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

[beowulf]

What's interesting is that adopted children who were half white/half black were much closer to the white IQ level (109 versus 112) than to the black IQ level (97). This reminded me of the theory that intelligence is passed on the X chromosome.
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/genderdiff.htm

This would mean half of the biracial daughters and all of the biracial sons inherit their mother's intelligence. We know 75% or more of black/white couples are black father, white mother (per the 2000 Census, 73% of married couples, 80% of cohabiting couples).
http://www.isteve.com/2003_Census_Interracial_Marriage_Gender_Gap.htm

Quickly multiplying .75 x .75 of the white mothers' offspring, and .25 x .25 of the white fathers and then adding-- at least 62.5% of biracial children have white X chromosomes (actually a higher percentage because of the indeterminate number of self-identified black parents who are themselves biracial). It suggests the race of the X chromosome accounts for the high IQ of biracial children (109, instead of merely the average of black and white IQ, 104.5).

I don't know if the study breaks out gender of the children or race of the parents, but it'd be interesting to sort the IQs of sons (who always inherit the maternal X chromosome) by parent groups-- both black, both white, biracial black mother and biracial white mother.

[Jason Malloy]

My mistake, Murray only estimates those "trying to" go to college, not those that actually graduate. And the number was 104.
There is no magic point at which a genuine college-level education becomes an option, but anything below an IQ of 110 is problematic. If you want to do well, you should have an IQ of 115 or higher. Put another way, it makes sense for only about 15% of the population, 25% if one stretches it, to get a college education. And yet more than 45% of recent high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges. Adjust that percentage to account for high-school dropouts, and more than 40% of all persons in their late teens are trying to go to a four-year college--enough people to absorb everyone down through an IQ of 104.

[Mark]

"Wow, after a quick skim, it's rather depressing to see that the bottom 25% of the population is unemployable"

The unemployment rate among the lowest 25% is around 10% to 12% with a labor force participation rate of around 80%. Not exactly a numbers that scream "unemployable".

"and those around the "average" can be outsourced for pennies on the dollar"

Food service, nurse's aide, beautician, police officer, plumber, sales clerk and so on and so forth are not the sorts of jobs you can outsource. When was the last time you were served food at a local restaurant by someone in India? (From India, perhaps, but never in India). Most jobs in America are not outsourcable for the same sort of reason.

"I'm surprised and skeptical that lawyers have that high an average IQ; I'd bet it's closer to 115."

I am a bit skeptical myself. The ranks of the law have become flooded lately. The number cited by Gottfredson may come from a prior era.

[Jason Malloy]

What's interesting is that adopted children who were half white/half black were much closer to the white IQ level (109 versus 112) than to the black IQ level (97).

These numbers are incorrect, look at the final adult scores: 106, 99, 89.

In fact these Wikipedia numbers are incorrect as well. (surprise, surprise... and don't try to correct these articles, you're outnumbered by the race activists just like Watson) The numbers from this study were later Flynn corrected by behavior geneticist John Loehlin in the Handbook of Human Intelligence. Here are his numbers:

Age 7

W-W 111.5
W-B 105.4
B-B 91.4

Age 17

W-W 101.5
W-B 93.2
B-B 83.7

The W-W/W-B difference is 8.3. The B-W/B-B difference is 9.5. And the W-W/B-B difference is 17.8.

So the IQ difference between whites and blacks raised side by side in the same high income households in mostly homogeneous Northern upper class US neighborhoods is 18 IQ points. The difference in IQ scores between 2 black biological parent adoptees and 1 black biological parent adoptees is nearly 10 IQ points despite the fact that both share the exact same social identity.

Similarly a dozen mixed race children that were raised under some mistaken information that they were not mixed race children nevertheless had IQ scores like the other mixed race children.

There is simply no plausible environmental theory that can account for that.

In my research I also uncovered the unpublished adult crime data from the MTRAS, anybody want to guess what it shows?

[Jason Malloy]

I should also point out that many of the psychology textbooks that even bother reporting on this enormous and important American sociology study, have a peculiar tendency of only reporting the numbers from the first measurement session at age 7. I'm talking about ones that have been printed long past the published MTRAS follow up data in 1994. (A similar expose showed how stereotype threat is misrepresented in college textbooks to show that the B-W IQ gap is "explained by" ST)

This is done because the 97 IQ for the B-B children and 106 IQ of the B-W children "proves" that environment can boost black IQ up to the white average. Even though the white children under the same condition score even higher; this is pretty much what Dragon Horse does when he uses the highest black score in 620 studies to juxtapose it with the lowest white score in a completely different environment.

But as we see from the more recent corrected data, not even this is the case. Even at age 7 the IQs of both groups of black adoptees were below the national white average.

[Mark]

In my research I also uncovered the unpublished adult crime data from the MTRAS, anybody want to guess what it shows?

B-B > B-W > W-W ?

[Jason Malloy]

Sorry I meant "both groups" age 7 and 17 the B-B group is below the white average.

[Scott]

Sailer has a satirical rant on the Levit-Fryer paper:

I just did a study of lactose tolerance among one-year-olds, and guess what? I didn't find any racial differences! They were all lactose tolerant. So all those stories you hear about how East Asians don't have a gene for lactose tolerance are just racist myths! I proved it with science!

I also did a study of one-year-olds' ability to slam dunk on a ten foot basket. Once again, there were no racial differences. None of them could dunk. I even lowered the basket to six feet and still there were no racial differences in dunking. So, when you watch the NBA and there are all these blacks guys slam dunking, that's just racism. Who are you gonna believe, science or your lying eyes?

Then, I got a bunch of Kenyan and Ethiopian highlander one-year-old babies together with some other babies and timed them in the marathon. As always, there were no racial differences. Not a single baby of any origin finished the 26.2 mile run. So, the next time the top ten finishers at a big marathon are eight Kenyans and two Ethiopians, don't believe it!

[William]

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

Charles Murray has a published paper that addresses the claims put forward by Dickens and Flynn using a more robust data set.

Here is the abstract:

Data for three Peabody achievement tests and for the Peabody picture vocabulary test administered to children of women in the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth show that the black–white difference did not diminish for this sample of children born from the mid 1970s through the mid 1990s. This finding persists after entering covariates for the child's age and family background variables. It is robust across alternative samples and specifications of the model. The analysis supplements other evidence that shows no narrowing of the black–white difference in academic achievement tests since the late 1980s and is inconsistent with recent evidence that narrowing occurred in IQ standardizations during the same period. A hypothesis for reconciling this inconsistency is proposed.

Here is a post at Gene Expression on the Murray paper.

Here is an other post at Gene Expression on the Dickens and Flynn paper.

[SFG]

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.
Actually, it's the more successful races that tend to get persecuted more. To take a familiar example, Southerners enslaved blacks but Germans exterminated Jews. Amy Chua has a book on this ('World on Fire'); her grandma was an overseas Chinese who had to flee after much the same sort of thing.

[James Igoe]

Proposition #1 is correlated at .3, and within blacks themselves, it drops to .1. The correlation, although loosely true, is minor. The beginning of the fallacy of the meritocracy...

As for #2, MZA studies show the correlation with heredity is .7, while environment correlates at .5. This assumes the middle though, so genes are more highly correlated for the affluent, and less so for the poor. Poor environments dictate outcomes for the poor, while genes dictate outcomes for the rich.

[Dragon Horse]

DA:

I think you need to get out and join organizations/associations with different types of black people. I don't know any "low functioning" black people, although I see them. Possibly moving to another area of the country. I live in Washington, D.C., some of the wealthiest and most educated black people in the country live in the DC-VA-MD area. Maybe they will talk to you if you don't come off so self hating and white girl worshiping. That tends to annoy black people, FYI.

The fact that 5% of whites have IQ's higher than 125 is reasonable. That is still 10 million people. As someone pointed out you don't need an IQ of 125 to get a BA/BS. You don't even need an IQ of 125 to get a MA at most second tier schools in a social science.

If you look at black IQ level:

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/retar0%7Bimage0%7D.gif

(based on the outdated 85, that Flynn has said has increased 4-7 points since 1970) you will see that there are about 5 million or so blacks who have higher than average white IQ levels. That means 6 million blacks are more intelligent than (300*.66/2)99 million whites. R

Reality is if you work at a IT Help Desk and rest passwords you have and reset system passwords you have a white collar middle class job. It does not take much intelligence to do something like that. Most Middle class people don't even have college degrees in America. About (from my memory of the census) 17% of blacks have BA/BS and almost 30% of whites, however 7% of whites live in poverty. That means 63% of whites are doing a job that is keeping them out of poverty although they do not have a 4 year college education.

At the same time blacks education levels are increasing, it is definitely not stagnating, contrary to popular belief it has been increasing every year since 1965.

http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/50_black_doctoraldegrees.html

Doctoral Degree Awards to African Americans Reach Another All-Time High

In 2004 African Americans earned 1,869 doctoral degrees. This number has increased more than 9 percent from a year ago. Black doctorates now stand at the highest level in history.

http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/56_enrollments_climb.html

Black Enrollments in Higher Education Continue to Climb

African Americans continue to post impressive gains in higher education enrollments. The most important progress has been in graduate education.

The latest data from the U.S. Department of Education reveals that in the fall of 2005 there were nearly 2.1 million African Amer-icans enrolled in higher education in the United States. There were nearly 45,000 more African Americans en-rolled in higher education in 2005 than was the case the previous year. This is an in-crease of 2.2 percent. Blacks were 11.7 percent of the nearly 18 million students enrolled in higher education nationwide. This is nearly equivalent to the percentage of blacks in the college-age population. A decade earlier, in 1995, blacks were 10.3 percent of all enrollments in higher education.

Elitist like Sigma will mock anything other than a Phd, Law Degree, Medical Doctor, etc.

Reality is for most people that is not necessary to live a middle class life in the United States. Obviously, most whites are not college educated and never have been, not even half, but they are mostly middle class.

[Marc]

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.

Buck up there, David! I don't know you from Adam but you seem like a fairly intelligent guy. Ever occur to you that you're just a late bloomer? I know one person in my close circle who has an IQ of 127 and it took him 5 and one half years to graduate college.

[anon mom]

David,

Get over it, I am so sick of your whining. You being a loser has nothing to do with you being Black. You have a loser personality. Get off this site and start reading some self help books. Your IQ is not the problem.

You live in NYC, this has to be the city with one of the highest concentration of high IQ blacks in America. I don't get why you never meet them. Oh I know you are always on the computer whining about your problems instead of going out and doing something about them and meeting smart people to network with so you can get a better job.

[Rob]

I will go out on a limb (a short limb here) and say that I think HS's three points are true. Blacks in high latitudes are also more likely to get rickets than whites. What was society's response to some fraction of white kids getting rickets and a larger fraction of black kids getting rickets? Did we call institutional racism? Did every researcher who looked into it get branded a Nazi or some other kind of monster? No. We identified a problem, and solved it by adding vitamin D to foods.

There is some evidence that for gene-environment interaction in IQ (eg. diet- people who are nontasters for PTC have higher IQ and eat more vegetables than nontasters) 97% of West Africans are tasters. 70% of whites are tasters. (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n5/980775/980775.html?erFrom=5156955807120467378Guest)

Intelligence and personality related to tasting
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n411121322hj361l/

Nontasters have higher visuospatial ability. If I remember correctly, micronutrient supplementation disproportionately raises performance IQ.

Tasting and vegetable consumption
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/84/1/245

Vegetable consumption and IQ
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/119/1/e38

Granted, these aren't the last word on the relationship. The last one in particular can not provide a chain of causation. But it is an interesting possibility.

Supplementing the diet of pregnant and nursing women with cod liver oil increases the child's and IQ at age 4. This difference may not last until adulthood.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/111/1/e39

I don't have access to most articles, but from google scholar, I think whites consume more fish than blacks. If anyone can get the whole article, I'd appreciate knowing the difference.
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/107/10/1372

Creatine supplementation, at least for vegetarians for short periods of time, increases intelligence significantly. About one SD on Ravens and Backwards Digit Span. This is young adults.
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/995yme1nnn6qvya1/

Low iodine causes lower IQ even in non-cretinous children.. http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/995yme1nnn6qvya1/

Even a low dose multivitamin improved IQ scores in a study on hispanic children.
http://www.baldwins.co.uk/perl/go.pl/healthnotes.html?org=baldwin&page=newswire/hnwire_2000-04-13_2.cfm

I'm sure there are far more studies, and I remember The Bell Curve citing at least one study that showed a multivitamin supplement increasing fluid intelligence in children. I don't have the book anymore, but someone could look it up.

In summary, while gene frequencies likely account for at least a fraction of racial IQ gaps, nutritional supplementation can likely 1) Reduce the size of the gap. 2) Make large fractions of all populations smarter. Because increasing intelligence is not a zero-sum game, either 1) or 2) would make everyone better off.

In the near future, if we investigate the genetic differences that lead to the genetic gap between populations, at least some of these are going to be amenable to intervention. For example, high levels of IGF-1 likely increase intelligence. I don't have access to the whole paper, but from google, "100-ng increase in IGF-1, IQ increased by 3.2 in verbal performance"
jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/294/11/1373.pdf
Because myopia varies by population, and is related to IGF-1, it is likely that IGF-1 levels vary by race, even controlling for diet.

If we disbelieve IQ, or refuse to research differences in IQ between races, we may be stuck with how things are now. And how is that working for us? How is it working for Africans?

[superdestroyer]

I always look at the question of IQ as really a question about learning quantum mechanics.

The left side of the political spectrum publicly argues that everyone is capable of learning quantum mechanics if given the proper home life, education, and environment. On face value, this type of argue is false based upon the number of rich white prep school graduates who cannot succeed at it.

The middle of the political spectrum will argue that intelligence varies among individual but that the variation is the same for all ethnic groups and races. This allows them to concede that not everyone has the same inate ability but does not make them sound racist.

The right side would argue that intellgience not only varies among individuals but that the percentage of people capable of learning quantum mechanics varies among ethnic and racial groups. Anyone who has actually taught or studied quantum mechanics in a formla setting probably agress with this argument. Even Larry Summers was making this argument (in an ackward way).

[Half Sigma]

Even a low dose multivitamin improved IQ scores in a study on Hispanic children.

Hmmm, do you think some Flintstones chewables will help my LL.M. grades?

[Jason Malloy]

Rob, how can vitamin or diet differences account for the fact that the IQ difference is as large for blacks and whites raised in the same household as it is in the general population?

[Rob]

HS, it can't hurt, and they are pretty tasty. But you aren't hispanic, and check the RDAs. One can do more harm than good with fat-soluble vitamins. I started taking creatine while I was studying for the MCAT. I am not sure if it made me smarter, but I did notice within a day or so that my brain didn't get fatigued as quickly, which matters alot for a timed test. I rocked the MCAT. I credit creatine and running to the test site.

A stat question, just for argument: if variation in consumption of fish by pregnant women causes variation in children's IQ, and the causation holds within whites and blacks, and blacks eat less fish, it seems that fish consumption may account for a portion of the B/W cognitive gap. Right?

Superdestroyer,

I fully agree that the ability to learn QM varies both within and between races. I also agree that most of what the left has argued in the past as influencing IQ does not seem to do so (books in the house, the ethnic slurs one hears in multiracial environments).

What I disagree with is the fatalism. If a particular supplement is cheap, safe, and has even a bit of evidence behind it, it is worth trying ones self and researching further. Another way of interpreting my presentation is: weak smart drugs already exist, some populations take more of them than others. In the future, we will have better smart drugs. People make their own smart drugs in varying doses. One day, if we do the research and aren't shut down by bio-luddites and race-deniers, these smart drugs will be available pharmaceutically.

I think, and I am surely not the only one, that low IQ is a problem that can be solved or treated. Like rickets or type I diabetes.

Jason Malloy, if you are read this, would you mind pumping those gene's HS mentioned in the essay into the hapmap site, and seeing if the allele frequencies vary by race?

[Dragon Horse]

Cameron:

"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."

LOL...tell that to the Chinese who came to work on the railroads?

http://us_asians.tripod.com/timeline-1875.html

It is a little more complicated than that. First you have to be able to get jobs. There are plenty of examples of wealthy and highly educated blacks and Hispanics who have caught hell in this country...it had nothing to do with individual merit but group association.

"able to fit in, maintain respectable careers, and are capable of rising to higher socioeconomic classes."

No more like..."allowed to fit in, come here highly educated from the upperclasses, and face little discrimination in hiring".

Obviously if the Chinese who came here to work the railroads and were forced to live in Chinatown came here well educated it would not have mattered as they were "Chinamen" and Chinamen had a "place". If you think discrimination is just about the "actions" of the people being discriminated against than you have no concept of American history.

Even today...if the average Indian came here (the barely literate low caste or unscheduled caste) came here in mass what do you think the response or "resistance" or "stereotype" would be?

[Rob]

Jason,

Are you an only child? I remember my sister and I grew up in the same household, but had different dietary preferences. We managed to eat different quantities of different foods. Even more so when she became a vegetarian. Same household, variation in diet. For most kids, at least when I was growing up, the clean your plate thing was dead. Food choice at school can make a difference as well.

I am not arguing that nutrition accounts for the whole gap. I am arguing it may account for a small fraction. More generally, I am arguing that some things might increase intelligence, and that is good. I am pro-eugenics too.

[JewishAtheist]

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.

What's wrong is not the statistic that only 5% of the population has an IQ over 125, but your idea that anyone below 125 must live in poverty, have criminal tendencies, and live off welfare. This, to me, is the huge problem with those who take glee in the race-IQ correlation -- they distort, exaggerate, and flat-out make up a good deal of the relevance of IQ to real life. Are there correlations between IQ and various measures of life success? Yes. Is everyone below-average IQ doomed to a worthless, unproductive life? Absolutely not.

What IQ measures, most precisely, is the ability to do well on IQ tests. This is obviously related to testing well on the SATs, school tests, etc. Testing well will itself get you a long way in life even if the tests don't show anything other than the ability to take tests.

There is a correlation between that test-taking ability and some other success measures which cannot be traced back directly to taking tests, yes. But the degree of that correlation is rarely spelled out clearly by people who talk about this sort of thing, leaving the implication that IQ is destiny.

Finally, there are other talents besides IQ, though they may be correlated to a greater or lesser degree. It's hard to know famous people's IQs unless they broadcast them, but one example is Jason Kidd, who probably has a signficantly below-average IQ considering it took him 4 times to meet the NCAA minimum SAT score. Not only is he a great athlete, but he's one of the "smartest" players in the game.

[David Alexander]

I don't have access to most articles, but from google scholar, I think whites consume more fish than blacks.

Useless fact: David is from a Catholic family who lived in a Caribbean country, thus fish consumption was rather high, especially since his parents maintained the "no meat" rule year round on Fridays. Yet, from what tests have shown, Caribbeans have low IQs than the native born black population in the US, but higher than Africa. Interestingly, the richest majority black country in the world per GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity) is in the Caribbean (Barbados $19,274, Bahamas $20,440, Trinidad & Tobago $17,494)*. Even with Jamaica's low GDP per capita at $4,494, it's still leagues better than say Nigeria which has oil at $1,227. Haiti is really the only broken Caribbean state with a GDP per capita at $1,840, and that's better than a "stable" African country like Ivory Coast at $1,680, and right behind Senegal at $1,981.

*Even with massive US subsidies, Puerto Rico's GDP per capita is 19,300 which shameful given that other countries are able to reach similar GDPs sans the US Federal government pouring money into them. Interestingly, it's still better than Saudi Arabia's GDP per capita at 16,505, and that's an oil rich state...

[SFG]

I don't know. Certainly an IQ of 125 isn't necessary or even useful, but an IQ of 80 seems like it would hold you back a bit.

You know, Robert Wadlow (tallest man in the world) may have had problems, but short guys still have problems picking up chicks.

[Rob]

David, I didn't say fish is responsible for most of the gap. Given that I accept HS three postulates, US blacks are probably brighter than Caribbean blacks because of higher white admixture. US whites, US blacks, Caribbean blacks, and African blacks would probably see IQ gains with omega-3 supplementation.

JA, are you sure that doing well on standardized tests only correlates with test-taking? Is the correlation between college students' test scores and essay grades 0?

[Spungen]

Hmmm, do you think some Flintstones chewables will help my LL.M. grades?

Probably not as much as an Internet outage would. :)

[Jason Malloy]

"Jason Malloy, if you are read this, would you mind pumping those gene's HS mentioned in the essay into the hapmap site, and seeing if the allele frequencies vary by race?"

Power To the People, bra. :)

I remember my sister and I grew up in the same household, but had different dietary preferences.

Hmm, even if we accept that parents would make separate dinners for every child (fish for Johnny, chicken for Sally), your theory would require systematic preferences. Are you hypothesizing that blacks have a genetic preference for food that depresses their IQ scores?

[David Alexander]

Food service, nurse's aide, beautician, police officer, plumber, sales clerk and so on and so forth are not the sorts of jobs you can outsource.

Actually, jobs like food service and beautician can be done by illegal immigrants working under the table for lower pay than their American counterparts. Guest workers can do jobs like nurses aide and plumbing. So that leaves sales clerk, and given the complaints that people have about customer service these days, one would suspect that low IQ plays a role in that as well. As for policing, since more and more jurisdictions now require a minimum of two years of college to take the exam, it weeds out more and more of those lower IQ individuals. As I've said before, these people are not smart enough to go to college, and they will be left off the train of progress and I predict that these people within the next 50 years will become slum dwellers.

The W-W/W-B difference is 8.3. The B-W/B-B difference is 9.5. And the W-W/B-B difference is 17.8.

Wow. That makes having children with a white woman rather pointless if the IQ only goes up by so little. Shit, it makes having children rather pointless. Plus, now I feel sorry for the whites who adopted these bi-racial and fully black children.

I think you need to get out and join organizations/associations with different types of black people.

I hate those organisations. They're remnants of segregation and should be done away with. They only reinforce separation between the races, and reinforces our inferiority vis à vis whites because we need our "own organisations" to feel competent. We're in a white country, it makes no sense to "hide" from whites.

Besides, given my own inability to complete school on time, I shouldn't associate with smart people regardless of race.

I live in Washington, D.C., some of the wealthiest and most educated black people in the country live in the DC-VA-MD area.

They all fucking work for the government, so they don't count.

Maybe they will talk to you if you don't come off so self hating and white girl worshiping. That tends to annoy black people, FYI.

White women are better looking, emotionally stable when compared to black women, and it's much easier to get along with them.

That means 6 million blacks are more intelligent than (300*.66/2)99 million whites.

That's certainly not enough, IMHO.

Obviously, most whites are not college educated and never have been, not even half, but they are mostly middle class.

I still don't see how that's possible. Nearly every job listing that pays middle class wages demands a college degree. Even the entry level jobs now require it. Everything sans degree, OTOH, pays around the $10-$15 range with a few creeping into the $17-$18 range with benefits, and that's for working with some government agency. Either these people are peasants who are living in low cost living locales in the middle of nowhere, or they're the blue collar workers which our society looks down upon and serve as the nightmare of white middle class parents.

[Loki on the run]

Peter says:

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.

Hey, great sarcasm.

Tests of the sprinting abilities of one-year-olds likewise show no differences, as do tests of the weight-lifting abilities.

[Rob]

Jason,

Power To the People, bra. :)

I would do it, but I'm not smart enough. I only just mastered putting things in italics. I also don't know if I have access to the accession numbers for the alleles. If I feel super ambitious, I may try though.

Systematic food preferences: yes. The variation in PTC tasting shows that for cruciferous vegetables. The upper-middle class eats out a fair amount. Restaurants will indeed prepare food for each family member. Who eats more of different leftovers is susceptible to preference.

Whether there is any genetic racial variation in preference for fish, I don't know. And as I said, it could only account for a small fraction of the gap, less than 4 points. But the racial variation in fish consumption and type of cooking may point to a genetic difference in preference.

[Peter]

It's hard to know famous people's IQs unless they broadcast them, but one example is Jason Kidd, who probably has a signficantly below-average IQ considering it took him 4 times to meet the NCAA minimum SAT score. Not only is he a great athlete, but he's one of the "smartest" players in the game.

NFL players are a partial exception. Most draft prospects take the Wonderlic intelligence test as part of the annual "combine" evaluation, and while the scores are supposed to be confidential they're the worst-kept secret imaginable. You can find them easily enough through Google.

Wonderlic scores are supposed to be a very good proxy for IQ scores, with a Wonderlic of 20 equal to an IQ of 100. As for the scores of NFL players, the rule of thumb is that the closer to the ball that a player lines up, the smarter he is.

[Mark]

"Jason Malloy, if you are read this, would you mind pumping those gene's HS mentioned in the essay into the hapmap site, and seeing if the allele frequencies vary by race"

The names of the genes are DTNBP1 and CHRM2.

1. Go to the Happlotter Home

2. Plug "DTNBP1" or "CHRM2" (without the quotes) into the "Gene name" box.

3. Press the "submit" button

4. Examine the "iHS" graph.

Blue = European
Green = S-S African
Red = E. Asian

DTNBP1 seems to be more elevated in Europeans or East Asians than Africans. CHRM2 seems to be mildly more elevated in Africans than Europeans or East Asians.

[Mark]

"Actually, jobs like food service and beautician can be done by illegal immigrants working under the table for lower pay than their American counterparts. Guest workers can do jobs like nurses aide and plumbing."

This may be an argument against unchecked immigration from the bottom end of the IQ spectrum (competition at the top end may drive down the rising levels of income inequality), but not against outsourcing (the original complaint).

This [is not] an argument ... against outsourcing (the original complaint).

A lot of outsorced jobs seem to involve the "top end" of the IQ spectrum. This article from the Guardian reports that labor shortages in such fields as IT and finance have caused Indian wages in these sectors to reach U.S. levels. As a result, some outsourcing firms are now re-exporting IT jobs to rural America.

[Marc]

Mark:

The studies Halfsigma links to suggest specific SNPs on the genes correlate with intelligence (rs324650 on CHRM2, for instance) but when I try to do a search by SNP, I can't seem to find any. Any idea as to why?

[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.

Hey, great sarcasm.
Tests of the sprinting abilities of one-year-olds likewise show no differences, as do tests of the weight-lifting abilities.

Children obviously have nothing remotely close to adult-level physical abilities at age one and therefore intergroup differences will not be apparent even if they arise in later years. It is not so obvious, however, that some meaningful sorting of children by intelligence at age one is impossible.

[Rob]

Ok, read a bit of the happlotter info. iHS is a sign of recent positive selection.

TNBP1 has been significantly selected in whites. It doesn't pass significance test for Asians or blacks. CHRM2 looks like it hasn't been under positive selection in any population, but there's no score under the Yoruban population. Does that mean one version is universal in that population?

[Mark]

"The studies Halfsigma links to suggest specific SNPs on the genes correlate with intelligence (rs324650 on CHRM2, for instance) but when I try to do a search by SNP, I can't seem to find any. Any idea as to why?

1. Go to a HapMap Gemome Browser

2. Plug "SNP:rs324650" (without the quotes) into the "Landmark or Region" box.

3. Under "Details" look at the "Genotyped SNPs" pie charts.

CEU = European
CHB = Chinese (E. Asian)
JPT = Japanese (E. Asian)
YRI = Yoruban (African)

E. Asians > Europeans > Africans

Observe that "T" is greater in Europeans than in Africans; greater in E. Asians than in Euros.

[SFG]

Do you know which polymorphism corresponds to increased IQ? You're only saying that one polymorphism is more common in one group than another. For all we know, it could work the opposite way from what we're expecting. From anyone with access to scholarly papers, is 'T' the smart SNP or the dumb one?

[Marc]

T is *way* more present than A in rs324650 among East Asians (91%) relative to Europeans (47%) and blacks (27%). Since T is associated with an increase in 4-5 points of performance IQ (what is that, anyway? Is that different from G?) that is significant.

Actually, this is fun. Let's look at rs:760761, rs:2619522 and rs:2619538, all of which are associated with increased or decreased intelligence in DTNBP1.

Regarding rs:760761, 18% of Europeans carry the T allele, which knocks about 8 points off the ol' IQ, compared to around 7% of East Asians and 37% of blacks.

Regarding rs:2619522, the numbers are similar. 18% of whites carry the G allele, which knocks about 7 points off the ol' IQ, versus around 8% of Asians and 35-36% of blacks.

Regarding rs:2619538, 39% of whites carry the A allele, which adds about 6.5 points to one's IQ, versus about 99% of Asians and 31% of blacks.

All fun aside, does any of this actually mean anything?

[Marc]

SFG: To answer your question, "T" is the "smart one."

"The strongest association was between rs324650 and performance IQ (PIQ), where the T allele was associated with an increase of 4.6 PIQ points."

That's from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=17081262

[SFG]

Thank you much. Never hurts to be sure.

'Performance IQ' is the non-verbal part of IQ. It includes spatial and mathematical.

If 'T' adds 5 points, and is present in 20% more whites than blacks, then it will create 5*.2=1 points of difference between whites and blacks in performance IQ. It's in about 45% more Asians than whites, which'll give them 2 more points on average.

Blacks are 20% more likely to have the T allele at 760761, which given that it costs you 8 points will lower IQ by 1.6 points on average. About the same for the next 7-point allele, again costing you 1.4 points. 8% more blacks have the bad version of the third allele, which costs you 6.5 points on average, costing you about 0.5 points.

For Asians, I calculate about 1 extra point from the first allele, 0.7 points from the second, and about 4 points from the third.

So based on these two genes (and you know for something as complex as the brain there are going to be fifty more) we've got Asians being 6 points smarter and blacks being 4.5...well, you know.

What I find compelling is that the trend goes the same way in all the genes. Can you find polymorphisms where it goes the opposite way? Do you know any other genes for IQ? Maybe we can tease out differences in strengths for different groups in verbal vs. performance.

C'mon, do it before GNXP reads this, tells Sailer, who publicizes it, and the guys with the website shut it down. This is major-league heresy.

Or, um, Steve...sit tight on this for now, s'il vouz plaiz? :)

[Half Sigma]

Wow, I had no idea that actual genetic proof of racial intelligence differences was sitting out there on the internet!

If one assumes that some sort of evolutionary pressures favored higher intelligence in Europe and Northern Asia, but not in Africa, then you would expect that the majority of genes correlating with higher intelligence will appear with greater frequency in European and northern Asian gene pools.

I guess I'll have to teach myself this new technology, unless someone steps up to bat and posts the definitive blog post first.

***

And then I visited this page and I have no idea what I'm looking at.

[Rob]

Yeah, Thanks Marc and Mark, and SFG. One more stupid question. How do you tell if the SNP you searched for is A or T on the little pie charts?

These are just the sorts of alleles that meet criteria for actual racial difference. They correlate with intelligence both within and between races.

HS, shame on you for distracting us all with a videogame post when this is happening.

Performance IQ is nonverbal ability, including spatial relations, 3D rotations. It correlates strongly with g. Asians have relatively higher performance IQ than verbal IQ.

[SFG]

If this was Saturday instead of Sunday, I would have done it for you, but as it is...anyone else want to step up to the plate?

[David Alexander]

Or, um, Steve...sit tight on this for now, s'il vouz plaiz? :)

Nitpick: It's s'il vous plaît. :)

[Mark]

"How do you tell if the SNP you searched for is A or T on the little pie charts?"

Look at the key on the left of the series of pie charts. The "T" is blue. The "A" is red. :-)

[Brandon Berg]

If one assumes that some sort of evolutionary pressures favored higher intelligence in Europe and Northern Asia, but not in Africa...

Don't forget that American blacks are the product not just of natural selection in Africa, but also of human-directed breeding under slavery. It's not clear what kind of effect that would have on intelligence. The capture of slaves in Africa and the Middle Passage may also have exerted significant selection effects.

I've found that lefties tend to be more open to the possibility of biological differences between the races if the differences can be blamed on whites.

[Paavo Nurmi]

There are plenty of things that just about every non-retarded adult knows to be true, but which you still Don't Say In Public for fear of censure (or worse). Among these:
(1) There are innate differences in average intelligence between racial groups.
(2) The Abrahamic God does not exist, any more than does Zeus or Odin.
(3) Men are more rational than women, and women are more emotional than men.

There are others, but there are probably the Big Three.

[Marc (a.k.a. I ::heart:: heresy)]

What we need to do is come up with a definitive list of all polymorphisms that have been found to date that are associated with intelligence, then plug them in to the haplomap, and calculate their cumulative effect across the races a la SFG.

I'll do some more searching for such polymorphisms once I get to the office. God knows this is more fun than the crap I do. :-)

I guess I'll have to teach myself this new technology, unless someone steps up to bat and posts the definitive blog post first

Don't despair, HS. I taught myself the new technology in a little more than an hour, and I'm an English major. An English major...