An essay on race and intelligence

The James Watson controversy has gotten me thinking about the black-white intelligence difference. As you know, it is well documented that, in the United States, the average black person scores about one standard deviation below the average white person on all variety of mental tests, including self-named IQ tests, the SAT, the reading and math competency tests given to school children, and pre-employment tests. For those who don’t understand the term “standard deviation,” here’s a simple example: if there is a one standard deviation difference between whites and blacks, that means that only 16% of blacks will score equal to or higher than the score of the average white person, and only 16% of whites will score equal to or below the score of the average black person.

The politically correct chorus screams very loudly that the observed intelligence difference is due to environment, the environment being discrimination, poor schools, poor nutrition, and anything else they can think of to give weight to their argument. It’s obvious that the average black lives in a disadvantaged environment compared to the average white, but it’s not obvious that this proves anything. If the following three propositions are true:

(1) we live in a society where how much money one is able to earn is correlated with one’s intelligence;
(2) one’s intelligence is correlated with one’s parents‘ intelligence on account of genetic heredity;
(3) various genes that correlate with high intelligence occur less frequently in the black gene pool than in the white gene pool

then the expected result would be that the average black would live in a disadvantaged environment compared to the average white.

Proposition one above is obvious and doesn’t need much explanation. Everyone knows that college graduates earn more than high school dropouts. People who aren’t smart enough to do well on the SATs won’t get into college, and people who aren’t smart enough to read at grade level are more likely to drop out of high school in frustration. For readers looking for a more detailed examination of how low intelligence leads to poorer life outcomes, I recommend The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray. It’s an excellent book that has been unfairly maligned, mostly by people who want to shoot the messenger. That said, it’s more of a sociology book rather than a scientific treatise on genes and intelligence, and Murray is often overeager to jump to conclusions, but nevertheless it’s an interesting and thought provoking book. (People who have been reading my blog for a while know that I’ve written many posts about how high intelligence isn’t as great a benefit as some think, but the point of those posts is not that intelligence doesn’t matter, but rather that low intelligence is a better predictor of poverty and other bad outcomes than high intelligence is a predictor of wealth and other good outcomes.)

Proposition two, that intelligence has a genetic component, has now become generally accepted, even though back in the 1970s the politically correct establishment was adamantly opposed to the idea. There has just been too much evidence to the contrary. Studies of identical twins reared apart, as well as various other kinship studies, demonstrate that intelligence as measured by IQ tests is 70% to 80% hereditary. To back up kinship studies, scientists are now discovering actual genes correlated with intelligence; on the other side of the country, different scientists discovered another gene correlated with intelligence.

So what about proposition three, that the genes that correlate with high intelligence occur less frequently in the black gene pool? One might start with the basic Occam’s Razor principle, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Given that blacks score lower than whites on intelligence tests, and given that intelligence is a genetically determined hereditary trait, the simplest explanation is that the black-white intelligence difference is genetic. As pointed out at the beginning of this essay, the fact that the average black grows up in a disadvantaged environment relative to the average white doesn’t prove or disprove anything.

If I wanted to set up an experiment to best study the issue, this is what I would do: I would compare the intelligence of black children adopted by upper-middle-class white families to the intelligence of white children adopted by upper-middle-class white families. This ensures that all children being studied are brought up in the most favorable family environment, and therefore any difference that emerges between the groups is a result of genetics and not environment.

It turns out that the exact situation above has already been studied! I am referring to the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study, and there is an excellent page at Wikipedia summarizing the results of the study. It’s rather ironic that the researchers who conducted this study were left-wing types who were hoping to prove that it’s environment, not genes, that causes the black-white intelligence difference.

In interpreting the results, I must note that it’s not clear what IQ test was being used, but I presume that the scoring scale follows the convention in the IQ field that the average score is 100, and the standard deviation is 15, and when such an IQ test is given to both whites and blacks, it’s expected that the average white person will score 100 and the average black person will score 85.

When IQ tests were given to adopted 7-year-olds, the average scores were:

White: 112
Half white, half black: 109
Black: 97

As predicted by the genetic explanation, black children scored 15 points lower than white children. And children of mixed race background scored between the two extremes. Yet strangely, Scarr and Weinberg, the authors of the study, argued that this somehow proves that it’s environment causing the black-white IQ difference. They said, “look, half-white half-black children, who are ‘socially black,’ score higher than the average white child when they have upper-middle-class parents!”

If we assume that this same test would show an average score of 100 for white kids raised by regular blue collar white parents, then the study is indeed showing an effect where being raised by upper-middle-class white parents has a strongly positive impact on IQ tests given to 7-year-olds. But the effect isn’t one where racial IQ differences are eliminated. Rather, the effect is that less-intelligent children get an average score on the test, and average children get an above-average score on the test. There is similar evidence from many other studies that early childhood test scores are more easily raised by coaching than tests given to teenagers and adults. This is what studies of the Head Start program have showed:

Children enrolled in Head Start enjoy significant, immediate gains in cognitive test scores, socioemotional test scores, and health status. In the long run, cognitive and socio-emotional test scores of former Head Start students do not remain superior to those of disadvantaged children who did not attend Head Start. [source]

I believe the reason for this is that IQ tests given to young children are obviously unable to test the full range of adult level thinking skills. They can only test a narrow subset of skills, and the enrichment activities given to young children are very similar to the types of questions on early-childhood IQ tests, so children are being trained or coached to do well on such tests. A dog who has learned to sit on command isn’t any smarter than the untrained dog, the trained dog has simply been taught a trick.

If you refer to the Wikipedia article for the results of the followup study when the children were 17, we see that the early effects of being raised in an upper-middle-class family have mostly worn off. At the age of 17, the black adopted children have a measured IQ of 89, while the white adopted children have a measured IQ of 106. High school class ranks show a similar effect. White adopted children had an average rank of 54th percentile, only slightly above average, while black adopted children had an average rank of 36th percentile. There still seems to be a small beneficial effect to being raised by upper-middle-class parents (and only crazy IQ-absolutists would think that there’s no benefit to having upper-middle-class parents), but that effect is independent of the black-white intelligence difference.

I view the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study as conclusive enough proof, given all the other evidence out there, that proposition three above is the correct one, that various genes that correlate with high intelligence occur less frequently in the black gene pool than in the white gene pool.

It’s possible to write a whole book on this topic, but that would be a waste of my time because the book has already been written: it’s The g Factor by Arthur Jensen, and should be the starting point for anyone who wants to know more. And since the publication of The g Factor, there have been many new discoveries in genetics, as mentioned above, that add further evidence that Arthur Jensen was correct in all of his conclusions.

At the conclusion of this essay, it’s appropriate to ask if this essay will convince anyone of anything? The answer is that it’s possible that someone sitting on the fence would be swayed over to the correct side, but for the most part, human beings are amazingly adept at ignoring logic and reason when it suits them. Among educated white people, the idea of racial equality has become a religion, and the whole point of religion is that it involves faith rather than science. Just as there’s zero chance of using logic and reason to get a fundamentalist Christian to believe in evolution, there’s zero chance of using logic and reason to get a hardcore liberal to see the truth about racial intelligence differences. People who are capable of using logic and reason to solve a complicated math problem, for some reason, shut down when an application of similar reasoning would cause one of their core beliefs to be proved wrong. In general, people are much more comfortable in adopting the belief of the majority rather than making up their own minds. And it doesn’t seem to matter how nonsensical the majority beliefs are.

But my prediction is that beliefs will soon change. With the progress we are making in genetic research, within a decade or two, we will probably be able to identify a large number of genes that determine intelligence, and scientists will be able to develop a genetic test that is able to predict someone’s intelligence. This will prove once and for all that there are racial differences in intelligence. (And here’s a question for those who will inevitably leave angry comments on this post: what will it take to convince you that the black-white intelligence difference is genetic? Will a genetic IQ test do it?)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Heres a link to a 60-page paper by two leading researchers documenting why race differences in intelligence are genetic: Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability, by Rushton and Jensen. Obviously there's nothing I can say in my amateur blog post that can equal the quality of discourse in their paper, so I recommend reading it. It's free. It answers nearly all of the objections raised in the comments. And did I mention it's free?

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

I have written a blog post responding to common criticisms of this essay and others like it.

Comments

[Peter]

According to the Freakonomics blog, there's now an intelligence test that can be given to one-year-olds, and it shows no racial gap. If indeed this test really measures intelligence, tough to tell given the very young ages of its subjects, it's strong evidence for nuture over nature.

[Gannon]

Like HS already said, intelligence must be measured at adulthood, because girls and I also suspect blacks earlier mature than say white boys, but reach their potential earlier.

[Scott]

"it's strong evidence for nuture over nature"

Does not follow.

That's like saying that we know the unequal distribution of facial hair on men and women is largely a matter of nurture because baby boys and baby girls do not shave at age one.

[JewishAtheist]

This essay is a decent introduction to the subject, but it addresses only half of the great debate -- whether IQ is genetic or not. The other half, which is still under serious discussion, is what exactly IQ means. (I don't think I'll disagree with you on it, but it's too huge a part of the debate to leave out of the discussion.)

[Brandon Berg]

Peter:
According to the paper, linked to on the Freakonomics page, the correlation between an infant's score on this test at the age of 12 months and IQ at 5 years is only .3, compared with a correlation of .7 between IQs at age 4 and at age 17, so it's not at all clear that what this is measuring is potential for adult intelligence (of course, it doesn't prove otherwise, either, since this can easily be explained by differential environments).

There's a plausible model that explains this is purely genetic terms: Genes for intelligence aren't expressed phenotypically until some time after birth. Young boys and girls have similar amounts of muscle mass, but this doesn't prove that the fact that men have more muscle mass than women is the result of nurture and not nature.

Also, I'm not sure that the question of the relative contributions of genes and environment to adult IQ is even all that important. That IQ is at least broadly heritable, if not narrowly heritable, is a settled question. And as far as I know, there's no known intervention short of adoption that can produce substantial increases in IQ that persist into adulthood.

So suppose we determine beyond all doubt that the racial IQ gap is entirely environmental. What can we do about it? Take babies from mothers in the bottom decile of IQ and give them to better parents? Ethics aside, it's utterly impractical. For all practical purposes, it might as well be genetic.

[Dragon Horse]

We should also be reminded that not all whites have the same IQ and not all nations of whites do either

Therefore the conclusion of any "genetic IQ test" will reveal to 50% of white America they are below average IQ and are genetically inferior cognitively to the average East Asian. The average WASP is inferior genetically on a cognitive level to a Ashkenazi Jew. Somehow I think that won't go over to well.

Speaking of white IQ variation by country, Lynn found:

"He concludes that in Europe, adults in Germany and the Netherlands have the

highest average IQ at 107, compared with 100 across Britain. The UK is also beaten by Poland (106), Sweden (104), Italy (102), Austria (101) and Switzerland (101).

But Britons are brighter than people in Belgium (99), Spain (98), Hungary (98), Russia (96), Greece (95), France (94), Romania (94), Turkey (90) and Serbia, which finishes bottom with 89. "

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=381057&in_page_id=1770&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=Talking%20point&ct=5

Now it says Romanians and French have an IQ of 94 and Serbians 90, right?

Now according to the Brookings Insitutte black American IQ increased from 85 to 89-92 since 1972. (Flynn, 2006) Now blacks did not "evolve" that quick and there has not been enough interracial marriage so it is obviously environmental.

If black IQ is up to 92, assuming similar standard deviation, blacks could be equal in intelligence to some European populations like France or Romanian, both EU countries?

That would be high enough to have a industrialized Western society.

And blacks could be more intelligent than people in Serbia who are very white.

[Spungen]

The other half, which is still under serious discussion, is what exactly IQ means.

As usual, I second Jewish Atheist.

I haven't had time to read all the links yet. But it seems to me from what I have read that IQ is very important in regard to who causes societal ills such as crime. It's a lot less important (above a certain minimal threshhold) in determining who gets the goodies important to middle-class people.

Re the No Child Left Behind post where "Rob", David A., and others were discussing the child welfare system: It occurs to me that depending on how important IQ is to crime and child abuse, it might not be as risky as we were thinking to have the parents of the abusers raising their grandchildren. Maybe the troubled parents aren't that way because they were raised poorly, but because they drew the short end of the intelligence stick in the family. (There is screening done before a child is placed with a relative, and any child abuse history will prevent or delay placement.)

[Dragon Horse]

I will include the link to Flynn's results as reported by the Brooking Institute.

http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/dickens/20060619_IQ.pdf

I fully expect a brilliant display of mental gymnastics to explain things to follow. LOL

A more recent study at Ohio State showed IQ did not closely correlate with income...although anyone knows that there is a floor, below which, one can not earn a good living. It is obvious some of the wealthiest people might make a mint in sales whereas there intellectual superiors could become professors. I'm pretty sure most people do not think Donald Trump has a higher IQ than the top astrophysicist at NASA.

"In the study, published in the journal Intelligence, Dr Zagorsky examined detailed data from 7,403 Americans who had been interviewed repeatedly since 1979. IQ scores were compared with income and overall wealth, and participants were asked whether they had ever reached their limit on a credit card, been declared bankrupt or missed paying bills for financial reasons.

It found that IQ was strongly linked to income, with each extra point of IQ worth between $202 (£101) and $616 (£308) a year. The average annual income difference between a person with a normal IQ, of 100, and a person in the top 2 per cent, with an IQ of 130, was between $6,000 (£3,000) and $18,500 (£9,250).

Overall wealth, however, was not correlated strongly with IQ, and there were mixed results regarding financial problems. While people with low IQs were the most likely to have reached their limit on credit cards, those with very high IQs were more likely to have had financial difficulties than those with slightly above-average intelligence. "

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1701377.ece

[Mark]

"A more recent study at Ohio State showed IQ did not closely correlate with income."

Actually, the Ohio State study confirmed the finding that IQ and income are positively related, as the article you quote reports. Along with that, the Ohio State study found that IQ did not closely correlate with wealth (i.e. net worth).

[Ximun]

Dragon Horse,

I haven't read the article you linked to but it's easy to imagine why overall wealth wouldn't correlate as strongly as income: inheriting and regression to the mean.

As for Serbia, I come from a country with the same average IQ score. We certainly have an industrialized society here, so I can confirm it is doable with an average IQ of one standard deviation below, say, Germans.

[Cameron]

On the Freakonomics blog:
Brain development continues beyond the first year of life. So the genes that account for IQ differences may be appearing later than one. This fact makes Levitt's argument a pretty weak considering how much of the brain is still under development after the first year of life.

[Ximun]

Levitt displayed dishonest thinking in his blog post. First he called the correlation between intelligence at 12 months and later in life high, then he claimed that there are no differences in IQ at 12 months but significant differences later. Obviously, both can't hold. If you actually read his paper, correlation seems to be .3, certainly not high.

[Mark]

"The other half, which is still under serious discussion, is what exactly IQ means.

IQ means a greater or lesser likelihood of certain outcomes on a variety of other metrics (such as adult literacy, enrollment in tertiary education, life expectancy, adult earnings, and so on and so forth).

Asking for a definition of 'IQ' is about as useful as asking for a definition of 'temperature', an other concept that is often defined in terms of its measurement.

The rest is semantics, and often used as a debate tactic to hamstring discussion.

If you want a working definition, try this:

"'IQ' is the ability to do well on IQ tests, which suggests a general problem solving ability."

[Ximun]

And a general comment for Half Sigma. Though I agree with you much, I don't consider that one study conclusive. It's a small sample, for one. Small samples are the bane of these "natural experiments". If you recall, there is also a study about children fathered by black US soldiers in Germany, who seem to have tested identical to their white comrades. That "natural experiment" is also plagued with a small sample and questionable data, if I recall correctly.

I think that eventually the public is going to accept the current consensus of experts, that intelligence is at least 2/3ds nature. But let's not hang the entire argument on one small study.

[SFG]

Just one nitpick: you can only make the 16% claim if the distributions are Gaussian (the 'bell curve'). IQ does show a Gaussian distribution, but you can't look at, say, income and say things like that.

[JewishAtheist]

IQ means a greater or lesser likelihood of certain outcomes on a variety of other metrics (such as adult literacy, enrollment in tertiary education, life expectancy, adult earnings, and so on and so forth).

It doesn't "mean" those things. There may be a correlation, but even that wouldn't show causation. For example, you might need a high IQ to get into tertiary education by fiat of the admissions committee, which may in turn influence the other things.

Asking for a definition of 'IQ' is about as useful as asking for a definition of 'temperature', an other concept that is often defined in terms of its measurement.

Except that temperature actually has a meaning.

"'IQ' is the ability to do well on IQ tests, which suggests a general problem solving ability."

It's that "suggestion" which I am suggesting we talk about.

[Mark]

M:IQ means a greater or lesser likelihood of certain outcomes on a variety of other metrics (such as adult literacy, enrollment in tertiary education, life expectancy, adult earnings, and so on and so forth).

JA: It doesn't "mean" those things.

I guess I don't understand the question.

Define "meaning". :-)

[Tech Lead]

I'm pretty disappointed in this post.

One big thing that bothers me this is that it seems to be saying "I've always felt like blacks were dumber than whites, and here's 1 lame study that supports this view". It doesn't have the scrutiny for instance that the author would give to a study showing that his race was inferior in IQ.

Another issue is: why post this at all? Is it scientifically interesting? Mildly, although one could find many scientific flaws with it and the underlying study.

If I were to believe the "facts" in this post, what should I do? Should I advocate discrimination against blacks because they are less smart? Should I not hire them to my company because odds are I could find a smarter white person? Should I try and drive them from society?

Ok, now I'll break out the big guns. Isn't this the same sort of thing Hitler did? Don't you think he showed evidence that Jews were less smart, bad for society,etc. Didn't he advocate his genetic heritage as superior? I bet he had some scientific studies to show it too.

Stop trying to prove that one group of people are genetically inferior to your group. Just stop. It makes you sound like a Nazi. Its bad for society. Its bad for all involved. And I'd bet its scientifically flawed as well. Frankly I don't care if its true or not, our society is not ready to handle it, and doesn't know how to respond. Frankly we, as a human race, do not have the IQ to know what do do with this information.

[Spungen]

You will probably say I am naive, Tech Lead, but I think good things could be done with the information. For instance, children from disadvantaged groups who do have high IQs could be targeted for aid. Schools could more easily target students of particular abilities for particular education or training.

I'd rather see young people deliberately segregated on the basis of IQ than on the basis of income and/or race.

A lot of people who say they don't believe IQ is the deciding factor in achievement and outcomes instead harbor the view that effort, morals, and diligence are the deciding factors. This still results in prejudicial views toward lower-achieving groups. I think it's even more harmful than believing in innate differences, because it allows people to paint the lower achievers as immoral, rather than genetically disadvantaged through no fault of their own.

[Dragon Horse]

I wonder why nobody ponders the fact that France is close to a standard deviation below Hong Kong and Taiwan in intelligence but is a country know for great philosophers and is considered "1st world" but have the lowest IQs in Western Europe, lower than even Spain. LOL

That should be enough to keep Half Sigma up at night.

Then again proving French people "dull" does not boost anyone's self esteem or make them feel superior based around race...is this just an issue of cheer leading to make one feel good about their "home team"?

[Tech Lead]

Here's a page that debunks the statement: "Some ethnic groups have genetically inferior IQ's."

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

Basically it shows that "There are countless examples around the world where the dominant ethnic group scores higher on IQ tests than the discriminated minority"

I am a scientifically minded person, I love science. But I don't think studies that try to asses the IQ of people based on race or genetics are good. I think they will be misused, misunderstood,etc. I think most of them are in fact scientifically flawed.

[Spungen]

Basically it shows that "There are countless examples around the world where the dominant ethnic group scores higher on IQ tests than the discriminated minority"

But how does the fact that they're persecuted prove that they're not genetically less intelligent?

I agree it's cause for suspicion, but I don't think it disproves the contention.

[Half Sigma]

In Malaysia, the Chinese minority outperforms the Malaysian majority, and there is affirmative action there to help the majority Malaysians, because employers hire too many minority Chinese.

And then, in every country where Ashkenazi Jews live, they outperform everyone else. And this is also true in Israel where Ashkenazi European Jews do better than the Sephardic Middle-Eastern Jews, even though the Ashkenazim are a slight minority compared to the Sephardim.

[Spungen]

But it either case, HS, is the minority a persecuted minority? Or is it an economically advantaged minority?

[Spungen]

Do the Sephardim also come from Spain?

[Tech Lead]

"And then, in every country where Ashkenazi Jews live, they outperform everyone else. "

Ha, ha I'm smarter than you are, nah nah na nah nah.

[Spungen]

Tech Lead, please refrain from ad hominem arguments. If you think it's immoral or silly to even discuss this issue, there are plenty of people, and bloggers, who agree with you that you can go visit. You're not a "discriminated minority."

[Mark]

"But it either case, HS, is the minority a persecuted minority?"

The Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia are intermittent objects of pogroms, which counts as a disadvantage in my book.

[Mark]

"Do the Sephardim also come from Spain?"

Iberian Jews, yes -- often ending up in a present location by way of North Africa.

[Zarathustra]

>>And then, in every country where Ashkenazi Jews live, they outperform everyone else.

>Ha, ha I'm smarter than you are, nah nah na nah nah.

Wow, what a surprise. I didn't see that one coming, haha.

[David Alexander]

For instance, children from disadvantaged groups who do have high IQs could be targeted for aid. Schools could more easily target students of particular abilities for particular education or training.

I'd rather see young people deliberately segregated on the basis of IQ than on the basis of income and/or race.

That still doesn't diminish the emotional effects of knowing that you're a freak in a race filled with idiots and retards who are unable to compete or even exist in the civilized world.

Filtering by IQ has the same effects that filtering by race and income has. You'll end up with a class filled with poor black students who perform poorly, except that maybe a few of the black students get filtered off into the mainstream classes for white students. Yes, there are white people with low IQs, but they'll move out to some rural area to assure that their children do not attend classes with blacks.

As far as I'm concerned, even if we all agreed that IQ is genetic, the fact that the lower IQs are pooled in one easily discernible segment of the population means that it's just as easy to point out the low IQ and discriminate against them. We've swapped the reason to hate blacks from "they're lazy and criminally inclined" into "they're genetically inferior to whites and Asians". For me, it really doesn't change anything, except move from us from "savable" to "hopeless".

[Mark Seecof]

The least of the problems with the concept of IQ is "what it means." IQ is a measurement of general problem-solving ability.[1]

You ask, "how does IQ measure that?"

Here's how: you give a lot of people a battery of mental tests which attempt to measure problem-solving ability (solving visual puzzles, matching words like synonyms and antonyms, solving analogies, solving arithmetic problems, on- and- on). You analyze their scores. You discover[2] that people who do well on any of these tests tend to do well on most or all of them (it is actually difficult to come up with any mental test that seems to require problem-solving which is not highly correlated with other such tests).

You figure out, for each type of test, how well it predicts overall performance. You choose some tests which seem to predict overall performance well, and you validate this by giving tests to more people-- if you can predict their performance on the whole battery just from their performance on a few tests, then you have correctly identified some key tests.

(Of course you adjust and "standardize" your key tests on a large sample of people, including people of different races, sexes, etc. to make sure that you're measuring everyone fairly.)

You use a mathematical method called "factor analysis" to extract the "principal component" of performance on your tests. Perhaps you call that 'g'. That component will represent the most general factor in the brain that your tests measure. You will test even more people to confirm that your principal component does, by itself, largely predict performance on the whole test battery.

You express that factor as a numerical "IQ" score. Knowing the IQ score for anyone allows you to predict his or her performance on a great variety of tests of mental problem-solving.

And, it turns out, problem-solving ability, summarized as IQ, predicts job performance and health and various life outcomes reliably and repeatedly for most people.

So anyway, if you bother to read up on it, you will find that there are in fact no serious questions or doubts that IQ measures what most people call "intelligence." You may safely ignore obfuscation and propaganda to the contrary from folks who simply do not wish the general public to understand that there is such a thing as intelligence and it is not distributed equally to everyone (any more than height, shoe size, sprinting-ability, or musical talent, to name a few).

[1] This is a big subject and I'm trying to summarize it in a few lines, so please don't take me to task for leaving out nuances or using certain technical terms rather loosely.

[2] The fact that performance on nearly all mental tests is highly correlated was one of the most surprising and intriguing discoveries of early psychological research. People have been investigating this for about a century now and this phenomenon has been demonstrated beyond any doubt by very many experiments. So-called "multiple intelligence" theories are not scientific since they lack support from experimental evidence.

[Jason Malloy]

He concludes that in Europe, adults in Germany and the Netherlands have the highest average IQ at 107, compared with 100 across Britain. The UK is also beaten by Poland (106), Sweden (104), Italy (102), Austria (101) and Switzerland (101).

But Britons are brighter than people in Belgium (99), Spain (98), Hungary (98), Russia (96), Greece (95), France (94), Romania (94), Turkey (90) and Serbia, which finishes bottom with 89. "

A lot of these values are from a single, outdated study and do not reflect the current estimates, which are averaged from multiple studies in each country and corrected for the Flynn Effect:

Germany 99
Netherlands 100
Poland 99
France 98

You are correct that scores are progressively lower into Southeastern Europe, which is a transition zone to the scores you see in the Middle East. So some European countries do come closer to African-Americans, but it's not clear that Af-Ams would perform the same if raised in that environment. Blacks in lesser environments, like Latin America, tend to do much worse.

The MTRAS is by no means the only transracial adoption study by the way, only the most popular one. I start researching this issue a couple years ago and have collected a lot more data on black (and Asian) adoptees. The findings are pretty consistent. I hope to share it soon if I can.

"There are countless examples around the world where the dominant ethnic group scores higher on IQ tests than the discriminated minority"

That link is by no means trustworthy. Some of those references, such as the supposed 1 SD difference between Irish Catholics or Protestants, are just completely made up. No such study exists, and no researcher has ever been able to find it. Similarly I only hit a dead end trying to find the one that supposedly looks at Burakumin IQ in America. It is likely apocryphal as well.

And of, of course, there are just as many, if not more examples of persecuted minority groups outcompeting and outscoring the majority all over the world: Chinese all over Asia and in the Caribbean, Jews all over Europe, Indians in Asia, Africa and the South Pacific, Armenians in Turkey, Middle Easterners and Asians in Africa, and on and on.

[Zarathustra]

"Don't you think [that big bad leftist bogeyman Hitler] showed evidence that Jews were less smart, bad for society,etc."

This may very well be the most idiotic thing I've ever heard in my entire life; it's a pity that the fabled Ashkenazi intelligence apparently passed you by. Hitler may have said many things about the Jews but one thing he never said was that the Jews were stupider than Germans. If your demonization/dehumanization strategy heavily relies upon portraying your intended victim as a horde of scheming, conniving manipulators the last characteristic you would want to attribute to them is stupidity - it directly conflicts with the rest of the narrative.

[tommy]

One big thing that bothers me this is that it seems to be saying "I've always felt like blacks were dumber than whites, and here's 1 lame study that supports this view". It doesn't have the scrutiny for instance that the author would give to a study showing that his race was inferior in IQ.

Really, it might help to get acquainted with the literature. If you honestly think there has been only a single study on this matter then I suggest Hernstein and Murray's "The Bell Curve," Jensen's "The g Factor," and Lynn and Vanhanen's "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" for starters.

Another issue is: why post this at all? Is it scientifically interesting? Mildly, although one could find many scientific flaws with it and the underlying study.

Again, it might help to get acquainted with the literature. Many of the so-called "flaws" skeptics claim they can point out turn out to have been addressed previously. Fortunately for defenders of the PC status quo, ignorance about the subject ensures we get plenty of uniformed responses like those that littered the New York Times blog a few days ago.

If I were to believe the "facts" in this post, what should I do? Should I advocate discrimination against blacks because they are less smart? Should I not hire them to my company because odds are I could find a smarter white person? Should I try and drive them from society?

You should hire the smartest employee you can find. You have the opportunity to judge a job applicant on their individual merits rather than their race and you should do so. But you should also oppose the immigration of groups that are likely to drag the mean IQ of society down.

Stop trying to prove that one group of people are genetically inferior to your group. Just stop. It makes you sound like a Nazi. Its bad for society. Its bad for all involved. And I'd bet its scientifically flawed as well.

Godwin's law strikes again! You did mention you were Jewish so I can't say I'm too surprised by this little bit of reductio ad Hitlerum.

My challenge to those who deny the importance of IQ or believe in multiple intelligences still stands: do you honestly think you can you find a single Fortune 500 CEO, hedge fund manager, physicist, chemist, mathematician, biochemist, or even an English Lit professor with an IQ of 85?

[Scott]

"Stop trying to prove that one group of people are genetically inferior to your group. Just stop. It makes you sound like a Nazi."

I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Nazi Party, Senator McCarthy.

[tommy]

The term Sephardim is often used to refer to Jews with origins anywhere in the Mediterranean or the Middle East. This usage is rather imprecise and a bit confusing. More recently, people have distinguished the Mizrahim - Jews from the Mideast, North Africa, Iran, as well as other eastern communities such as the Bukharic Jews and Indian Jews - from the Sephardim - a Jewish population that originated on the Iberian peninsula but following expulsions and forced conversions in Spain and Portugal found in several other locations such as Greece and the Netherlands.

I'm sure whether any of the literature concerning Sephardic IQ distinguished Sephardim from Mizrahim. The term "Mizharim" itself seems to be conglomeration of several distinct groups of Jews without much shared history.

[Dragon Horse]

If the average black IQ (according to Flynn's latest study) is between 89-92 and the average white IQ is 100, that means there are millions of blacks above the average white IQ.

This being said, If any of you really believe that proving blacks genetically cognitively inferior is going to help blacks you are kidding yourself and are clearly ignorant of human nature and American history.

The average person in this country will not discriminate, as in, oh well that individual black person might be as intelligent as me. Also we already know 50% of whites are below average in intelligence. They will say...that's a black person and they are stupid until proven otherwise.

Some say it will help white and Asian students get into choice schools as minorities (mostly black and Hispanic) will not get affirmative action as it is "not helpful".

That selective outrage is always interesting to me as:

www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/ articles/2007/09/28/ at_the_elite_colleges___dim_white_kids/

"What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards."

No one gets outraged over that...well at least not white people who are so for "merit" when a black or Hispanic person is involved when reality is America has never been and is no a meritocracy. It might be the closest we have in the world, but that is not saying much. Anyone who has been truly exposed to the power elite in this country know better.

[Spungen]

That still doesn't diminish the emotional effects of knowing that you're a freak in a race filled with idiots and retards who are unable to compete or even exist in the civilized world.

David, even white people with an IQ of over 125 are only 5 percent of the population (per earlier commenter). So everyone smart is a freak, statistically speaking. The world is a rainbow of violent, grunting cavemen.

Once you get a better job, you'll meet some other smart, high-functioning black people. You'll feel more normal.

[Positive Postdoc]

Another great HS post! It is a bit tiring with the regular "What is IQ anyway? It is useless!" and "You just want to have an excuse to fire up the gas chambers, that's all!" comments, but these concerns have already been thoughtfully addressed.

As far as statistical mental/personality differences between groups being valid research, I think it is absolutely essential in a time where any observation of the kind "Group A constitutes x% of the overall population, but represents y% of the population having outcome B." where x<>y ALWAYS seem to lead to the conclusion "Group A is discriminated and actions have to be taken until x=y.". If that should be the starting point, it has to be legitimate for those who doubt to carry out research to investigate if a deviation from population matching is legitimate.

[David Alexander]

David, even white people with an IQ of over 125 are only 5 percent of the population (per earlier commenter)

There's no way it can be that low. Something has to explain all the college students who graduate and all those people with various professional degrees. For 5% of the population to only have 125%, that implies that the rest of this country lives in poverty, has criminal tendencies, and lives off welfare. It just doesn't make sense to me for the intelligent segment of the population to be so low.

Once you get a better job, you'll meet some other smart, high-functioning black people. You'll feel more normal.

Not really. For every smart high-functioning black person that I meet, there's at least 50 other low-functioning black people. Even the fact that it's taking so long for me to finish implies that I'm low functioning as well.

[Cameron]

David:

No, it is true. Only 5% of the population have IQs over 125. For IQ the standard deviation is about 15 points and 100 is the average. You can use that data to compute the probability if you know statistics. It's about 5%.

Most people with IQs under 125 are not capable of taking on positions like doctor, lawyer, executive, scientist. Most people between 115-125 are able to take positions like teacher, manager, accountant. Below 115 are positions like police officer, factory worker etc...

Here, read this if you don't believe me...

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/
1998generalintelligencefactor.pdf

[Mark]

S: David, even white people with an IQ of over 125 are only 5 percent of the population (per earlier commenter)

DA: There's no way it can be that low

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

Check the "US Population Distribution" field in the "Economic and social correlates of IQ" table. Only 5% of the population is above 125.

[Spungen]

There's no way it can be that low. Something has to explain all the college students who graduate and all those people with various professional degrees. For 5% of the population to only have 125%, that implies that the rest of this country lives in poverty, has criminal tendencies, and lives off welfare. It just doesn't make sense to me for the intelligent segment of the population to be so low.

Dude. The average cop's IQ is about 95 (don't make me look up my source, and I could be off by a couple points). Jokes and cop-bashing aside, most of the cops I know are at least reasonably functional and many are even clever.

The average college graduate's IQ is nowhere near 125. Again, don't make me look it up. And most people in America do not graduate from college. Cameron, I'm surprised and skeptical that lawyers have that high an average IQ; I'd bet it's closer to 115.

You don't have to hang out with all the black people, David. Just a few. :)

[David Alexander]

Wow, after a quick skim, it's rather depressing to see that the bottom 25% of the population is unemployable or only capable of work that pays very little, and those around the "average" can be outsourced for pennies on the dollar. It's almost as if we might as well raise the definition of mentally handicapped from 75 or to 100, and just pay everybody not to work and bother and burden the smarter segments of the population. It's too scary to even contemplate the idea that most of society is composed of idiots who barely function. I am now amazed that civilization has managed to hold itself together for so long without collapse.

[Kirk]

Whenever someone uses the term "standard deviation" without adequately explaining it, as H.S. did in the first post of the thread, I tune out. I figure they're just being pretentious.

Yeah, H.S. equated "one standard deviation" with 16%, but without any kind of explanation as to how he got that number, it seems random and meaningless -- kind of like those colored graphs he keeps putting out that I ignore.

I'd appreciate a better explanation of the term. I'm stupid,you know...

[David Alexander]

Again, don't make me look it up. And most people in America do not graduate from college.

It seems like everybody I graduated high school with graduated, including the students who did poorly grade wise. All of my neighbours' children are attending college. Given that a college degree is the on means of becoming acceptable middle class, where the hell are these other people who are not living in poverty starving making their money with out a college degree? Are they selling drugs or engaged in some other illicit activity? Factory work has dried up, and most people have no interest in doing nigger work like plumbing, and Mexicans have swallowed up construction...

You don't have to hang out with all the black people, David. Just a few. :)

Not funny at all.

[Jason Malloy]

Traditionally the average college graduate had an IQ of about 115. But colleges have increasingly accommodated much more of the population (gotta make that $$$), so Charles Murray estimates that number has dropped to about 106.

[Cameron]

Basically it shows that "There are countless examples around the world where the dominant ethnic group scores higher on IQ tests than the discriminated minority"

On http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-inferiorIQ.htm:
This may be true, but why are these ethnic groups persecuted in the first place? Many groups who have struggled from the beginning travel from place to place and then finally settle down in another civilization. Natives often abhor newcomers when the have little to contribute. Also, it could be true that other races find them inferior because they are not as intelligent, and therefore not as advanced or adept as their persecutors, thus low IQ would be the factor causing the persecution in the first place.

Many minority groups have come to the United States and have met little persecution/hate while others have withstood a tremendous amount. Indian's, for example, have met little (still some, but this is a very small amount) resistance in comparison to other minority groups because they are able to fit in, maintain respectable careers, and are capable of rising to higher socioeconomic classes.

[Brandon Berg]

According to Census figures, about 28% of whites aged 25-29 have a bachelor's degree or higher. If we assume that the vast majority of these are in the top third of the IQ distribution, that would make 105 or so a good lower limit, with an average of around 115.