Human biodiversity denialism in the NY Times

A reader pointed out a human biodiversity denialism editorial in today’s NY Times, attempting to debunk the well established fact that there are intelligence differences between the races.

As normal with these types of articles, it is mostly an attempt to confuse rather than enlighten (similar to the tactics used by a defense attorney who knows his client is guilty, but who hopes to confuse the jury and get an acquittal), and any mysteries in the area are seen as proof that, by some strange feature of evolution (perhaps Intelligent Design), the races evolved to be exactly equal in intelligence.

The argument I can best counter-debunk is:

During World War II, both black and white American soldiers fathered children with German women. Thus some of these children had 100 percent European heritage and some had substantial African heritage. Tested in later childhood, the German children of the white fathers were found to have an average I.Q. of 97, and those of the black fathers had an average of 96.5, a trivial difference.

Because the army rejected enlistees with too low of an IQ, the average black IQ in the military was 89 and not 85 (writing from memory with respect to some comments by Arthur Jensen), and also a quarter of the “African” soldiers were actually French North Africans who would be Arabic and have an average expected IQ in the low 90s. If we suppose the average IQ in that sample was 90, and the average white German woman had an IQ of 100, using simple arithmetic one would expect the average IQ of their babies to be 95. Thus the mystery is why the measured score was 1.5 points higher. Hybrid vigor, perhaps? A separate mystery is why the offspring of white soldiers was so low. The sample size of white soldiers in that study was a lot smaller. It could have just been error resulting from a small sample size.

Because the IQs of the mothers were never measured, and because there was no attempt to test the IQ of more white children, and because there were no follow-up tests when the children were adults, there isn’t really that much to get out of this. But the liberal reaction is “Ah ha! This proves the human biodiversity viewpoint is racist and we don’t need to research this any further.” The reaction of a scientist is sadness that the study is too limited to tell us anything useful and that the data is unavailable for independent analysis.

See Tommy's comment, below for some excellent thoughts on this study.

Comments

[dearieme]

"by some strange feature of evolution (perhaps Intelligent Design)": a palpable hit, sir.

[Marc]

This was a disappointing article. It's well established that environmental factors diminsh with age, yet all the studies they cite showing improved environments leading to improved IQs are confined to children.

Anyone have a link to the Elsie Moore study they reference?

[Half Sigma]

In the Elsie Moore study, there were only 46 children, 23 in white families and 23 in black families. IQs were measured between the ages of 7 and 10.

IQ tests given to young children are more heavily influenced by coaching because they test a narrower range of cognitive abilities than adult-level tests.

[APH]

In fact, we know that the I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped to 9.5 points from 15 points in the last 30 years — a period that was more favorable for blacks in many ways than the preceding era.

That's a curiously selective timeframe because it's been established that blacks made slight gains on their SAT scores from the mid 70s until 1988- at which point progress stopped completely. So for the past 20 years, there has been basically no improvement on the SAT - which for all practical purposes the single most important test a student will take in their life.

[tommy]

During World War II, both black and white American soldiers fathered children with German women. Thus some of these children had 100 percent European heritage and some had substantial African heritage. Tested in later childhood, the German children of the white fathers were found to have an average I.Q. of 97, and those of the black fathers had an average of 96.5, a trivial difference.

I recently wrote an email to Sailer on this study. I'll publish some of my theories and Steve had another of his own. Since I haven't asked to publish his email, I'm not going to disclose it.

Flynn continues to make his case relying heavily upon the Eyferth study. His argument seems to be that since both whites and blacks would have to take intelligence tests, then both white and black recruits would be smarter than non-recruits of each race. Intelligence tests would narrow the racial gap but not close it entirely and yet both black and white illegitimate children of GIs stationed in Germany in 1950s have the same average intelligence. I think Flynn is a good fellow, but I see some problems:

1. Smarter whites may be (or at least might have been back in the 1950s) less likely to join the military. The military didn't offer the kind of educational incentives it does today. This would narrow IQ scores between races further. Also, the parents of smarter blacks might have seen the military as a more practical alternative to pursuing an education during that time.

2. It might be that selection for IQ within the military is important but ignored. In addition to passing intelligence tests to get into the military, eligibility for certain occupations is dependent on IQ. You must have a higher IQ to become an intelligence interrogator or a member of special operations unit than to become a regular infantryman, cook, or supply clerk. There may even be measurable differences in intelligence between soldiers in more and less accomplished infantry units. I would imagine that the choice of MOS and the unequal distribution of those occupations among different bases will tend to equalize IQ scores among different races at each locale beyond that achieved by entrance tests. It is similar to the way you would find a more narrow range of IQs among engineering majors than among all students admitted to a certain university. To the extent that personnel of different military specialties tend to be stationed at different bases, IQ scores for GIs of different races at particular bases might be more equal than predicted from overall intelligence scores among all GIs.

3. The behavior of having illegitimate children is probably highly correlated with IQ. In response to the observation that illegtimate children of black and white GIs had the same mean IQs according to the Eyferth study, John Ray has argued that German women might have been less likely to select less intelligent blacks. Alternatively, I would guess that less intelligent soldiers of either race were more likely to impregnate local women.

In any event, the Eyferth study strikes me as very thin evidence on which to make a case for a reduction in the IQ gap between blacks and whites due to all the selective forces involved:

1) There would be an initial narrowing of the intelligence gap between two populations due to entrance-level intelligence testing. This would narrow the gap considerably.

2) There is more narrowing of scores due to the racial background of children being studied. We are comparing white children and half-white children. Ignoring all other pressures, that would cut the measurable gap in half.

3) There may be more narrowing than entrance scores would predict due to more intelligent whites forgoing careers in the military. That might have been less of an option for blacks, even blacks bright enough to pursue higher education, back in the 1950s. African-American parents might have pushed their children to pursue careers they considered more practical when segregation was still in force in a large section of the country.

4) You might have had the kind of geographical/occupational narrowing of IQ I mentioned above.

5) Having illegitimate children is a behavior likely to be dependent on intelligence.

Sailer did remark that it was interesting no one has tried to duplicate this study in over forty years.

[SFG]

I'll buy 1 through 4, but smart people have more illegitimate kids? I thought HS showed smart people had less sex or something.

[DML]

When you start stringing together lines like "human biodiversity denialism", it's a sure sign that your stance is (at least in part) bullshit. Or maybe you're getting an early start on lawyer-speak. :)

I've no doubt that much of the NYT's study is bullshit though. But then again, we've already demonstrated there's tons of bullshit in the studies you've pointed out too. Perhaps someday we're figure out some sort of truth.

[tommy]

I'll buy 1 through 4, but smart people have more illegitimate kids? I thought HS showed smart people had less sex or something.

No, I meant dumb people have more illegitimate kids. Perhaps I should have said that the behavior of having illegitimate kids is dependent on lack of intelligence.

[tommy]

When you start stringing together lines like "human biodiversity denialism", it's a sure sign that your stance is (at least in part) bullshit. Or maybe you're getting an early start on lawyer-speak. :)

When you start complaining about silly nonsense like how HS is trying to describe what the NYT is doing, it is a sure sign you don't have much to say. At least, we can hope. ;-)

[Rob]

The military grade and high schools would be a great place to look into the bw gap. They have lots of students, virtually no true poverty, test scores for most of the parents, probably less social diversity than anywhere else.

What do we see there? Audacious Epigone had a post or two about DOD schools.

And HS, you are ignoring regression to the mean. White parents with 115 IQs will have children averaging at 107. Black parents at 115 would have children averaging at 100. For the bw gap to be 100% genetic and half black children have the same IQ as all-white children, the black fathers would have to have considerably higher IQs than the white fathers.

[APH]

FYI I saw this article in the New Jersey section of the NY Times today, in print - not sure where it appeared elsewhere:

In Gaps at School, Weighing Family Life

[DML]

tommy says:

"When you start complaining about silly nonsense like how HS is trying to describe what the NYT is doing, it is a sure sign you don't have much to say."

I won't deny that. :) But what else needs to be said? We've got our own inherent prejudices for our arguments, and we link to scientific studies "proving" them. When debating against counter-arguments with their own supporting scientific studies, we look for technical flaws to discredit those. And the circle continues again. I'm sure you understand how the game is played around here by now. :)

[Rob]

I'd like to point out another error in the editorial. It has often been noted that the performance differential between smarter and less smart people is more pronounced in more difficult tasks.

The study the author cites discussing white and black performance being equal on tasks that blacks and whites are equally familiar with is probably just looking at tasks with lower g-loadings.

[Lancaster]

An interesting cinematic illustration can be found in the movie Sayonara. The movie takes place in Japan during the late years of the Occupation and the early years of the Korean War. Red Buttons plays an enlisted man with a Japanese girlfriend. Marlon Brando (with a southern accent you could cut with a knife, making clear the underlying message of the movie) plays his CO. The movie begins with Brando lecturing Buttons on the "evils" of miscegenation. "Anti-fraternization" was military policy at the time, and it was up to the COs and NCOs to enforce it. By the end of the movie, Brando has done a one-eighty and taken a Japanese wife, to the shock and surprise of everybody. Three points: 1) this was, as the movie depicts, mostly a "problem" with enlisted men; 2) Brando's character is way higher social class than Buttons' character; 3) Brando's girlfriend is way higher social class than Buttons' girlfriend.

[turkey]

I'm kinda irritated that Saletan raised the GI war baby study explicitly and mentioned the selection effect, yet these debunker articles, explicitly written to minimize Saletan, raise the same thing again without any modification.

[På]

Further support for involvement of Reelin gene variation in working memory performance.

Shortage of true positive results in gene identification for mental disorders has increased interest towards quantitative traits, which provide more power in analysis and may thus help in the susceptibility gene search.
We have demonstrated replication of schizophrenia (SZ) linkage to chromosome 7q21-32 in 352 Finnish families (n=1626).
A regional Reelin (RELN) gene on 7q22, encoding glycoprotein involved in neuronal migration regulation during brain development, and contributing to
synapse remodelling, crucial for cognitive abilities, showed robust association with an intragenic microsatellite marker in a subsample of 186 neuropsychologically tested families (n=618) to traits measuring visual (p=.003) and verbal (p=.000006) working memory, memory (p=.002),and executive functioning (p=.002). Also animal studies have supported the role of RELN variation in cognitive processes.
We utilized an independent Finnish sample of neuropsychologically tested 67 SZ
patients and 121 healthy controls, genotyped with Illumina 317K SNP array as part of the SGENE consortium, and analyzed 105 RELN intragenic SNPs. Among patients, multiple SNPs associated to verbal attention (p=.006) and working memory (p=.005), learning (p=.001), and memory (p=.006). Among controls, multiple SNPs associated to verbal attention (p=.002), visual attention (p=.00003) and working memory (p=.000003), memory (p=.002), and processing speed (p=.0007). The strongest signals emerged from the high LD region where the previously associated microsatellite is located. Our results provide further evidence for involvement of RELN variation in cognitive functions.

[SonOfSilver]

How do gene-huggers explain the latest GCSE results in the UK? For those who haven't heard, black students have nearly closed the gap with white students (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2007_0223), despite the still considerable disadvantages blacks suffer in terms of education, housing, career opportunities, and family background. And the improvement shows no signs of slowing down! Just think how well the black students will perform when (or if) they're given the chance to enjoy the same enriched environment as the whites.

[Rob]

Pa, which SNPs were associated with higher or lower IQ?

I'm not sure Turkheimer managed to demonstrate what he wanted to. I can think of at least one reason why heritability of IQ in black slums would be low. Having been less selected for IQ, blacks have lower frequencies of alleles that boost IQ, so there is less genetic variation contributing to IQ. That means environment will account for more of the variation.

[Geremiah]

HS, I'd have expected you to pick apart this article rather than shrugging it off. Will you humor a guy who hasn't made up his mind about this issue?

My main reading on this subject is the Bell Curve, which has some mix of solid analysis and total politicized BS; I've never seen an intelligent defense of the liberal point of view, but there are things in this article that seem to me they might be referring to one. Here they are:

"it turns out that skin color and 'negroidness' of features — both measures of the degree of a black person’s European ancestry — are only weakly associated with I.Q. (even though we might well expect a moderately high association due to the social advantages of such features)." This kinda sounds like BS with the way he hedges about social advantages, but do you know what study he's talking about and whether the relationship is as strong as would be predicted by a 1-Z difference?

"The blood group assays show no association between degree of European heritage and I.Q. Similarly, the blood groups most closely associated with high intellectual performance among blacks are no more European in origin than other blood groups." Same question

"for instance, the black children had been adopted at a substantially later age than the mixed-race children, and later age at adoption is associated with lower I.Q."

I don't remember seeing this in other accounts I've read of the Minnesota study (I think I read the study itself too at some point & don't remember this). Is this true? How much later were the blacks adopted?

My final question is about the Elsie Moore study. I have no idea what your response to it is supposed to mean. 7-10 is old enough that a difference should be reflected. For 23 kids whose "true" IQ is -1Z to test at 0Z is a ~5Z event, is it not? I have no clue WTF your point is in bringing up "coaching" (you think adoptive parents coach their children)?

Personally I've never felt there's much out there to distinguish the "blacks have inferior [pre-age-5] early child care" hypothesis from "blacks have genetically inferior intelligence" one (or determine the relative sizes of the effects). The evidence I know of is the Minnesota study and the failure of preschool programs to cause sustained changes in IQ (though who knows how good preschool is at substituting for parenthood?) It's possible that this article is a stupidly slanted presentation of everything (in fact, I would probably bet at even odds that it is), but if what it says is true it would certainly be enough to make me question just how well-established the case for a *major* genetic difference is. I hope you're interested in responding to someone who honestly doesn't know where he stands yet, and not just to adoring fans.

[Bill]

I like the NFL because it’s honest. The teams have a set amount of money to spend and their job is to win games. There are affirmative action initiatives in the coaching and referee ranks, and maybe in the quarterback ranks, but beyond that, it is a competition based on meritocracy.

My favorite team is the Green Bay Packers and since I now live in New England, I get to root for the Patriots too. It’s a good year for me. My two teams have the best records in the league.

They’ve also got something else in common, all white offensive lines. This is consistent with the human biodiversity argument. Defensive linemen act relatively independently, using strength and agility in an effort to get to the quarterback. Physical skills are the most important skills for defensive linemen. Both teams’ defensive linemen are largely dark-skinned.

But offensive lines need to work as a group to open running lanes, and protect the quarterback. Their plays are planned in advance and need to be executed with discipline to be most effective. Good planning and execution require intelligence. The Packers and Patriots are the first two teams to clinch their divisions this year. New England is beating Pittsburgh 31-13.

[Gil]

Would H.S. be surprised if a I.Q. survey was done on large group of only white people and there still was a bell-shaped curve?

[tommy]

How do gene-huggers explain the latest GCSE results in the UK? For those who haven't heard, black students have nearly closed the gap with white students

Lets look at what your article actually says:

Published today, the Statistical First Release National Curriculum Assessment, GCSE and equivalent attainment and Post- 16 attainment by pupil characteristics, in England, 2006/07 shows the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more A* to C grades at GCSE equivalent and a comparison with 2006 figures is given below:

Problem 1. This study treats every grade from A* to C as equal. (This is typical of education establishment obscurantism.) A black Caribbean student getting five Cs is treated as doing as well as a white student getting five A*. Hmmm....

And let us see here:

• Black African: up 4.6 percentage points to 55.6 per cent

• Black Caribbean: up 4.2 percentage points to 49.1 per cent

• Bangladeshi : up 1.8 percentage points to 58.4 per cent

• Pakistani : up 1.6 percentage points to 53.0 per cent

• White : up 2.0 percentage points to 59.5 per cent

• All pupils in maintained schools up : up 2.0 percentage points to 59.3 per cent

If all pupils are moving up within that broad range, then there is a good chance the curriculum is just getting easier. This could all easily be a product of the dumbing down of the education system in Britain. I find that explanation as plausible as the claim that blacks are getting smarter.

[beowulf]

Interesting study because, by definition, any child whose American father married his German mother was excluded from the survey. Does anyone doubt that GIs who had the foresight to marry their fraulein before knocking them up had higher IQs than GIs who
didn't?

Also, let's not forget-- apparently, intelligence is passed via the X chromsome. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/genderdiff.htm

Daughters can inherit the intelligence of either parent, but sons can only inherit the X chromosome from their (in this case) German mothers.

[tommy]

Interesting study because, by definition, any child whose American father married his German mother was excluded from the survey. Does anyone doubt that GIs who had the foresight to marry their fraulein before knocking them up had higher IQs than GIs who
didn't?

This is getting close to the point Sailer made in his email.

[tommy]

I really don't think Steve will mind if I just post his response since it doesn't involve anything very personal (sorry if I'm wrong, Steve), so here it goes:

Maybe smart blacks who knocked up German girlfiends left them behind in Germany while smart whites brought them home to America as warbrides? That would be fairly rational, humane behavior for both groups -- the blacks would see that they would be exposing their girlfriends to a lot of grief to bring them back to 1950s America, but the whites would view it as good for their girlfriends. My mom's bridge group was largely composed of nice German ladies who had come to America in the 1950s with American soldier husbands.

Anyway, you might think somebody would try to replicate this famous study in the last 46 years.

[Marc]

Problem 1. This study treats every grade from A* to C as equal. (This is typical of education establishment obscurantism.) A black Caribbean student getting five Cs is treated as doing as well as a white student getting five A*. Hmmm....

Man, I read that study at least twice and didn't even catch that. But you're right. And I can't seem to find any further breakdown of the scores in the press release. Hmm.

[Marc]

Geremiah,

I can respond to some of your questions as follows:

"for instance, the black children had been adopted at a substantially later age than the mixed-race children, and later age at adoption is associated with lower I.Q.

I don't remember seeing this in other accounts I've read of the Minnesota study (I think I read the study itself too at some point & don't remember this). Is this true? How much later were the blacks adopted?"

According to the G Factor's review of the literature on page 473:

"The average age at adoption was 32 months for black-black adoptees, 9 months for the black-white adoptees, and 19 months for the white-white adoptees." So it would seem that the black children were oldest when adopted, followed by the white children and then the interracial children.

However, from page 477:

"The authors of the Minnesota Study suggest the difference in age of adoption... ...as a possible cause of the lower IQ of the black group... A large scale study specifically addressed to the effect of early versus late age of adoption on children's later IQ did find that infants who were adopted before on year of age had significantly higher IQs at age four years that children adopted after one year of age, but this difference disappeared when the children were retested at school age."

Jensen takes apart the blood group/phenotype argument on page 480:

"According to genetic principles, the alleles of a particular racial origin would become increasingly disassociated from one another in each subsequent generation. The genetic result of this disassociation, which is due to the phenomena known as crossing over, and independent segregation of alleles, is that any allele that shows different frequencies in the ancestral racial groups becomes increasinly less predictive of other such alleles in each subsequent generation of the racially hybridized population."

[Peter]

Published today, the Statistical First Release National Curriculum Assessment, GCSE and equivalent attainment and Post- 16 attainment by pupil characteristics, in England, 2006/07 shows the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more A* to C grades at GCSE equivalent and a comparison with 2006 figures is given below ....

• Black African: up 4.6 percentage points to 55.6 per cent

• Black Caribbean: up 4.2 percentage points to 49.1 per cent

• Bangladeshi : up 1.8 percentage points to 58.4 per cent

• Pakistani : up 1.6 percentage points to 53.0 per cent

• White : up 2.0 percentage points to 59.5 per cent

Something odd popped right out at me when I saw these figures on Gene Expression a couple of weeks ago. Note how there's a significant gap between Pakistani and Bangladeshi students despite the fact that they're demographically and economically quite similar. After I pointed this out in a comment, the only possible explanation given was that the Pakistanis tend to live in more or less single-ethnic communities in northern England while many Bangladeshi live in cosmopolitan London, and even that was more or less a guess.

geremiah, thanks for your comment and marc, thanks for your response to his comment. I had pretty much the same reaction geremiah did to Nesbitt's column. I knew about the Minnesota adoption study and the German 1961 study on GI's children, but I didn't know about other things Nesbitt mentioned, which seemed impressive. For example, he wrote:

If European intelligence genes are superior, then blacks who have relatively more European genes ought to have higher I.Q.’s than those who have more African genes. But it turns out that skin color and “negroidness” of features — both measures of the degree of a black person’s European ancestry — are only weakly associated with I.Q. (even though we might well expect a moderately high association due to the social advantages of such features).

What about that? The Minnesota adoption evidence seems to point the other way, but what evidence does Nesbitt have in mind when he writes this?

If European genes conferred an advantage, we would expect that the smartest blacks would have substantial European heritage. But when a group of investigators sought out the very brightest black children in the Chicago school system and asked them about the race of their parents and grandparents, these children were found to have no greater degree of European ancestry than blacks in the population at large.

Evidently this study predated DNA analysis. But can anyone tell me more about it?

Joseph Fagan of Case Western Reserve University and Cynthia Holland of Cuyahoga Community College tested blacks and whites on their knowledge of, and their ability to learn and reason with, words and concepts. The whites had substantially more knowledge of the various words and concepts, but when participants were tested on their ability to learn new words, either from dictionary definitions or by learning their meaning in context, the blacks did just as well as the whites.

Has anyone read this study?

[k]

Why are people making a big deal out of this study when there are millions of other bits of data which prove true state of affairs?

[SonOfSilver]

For those who want to look at Nisbett's evidence in more detail, see the working paper on his website:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/racegen.pdf

Nisbett interestingly points out that when the Moors invaded Europe, they speculated that whites were congenitally inferior to blacks, not the opposite.

He goes on to summarize several IQ studies, all of them inconsistent with a significant white advantage except for one -- the Scarr and Weinberg adoption study (which Nisbett notes was flawed in 5 different ways, and even the authors themselves cautioned against any conclusion at all with respect to the role of heredity).

But all of the other evidence supports a zero or near-zero genetic contribution to the gap -- or even a slight black advantage: Tizard and colleagues showed that when black and white infants were reared in the same enriched environment, white children ended up with IQs of 103, black children had IQs of 108, and children of mixed race had IQs of 106. Witty and Jenkins showed that the highest-IQ black children in Chicago had slightly _less_ European ancestry than is found in the American black population on average.

As might be expected, advocates of the genetic hypothesis focus on the single study (Scarr & Weinberg) that supports what they already believe. Nisbett notes that they would have to invent the equivalent of Ptolemaic "epicycles" to explain away all the negative evidence.

[Rob]

I recall a gnxp discussion of the Tizard study: he had an ax to grind, and refused to share his data.

Did the moors think whites were dimmer than black africans, or dimmer than moors?

[John Smith]

Son of Silver,

And yet the IQ gap persists at all economic levels and among the elite in Africa?

The moors were arabs, who had almost the same genetic characteristics of italians and spanish.

[SonOfSilver]

Rob, it would be easy to cast doubt on any one piece of evidence by talking about axes to grind, bad sampling, bad controls, etc. But all the evidence together? When you have a stack of studies finding no significant genetic contribution to the B/W IQ gap, wouldn't the simpler and thus more likely explanation be that whites have no genetic advantage? The genetic hypothesis requires dismissing a hill of research; the environmental hypothesis is at odds with only one study which is already known to be seriously flawed in multiple ways.

[SonOfSilver]

John Smith, the Moors that ruled parts of Europe were described as "black" in many medieval European quotes, which are pretty easy to find using a Google search.

SonOfSilver

The genetic hypothesis requires dismissing a hill of research; the environmental hypothesis is at odds with only one study which is already known to be seriously flawed in multiple ways.

That doesn't sound like a very complete description of existing research.

John Smith, the Moors that ruled parts of Europe were described as "black" in many medieval European quotes, which are pretty easy to find using a Google search.

And Othello is so described by Shakespeare. But what do you think a Berber would look like to someone who had only seen white people?

[tommy]

Rob, it would be easy to cast doubt on any one piece of evidence by talking about axes to grind, bad sampling, bad controls, etc. But all the evidence together? When you have a stack of studies finding no significant genetic contribution to the B/W IQ gap, wouldn't the simpler and thus more likely explanation be that whites have no genetic advantage?

No, a lack of evidence or, alternatively, the reliance upon false arguments and intentionally obscured research like the type you chose to cite previously in opposition to us "gene-huggers" is precisely what characterizes environmentalist theories. The fact that the environmentalists haven't made a case, let alone a compelling one, hasn't stopped them from wasting countless billions of dollars in pursuit of failed social policy based upon the unproven premises they hold so dear. Pure environmentalists have as much a duty to prove their arguments as those who propose a mixed genetic/environmental approach to intelligence. They haven't even tried - not honestly, in any case.

The abundance of the available evidence suggests that a genetic basis for racial disparities in intelligence is more viable than one of the many-headed hydras of causality to which environmentalists resort in explaining away flaws in their principal arguments.

[tommy]

Nisbett starts out with an obvious lie right from the get go:

Yet by the last quarter of the twentieth century Jews and many of the other European groups initially found wanting in intelligence had higher average IQ scores and higher average incomes than northern Europeans in the United States.

How many times does the claim of low Jewish IQ scores early in the 20th century have to be debunked? How many?

Studies relating darkness of skin color and IQ are easy to do and many have been reported over the years. This literature consistently shows that the correlation of IQ with skin color in the black population is quite low. Even Audrey Shuey (1966), one of the most vehement supporters of the view that the B/W IQ gap is genetic in origin, reached the conclusion that IQ is only weakly associated with skin color. Typical correlations are in the range of .15 (and are even less with degree to which facial features are rated as "Negroid"). Even if we ignore the advantages that might accrue to "blacks" with light skin, a correlation of 0.15 does not suggest that European ancestry exerts a strong genetic influence on IQ. On the other hand, many of the studies reviewed by Shuey had small samples and dubious sampling procedures, and moreover the .15 estimate could be low due to error of measurement. Both skin color and IQ are measured with high reliability, but a major problem with these studies is that while skin color may seem to be a straightforward indicator of degree of European ancestry, it is not. Skin color varies substantially in Sub-Saharan African populations. As a result, some Africans have relatively light skin for reasons that have nothing to do with European ancestry. A strong test of the "European ancestry" hypothesis therefore requires a more reliable indicator.

Boy, that was self-refuting. In other words, lighter skin color among blacks isn't a guarantee of white admixture. Given that white genes for skin color might have passed into the black population long ago, it isn't even a guarantee of much significant white admixture even when it is attributable to European genes. So this proves what exactly about the black-white IQ gap? That's right, folks: nothing.

His blood-group argument is equally irrelevant for similar reasons.

Here, lets play "Spot the Fallacy."

A third approach to estimating blacks' white ancestry is to ask them. Imagine a 15 point B/W IQ difference that is fully genetic in origin. Then think of two groups of blacks: one has only African genes and one has 30 percent European genes. According to the pure genetic model, the first group would be expected to have an IQ 4.5 points lower than the second. If we singled out everyone who had an extremely high IQ -- say of 140 -- we would expect to find several times as many individuals in the group with 30 percent European genes as in the pure-African gene group.

What could possibly be wrong with this assumption? What might be wrong with the assumption that whites who impregnated blacks collectively represented the statistical average of intelligence among whites?

Round II of "Spot the Fallacy."

A study by Witty and Jenkins (1934) [Environmentalists like those really archaic studies, don't they?] identified 63 children in a sample of black Chicago schoolchildren with IQs of 125 or above and 28 with IQs of 140 or above. On the basis of their self reports about ancestry, the investigators classified the children into several categories of Europeanness. The children with IQs of 125 or above, as well as those with IQs of 140 or above, had slightly less European ancestry than the best estimate for the American black population at the time.

Emphasis mine.

He then refers to the Eyferth study and the adoption studies with which everyone here should be familiar with. In doing so, he proceeds to ignore the severe flaws in environmentalist interpretations of such studies.

Advocates of the genetic hypothesis can always invent the equivalent of Ptolemaic "epicycles" to explain these results. But there would have to be a good many such convolutions to make much headway.

Nisbett isn't only a complete buffoon. He is also quite the comedian, isn't he?

[Marc]

John Smith, the Moors that ruled parts of Europe were described as "black" in many medieval European quotes, which are pretty easy to find using a Google search.

Son of Silver,

Caucasians (i.e. people from the Caucasus mountains) are described derogatively as "black" in Russia. They are darker than most Russians, but they would certainly be considered white in America.

[Marc]

John Smith, the Moors that ruled parts of Europe were described as "black" in many medieval European quotes, which are pretty easy to find using a Google search.

Son of Silver,

Caucasians (i.e. people from the Caucasus mountains) are described derogatively as "black" in Russia. They are darker than most Russians, but they would certainly be considered white in America.

[John Smith]

Son of Silver,

The disparity in genetics between Arabs and SS Africans is a result of the huge barrier the Sahara posed to genetic mixing. If the Moors really were SS Africans, then there would be many Europeans with much darker shades than they have now.

African kids with IQs of 140 in a sample of black schoolchildren? Where are these kids? Why aren't they the mouthpieces for the environmental left?

[JQ Public]

Just to set the record straight, it was an op-ed, not an editorial. I won't take that mistake as a sign of low IQ, though. :-)

On to larger point: I don't get the obsession on this blog with this topic. Let's suppose that after all of the evidence is in (and it isn't), it's proved that blacks are genetically predisposed to a lower IQ than whites. Well, then what? Return to segregation? Genetic engineering? Sterilization? Nuke Africa? There is no practical endgame to this argument. There might be one in theory, but in reality you can't divorce this argument from its potential consequences.
But that's just my opinion. What I'd really like to know is what you hope to gain from all this.

[Tony]

Nisbett correctly notes that evidence of heritability between individuals in a group can not be automatically taken as evidence of heritability between groups if the environments that sustain the two groups are different. It is important to underscore this. The massive evidence of heritability that we have is largely monoracial. When you compare identical twins, you are comparing children of the same race (obviously). When you compare fraternal twins, you are comparing children of the same race (obviously). When you are comparing non-twin siblings, you are comparing children of the same race (by-and-large).

Here is an illustration of how evidence of heritability between individuals within a group is not automatically evidence of heritability between groups if the environments that sustain the two groups are different:

Assume we have a bunch of seeds. All the seeds are clones of each other. Plant half of those seeds in nutrient rich soil (call the soil "North America"). Plant the other half of the seeds in nutrient poor soil (call the soil "Africa"). The seeds stimulated by the nutrient rich soil grow tall. The seeds stimulated by the nutrient poor soil grow short. All of the height difference between the two groups is environmental even while all of the hight difference between individual plants is genetic.

Does the Parable-of-the-Cloned-Seeds-in-Different-Soils describe what we see between whites and blacks in America? Many people would argue that is does. Nesbitt does. "[The] difference has environmental, not genetic, causes," he says. Allow me to summarize and number his arguments.

1. The test gap is closing.

2. Gradations of black-white racial admixture do not match gradations of IQ. (The Audrey Shuey meta-analysis)

3. Black-white biracial children raised by white mothers have the same average IQ. (The Eyferth study).

Please correct the characterization of the arguments if you think they are mischaracterized here.

Note well that each one of these lines of evidence stands on its own. The failure of any one line of evidence leaves the others supporting the conclusion that the difference in average IQs between whites and blacks is environmental, not genetic.

[Tony]

COMMENTARY ON THE TEST GAP LINE OF EVIDENCE.

An all-in-the-genes argument (or mostly-in-the-genes argument) predicts that no change (or very little change) in test results will follow from any additional equalization of environment. Your family is as tall as it is. Your neighbor's family is as tall as ~it~ is. If the difference is all in the genes, no additional equalization of circumstances on the kibbutz will change that. The all-in-the-environment argument (or mostly-in-the-environment argument) predicts that a large change (or sizable change) in test results will follow from equalization. Your family has its height. Your neighbor's family has ~its~ height. If the difference is all in the environment, equalization of circumstances on the plantation will change that.

Nisbett notes that the test gap is closing. This is consistent with an environmental explanation. What he neglects to tell us is that the gap is closing only among children. Among adults, the gap remains as big as ever (Jencks & Phillips1998 as quoted in Hart 2007).

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/08/narrowing-of-white-black-iq-gap.php

Heritability increases with age. Let me provide an analogy to explain how this works:

Imagine barrels in a liquid. Some barrels are low density (have higher native intelligence) and float high in the water (the environment) while others are high density (have lower native intelligence) and float lower. Mandatory compensatory schooling is like a hand that lifts the high density barrels up towards the low density barrel level. Remove the hand (graduate the kids from their schooling), and the heavy barrels resume their natural equilibrium.

Add an additional layer to the analogy.

If the gap between the racial groups is largely (if not entirely) due to environmental factors, education in America must be like separate tubs filled with different liquids and populated by different races -- a low density liquid (like pure water) for black kids; a high density liquid (like salt water) for white kids; and a very high density liquid (like mercury) for Asians. Before Brown v. Board, there was colorable grounds for this theory because education was largely segregated by race. After Brown, much less so. It is hard to argue convincingly that kids from different races who come from the same neighborhoods and sit in the same classrooms and learn the same lessons from the same teachers are floating in entirely different bath tubs.

"Furthermore, blacks whose parental income exceeded $70,000 a year (the highest of the four categories) have on average obtained lower SAT scores than whites whose parental income is less than $20,000 a year (the lowest of the four categories). These results6 appear to refute the notion that the low test scores of blacks are caused entirely — or even mostly — by their relative poverty."

Michael Hart "Understanding Human History" 2007 p. 108

http://www.wspublishers.com/uhh.pdf

[Tony]

COMMENTARY ON RACIAL ADMIXTURE

Nesbitt mishandles data from Audrey Shuey here. Here is Hart on Nesbitt mishandling Shuey:

"Richard Nesbitt [23], citing the data compiled by Audrey Shuey [24] claims that such studies show no significant positive correlation between lighter skin color and higher IQ. However, direct examination of Shuey’s data shows the contrary. Shuey examined studies made between 1913 and 1964 by 13 different researchers, each of whom tested black-white hybrids and attempted to determine if light skin color (or other evidence of Caucasoid ancestry) correlated with the results of IQ tests. Twelve of those studies (with a combined sample size of 6,520) showed a significant positive correlation between Caucasoid ancestry and IQ scores — a large correlation in seven of the studies — whereas only four small studies (with a combined sample size of 460) failed to do so.

Because the studies that Shuey tabulated used different criteria, and did not reach uniform results, one cannot say that they provide conclusive proof that blacks with a higher fraction of white ancestry are more intelligent, but that is certainly the conclusion they suggest. [25]

The best recent data is that collected and presented by Sandra Scarr and her associates in their review of the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study. That study found that — under conditions where environmental factors had been equalized to an unusual degree — black children and teenagers scored much lower than those of mixed-race, who in turn scored much lower than whites.[26] Furthermore, the results of that study show that the scores of mixed-race children and teenagers are roughly half-way between those of blacks and whites, which is consistent with the predictions of the strong hereditarian view."

[Tony]

COMMENTARY ON EYFERTH

Most of the commentary on this thread has been about Eyferth. Different degrees of restriction of the range (aka "enlistee sorting" -- for which we have evidence from Jensen in "The g Factor") and assortive mating (for which we don't have direct evidence -- in this case -- but can infer from a general pattern of mating in most cases) both produce testable predictions about parental IQ. Unfortunately that piece of the puzzle is missing from Eyferth. America still has a substantial presence in Germany. The Eyferth study could have been easily redone with better protocols at any point in the last 46 years (include information about parental IQs, do not include North Africans as "black"). That environmentalists, such as Flynn and Nesbitt, who have been touting Eyferth for years, have not done so is telling.

Note also that Nesbitt pokes holes in the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study in other venues. But the Eyferth study has even more serious flaws. This does not stop Nesbitt from promoting Eyferth.

...

In his book, "Understanding Human History", Michael Hart includes a section on the natural or nurtural sources of the B-W difference in IQ averages (Chapter 16 "Nature or Nurture?" pages 103 to 120)

Here is a summary, in Hart's own words, of the lines evidence for nature over nurture:

A) The magnitude of [the B-W difference in IQ averages] has changed very little in the eight decades since it was first observed.

B) The low average intelligence of blacks is a worldwide phenomenon
C) None of the environmental theories that have been suggested adequately explains [the B-W difference in IQ averages].

D) Even the best planned and most lavishly funded “early intervention” projects
have failed to bring the average IQs of adult blacks up to, or close to, the white level.

E) The differences between the environments of American blacks and whites have
not resulted in any black inferiority in physical skills.

F) Since genes have caused so many physical differences between the races, it is
implausible that they have not caused any mental differences.

G) Blacks, on average, have smaller brains than whites.

H) Most of sub-Saharan Africa was extremely primitive before it came into contact
with the West two centuries ago.

I) The low average intelligence of blacks is consistent with the paucity of blacks
in occupations that demand high cognitive skills, such as mathematics and physics.

J) The relative performance of blacks on different intelligence tests does not
depend on the cultural content of the test, but rather it is closely correlated with the
extent to which the test is “g-loaded.”

K) While environmentalists often attack the evidence that [the B-W difference in IQ averages] is due to genetic factors, they rarely offer any direct evidence of the alleged equality of black and white
native intelligence.

In the book, Hart goes into these lines of evidence in greater detail -- including chapter endnotes with citations of primary source material. The book is available for free online for a limited time:

http://understanding-human-history.blogspot.com/2007/11/free-book-courtesy-of-steve-sailer.html

Download your copy now before it's too late.

Note well that each one of these lines of evidence stands on its own. The failure of any one line of evidence leaves the others supporting the conclusion that the difference in average IQs between whites and blacks is genetic, not environmental.

Rushton and Jensen's paper "Thirty Years of Reasearch into Race Difference in Cognitive Ability" is also relevant here. And it's free.

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

[Rob]

JQ,

That is a really good question. The first step in solving a problem is recognizing it exists. The entirety of the left, check out the recent amptoons "discussion" of race and IQ.
(http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/12/10/political-positions-beyond-the-pale/
One of these days, I will NAIL inserting a hyperlink)is in denial.

A biological component to IQ is actually far more tractable than any social-environmental contribution. Eg, if blacks raised in white families did as well as whites raised in white families, what then? Should every white family adopt a few black children? Can you say white man's burden?

It is pretty clear to me that the failure of (nearly) every social program is driving the left crazy. They've started creating conspiracy theories: white privilege, institutional racism, bizarre epicycles that to say that the poorest white children have better environments than the highest income black children, and I don't know what else.

As to what the policy implications of the gap are, not being a liberal, I can't really say what bio-liberalism, or hbd liberalism would look like. Someone who can actually think like a liberal should give it a shot. I tried, and I just kept reaching conservative conclusions.

The stages of grief (for the blank slate)
* 1. Denial and Isolation.
* 2. Anger.
* 3. Bargaining.
* 4. Depression.
* 5. Acceptance.

The left is in 1-2. 3 will be a step forward.

[Tony]

Abortion (advocated by M. Sanger), sterilization (endorsed by O.W. Holmes, practiced by Sweden), genetic engineering (advocated by W. Saletan), drug legalization (advocated by T. Leary and K. Kesey), and race-mixing (advocated by A. Ziv) are all liberal "solutions" to human bio-diversity inequality.

It is also worth noting that compassion (aka "agreeableness") is heritable. Nobel Prize winner and arch-Leftist HJ Mueller (spent time as a political pilgrim in Soviet Russia before he became disillusioned) advocated selective breeding for compassion.

[Half Sigma]

"The differences between the environments of American blacks and whites have not resulted in any black inferiority in physical skills. "

That's one that I never thought of before. Poor nutrition and low self-esteem of black children certainly hasn't hurt their athletic abilities!

[Dragon Horse]

Being James Watson is part black did his black ancestor who "passed" lower his IQ I wonder?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/
science/article3022190.ece?Submitted=true

[APH]

I will expand upon Rob's very good response to JQ: The short answer, why this all matters, is because 1) it affects public policy at every level of government and 2) we live in a multi-racial society where there are plainly observable differences among subpopulations across racial and ethnic lines - Now if those differences show up in life expectancy, earnings, wealth accumulation, test scores or anything else - people, rightfully and expectedly, want to know why. It's either culture, genes, or "institutional" advantages or disadvantages that's responsible - or a combination. Getting to the truth is paramount - otherwise more (bad) policy will be generated and resentment between races may increase since demographic trends and your eyes reveal a more racially future ahead.

And if you want examples of policy issues that affect races differently and individuals on a direct level, here's just a handful: social security & retirement savings, immigration, health insurance or the lack thereof, the subprime mortgage crisis and access to credit, affirmative action, the criminal justice system, set-aside contracts and hiring quotas, access to scholarships, property values, obesity rates, STD rates -- I mean honestly, you could make a list of 1,000 issues where there are substantial differences between groups and where policy intersects. Exploring the genetic path is no less valid than the others just because it makes some people uncomfortable - If anything, it is the one possible "cause" that we can (someday) be most objective about because it is all stooped in science and impersonal, blameless things like thousands of years of evolutionary pressure.

[Calvin]

Faster maturation rates keep Black children ahead of White and Asian children until around the age of nine, from this age Eurasian children begin to catch up with Blacks and then overtake them in early adolescence. Egalitarian IQ studies are temporally contrived to exploit the higher IQ's of Blacks in childhood. The fact that Black children are more intelligent, or at least as intelligent, as Whites actually contradicts an environmental analysis of IQ.