That was 1984 and the consensus was coming mostly from the IQ testers, not all the experts are really relevant to the specific issue or should I say the solutions or conclusions you want to get.
Well, to be generous, that is just horse puckey, the survey did not include anthropologists or biologists, and few geneticists. Whoever did this survey is playing loose and fast with what an expert in the matter is, as it was in reality a grab bag of diverse fields that they surveyed.
This is using a similar tactic as the survey the global warming deniers did showing that 32000 experts do not see that humans are causing the current warming that is being observed:
Since 1984 which of the environmental arguments have survived? Sure, some of the statistical differences are due to environmental factors. But it seems increasingly difficult to deny that genetic variation plays a role.
Do you really think that members of the Behavioural Genetics Association, Cognitive Science Society & APA can’t be classed as experts in the field of intelligence testing & what contributes to individual differences? Or that they would be completely ignorant of the views from other disciplines?
In any case, the point is that you seem to consider your position represents some kind of consensus or majority view. It doesn’t and researchers are trying to gently prepare people to deal with research that might challenge views like your own.
As I said before, you do really believe that “Brains” from the Thunderbirds was a real scientist and an expert on everything. What they offer is their opinion on an issue related to IQ, but the survey included many more experts that are not experts on the specific matter.
Nowhere I have denied that there is diversity among populations, and once again it is an article that does not clearly demonstrates that you are correct about dividing humanity by races.
And still, the article from the magazine that is part from The Economist and Slate also report on how far in respect has “The Bell Curve” fallen, the point is that if there was even the **simulated **acceptance of the book that you are trying hard to demonstrate with out of context and incomplete cites, what is clear is that both in the USA and the world “the bell curve” is known, but mostly as an example in academia of what not to do. (I already linked before to a college textbook that shows this, and one has to take into account that that is what students training to be scientists in Anthropology and biology are using to learn about this issue)
Again, you will note that nobody denies that environmental variation explains part of the variation between individuals. And if you are particularly malnourished, or exposed to toxins in utero, the environmental influence (in depressing scores) will be significant. This isn’t news to researchers like Jensen or Linda Gottfredson.
The more you improve the environment the more variation is due to genetic factors. As a study a couple of months ago showed:
As usual, I will have to say that the article does not support what you get from it, for starters there are no values offered, and there was no mention of those genes being missing in specific populations or even races.
You made the comment that regarding intelligence genes are not as important as other factors. I was simply citing it as further evidence showing that genes are as, if not more, important. That kind of research continues to accumulate.
You’ll also see from my comment that I acknowledge that environmental factors are important too & can depress achievement (for instance exposure to toxins in utero). And that this isn’t news to researchers like Arthur Jensen or Linda Gottfredson.
The context is race, so I was referring to intelligence controlled by genes because of population or “race”. Trying to confuse others with your silly gotchas is getting tiresome. Everyone can notice that you are now beginning to sound more “reasonable” once you avoid dealing with the reality that you are still trying to defend the “Bell Curve”. “Race” or populations differences are not important for the latest research you are mentioning now.
You mean a couple of chapters in The Bell Curve. The rest of the book is about intelligence, how it tends to predict outcomes & society is becoming more statified according to how it is distributed.
In terms of that research, you have to remember that Jensen’s position is basically that individual differences are due to genetic & environmental variation. If you aggregate individuals into groups, then the group differences will also be due to environmental and genetic variation.
The real test would be to identify the relevant genes involved and see how they are distributed across groups.
I will have to say that even that generous interpretation of the book is not reflected in the latest “looking back” articles. Sucks, but you are really off base. Or attempting to avoid being branded a racist..
Far from presenting new evidence that The Bell Curve is not true, this article is boilerplate Bell Curve bashing. Steven J. Gould is praised. The Pioneer Fund is growled at. The word “racism” is used six times. The word “racist” appears once.
As I read through for a testable assertion, I encountered:
“The Black-White Test Score Gap, whose conclusion was summarized by Jencks in the forward: ‘Despite endless speculation, no one has found genetic evidence indicating that blacks have less intellectual ability than whites. Thus while it is clear that eliminating the test score gap would require enormous effort by both blacks and whites and would probably take more than one generation, we believe it can be done’.”
When I read a statement like this I wonder what genetic evidence would satisfy the person making the statement. I am confident that in the fairly near future genes for intelligence will be discovered.
However, there has been a generation since 1990. Since then the race gap in SAT scores between blacks and whites has actually increased.
The average white score in reading during 1990-91 was 518.
The average white score in reading during 2008-09 was 528.
There was an improvement in 10 points.
The average black score in reading during 1990-91 was 427.
The average black score in reading during 2008-09 was 429.
There was an improvement in 2 points.
The average white score in math during 1990-91 was 513.
The average white score in math during 2008-09 was 536.
There was an improvement in 23 points.
The average black score in math during 1990-91 was 419.
The average black score in math during 2008-09 was 426.
There was an improvement in 7 points.
every single non-African on the planet is descended from one or possibly two small bands of humans who made it on rafts and skins across the Red Sea at the narrows of the Bab el-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears, about 50,000 years ago…
Cavalli-Sforza’s “The History and Geography of Human Genes”, written with Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza (Princeton University Press, 1994), is still considered the best overview of genetic diversity in humans. Cavalli-Sforza demolished the idea of there being different species of human being. No more Homo afer, asiaticus, europaeus, americanus and monstrous. Race, says Cavalli-Sforza, has hardly any useful biological meaning at all.
This article does not provide proof, or even weak evidence that the concept of race is a social construct, and that “we are all the same under the skin.”
With no fossil evidence at the time, Charles Darwin speculated that human evolution began in Africa. He also had views about Negroes that would cause any contemporary speaking engagement of his to be picketed, and perhaps prevented by the enforcers of political correctness.
During the 50,000 years since a small number of humans left Africa, there have been about 2,000 generations. Any animal breeder will tell you that much can be accomplished with many fewer generations than that.
Cavalli-Sforza deliberately confuses the issue by conflating the concepts of species and race.
That’s gonna be awful hard if we don’t manage to define intelligence by then. I’ve never met a research scientist in psychology that was ever so deluded as to confuse a metric for the thing they’re trying to measure.
IMO, I’d probably invalidate the comparison just based on the selection bias for the populations taking the SAT. At the very least I’d want to compare distributions and not just means.
I think most of us will agree that an experimental scientist and a medical doctor is likely to be more intelligent than someone in a low wage job. It is already known that experimental scientists and medical doctors nearly always score higher on IQ tests than people in low wage jobs, and that they did when they were seven years old.
If genes are discovered that nearly always appear in the chromosomes of experimental scientists and physicians, but which rarely appear in unskilled workers, if these genes also correlate with high scores on mental aptitude tests, and finally if these genes, when discovered in infants, accurately predict high IQ scores at the age of seven, it will be difficult to argue that those genes are not intelligence genes.
Currently, there is no evidence for your strongly held belief. You want Nisbett, and the other members of academia to endorse your belief in the absence of evidence. Because you feel it so strongly, we can dispense with standards of evidence and scientific inquiry. After all, it’s so close you can almost taste it, right? Who needs actual evidence and scientific rigor?
The US is the worst possible place to make your case. Partly because black Americans have been treated so differently from other Americans for centuries, and consequently have very different cultural practices.
Primarily because the genes from various European populations and the genes from various, extremely diverse African populations have intermingled to create new populations with their own distinct characteristics. To make genetic arguments, you have to study these new populations on their own, without broad generic references to Africa. There are no generic Africans, no generic “blacks”. The categories you base your argument on simply don’t exist.
In order to pass the plausibility test, you have to go a step further, and present some sort of model by which genes for higher intelligence did not give their possessors a breeding advantage in Africa. It’s not as if high IQ Africans don’t exist.
The whole “female farming systems” argument doesn’t cut it. Partly because it just isn’t true for large sections of Africa. (The people who make these arguments haven’t done their research, and consequently make absurd, easily disproved claims about Africa.)
In addition, you fail to acknowledge that Europe outside of the Mediterranean was quite backwards until recently, with all of the problems currently faced by Africa. We can certainly characterize agriculture in many parts of Europe as “female farming systems” where men were constantly engaged in skirmishes.
None of your arguments withstand close scrutiny in light of what we already know about history, genetics, human development, and culture. You hope that some new piece of research will save your slowly sinking ship.
I posted some evidence in comment #511, but there is much more. Actually, there is no evidence for your strongly held belief that blacks and whites are genetically equivalent.
If the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination is responsible for low black test scores, why do American blacks tend to score better than blacks in Africa or Haiti?
Also, if being discriminated against two generations ago is responsible for the fact that black children tend to perform poorly in school now, why did the Holocaust not have a damaging effect on Jewish performance? I used to have a Jewish doctor who survived a Nazi death camp despite the fact that every member of his family and all of his Jewish friends were killed. Somehow he managed after that experience to go to medical school and start a practice. His son inherited his practice, and performs well.
When Vietnamese war refugees came to the United States the children had been raised under war time conditions, and in refugee camps. Nevertheless, they usually did better in school than whites, and far better than blacks.
My ship is not sinking at all. It will sink quickly if you can show me a country where blacks perform at white levels.
So after all that talk you could not come with evidence, that figures. As for the SATs there are already better explanations that an assumption that genetics are the main reason for them.
Again, no such thing as a generic “black”. Doesn’t exist. You have to address each population in its own right. Otherwise you can’t make genetics based arguments.
Also, unless you’re massively ignorant, you recognize that the experience of black Americans are significantly different from those of immigrants. African and West Indian immigrants do much better than black Americans too.
No German Jew or Vietnamese would trade places with a black American over the past 300 years. One experience is clearly worse than the others.