Race differences in average IQ are largely genetic

[Heimdallr]

The American Psychological Association published a study in 2005 showing that IQ differences along racial lines are more genetic than the result of environment... A 60-page review of the scientific evidence, some based on state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain size, has concluded that race differences in average IQ are largely genetic.

"Neither the existence nor the size of race differences in IQ are a matter of dispute, only their cause," write the authors. The Black-White difference has been found consistently from the time of the massive World War I Army testing of 90 years ago to a massive study of over 6 million corporate, military, and higher-education test-takers in 2001.

News-Medical.net >>> Race differences in average IQ are largely genetic

Related: The book IQ and Wealth of Nations by Dr. Richard Lynn and Dr. Tatu Vanhanen, father of the Finnish Prime Minister, studies the average IQ of 81 countries around the world. The top 10 countries with the highest average IQs are all in the Pacific Rim and Europe. The bottom 10 are all located in Sub-Saharan Africa. In countries like Jamaica, where the population is of Sub-Saharan decent with little to no Caucasian admixture, the average IQ is similar to that of the Sub-Sahara.

Photo Below: Picture of the “Cape Cod Coloreds,” urbanized South Africans who have significant admixture of British, Dutch, and Indian(from India) blood. The “coloreds” constitute about 10% of the population of South Africa. Their average IQ mimics American blacks (who also have a large Caucasian admixture) and not other Sub-Saharan Africans.




IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen

[Yago]

I think that those are Cape Malays, not Cape Coloureds. Cape Malays were a mixture of San (Bushmen) or Khoi (Hottentots) , Indonesian and Dutch (via early Afrikaners settlers). Not Indian and I doubt it that British (the British in South Africa followed a pattern of segregation that included even the Dutch).

They live in Cape Town, not in Cape Cod.

Coloureds (not "Coloreds") are just Mulattos of Black and Dutch (or German, in Namibia).

Coloureds in South Africa are also known as Brown Afrikaners, as they speak Afrikaans (which they have influenced in its development away from Dutch) and have retained their Afrikaner culture.

[Yago]

By the way, this should not be in the Anthropology forum but in the Genetics forum. It doesn't take much to figure.

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by Heimdallr

Related: The book IQ and Wealth of Nations by Dr. Richard Lynn and Dr. Tatu Vanhanen, father of the Finnish Prime Minister, studies the average IQ of 81 countries around the world. The top 10 countries with the highest average IQs are all in the Pacific Rim and Europe. The bottom 10 are all located in Sub-Saharan Africa. In countries like Jamaica, where the population is of Sub-Saharan decent with little to no Caucasian admixture, the average IQ is similar to that of the Sub-Sahara.

This actually doesn't prove anything. The IQ testing is performed using standardized tests, in which certain pattern always repeats. Furthermore, you cannot possibly measure one's intelligence using the score from the IQ test, because the intelligence itself is way more complicated, and possibly divided into several branches.
In addition, the title of this thread would imply that the differences are "largely genetic", but no genes(or even gene loci) were detected, that are responsible for the human intelligence.

Human brain is much more complex, to measure its intelligence by the means of primitive IQ testing.
I'd even compare that with a Neanderthal trying to run a nuclear power plant.

[Marcus Marulus]

To sum it up: the pseudo-"science" pursued by arrogant quacks. (Lynn and co.)

[Yago]

Well, the "Related" added part does indeed rest credibility to the whole thing. Notice that the post is copied and pasted from a site called the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is the one that apparently added the "Related" bit to the article

IQ differences in race are "largely genetic" says medical publication. | Council of Conservative Citizens

and which, from what I've read through their site, it has all the looks of a WN attempt not to look much WN (yes, there's being some moves into that direction, from what I've heared, while still retaining the "real freak" in other sites).

However, the claim of the genetic association is credible, or it states the obvious if you prefer it. Even when IQ test results have an important percentage of variables that is not concerned to anything related to genetics, but to social environment among others.

Having said that, I do not think that these claims, whatever you make of them, are important or relevant to the issue of concern. Which is to us here that of ethnic preservation.

So only under a strict American mentality can one understand that such things may become central to any political idea.. or pretended ideal. In other words, since we are about nothing, let us waste time while we can.

Leaving this on a side, what I would call the attention upon from the publication of such articles among certain circles in the internet and outside of it, is the lack of publication of similar or parallel articles pointing to such issues within more homogenous populations (say ethnic or para-ethnic groups). But of course this could be not all that convenient to the said circles, as its analysis and discussion would very likely stir internal troubles and unveil a few uncomfortable realities that right now are hidden behind the focusing of attention on the articles that are more... commercial? at least for a given public.

[Marcus Marulus]

THE BELL CURVE: INTELLIGENCE AND CLASS STRUCTURE IN AMERICAN LIFE

By Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Free Press, 1994 ($30).

This book, with 400,000 copies in print just two months after its publication, has created an enormous stir. The authors unabashedly assert that scientific evidence demonstrates the existence of genetically based differences in intelligence among social classes and races. They maintain further that data from some 1,000 publications in the social and biological sciences show that attributes such as employment, income, welfare dependency, divorce and quality of parental behavior are determined by an individual's intelligence. These claims--another eruption of the crude biological determinism that permeates the history of IQ testing--lead Herrnstein and Murray to a number of social policy recommendations. The policies would not be necessary, or humane, even if the cited evidence were valid. But the caliber of the data in "The Bell Curve" is, at many critical points, pathetic. Further, the authors repeatedly fail to distinguish between correlation and causation and thus draw many inappropriate conclusions.

I will deal first with an especially troubling example of the quality of the data on which Herrnstein and Murray rely. They ask, "How do African-Americans compare with blacks in Africa on cognitive tests?" They reason that low African-American IQ scores might be the result either of a history of slavery and discrimination or of genetic factors. Herrnstein and Murray evidently assume that blacks reared in colonial Africa have not been subjected to discrimination. In their view, if low IQ scores of African-Americans are a product of discrimination, rather than genes, black Africans should have higher IQs than African-Americans.
To answer the question they have posed, Herrnstein and Murray call on the authority of Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster in Ireland, described as "a leading scholar of racial and ethnic differences," from whose advice they have "benefited especially." They state that Lynn, who in 1991 reviewed 11 African IQ studies, "estimated the median black African IQ to be 75...about 10 points lower than the current figure for American blacks." Herrnstein and Murray conclude that the "special circumstances" of African-Americans cannot explain their low average IQ relative to whites. That leaves genetics free to explain the black-white difference.

But why do black Americans have higher scores than black Africans? Herrnstein and Murray, citing "Owen 1992," write that "the IQ of 'coloured' students in South Africa--of mixed racial background--has been found to be similar to that of American blacks." The implication is clear: the admixture of Caucasian and African genes, both in South Africa and in the U.S., boosts "coloured" IQ 10 points above that of native Africans. But the claims made regarding African and coloured IQs cannot withstand critical scrutiny.
Lynn's 1991 paper describes a 1989 publication by Ken Owen as "the best single study of the Negroid intelligence." The study compared white, Indian and black pupils on the Junior Aptitude Tests; no coloured pupils were included. The mean "Negroid" IQ in that study, according to Lynn, was 69. But Owen did not in fact assign IQs to any of the groups he tested; he merely reported test-score differences between groups, expressed in terms of standard deviation units. The IQ figure was concocted by Lynn out of those data. There is, as Owen made clear, no reason to suppose that low scores of blacks had much to do with genetics: "the knowledge of English of the majority of black testees was so poor that certain [of the] tests...proved to be virtually unusable." Further, the tests assumed that Zulu pupils were familiar with electrical appliances, microscopes and "Western type of ladies' accessories."

In 1992 Owen reported on a sample of coloured students that had been added to the groups he had tested earlier. The footnote in "The Bell Curve" seems to credit this report as proving that South African coloured students have an IQ "similar to that of American blacks," that is, about 85 (the actual reference does not appear in the book's bibliography). That statement does not correctly characterize Owen's work. The test used by Owen in 1992 was the "nonverbal" Raven's Progressive Matrices, which is thought to be less culturally biased than other IQ tests. He was able to compare the performance of coloured students with that of the whites, blacks and Indians in his 1989 study because the earlier set of pupils had taken the Progressive Matrices in addition to the Junior Aptitude Tests. The black pupils, recall, had poor knowledge of English, but Owen felt that the instructions for the Matrices "are so easy that they can be explained with gestures."

Owen's 1992 paper again does not assign IQs to the pupils. Rather he gives the mean number of correct responses on the Progressive Matrices (out of a possible 60) for each group: 45 for whites, 42 for Indians, 37 for coloureds and 28 for blacks. The test's developer, John Raven, repeatedly insisted that results on the Progressive Matrices tests cannot be converted into IQs. Matrices scores, unlike IQs, are not symmetrical around their mean (no "bell curve" here). There is thus no meaningful way to convert an average of raw Matrices scores into an IQ, and no comparison with American black IQs is possible.

The remaining studies cited by Lynn, and accepted as valid by Herrnstein and Murray, tell us little about African intelligence but do tell us something about Lynn's scholarship. One of the 11 entries in Lynn's table of the intelligence of "pure Negroids" indicates that 1,011 Zambians who were given the Progressive Matrices had a lamentably low average IQ of 75. The source for this quantitative claim is given as "Pons 1974; Crawford-Nutt 1976."

A. L. Pons did test 1,011 Zambian copper miners, whose average number of correct responses was 34. Pons reported on this work orally; his data were summarized in tabular form in a paper by D. H. Crawford-Nutt. Lynn took the Pons data from Crawford-Nutt's paper and converted the number of correct responses into a bogus average "IQ" of 75. Lynn chose to ignore the substance of Crawford-Nutt's paper, which reported that 228 black high school students in Soweto scored an average of 45 correct responses on the Matrices--HIGHER than the mean of 44 achieved by the same-age white sample on whom the test's norms had been established and well above the mean of Owen's coloured pupils.

Seven of the 11 studies selected by Lynn for inclusion in his "Negroid" table reported only average Matrices scores, not IQs; the other studies used tests clearly dependent on cultural content. Lynn had earlier, in a 1978 paper, summarized six studies of African pupils, most using the Matrices. The arbitrary IQs concocted by Lynn for those studies ranged between 75 and 88, with a median of 84. Five of those six studies were omitted from Lynn's 1991 summary, by which time African IQ had, in his judgment, plummeted to 69.

Lynn's distortions and misrepresentations of the data constitute a truly venomous racism, combined with scandalous disregard for scientific objectivity. Lynn is widely known among academics to be an associate editor of the racist journal "Mankind Quarterly" and a major recipient of financial support from the nativist, eugenically oriented Pioneer Fund. It is a matter of shame and disgrace that two eminent social scientists, fully aware of the sensitivity of the issues they address, take Lynn as their scientific tutor and uncritically accept his surveys of research.

I turn now to a revealing example of Herrnstein and Murray's tendency to ignore the difference between mere statistical associations (correlations) and cause-and-effect relationships. The authors lament that "private complaints about the incompetent affirmative-action hiree are much more common than scholarly examination of the issue." They then proceed to a scholarly and public discussion of "teacher competency examinations." They report that such exams have had "generally beneficial effects," presumably by weeding out incompetent affirmative-action hirees. That view of tests for teachers is not shared by those who argue that because blacks tend to get lower scores, the tests are a way of eliminating competent black teachers. But Herrnstein and Murray assure us that "teachers who score higher on the tests have greater success with their students."

To support that statement, they cite a single study by two economists who analyzed data from a large number of North Carolina school districts. The researchers obtained average teacher test scores (a measure of "teacher quality") and pupil failure rates for each district. They reported that a "1% increase in teacher quality...is accompanied by a 5% decline in the...rate of failure of students"--that is, there were fewer student failures in districts where teachers had higher test scores. It does not follow from such a correlation, however, that hiring teachers with higher test scores will reduce the rate of student failure. The same researchers found, to their surprise, that "larger class size tends to lead to improved average [pupil] performance." Does it follow that increasing the pupil-to-teacher ratio would further improve student performance? That policy might please many taxpayers, just as firing teachers with lower test scores would please some. But neither policy derives logically from the observed correlations.

To understand why, consider the following. The average proportion of black students across the North Carolina school districts was 31 percent. Suppose--it does not stretch credulity--that black teachers (who have lower test scores) tend to work in districts with large proportions of black pupils (who have higher failure rates). Such nonrandom assignment of teachers would produce a correlation between teacher test scores and pupil failure rates, but one cannot then conclude that the teachers' test scores have any causal relation to student failure. To argue that, one would have to show that for a group of black teachers and for a separate group of white teachers, teachers' test scores predicted the failure rates of their students. No such information was available to the original researchers or to Herrnstein and Murray.

What about the finding that high pupil-to-teacher ratios are associated with good pupil performance? There is no way to be certain, but suppose deprived black children tended to be in small, de facto segregated rural schools, whereas more privileged whites were in larger classrooms. Would cramming more pupils into the rural schools promote academic excellence?

There is an important and general lesson buried in this example: the arithmetical complexity of the multitude of correlations and logistic regressions stuffed into "The Bell Curve" does not elevate their status from mere associations to causes and effects.
The confusion between correlation and causation permeates the book's largest section, which consists of an interminable series of analyses of data taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth (NLSY). Those data, not surprisingly, indicate that there is an association within each race between IQ and socioeconomic status. Herrnstein and Murray labor mightily to show that low IQ is the cause of low socioeconomic status, and not vice versa. The argument is decked out in all the trappings of science--a veritable barrage of charts, graphs, tables, appendices and appeals to statistical techniques that are unknown to many readers. But on close examination, this scientific emperor is wearing no clothes.

The NLSY survey included more than 12,000 youngsters, who were aged 14 to 22 when the continuing study began in 1979. At that time the respondents or their parents gave information about their educations, occupations and incomes and answered questions about themselves. Those reports are the basis for classifying the childhood socioeconomic status of the respondents. The teenagers also took the Armed Forces Qualification Test, regarded by psychometricians as essentially an IQ test. As they have grown older, the respondents have provided more information about their own schooling, unemployment, poverty, marital status, childbearing, welfare dependency, criminality, parenting behavior and so on.

Herrnstein and Murray pick over these data, trying to show that it is overwhelmingly IQ--not childhood or adult socioeconomic status--that determines worldly success and the moral praiseworthiness of one's social behaviors. But their dismissal of socioeconomic status rests ultimately on the self-reports of youngsters, which do not form an entirely firm basis.

I do not suggest that such self-reports are entirely unrelated to reality. We know from many sources that children from differing social class backgrounds do indeed differ in measured IQ. And in the NLSY study, after all, the respondents' self-reports are correlated with the objective facts of their IQ scores. But comparing the predictive value of those self-reports with that of test scores is playing with loaded dice.

Further, the fact that self-reports are correlated with IQ scores is, like all correlations, ambiguous. For Herrnstein and Murray, the relation of their index of parental socioeconomic status to the child's IQ means that parents of high status--the "cream floating on the surface of American society"--have transmitted high-quality genes to their offspring. But other interpretations are possible.

Perhaps the kinds of people who get high test scores are precisely those who are vain enough to claim exaggerated social status for themselves. That tendency could artificially inflate correlations of IQ both with parental socioeconomic status and with self-reports of success, distorting all tests of the relative predictive power of socio-economic status and IQ. Such an explanation may seem far-fetched to some readers, but it is clearly a logical possibility. The choice between such alternative interpretations of statistical associations cannot be based on logic alone. There is plenty of elbow room for ideological bias in social science.

The core of the Herrnstein-Murray message is phrased with a beguiling simplicity: "Putting it all together, success and failure in the American economy, and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit." Income is a "family trait" because IQ, "a major predictor of income, passes on sufficiently from one generation to the next to constrain economic mobility." Those at the bottom of the economic heap were unlucky when the genes were passed out, and they will remain there.

The correlations with which Herrnstein and Murray are obsessed are of course real: the children of day laborers are less likely than the children of stockbrokers to acquire fortunes or to go to college. They are more likely to be delinquent, to receive welfare, to have children outside of marriage, to be unemployed and to have low-birth-weight babies. The children of laborers have lower average IQs than do the children of brokers, and so IQ is also related to all these phenomena.

Herrnstein and Murray's intent is to convince us that low IQ causes poverty and its attendant evils--not, as others hold, vice versa.

For eight dense chapters, the authors of "The Bell Curve" wrestle with data from the NLSY survey, attempting to disentangle the roles of IQ and of socioeconomic status. They employ a number of quantitative tools, most prominently logistic regression, a technique that purports to specify what would happen if one variable were "held constant" while another variable were left free to vary. When socioeconomic status is statistically held constant by Herrnstein and Murray, IQ remains related to all the phenomena described. When IQ is held constant, the effect of socioeconomic status is invariably reduced, usually substantially, and sometimes eliminated.

There are a number of criticisms to be made regarding the ways in which Herrnstein and Murray analyze these data. But for argument's sake, let us suppose that their analyses are appropriate and accurate. We can also grant that, rightly or wrongly, disproportionate salaries and wealth accrue to those with high IQ scores. What then do the Herrnstein-Murray analyses tell us?

The socioeconomic status of one's parents cannot in any immediate sense "cause" one's IQ to be high or low. Family income obviously cannot directly determine a child's performance on an IQ test. But income and the other components of an index of socioeconomic status can serve as rough indicators of the rearing environment to which a child has been exposed. With exceptions, a child of a well-to-do broker is more likely to be exposed to book learning earlier and more intensively than is a child of a laborer. And extensive practice at reading and calculating does affect, very directly, one's IQ score. That is one plausible way of interpreting the statistical link between parental socioeconomic status and a child's IQ.

The significant question is not whether socioeconomic status, as defined by Herrnstein and Murray, is more or less statistically associated with success than is their measure of IQ. Different measures of socioeconomic status, or different IQ tests, might substantially affect the results they obtained; other scholars, using other indices and tests, have in fact achieved quite different results. The significant question is, why don't the children of laborers acquire the skills that are tapped by IQ tests?

Herrnstein and Murray answer that the children of the poor, like their laborer parents before them, have been born with poor genes. Armed with that conviction, the authors hail as "a great American success story" that after "controlling for IQ," ethnic and racial discrepancies in education, wages and so forth are "strikingly diminished." They reach this happy conclusion on the questionable basis of their regression analyses. But the data, even if true, allow another reading. We can view it as a tragic failure of American society that so few black and low-socioeconomic status children are lucky enough to be reared in environments that nurture the skills needed to obtain high IQ scores. For Herrnstein and Murray, it is only fair that the race should go to the swift, who are blessed with good genes and high IQs. The conception that our society hobbles most of the contestants at the starting line does not occur to them.

In the world of "The Bell Curve," the explanatory power of IQ is ubiquitous. The authors note that among blue-collar workers who tell researchers that they have dropped out of the labor force because of physical disability or injury, low IQ is common. Why? "An answer leaps to mind: The smarter you are, the less likely that you will have accidents." That answer leapt to mind before the thought that low-IQ workers, in minimum wage jobs, have little incentive to remain in the labor force. Dull young women lack the "foresight and intelligence" to understand that the welfare system offers them a bad deal. Welfare might be a bad deal for Herrnstein and Murray, but I am not so sure that single mothers on welfare have not figured out THEIR odds pretty accurately.

People who have low IQs, according to "The Bell Curve," commit crimes because they lack foresight, and so the threat of prison does not deter them. Further, they cannot "understand why robbing someone is wrong." Then what is to be made of the fact that although "very dull" young males are stopped by the police, booked for an offense and convicted less often than "normal" males, they are nevertheless jailed more than twice as often? "It may be...that they are less competent in getting favorable treatment from the criminal justice system. The data give us no way to tell." Perhaps not, but some hints are available. There is no doubt that O. J. Simpson is "competent," but his ability to hire high-priced lawyers is not irrelevant to the treatment he will receive from the criminal justice system.

"The Bell Curve," near its closing tail, contains two chapters concerned with affirmative action, both in higher education and in the workplace. To read those chapters is to hear the second shoe drop. The rest of the book, I believe, was written merely as a prelude to its assault on affirmative action. The vigor of the attack is astonishing.

Affirmative action "cannot survive public scrutiny." It is based on "the explicit assumption that ethnic groups do not differ in...abilities." Hiring and promotion procedures "that are truly fair...will produce...racial disparities," and "employers are using dual standards for black and white job applicants because someone or something...is making them do so." That behavior has resulted in the "degradation of intellectual requirements" in recruiting police, which has affected "police performance on the street." We learn that a veteran of the Washington, D.C., police force has heard "about people in the academy who could not read or write." And a former instructor saw "people diagnosed as borderline retarded graduate from the police academy." These anecdotes take their place among the politically potent folktales about welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

At long last, Herrnstein and Murray let it all hang out: "Affirmative action, in education and the workplace alike, is leaking a poison into the American soul." Having examined the American condition at the close of the 20th century, these two philosopher-kings conclude, "It is time for America once again to try living with inequality, as life is lived...." This kind of sentiment, I imagine, is what led "New York Times" columnist Bob Herbert to the conclusion that "The Bell Curve" "is just a genteel way of calling somebody a nigger." Herbert is right. The book has nothing to do with science.

LEON J. KAMIN is professor of psychology at Northeastern University in Boston. His more extensive critique of this work will appear in "The Bell Curve Debate," edited by Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman (Times Books/Random House, 1995).

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN February 1995 Volume 272 Number 2 Pages 99-103
Scientific American (ISSN 0036-8733), published monthly by Scientific American, Inc., 415 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017-1111. Copyright 1995 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved. Except for one-time personal use, no part of any issue may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise copied for public or private use without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding back issues, reprints or permissions, E-mail SCAinquiry@aol.com.

[source]

[Marcus Marulus]

Dan Agin: Black and White in America I: The Tribal Hoax

Dan Agin: Black and White in America II: The Phantom of Group Differences

Dan Agin: Black and White in America III: From Eugenics to Madness

Dan Agin

Author/Neuroscientist

Posted January 25, 2009

Black and White in America IV: IQ Myths and Realities

Myths about group differences in IQ and behavior depend very much on myths about individual differences in IQ and behavior. For example, some untenable ideas about the heritability of IQ are a central component of hereditarian explanations of group differences. Because of this overlap, discussion of myths about group differences often needs to include consideration of individual differences. In this column I focus on IQ and behavior myths with a special emphasis on myths related to race or groups as a whole and to cultural factors.

Myth: Biological or genetic determinism is a nothing more than a scientific discipline that studies the biological basis of all forms of human behavior.

Reality: Biological or genetic determinism as applied to human behavior is an ideology rather than a scientific discipline. It proposes that humans differ in fundamental abilities because of innate differences, that these innate differences are biologically inherited, and that human nature guarantees the formation of a hierarchical society -- top dogs and bottom dogs.

Myth: Intelligence is a general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience -- a broad and deep capability for comprehending our surroundings. Intelligence so defined can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well.

Reality: The deep fallacy is the idea that any concept occurring in the human mind and expressible in language is a real measurable entity. Apart from measuring learning rates (for example, "learning quickly"), nothing in this myth can be measured quantitatively and reliably with objective measuring instruments. Intelligence is a concept, not an object or a succinct event, and no more measurable than beauty, truth, wisdom, humor, misery, and so on. What we can measure quantitatively is cognitive performance on a certain task. The only meaningful definition of cognitive performance is operational and in terms of the instruments used to measure it.

Myth: Different types of intelligence tests all measure the same intelligence.

Reality: This is a fallacy. Since cognitive performance is defined operationally, the definition must change as the test changes. The myth is based on the pair correlations between scores on one type of test with scores on another type of test. But pair correlations measure only similarities of variation and imply nothing about underlying causalities. There is no basis for the idea that pair correlations between two sets of test scores indicate the tests are measuring the same variable.

Myth: The spread of people along the IQ-test continuum, from low to high, can be represented by the bell curve (the normal curve).

Reality: The questions in the IQ test are designed to produce a bell-curve distribution of scores. It's possible to design a cognitive performance test that produces another kind of distribution. What we find as the "spread of people" in cognitive performance depends on the measuring instrument we use.

Myth: Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born English-speaking people in the United States. Culture bias in IQ tests does not explain the difference in black-white IQ scores, a difference of approximately 15 points between the means of group distributions.

Reality: The idea that all "native-born English-speaking people in the United States" develop and live in the same culture is anthropological nonsense. Cognitive performance is never independent of culture any more than the way language is used is independent of culture. Linguistic structure, in fact, controls the way people think and learn, so that if linguistic structure is culture dependent, so also is thinking and learning. As for cultural bias in IQ tests not explaining the difference in black-white IQ scores, there is no hard scientific evidence to support any such idea -- and considerable evidence against it. The notorious black-white IQ gap of one standard deviation (about 15 points), touted by genetic determinists to be independent of culture, was in fact substantially reduced between 1972 and 2002 -- and it continues to shrink.

Myth: Heritability is the squared correlation of phenotype with genotype. Heritability estimates for IQ range from 0.4 to 0.8, most estimates thereby indicating that genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals.

Reality: If heritability is the squared correlation of phenotype with genotype, the assumption is that the phenotype and genotype under discussion can be measured. The human individual genotype is not yet even defined, let alone measurable, so with or without a measurable phenotype, "heritability" cannot be calculated without restrictive assumptions. As for the range of 0.4 to 0.8 for the heritability of IQ, it's a fallacy based on an assumption of independent genetic and environmental variables in a linear relationship with heritability, which means no gene-environment interactions. The deep fallacy is that any contributions to variance due to factors acting before birth (such as prenatal impacts) are assumed to be genetic. As far as genes playing "a bigger role" than environment in creating individual differences in IQ is concerned, that's a total misreading of the meaning of a correlation coefficient.

Myth: Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it to raise IQ permanently.

Reality: Most evidence suggests the opposite. For example, concerning prenatal impacts, the known effects on fetal brain development and later IQ of factors such as environmental pollution, maternal stress during gestation, and poor health care for pregnant women imply that removing these stressors would ultimately mean an improvement in postnatal IQ.

Myth: To the extent that genes play a role in intelligence, IQ will vary by racial admixture.

Reality: This simplistic statement is not true. Given the complexity of gene expression prenatally and postnatally, variation by racial or ethnic admixture may or may not occur. There is certainly no scientific evidence to support the myth, and racial admixture blood group analysis does not predict IQ. Human intelligence, whatever it is, is certainly not a Mendelian trait.

Myth: IQ subtests based on abstract designs have little or no cultural content.

Reality: The fallacy here is the assumption that cultural bias means only culture-dependent content. Methods of problem solution can also be culture dependent. If the method that must be used to solve an abstract problem is common to one culture but not to another culture, the problem is culturally biased.

Myth: the Spearman g-factor (also called "global intelligence" or "general intelligence") represents a biologically grounded and highly heritable cognitive resource, which gives one reason to think that not much about black-white IQ differences will change in the years to come.

Reality: The so-called biological grounding consists of correlations with various physiological parameters such as brain evoked potentials, brain pH levels, brain glucose metabolism, peripheral nerve conduction velocity, and psychological reaction time. All of these are also correlated with nearly everything that goes on in the brain, and none of these parameters has ever been established as a determinant of cognitive performance. The g correlations are merely evidence that the brain is a part of the body involved in taking an IQ test. The correlations tell us nothing about any "biological grounding" or any causal relation between any physiological variable and IQ scores. As expected, neuroscientists are not at all excited about Spearman's g-factor. It tells them nothing about the neurological substrate of cognitive performance. Concerning the "high heritability" of g, as I have pointed out, the numerical value assumes a fallacious linear statistical model and a fallacious biological model that lumps all prenatal environmental impacts with the genotype variance. As for the idea that not much about black-white differences in IQ scores will change in the years to come, there is no scientific evidence to confirm that idea, and there are hundreds of studies that suggest otherwise. The black-white IQ score distributions are now less than one standard deviation apart, and "the years to come" may demonstrate that elimination of prenatal impacts that are damaging to the brain and often transgenerational may also eliminate black-white group differences in IQ scores. There is certainly no evidence to suggest the idea that differences are intractable. A high calculated "heritability" says nothing about the possibility of future change. It's an old reality that a trait can have a current heritability of 1.0 (which means 100 percent of total variance is due to genetic variance) in a population and be completely altered in the future by a new environment that introduces environmental contributions to variance.

Myth: Genetic cluster analysis of DNA supports the common notion of individual "races" among modern peoples.

Reality: Genetic cluster analysis of DNA supports the idea of DNA clusters -- and that's all. Relating these clusters to so-called races is problematic. For example, DNA analysis reports a non-black Hispanic-American cluster different from a "white" cluster, but Hispanic-Americans are not commonly viewed as a "race" by most Americans. In addition, there is no evidence from any cluster analysis that the DNA components related to clustering are involved with intelligence or behavior. It's possible the DNA components that produce clustering are all related to superficial phenotype traits such as skin color, eye color, and so on.

Myth: The correlation between brain size and intelligence within either race, and the average difference in brain size and intelligence between blacks and whites, are well established in the scientific literature.

Reality: This canard is a common argument of white supremacists, but the scientific literature does not support the idea. What the scientific literature does suggest is a relation between cognitive performance and the thickness (or thinness) of certain regions of the cerebral cortex, but there are no reliable data measuring cortical thickness differences between ethnic groups.

Myth: Because prenatal effects are more or less random, they are difficult to remedy or control, and their occurrence has probably been reduced in recent decades by improved maternal nutrition, advances in obstetrical techniques, and improved health in general.

Reality: First, prenatal effects are not "more or less random" but usually nonrandom effects due to environmental pollution or cultural impacts on maternal psychology or physiology. Second, the variety of prenatal effects is so broad there is no basis for the statement that they are "difficult to remedy or control" --indeed, some prenatal impacts (for example, tobacco smoking and alcohol use during pregnancy, nutrition and infection, etc.) are relatively easy to control. Third, there is no evidence at all that prenatal impacts have been reduced in recent decades to make them now of little or no importance.

So much for some myths and realities. It's unfortunate that too many people who ought to know better are so eager to promote the idea of intellectual differences between blacks and whites in America. Their eagerness continues to appear as a psychiatric puzzle, the old tribal hoax covered by transparent veils.

Humans are a complex species with plastic brains that allow rapid behavioral changes from one generation to the next through cultural evolution. Brain plasticity means our brains can be wired and rewired by experience. No other species has any comparable biological capability -- not to the degree present in humans. As for black and white in America, it would certainly help us all to focus more on our similarities than on our differences. Meanwhile, until White America stops standing on the face of Black America, let's not delude ourselves that we're free of the tribal hoax.

-----

Here are a few books (one to be published soon) that expand on some of the ideas presented in this series of columns:

Agin, D. Changing Destiny: How the Fetal Environment Shapes IQ and Behavior. Oxford University Press, 2009 (in press).
Gould, S. The Mismeasure of Man. W. W. Norton, 1996.
Graves, J. The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Jencks, C. and Phillips, M. (Eds.) The Black-White Test Score Gap. Brookings Institution Press, 1998.
Kevles, D. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Harvard University Press, 1995.
Lewontin, R., Rose, S., and Kamin, L. Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. Pantheon, 1984.
Tucker, W. The Science and Politics of Racial Research. University of Illinois Press, 1994.

[source]

[Routasydän]

Vanhanen is actually an advocate of mongrelization. As is his son, the prime-minister, although he probably doesn't see it that way...

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Routasydän

Vanhanen is actually an advocate of mongrelization.

One more proof of the utter hypocrisy of these fashionable "Academic racists".

[hermeticist]

Originally Posted by Marcus Marulus

To sum it up: the pseudo-"science" pursued by arrogant quacks. (Lynn and co.)

I wasn't aware of this thread. Lynn and others are pursuing an ideologically driven project, and one which historically provided some of the rationale for European imperialism and colonisation -- namely that European civilisation was supreme and the heathen was genetically further down the scale of evolution and thus needed benevolent supervision.

There are differences in people -- physical and mental -- and much of this difference is genetic, is hereditary. Also, the environment does select for certain qualities -- the Darwinian thesis. We cannot say much more than this with confidence. "Race" is an ill-defined construct; we have to be arbitrary in what constellations of genes we cluster together to define "race," and this segregation by race only serves ideological ends. "Intelligence" equally serves only ideological ends. Call the set of qualities that, for example, Nordic Europe selected for "intelligence" and then use that arbitrarily as a yardstick to judge everyone else. But we probably can assert with confidence, however, that an African is unlikely to do well in the set of tasks that would be expected of a European in Europe: his skill set for dealing with his environment is different.

[Marcus Marulus]

The Return of Determinism?

The Pseudoscience of the Bell Curve

by Rajiv Rawat

In the past few months, there has been much discussion about the book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. This latest incarnation of biological determinism, where specific test scores and achievements are supposedly predetermined by genetic inheritance, has generated much controversy. A large number of magazines and papers have covered the authors' claims, and have perhaps unintentionally legitimized the topic in rational discussion. As a science and technology magazine, we felt that we ought to address an issue fundamentally based on scientific knowledge. Are Herrnstein's and Murray's ideas, in fact, as scientifically sound as they claim? Malcolm Browne of the New York Times Book Review commented in his article that the authors were "recognized by colleagues as serious scholars." Jeff Cowley of Newsweek further characterized the book as follows: "As the shouting begins, it's worth noting that the science behind the Bell Curve is overwhelmingly mainstream." Is it mainstream, or plain bunk, repackaged Social Darwinism and eugenics masquerading as a new discovery in genetics and "statistical" truths? As in most academic discourse, the text itself is written in a seductively ambiguous manner, claiming no implied racism or political bias, but a definite answer can come from looking directly at the history and background behind the Bell Curve's theories. Though the philosophical and policy issues surrounding the subject are of greatest importance, the book's assertions will ultimately stand or fall at the source.

The "scientists"

The first suspicions of the book's scientific worth were confirmed by an investigation into the identities of Herrnstein and Murray. Neither of their backgrounds are in genetics or even the biological sciences. The late Richard Herrnstein was educated in psychology and Charles Murray earned a degree in political science. Both had histories of chronic racism. Herrnstein was picketed at Harvard in 1971 for his racist views. In one of several incidents, a young Charles Murray held a cross-burning in his hometown. Murray also has a definite political ideology, being a member of the American Enterprise Institute. In the mid-1980s, Murray wrote a book called Losing Ground. In it, he advocated essentially the same views (disadvantaged sections of the population remaining marginalized due to their own genetic defects) as his more recent publication. He has campaigned for the end of welfare, one of several direct policy recommendations of the Bell Curve.

As for the book's findings, none of its "research" was new or original. The authors drew on several sources, none of whom were reputable geneticists. In fact, many were long discredited IQ researchers such as Arthur Jensen who hypothesized in 1969 that blacks were inferior and set out to prove it. They also cited Philip Rushton, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, whose own pronouncements on race drew fire from geneticists across the world. His theory of sexual-mental tradeoffs (i.e., people with larger genitalia suffered from decreased mental capacity) expressed in human races was declared "plainly science" by Murray and Herrnstein, even though Rushton stands alone in supporting it.

By far the most text citations originated from the Mankind Quarterly, a pseudoscientific anthropological journal that was founded by eugenicists and assorted fascist ideologues. Its original goals of combating communism, egalitarianism, and championing apartheid were based on a philosophy astonishingly close to the Nazi "racial sciences". The Bell Curve cites Richard Lynn, an associate editor of the magazine 24 times. Lynn has expounded the merits of genocide under the guise of so-called "human evolutionary progress". Allusions like Lynn's to evolution in a Social Darwinian fashion are frightful if not absolute scientific rubbish. That evolution determines progress and fitness within human populations fails to consider either the enormous time span involved in substantive evolutionary processes or the relative human genomic homogeneity in regards to race. (Most geneticists agree that race accounts for only a small fraction (~6%) of our genetic diversity. Other traits are much more important in determining our total genetic makeup)

Much of the funding for the work of these pseudoscientists came from a shadowy primary source: The Pioneer Fund. Formed in 1937 during the Depression era over concerns of "dysgenic" pressures on the American population, this New York-based foundation wishes to maintain "race hygiene" by ending racial integration and stopping immigration, goals long sought by eugenicists and racists alike.

Heads: Big and Small

Much of the speculation about racial intelligence differences comes from the 19th century practice of craniometry, where samples of skulls from several races were examined for brain capacity. Many scientists believed that such crude evaluations of people's brain sizes "apparently" corresponded to a person's mental ability. In those days, female inferiority was taken for granted and the smaller skull measurements of women confirmed those "findings." Also samples of skulls from around the world confirmed Western European supremacy. The "scientists" in pursuit of these studies always failed to clarify how typical these skulls were of their respective populations. Simple selection of skulls easily biased results, without a scientist necessarily realizing his own subjectivity. (19th and even 20th century sketches often depicted supposedly inferior peoples with exaggerated ape and monkey-like characterizations. A culture based on such visualization would have great difficulty overcoming the associated prejudices as seen by Victorian England's attitude towards its Imperial subjects) The craniometrists also disregarded the body sizes of their subjects. Moreover, their measurements were subjective and specious as estimated by later scientists. It was not until ethical scientists stepped forward to discredit pseudoscientific claims did the racial and gender theories behind these studies crumble. This style of science escaped destruction though and continued well into the 20th century as IQ.

The IQ deception

The [children of the poor] are catalogued, measured and deemed wanting the moment they enter school; they are tested before they are instructed. The teacher become a judge; the class' standing in the reading and arithmetic is a yardstick of collective failure; and the fear of inadequacy pervade the classroom, suffocating teacher and pupil alike.

- Vera John and Eleanor Leacock in Transforming the Structure of Failure, 1979

The idea that IQ tests and the "g" factor (generalized intelligence) supposedly determine intelligence is likewise rather dubious. Anyone who believes that IQ has much to do with intelligence and inheritance will find no compelling data in the Bell Curve. In truth, the data that deals with heredity fails to mention any accompanying genetic processes. Such simplistic and inadequate analyses are overwhelmingly represented in the works of the sources. Measuring intelligence has long been a source of contention, yet most would agree that such a feature would prove too complex to quantize as transferable genetic material from generation to generation. Furthermore, Murray and Herrnstein consistently confuse IQ with cognitive ability, intelligence, and smartness as if they were all one and the same thing. This obfuscation seems deliberate, as a thorough reading of the text would unveil the shakiness of their IQ = intelligence based reasoning. In addition to learned reasoning abilities, IQ measures little more than a person's ability to take an IQ test, as scores increase dramatically as a person is trained or familiarized with the tests. Like SATs, many IQ questions are culturally based and extensive acculturation of the test-taker to the test-giver's background is needed (i.e., proper schooling, role models, etc...) Some questions are idiom, expression, or historically related that are entirely dependent on the test-taker's knowledge of general American culture. For example, this question: "Washington is to Adams as blank is to blank" could not be answered by a non-American, or for that matter, a person who has never heard of the Founding Fathers. The fact that such questions abound in IQ tests casts enormous doubts over the validity of the tests' attempt to assert "intelligence" as a measurable quality.

The Bell Curve's extensive statistics do present some interesting correlations, yet Murray and Herrnstein avoid some of the more obvious explanations. By summarily dismissing socio-economic factors in favor of race and heredity, the authors fail to account for cultural destabilization, demoralization, oppression, poverty, violence, fear, lack of health care, malnourishment, drug use, and literally hundreds of other reasons for differentiable IQ scores. Most nutritionists rank diet high as a factor in pre- and post-natal mental development, something not mentioned at all in the book. In 1993 alone, 12 million children went hungry in the U.S. In the last 20 years, only the U.S. and Britain fell behind the other industrialized nations in providing for their young. In developing nations, nutritionists have long noted that poor children suffer mental deficiencies along side starvation and deprivation, as proper physical and mental development are arrested and irreparably damaged by years of hunger. Closer to home in Boston, malnutrition has been detected at high levels in the city's poor. Such cruel and criminal neglect of society as a whole has no place for discussion in Murray's and Herrnstein's book, a work more interested in writing off large sections of the American population in a "rational" manner.

History teaches us...

Calculating the IQ was also never meant as a test for intelligence. At the turn of the century, Alfred Binet, a French psychiatrist, devised a method of testing for learning disabilities. Though a former craniometrist and proponent of measuring intelligence himself, Binet succeeded at devising the first widely accepted intelligence test, unlike his more rabid eugenicist colleagues. Binet figured that by doing so, he could design appropriate remediation programs to help children with difficulties. He actually argued that with proper education and aid, most students regardless of background could catch up and do quite well in school: "Some recent thinkers seem to have given their moral support to these deplorable verdicts by affirming that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing." Unfortunately, Binet did not live to see or challenge the eventual application of his original pedagogic ideas as eugenicists in the U.S. discovered a far more sinister role for his scale. By testing workers, soldiers, immigrants, or students, the American eugenicists marketed an adapted quotient-based Binet scale (IQ) so that employers, governments, or schools could separate out the "feeble-minded", and further segregate society along racial lines.

Many state governments adopted eugenics laws in accordance with these tests. Over several decades, 60,000 American citizens and Native Americans were deemed "white trash" or mentally retarded (i.e., genetically inferior) and forcefully sterilized for race hygiene purposes. The preamble "Whereas heredity plays a most important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility" recurred in all the sterilization laws. New Jersey added "feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, criminal tendencies, and other defects" while Iowa accounted for "the prevention of the procreation of criminals, rapists, idiots, feeble-minded, imbeciles, lunatics, drunkards, drug fiends, epileptics, syphilitics, moral, and sexual perverts, and diseased and degenerate persons." Beginning in 1911, the tests were administered to immigrants with predictable results. After long sea voyages filled with hunger, deprivation, and fear, immigrant groups were tested immediately upon disembarking at Ellis Island. To their bewilderment, the people were asked questions they had never seen before, in a language they did not speak, and under conditions that were traumatizing. Predictably, most scored very poorly. A modern day legacy of these tests is the "Polish joke", as Poles scored the lowest of all groups in these trials. Over 80% of Jews, Hungarians, Italians, and Russians were also found to be feeble-minded. Later, the results of these "studies" generated so much concern that the U.S. government passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924. One of the most appalling effects of this act is detailed by Stephen Jay Gould in the Mismeasure of Man:

The quotas stood, and slowed immigration from southern and eastern Europe to a trickle. Throughout the 1930s, Jewish refugees, anticipating the Holocaust, sought to emigrate, but were not admitted. The legal quotas, and continuing eugenical propaganda, barred them even in years when inflated quotas for western and northern European nations were not filled... We know what happened to many who wished to leave but had nowhere to go.

The full consequences of that act will forever remain unknown.

End remarks

Without offering any data on all that occurs between conception and the age of kindergarten, they announce on the basis of a few thousand questionnaires that they are measuring the hereditary mental endowment of human beings. Obviously this is not a conclusion based on research. It is a conclusion planted by the will to believe... If the impression takes root that these tests really measure intelligence, that they constitute a sort of last judgment on the child's capacity, that they reveal "scientifically" his predestined ability, then it would be a thousand times better if all the intelligence testers and all their questionnaires were sunk without warning in the Sargasso Sea.

- Walter Lippmann

The disinformation masquerading as "sound science" in the Bell Curve should be particularly challenged by scientists. It is dismaying to see the subject return as a legitimate topic of discussion to academic circles. Long put to rest by both the aversion to past atrocities and scientific progress, the Bell Curve heralds a possible return of biological determinism in our era of mean-spiritedness and hard choices. As the authors claim the scientific mantle to expound outright racism and prejudice, those with a deeper understanding of statistics, evolution, genetics, and sociology must respond. Analyzing the data point by point as many have tried would do little good if we do not understanding the underlying scientific fallacies of the book's arguments. Such a detailed examination based on false assumptions would emesh the reviewer in a quagmire of statistics, charts, and equivocal statements, a trap that could muddle and confuse a simple issue. As scientists and critical thinkers, it's up to us to firmly debunk such studies. The task is somewhat similar to exposing paranormal hoaxes, yet in this case, the fate of millions of people hang in the balance. To see so-called "science" become a tool of oppression and discrimination would be shameful and tragic.

"Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" or "Ghosts of Eugenicists past"

Here's a sampling of quotes (with a mean score of nasty and within two standard deviations of evil) from the ideological forerunners of Herrnstein and Murray. These are typical of the thinking of a great number of psychologists and IQ researchers during the high-water mark of eugenics theory early this century. (drawn from Gould, 1981 & Kamin, 1974)

[low IQ] is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks which they come... Children of this group [low IQ] should be segregated in special classes... They cannot master abstractions, but they can often make efficient workers... There is no possibility at the present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding.
-Professor Lewis M. Terman of Stanford University, introduced and popularized the Stanford-Binet Scale, the precursor of all subsequent IQ tests.

The Nordics are... rulers, organizers, and aristocrats... The Alpine race is always and everywhere a race of peasants... The Alpine is the perfect slave, the ideal serf... the unstable temperament and the lack of coordination and reasoning power so often found among the Irish... our army sample of immigrants from Russia is at least one half Jewish... Our figures, then, would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that the Jew is intelligent...
We must face a possibility of racial admixture here that is infinitely worse than that faced by any European country today, for we are incorporating the negro into our racial stock ... The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro.
-Assistant Professor Carl Brigham of Princeton University in A Study of American Intelligence. Dr. Brigham also served as secretary of the College Entrance Examination Board and the American Psychological Association. He designed the first Scholastic Aptitude Test.

The thesis is carefully worked up to by a logical and careful analysis of the results of the army tests... we shall certainly be in hearty agreement with him when he demands a more selective policy for future immigration and a more vigorous method of dealing with the defective strains already in this country.
-1923 Journal of Educational Psychology's review of Brigham's landmark book.

[It would be wise] to further restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe... A large proportion of this immigration consists of the Hebrew elements... some of their labor unions are among the most radical in the whole country.
-Francis Kinnicut of the Immigration Restriction League, testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Immigration, 1923.

We have been overrun with a horde of the unfit... We shall degenerate to the level of the Slav and Latin races... pauperism, crime, sex offenses, and dependency...we must protect ourselves against the degenerate horde... We must apply ourselves to the task with the new weapons of science... it is now as easy to calculate one's mental equipment as it is to measure his height and weight... this new method... will enable us to select those who are worthy and reject those who are worthless.
-Dr. Arthur Sweeney, appendix to the hearings of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 1923.

[source]

[Marcus Marulus]

See especially remarks about Alpinoids:

The Nordics are... rulers, organizers, and aristocrats... The Alpine race is always and everywhere a race of peasants... The Alpine is the perfect slave, the ideal serf... the unstable temperament and the lack of coordination and reasoning power so often found among the Irish... our army sample of immigrants from Russia is at least one half Jewish... Our figures, then, would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that the Jew is intelligent...
We must face a possibility of racial admixture here that is infinitely worse than that faced by any European country today, for we are incorporating the negro into our racial stock ... The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro.
-Assistant Professor Carl Brigham of Princeton University in A Study of American Intelligence. Dr. Brigham also served as secretary of the College Entrance Examination Board and the American Psychological Association. He designed the first Scholastic Aptitude Test.

[Tuco]

The Nordics are... rulers, organizers, and aristocrats... The Alpine race is always and everywhere a race of peasants... The Alpine is the perfect slave, the ideal serf... the unstable temperament and the lack of coordination and reasoning power so often found among the Irish... our army sample of immigrants from Russia is at least one half Jewish... Our figures, then, would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that the Jew is intelligent...
We must face a possibility of racial admixture here that is infinitely worse than that faced by any European country today, for we are incorporating the negro into our racial stock ... The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro.
-Assistant Professor Carl Brigham of Princeton University in A Study of American Intelligence. Dr. Brigham also served as secretary of the College Entrance Examination Board and the American Psychological Association. He designed the first Scholastic Aptitude Test.

EDIT: ROFL Marulus, I guess this is the undisputed pearl of this article, we both quoted it at the same time lol

[hermeticist]

Some things I agree with, some things I don't. I have both of Charles Murray's books on my shelf: The Bell Curve, and Human Accomplishment. The latter is out to show that most everything substantial in science, engineering, and the arts has been done by people of European descent. The moment anyone starts to probe the claims carefully -- as I did for the areas of math and physics (my areas of strength) -- he uncovers grave errors in the way Murray has selected, compiled, and presented his results. Clearly, the man wants to put across a pre-determined thesis and is fitting his facts and arguments to do so. And equally clearly, the man is no scholar -- i.e., someone with deep erudition and intellectual scruple.

So we can dismiss Murray as an intellectual lightweight with a clear partisan bias. At the same time, I cannot deny the evidence of my senses: there are differences. African-Americans are not the same as Americans of European descent. There are differences at the group level -- for the purposes of convenience I will call them "racial differences." These cannot be ascribed, in my ever-so-humble opinion, to cultural and economic differences. The difference lies at the race genetic level -- no matter how poorly such differences may be understood, or how inept the champions of race genetic arguments may be. We can dismiss Murray. We cannot so easily dismiss the work of Lynn, Rushton, and Jensen. Or at least I cannot. Their work resonates with me, is in accord with what my experience tells me. That they may have an ideological axe to grind is another matter.

Just about every country in Sub-Saharan Africa is a failed or failing state. The moslem world, with over a billion people, hasn't produced one ranking university. India, with over 1bn people, doesn't have one university to compare to a Cambridge or MIT (the closest they have is the TIFR).

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by hermeticist

I wasn't aware of this thread. Lynn and others are pursuing an ideologically driven project

Murray is member of the American Enterprise Institute (not much comment is needed about them), whilst Lynn sits in the board of the obscure Pioneer Fund. That alone already says something.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by hermeticist

Just about every country in Sub-Saharan Africa is a failed or failing state. The moslem world, with over a billion people, hasn't produced one ranking university. India, with over 1bn people, doesn't have one university to compare to a Cambridge or MIT (the closest they have is the TIFR).

Once Europe was covered with woods and inhabited by "primitive" tribes, of approximately the same "racial" make-out as today's Europe...

[hermeticist]

Originally Posted by Marcus Marulus

Once Europe was covered with woods and inhabited by "primitive" tribes, of approximately the same "racial" make-out as today's Europe...

But arguably with the potential to be what they are today. I think an argument can be made that people in Africa, the Middle East, and India do not have such potential. Otherwise, with such ready access to Western and East Asian science and tech, why not be able to catch up? But this is a very personal opinion, though it does reflect several years spent in traveling and living in such parts of the world.

Caveat: I am of course not making the simple-minded racist claim that Europe and North America somehow represent the acme, the summit, of civilisational effort or human accomplishment. That would be risible indeed.

[Yago]

I don't see a problem with recognising differences in IQ. Both at the individual and at the group average levels. The problem comes when the group average is overstated and abused by a sector of the group in ways that deny the fact that the differences of individual IQs within a same group are in fact larger than among group averages.

Group averages must be acknowledged among other things to set quotas. A common problem with immigration is that IQ quotas are being globally decreased to accomodate outsiders to the group.

A clear example of how wrong this can be is in the army. Imagine what are the consequences of having an army with a majority of individuals who are borderline or below the borders.

Another example is in education. I don't think that at this stage anyone will be surprised if I mention that standards of education are being lowered, to accommodate the children of those outsiders to the group. Or that minimum quotas of outsiders are imposed to universities, forcing a racist bias in favour of the exogenous citizen and against the indigenous national.

And this is something that has its reflection and consequences in all social aspects.

However, it is just as wrong to ignore the differences among individuals, in a same group.

The possibilities of development of individuals whose IQs are higher than the average must not be hindered by artificial ideas of equality.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by hermeticist

But arguably with the potential to be what they are today.

Too conjectural. Why did they need then so many centuries, nay, millennia to use this "potential"? An utterly lazy "race"? Which in itself speaks against potential (you know that stereotypical story about a talented but a lazy child, which almost inevitably ends up in the potential evaporating with time, being not used). All of the technical inventions (the dominant narrative of our times tends to see the modern technocratic world as the peak of humanity, an extremely controversial view, but let's for a second try to assess things from the viewpoint of those who see it as a supreme proof of "superiority") are only 200 years old.

I'd rather say it is all result of the persistent pursuing of certain ideology, which seeks constantly improvements in all areas of life.

Originally Posted by hermeticist

I think an argument can be made that people in Africa, the Middle East, and India do not have such potential. Otherwise, with such ready access to Western and East Asian science and tech, why not be able to catch up? But this is a very personal opinion, though it does reflect several years spent in traveling and living in such parts of the world.

One does not know what the future brings. People from that area of the world have been exposed to these influences for too short a time to bring such sweeping conclusions.

Originally Posted by hermeticist

Caveat: I am of course not making the simple-minded racist claim that Europe and North America somehow represent the acme, the summit, of civilisational effort or human accomplishment. That would be risible indeed.

Of course you are not. But many of the Lynn and co. take it for a premise that a modern clerk of some multinational company, in grey suit and with extremely narrow minded view of the world, with some technocratically defined knowledge which enables him to function within his narrow area (but without any larger understanding of the world), that it is somehow the peak of humanity. You will rarely see that the cathedral of Chartres or some poet is invoked as sign of "superiority" or as any argument. And that is quite problematic.