics.

    So, are adaptiveness and thought opposites? Not opposites, but I think a case can be made that they are in fact two different processes that are independent of each other.
    .

  51. James Clinton says

    “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”

    This sloppy quote from Watson, is annoying, I agree, and could easily be interpreted to read “all blacks are unintelligent” or “treat blacks differently”, but his (always omitted) clarifications in the very next sentence act against that interpretation:

    “His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented…”

    http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2630748.ece

  52. Don Price says

    “there are many people of colour who are very talented…”

    How very charitable of him.

  53. caynazzo says

    Not sure what you mean by asking if thought and adaptiveness are opposites.

    Much of symbolic reasoning involves filling in the blind spots in experiential knowledge. Is calculus an adaptive quality? Is it more than a complex system of qualitative and quantitative analysis?

  54. James Abraham says

    It’s hilarious. People are still accusing me of claiming that black people are intellectually inferior, despite my carefully capitalizing POSSIBLY and MAYBE. The PC-fanatics just can’t resist misrepresenting me.

  55. Voting Present says

    caynazzo, I was trying to respond to windy’s comment at #44 about adaptiveness and thought. I would put calculus and other forms of symbolic reasoning in the second category. I would argue that the way we use calculus is pretty much entirely unrelated to biological adaptation in response to selection. Of course, to a mathematician everything looks like mathematics, just as to a biologist everything looks like biology :-)
    .

  56. says

    It seems like this discussion would be a lot easier if we stopped using the word “race.” If you mean shared culture, say that. If you mean shared ancestry, say that, and specify what level of clustering you’re talking about. “Race” has all kinds of baggage that complicates the conversation.

    And I’m pleased that the tenor of this argument has changed from “You’re a racist/PC-liberal!” to “Citations, please,” but bear in mind self-published reviews and books are not equal to peer-reviewed primary research.

    #49:

    Even if Caucasians, ON AVERAGE, are slightly smarter than Africans, and slighter less smart, ON AVERAGE, than Asians, there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence that this difference is of a magnitude necessitating different social and political standards and programmes for different races/countries. To suggest this is folly, and is correctly interpretted as racist.

    I missed something: what is the cutoff at which policy changes become necessary? If people of African descent score 20 points higher on IQ tests than people of Caucasian descent, does it then become necessary to take social action to level the playing field? What about a difference of 30 points? Is it still “folly” at 40? What is your criterion?

  57. Anonymous coward, for obvious reasons says

    I have a question for those who appear to be religiously asserting that there are no measurable differences in the distribution of intelligence between geographically distinct populations, and calling the idea “bigotry”: If it were conclusively demonstrated that Population X had a median IQ 10 points lower than Population Y, would you suddenly believe that enslaving Population X is justifiable?

    No?

    Then why do you assume that everyone suggesting there might actually be such differences is a bigot who thinks black people are morally inferior?

    There is a persistent, unspoken assumption, I think, on all sides, that intelligence is correlated with moral worth. It isn’t. If a person with IQ 80 has the same worth as one with IQ 120, a population with median IQ 80 has the same worth as one with median IQ 20. There is no biological fact that could make bigotry morally right. So why the outrage?

    It is true that because people implicitly believe less intelligent->inferior, asserting lower intelligence of a target group is a tactic that has worked for bigots before. It is also true that for this reason, it might be undesirable to publicize facts about group differences, if there are any. Still – why the outrage?

    On the other hand, if we assume that the average intelligence of a group is higher than it is, then as Watson says, we may adopt policies toward that group with a negative effect. So isn’t it dangerous to religiously deny the possibility of difference?

  58. says

    “1) Stop it already with the accusations of racism. ”

    I fail to see what is gained by pretending racists are anything but racists. And I can think of a lot of reasons to call racists what they are. Merely because racists use a patina of intellectuality means nothing.

    Even the KKK these days knows better than to say they’re racist. They talk about how they simply want white people to enjoy the same benefits every once else does. And they claim that their opposition to affirmative action is because it insults blacks.

    But it’s the same ugly garbage. You get nowhere arguing with racists. Ever. You will never convince James Watson or James Clinton of anything. It’s sheer psychopathology and there is nothing rational about it.

  59. says

    anonymous coward, for obvious reasons,

    Boy are you perceptive! Wow! Accusing the non-racists here of adhering to a religious dogma, knowing that you can’t possibly insult anyone in this forum better than by accusing them of religiosity! What a zinger!

    And how clever to put it as a question. Tell me anonymous coward etc, when did you first start beating your wife?

  60. ACfOR says

    tristero,

    The point of my comment was that I’m not convinced that everyone who thinks there are differences in the average intelligence of human populations is racist. Despite asserting it twice, you still fail to convince me.

    If you want me to believe you’re not religious, then tell me (a) what evidence it would take to convince you that differences in intelligence do exist, and (b) what evidence it would take to convince you that not everyone who disagrees with you is racist.

    (I’m not claiming differences in intelligence are indisputably established, in case I sound like I am. I do think you have insufficient evidence to dismiss them outright and throw in categorical moral judgments.)

    I don’t see any question I asked that had faulty premises, like “have you stopped beating your wife?”. I don’t think anyone here would say yes to my first question – my intent was to get people to realize that intelligence is not ethically relevant although they seem to unconsciously think it is.

  61. ACfOR says

    Razib at GNXP makes my point more eloquently:

    Now, here is something to repeat five times before breakfast: legal equality is not contingent upon biological equality, is does not necessarily imply ought and natural does not necessarily imply good. These are old lessons, centuries old, but it maybe that we have to learn these simple lessons again in the interests of a liberal order. What we hold to be good, true and right is not good, true and right because the world is as it is, but because it is what we wish it to be. And for us to most efficiently attain what we wish we must wrestle what what is. Live not for the fashions of the day, honor the timeless truths of nature.

  62. Francis Crunk says

    If Watson was wrong there would be no need to censor him, and his comments wouldn’t provoke such hysterical, substanceless, ad hominem reactions. It has been amusing watching 3rd raters like Meyers and Laden embarass themselves by attacking him.

    Why is it again, that Watson is wrong when he says there’s no reason to think peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically? Oh yeah, because he’s bad racist sexist person.

  63. says

    ACfOR

    “If you want me to believe you’re not religious,”

    I don’t care what you believe about me.

    As for the rest, the subject is James Watson’s outrageous, inexcusable and racist generalizations. To pretend for a moment that, in the light of Watson’s scummy remarks, that this is a perfectly splendid time to dispassionately discuss science is intellectually dishonest.

    I will not indulge your masochistic desire to demean yourself by taking Watson’s bigotry seriously enough to discuss. Nor will I participate while you, deliberately or ignorantly (or both), try to drag science down into the stinking gutter of racism.

    tristero

  64. says

    Francis Crunk,

    It’s sheer hyseria to say that Watson is being censored. His remarks are widely reported and distributed. He was disinvited to give a lecture for reasons that are patently obvious. That’s all.

    And I love people who deplore ad hominem attacks and then call others 3rd-raters. Charming.

  65. Francis Crunk says

    Tristero: How many comments you are going to post saying you aren’t going to discuss this? We get it. You can’t deal with the evidence, so you climb on your moralistic high horse and claim it’s beneath you because it’s sinful. Just like fundementalists who think evolution shouldn’t be discussed.

  66. says

    Francis Crunk,

    The subject is Watson’s racism. But if you’d like to open it up to other topics, I’m game.

    Let’s discuss you’re propensity for accusing brilliant men like Myers and Laden of resorting to ad hominem attacks on a racist by using ad hominem arguments.

    I’m curious: Do you think no one notices?

  67. Francis Crunk says

    I did call them 3rd raters, which is more polite than they’ve been Watson. And more accurate. Don’t think for a moment there’s not a considerable amount of jealousy behind these attacks.

  68. Francis Crunk says

    “Let’s discuss you’re propensity for accusing brilliant men like Myers and Laden of resorting to ad hominem attacks”

    They aren’t aren’t brilliant, and it’s not an accusation, it’s what they did.

  69. says

    So two wrongs make a right, in your morality? Interesting.

    And don’t you think Watson is strong enough to stand up for himself? Or do you always leap to the defense of racists?

    Don’t take offense. I didn’t say YOU were a racist, did I? I just said you leapt to the defense of one racist. I’m curious if this is a thing with you, defending racists. Or you make an exception with Watson.

  70. says

    And calling them “3rd rate” is merely an objective judgement of their intelligence?

    Interesting. Let’s discuss that as well. I’m wonder: Do you have to be a racist to be a 1st rate intellligence? Or just keep yourself open to possibility that racists might be right?

  71. Francis Crunk says

    I don’t know him personally, but Watson’s remarks certainly weren’t racist. What he said was true, which is why instead of rebuttals he’s recieved censorship and personal attacks. Or do you think reality itself is racist, and therefore reality should not be discussed?

  72. says

    If it were conclusively demonstrated that Population X had a median IQ 10 points lower than Population Y, would you suddenly believe that enslaving Population X is justifiable?

    Certainly not. But IQ is an inadequate measure of what we call “intelligence.” There are multiple “intelligences.” There are socio-economic and cultural factors in all this. The “intelligence” of a population also changes over time. And there is always the question of whether the tests measure what they purport to measure. Writing good survey questions to sample a small population is difficult enough.

    Frankly, I have mixed feelings about this affair, since I would welcome an opportunity to hear Watson in person, provided that he refrained from this dumb blather and stuck to what he knows about. Crap, St. Thomas hosted Ann Coulter then turned away Desmond Tutu for his “insensitivity.” Am I confused enough yet? Of course, I live in the United States of Absurdica.

    Don’t think for a moment there’s not a considerable amount of jealousy behind these attacks.

    Jealousy of being “censored”? ;-)

  73. Francis Crunk says

    “But IQ is an inadequate measure of what we call “intelligence”

    That’s not what most scientists think. Do you base your opinon on any knowledge of intelligence testing, or are you merely stating something you wish to be true?

  74. says

    I created an honorary group for people like Haggard, Craig, and Roberts’ wife: the Distinguished Order of Unapologetically Conservative Hypocritical EvangelicalS.

  75. says

    I don’t know him personally, but Watson’s remarks certainly weren’t racist. What he said was true, which is why instead of rebuttals he’s recieved censorship and personal attacks. Or do you think reality itself is racist, and therefore reality should not be discussed?

    The science of genetics isn’t racist, Crunk. Sorry, I know all the bigots would like data to support their conclusions about them slopes and darkies, but it just ain’t true.

    Feel free to grandstand against the injustice of polical correctness all you want though. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it automatically makes you right.

  76. says

    Do I think Watson’s a racist?

    Well there’s an interesting epistemlogical question. Let’s discuss it in a sober, non-hysterical way, like the first-rate minds we are.

    If one makes egregiously racist comments, which Watson clearly did, how do we know that the mind behind those comments is a racist mind? And under what circumstances can we ascribe the attitude of one’s mind to one’s being? It is not clear that they are one and the same, if you think about it.

    Therefore, looked at epistemologicallly, we have two serious, sober issues to resolve before we can answer your question. These are issues that have bedeviled philosphers for centuries. We can choose to explore those issues in great detail or we can choose to recall that those who quack are most likely ducks.

    True, sometimes those who quack are Mel Blanc, but most of the time, let’s face it they’re ducks.

    So the answer to your question is. HELL YES, WATSON’S A RACIST. But sober serious people like yourself can never know for sure because of all those subtle epistemological issues so confuse the issue. Except when it comes to ranking the minds of scientists like Laden and Myers where they are unequivocally third rate.

  77. says

    I wrote what I did after reading what you wrote, so perhaps my intelligence was affected.

    But seriously – “most scientists”? Isn’t that most social scientists? And what tests are we talking about: the original Binet-Simon or the modern Stanford-Binet, etc.?

    Average IQ scores were rising at around three points per decade during the 20th century, and that is a fact (the Flynn Effect). The questions as to whether this is due to methodological testing or an increase in real ability is controversial for sure. Certainly IQ correlates with parents’ status in society, salary and educational levels.

    And that’s about what I know. I don’t have any particular “wish” for anything except that we be honest and impartial here.

    (Ta ta, I must run – I have a field trip, if you can believe that!)

  78. says

    Francis Crunk,

    When you say that Watson’s comments aren’t racist but true, do you base your opinon on any knowledge of racism, or are you merely stating something you wish to be true?

    Hmm…where did I hear that question? Sounds familiar.

  79. Francis Crunk says

    All the science supports Watson, see all the links provided by those defending him. The science doesn’t support Laden and Meyers, which is why all they’ve done is call names, accused Watson of being sexist, etc. It should be simple enough to explain why Watson is wrong when he says there’s no reason to think peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. But no one has done so, because they can’t. Feel free to pretend otherwise.

  80. Francis Crunk says

    Tristero said: “If one makes egregiously racist comments, which Watson clearly did”

    They don’t seem racist to me.

    “Except when it comes to ranking the minds of scientists like Laden and Myers where they are unequivocally third rate.”

    They are, aren’t they? Look at what they’ve published and where they work.

    Kristine said: “”most scientists”? Isn’t that most social scientists?”

    Scientists working in a variety of fields accept the validity of IQ tests. Alzheimers researchers, scientists who research the effects of chemicals on mental development, etc.

    “And what tests are we talking about: the original Binet-Simon or the modern Stanford-Binet, etc.?”

    There are a variety of modern tests, including non-verbal ones, that get used, and there’s been considerable effort to make these tests fair and remove cultural bias, something those who dismiss IQ testing seem not to be aware of.

  81. says

    Oh, yes, all the science supports Watson. Well that’s that, isn’t it.

    In the burgeoning field of Sean Connery Studies, considerable anthroplogical work has been done demonstrating that Scots and only Scots are so intellectually and sexually superior to all other human they constitute a separate species.

    In the Journal of Modern Employment, Jan, 2003, it was unequivocally proven beyond a shadow of a doubt – there are charts and everything! – that blacks are too stupid to do a a white man’s job, which supports Watson’s point,

    ” He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.”

    The Institute of Vapid Generalizations has done a meta-analysis of studies on Africa and found that the entire continent has an intellect lower than the average Paris Hilton fan, and that’s mighty low. This was the study Dr Watson was referring to here:

    Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.

    Yes, that erudite, first-rate, Dr. Watson, ever on top of the most avant-garde racist research.

  82. says

    Francis Crunk,

    I need to ask you again:

    When you say that Watson’s comments aren’t racist but true, do you base your opinon on any knowledge of racism, or are you merely stating something you wish to be true?

  83. darwinfinch says

    I expressed having respect for Caledonian in the first Watson non-debate. Yet another case of my confusing names!

    Dear Cal,

    You are not simply wrong, but twisted. It might be best to head for the stables, as Gulliver did – the smell of us homo sapiens, even electronically, seems to disagree with you.

  84. khan says

    People with large amounts of ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa – blacks – average similar low IQ scores no matter what country or world culture they are born and raised in.

    Define ‘large amounts’.

    At what fraction black is one no longer intellectually inferior? Does it snap in across one generation: (say from one eighth to one sixteenth?).

    And while we’re at it, at what fraction black does athletic ability appear/disappear?

    Is this inheritance Mendelian?

  85. David Marjanović, OM says

    A 1987 scientific poll published in the American Psychologist of over 1200 relevant scholars (sociologists, psychologists, and geneticists) found that 46% – a plurality of those polled – believed the evidence pointed to genetics playing a role in observed racial intelligence differences, compared to only 15% who thought genetics did not play a role.

    The vast majority of these people isn’t relevant at all, and you know full well why: I am (marginally) relevant if you want to know where the frogs come from; I am not relevant if you want to find out whether the strepsipterans are closer to the beetles or to the flies.

    Watson, one of the most esteemed living biologists

    Argument from authority.

    Newsflash: Watson’s opinion on the very topic of his quote is irrelevant. He has not worked on human population genetics. Go cite someone else.

    Posted by: Anonymous coward, for obvious reasons

    But surely you aren’t as extremely unimaginative as I? Surely you can come up with some creative nickname?

    Why is it again, that Watson is wrong when he says there’s no reason to think peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically?

    Because they haven’t been geographically separated in their evolution. That’s why all geographic variation in humans is clinal.

    The longest period of isolation in the history of humankind was experienced by the population of Easter Island for about 400 years. I’ve never seen a classification of humans into two races, “Easter Islander” and “Other”, yet it would make more sense than all the dozens and dozens that have been published. (Off the top of my head, I’ve seen one from the early 20th century that distinguished 66 races. Yes, sixty-six.) We are all one population. We don’t have panmixia, but we’re still all one population. The chimpanzees have subspecies, not us.

    “But IQ is an inadequate measure of what we call “intelligence”

    That’s not what most scientists think.

    “Most scientists”? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

  86. David Marjanović, OM says

    A 1987 scientific poll published in the American Psychologist of over 1200 relevant scholars (sociologists, psychologists, and geneticists) found that 46% – a plurality of those polled – believed the evidence pointed to genetics playing a role in observed racial intelligence differences, compared to only 15% who thought genetics did not play a role.

    The vast majority of these people isn’t relevant at all, and you know full well why: I am (marginally) relevant if you want to know where the frogs come from; I am not relevant if you want to find out whether the strepsipterans are closer to the beetles or to the flies.

    Watson, one of the most esteemed living biologists

    Argument from authority.

    Newsflash: Watson’s opinion on the very topic of his quote is irrelevant. He has not worked on human population genetics. Go cite someone else.

    Posted by: Anonymous coward, for obvious reasons

    But surely you aren’t as extremely unimaginative as I? Surely you can come up with some creative nickname?

    Why is it again, that Watson is wrong when he says there’s no reason to think peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically?

    Because they haven’t been geographically separated in their evolution. That’s why all geographic variation in humans is clinal.

    The longest period of isolation in the history of humankind was experienced by the population of Easter Island for about 400 years. I’ve never seen a classification of humans into two races, “Easter Islander” and “Other”, yet it would make more sense than all the dozens and dozens that have been published. (Off the top of my head, I’ve seen one from the early 20th century that distinguished 66 races. Yes, sixty-six.) We are all one population. We don’t have panmixia, but we’re still all one population. The chimpanzees have subspecies, not us.

    “But IQ is an inadequate measure of what we call “intelligence”

    That’s not what most scientists think.

    “Most scientists”? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

  87. Pygmy Loris says

    Wow. I didn’t hear about this until today, but it was the talk of my department (anthropology) all day long. I find it astonishing that people still buy into the “IQ tests are not biased” stuff . There’s quite an extensive literature detailing how and why IQ tests are biased in many different ways.

    But…. If you can demonstrate that sub-Saharan Africans do have a lower average IQ, then here’s an explanation I have…Many sub-Saharan Africans suffer from malnutrition as children. Malnutrition can have a dramatic influence on brain development and result in cognitive capacities that are reduced compared to people (such as modern Europeans and Euro-Americans) that do not suffer from malnutrition as children.

    One thing so many proponents of the genetic basis for IQ seem to ignore is that genotype+environment=phenotype and IQ is a phenotype dramatically influenced by the environment.

    Whereas some studies have shown a considerable heritability for IQ, heritability is a statistic, not a biological fact. Heritability doesn’t necessarily equal genetic control. For instance, wearing shoes has a high heritability among my friends. This doesn’t mean the impetus to wear shoes is genetic.

    As for Francis Crunk

    There are a variety of modern tests, including non-verbal ones, that get used, and there’s been considerable effort to make these tests fair and remove cultural bias, something those who dismiss IQ testing seem not to be aware of.

    That doesn’t mean the IQ test data being discussed are results from these “non-biased” tests. Much of the data supporting the “blacks have lower average IQ” comes from highly biased, antiquated tests. Furthermore, the idea of removing cultural bias from such a blatant cultural construct as an IQ test is laughable over here in anthropology. (I’m in bioanth, so I’m not going to freak out, but if you made these comments to a socio-cultural anthropologist or a linguistic anthropologist, you’d get your metaphorical rear-end handed to you).

    Bottom line, Watson made racist comments. That’s that.

  88. musician sgb says

    I am not a scientist, so I am reticent about posting here. Nevertheless, what always strikes me about race=IQ debate is that no one ever dicusses it in terms of Asian achievement versus white achievement. Or, if someone white is forced to discuss it, we always (myself included) talk about nurture rather than nature, i.e., Asian parents value education more; they demand more from their childre; they have a stronger work ethic. All of these statements may or may not be true, but the point remains that we never hear a white person (and it is always a white person)conflate race with IQ when it comes down to Asians outperforming whites. The subhect of IQ never comes up in this context unless it is being used to “argue” that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.

  89. Francis Crunk says

    David Marojanivic said: “Because they haven’t been geographically separated in their evolution.”

    Swedes, Japanese, and Bantu’s haven’t been geographically seperated in their evolution? That’s beyond stupid.

    Pygmy said: “if you made these comments to a socio-cultural anthropologist or a linguistic anthropologist, you’d get your metaphorical rear-end handed to you).”

    I don’t take the opinions of pseudo-scientists seriously, and besides they would be better served refuting the actual intelligence research being published in peer reviewed journals. For some reason none of them seem to be able to do that.

    “Bottom line, Watson made racist comments. That’s that.”

    Bottom line, no one has explained how it is humans have managed to evolve to be exactly the same.

    Musician sgb said:

    “what always strikes me about race=IQ debate is that no one ever dicusses it in terms of Asian achievement versus white achievement”

    The margins in average IQ between whites, asians, and Ashkenazi Jews are no secret. The difference is those margins don’t inspire people to scream racism.

  90. Bernard Bumner says

    James Clinton, just to reply – although I think others have answered your questions.

    I may be misunderstanding you, but this is false…

    You have misunderstood me. There s clearly going to be a relationship between genetic variation and the degree of relatedness, but that variation cannot be predicted on the basis of “race”. It isn’t possible, without knowledge of the genetic relationships between populations, to predict microsatellite variation.

    There is clustering in populations due to the fact that the individuals are commonly related, but the clustering doesn’t reflect “race”. Equally, whilst there is some clustering of markers, some will be diverse. So, given any arbitrary groupings of individuals, it will be possible to statistically define microsatellite clusters which differentiate between those groups. The whole point of the paper you’d picked was that they had a selection bias for exactly those clusters which defined their chosen sub-populations, in order that they could measure the genetic distances between those populations.

    As for this ongoing debate about IQ scores, I’m not an expert by an means, but for every paper I can see claiming that there is a strong in inherent difference between populations, I can see at least one direct criticism, and another showing that there is no meaningful difference. The issue of IQ as meaningful universal measure of intelligence is very much unresolved, and the search for better measures is ongoing.

    As such, we’re left with two problems for anybody who thinks that race and intelligence are connected; firstly, race has been largely dismissed as a meaningful biological concept, and secondly, intelligence is poorly defined and very difficult to measure across cultural boundaries with the exclusion of environmental factors.

    The issue with Watson remains, even if someone was able to show that “blacks” really were less intelligent, because that would only provide a post hoc vindication of his racist opinion.

  91. says

    Thank you, Pygmy Loris, I thought of the issue of nutrition after I had to leave this discussion.

    However, I wish to stress that I do not dismiss the value of IQ testing or assert that “everyone is equal” in IQ in an attempt to pre-empt any irrational racist conclusions from people who are already inclined toward that view.

    My objection to Watson’s statement is his generalization about “black employees” – in the United States, at least, most “black people” are considerably white, and have Native American ethnicity as well, as opposed to the recent immigrants from Africa. Watson was eyeballing people. Well, were I to eyeball my neighbors I observe Oromo and Somali immigrants making rapid advancements in computer science, law, and education. One can argue anything from eyeballing.

    Of course testing can be biased; any research method can be. That’s why we have controls and peer review. But certainly I think IQ testing is valuable, in particular to identify those students who need special education, as well as gifted/talented students, who sadly tend to be overlooked in our educational system.

    But, after sniffing the high-tech copolymer glue at the U of M Bindery (a visit I recommend), I realized that this ongoing, fascinating discussion is largely academic at this point, because we have a no-nothing President whose administration has shoe-horned in No Child Left Behind, a disastrous policy that in reality punishes good schools (like those in Minnesota) for teaching children with special needs, because they haven’t magically brought those students up to the performance of the rest of the students, whatever that performance is supposed to be (rote learning and memorization, it seems).

  92. Francis Crunk says

    Racists who belive in group differences in IQ, like Charles Murray, oppose No Child Left Behind. If he’s wrong and there are no group IQ differences than NCLB is the right policy and will prove to be sucessful.