And somehow the U.S., Jamaican, and Nigerian teams have managed to keep this a secret?
OK, can you see after all the information that’s been cited and all the extra information about how evolution works has been given (see old “Iggy” posts) which seems to be far from common knowledge around here (people keep assuming “natural selection” is the only evolutionary mechanism), the fact that your comments don’t engage with any of it in a substantive way, lessons the credibility of your posts?
No. But why should that matter?
Big changes in cricket haven’t translated to great US success in the sport, either. If a country is not particularly interested in a sport, it’s not going to matter.
I’ll also note that, despite the fact you can run pretty much anywhere, the Nigerian Olympic team trains in the US.
So, again, that leads back to my proposed test. By including dozens of countries, you can begin to control for those kinds of things. Is there any good reason why my cross-country comparison shouldn’t be done? I’m not understanding the pushback. You can claim that a test is “good enough” but, in my line of work, “good enough” means cutting corners and getting sub-optimal answers.
Because no one country has any specialized knowledge compared with another (is perhaps better wording of what I intended to say)
Civil strife might have something to do with that…
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Look forward to seeing the results…
Similar to the way Russian and Canadian hockey coaches seem more successful than coachs from other countries?
The point is that there is a tremendous amount of specialized traing that goes on.
Why do you think times have increased so dramatically in the past few decades that there are now female sprinters beating the times put up by Jesse Owens.
For that matter, just being able to run 200 or 400 meters at a dead sprint takes a signifigant amount of training and, to a lesser extent, the same is true of the 100 meter dash.
Anyone who doesn’t believe this should try to run first 200 meters and then 400 meters at a dead sprint.
Once again, if you want to push a scientific hypothesis, you test it. You’re the one claiming there’s sufficient reason to believe in a genetic basis, so it’s on you to produce the valid evidence. You can’t merely assert based on minimal (or no) evidence. “Plausible” scenarios aren’t actual scientific evidence, by the way.
And once again, I’m not averse to a genetic explanation. But before I accept it, actual evidence is required. Not correlations and “just-so” stories.
We’re talking about the purest sprint, the 100. I know you want to cloudy the waters, but still…
And again, NO ONE has expressed the opinion that to compete at the elite level takes training. PLease stop this straw manning.
I think you’re implying there needs to be some standard of evidence that is really never employed in population genetics. We can’t test every athlete from every country and compare their genomes–we have to go by what data is practically available.
I think I’ve pointed to plenty of evidence–it just happens to be circumstantial (as any evidence would be in this case–even the results of your study). From my perspective, it’s as if you’re arguing OJ must be innocent because there’s not firm, unequivocal, double-blind studied evidence he’s a murderer. Technically true, but that he’s a murderer is the only reasonable explanation for the observed facts.
Combining the findings in genetics, what’s currently known about evolution (i.e., how “clusters” of alleles can be completely dominant and transmitted throughout a region), and the results of 50 years of races (tests), I think the circumstantial evidence in this case is as strong as the OJ case.
Offer one reasonable alternative hypothesis for what’s been found in the 10-second barrier question, and I’d change my mind.
How is that a “just-so” story or vague correlation?
My assertion a couple of pages back that training is the most important factor comes from my education in kinetics and sport psychology, but if you need a reference, the simplest one would probably be Outliers. This notion of needing around 10,000 hours of practice at something to be an expert has been around for a while, because I got my degree years before that book got published and it was commonly accepted by the faculty then.
Also, for some easy-to-find examples of the need for training and its importance, see here (warning - PDF), here and here.
Basically, I was a bit glib on the importance or relevance of genetics earlier, but only to illustrate my point. In a vacuum, with all things being equal, you would probably expect to see the athlete with the greater genetic advantage win (say, the protein for more fast-twitch muscles). However, all things are never equal. In fact, look at the history of sport in every category. Generally, the most successful athletes in every sport in every competition since sport has become an organized and dedicated endeavour (essentially, since the death of amateurism) have been the ones who have been the best trained, had the most money available, and the most resources dedicated to them.
So my point is that Jamaican or West Africans might be faster than everyone else (but likely only by a very small amount, like a half-second or so), but you will only be able to say that they win because of that if you can show that everything else is equal. And everything else most certainly isn’t equal. Sprinting can be taught, and is taught, and requires way more training than some seem to think, and it is that training, born of a combination of the availability of resources and the culture that makes that possible, that allows individuals with some talent to become great. Put that same level of culture and dedication and resources in Russia and watch the sprinting finalist start getting paler as they get the training. Genetics help, but training wins.
Also, as an aside, the 100m is the most glamourous sprint from a media and common culture point of view, but there are plenty in the sprinting world who consider the 200m to be the real test of speed. Look it up if you want to see some interesting points (I won’t link to anything here as that is an aside).
People have and you haven’t.
In terms of the 100 metres the evidence is so stark I’m astonished people waste time debating it. There is even physical evidence of differences which help to explain why people with west african ancestry dominate this event.
Sorry, but this is inaccurate. The belly button measurements they refer to in that article is indicative of torso-to-limb ratio, which does not map out onto race, but environment (people whose ancestors lived in tropical environments tend to have longer limbs and shorter torsos). Such environments are found not only in Africa, but Eurasia, Middle East, &c. So, of course, if you happen to test Africans whose ancestors DID happen to live in such regions, and whites whose ancestors DID NOT live in such regions, you get these results. Had they tested West Africans whose ancstors were from the steppes, or some Pygmy group, against Caucasians populations from the Middle East or southern Europe, or certain Asian peoples from South Asia, they of course would have gotten opposite results, and claimed whites/Asians had higher centers of gravity than blacks or West Africans (terms which they misleadingly interchange in the article). In short, the research is nearly worthless both because it is based on sloppy science (based on what I said above, one wonders how thorough they were in selecting their subjects), as well as the fact that the results are painstakingly obvious! Of course, if you select tropical populations (mistaknly labelled in this case as “black”) and compare them with non-tropical populations (mistakenly labelled “white”), then the tropical populations will be longer-limbed, their center of gravity higher, etc. Everyone knows that.
Pretty sad research, in my opinion.
The darker-skinned Africans are, roughly-speaking, the most heat-adapted populations on the planet. Kinky hair, lower body fat, longer limbs, and shorter torso are ALL heat adaptations, at least partially.
Speaking of, heat adaptations make them better runners in a general sense, as well. Granted, 10 seconds of sprinting doesn’t build up much heat, but it does make a difference in endurance running, at least slightly.
Saying Southern Europeans are as heat-adapted as sub-Saharan Africans is a little silly.
I wasn’t talking about heat adaptedness generally, only lanky physiques (which are particular adaptations to heat adaptedness). That being said, it is ridiculous to claim that Sub-Saharan Africans are more heat-adapted than anyone else IN THIS SENSE (lanky physiques), being that there are several Sub-Saharan African types (forest populations, for instance), which do not show prevalence of this body type, actually showing quite an opposite prevalence.
Given what I saw yesterday there will be one non-slave descendent in the 100m Final in three weeks.
Here’s what we do know:
- There are two possibilities for superior average performance between groups: Nature and nurture.
- Epigenetics is a bit of a stretch for the “nature” explanations, so it’s pretty much down to genes and nurture.
- Even though race, by definition, is a “social construct,” Self-identified Race/Ethnicity correlates surprisingly well to population origin for the majority of your genes. If your SIRE group is black, the majority of your gene pool is more likely than not to be closer to a sub-saharan mix than a european mix.
- There may be more intra-race genetic variation than between races, but you only need a given genetic trait to vary in order to achieve marked group differences. The Tall versus the Short may have a zillion intra-group variations but the thing that separates them out for that characteristic is just one gene set. Average performance difference between groups is dependent upon penetration of a handful of genes governing a particular characteristic and the amount of the general variation for all the other genes is irrelevant.
- No amount of nurturing has come close to eliminating average differences in SIRE groups. Somehow poorly coached, crappily cultured and environmentally handicapped black SIRE groups dominate the NBA despite the over-representation in the candidate pool by a factor of 4 for caucasion SIRE groups. Either droves of whites are abandoning their NBA dreams in favor of sales jobs, or they are culturally too lazy to work as hard on their basketball skillsets.
- The ONLY reason "it’s important to keep an open mind "and to keep pretending “we just don’t know…it’s hard to say where any genetic component comes from…not all the data is in…it’s a complex issue…”… for physical skillsets is that we don’t want there to be a genetically-based average performance difference for intellect-based skillsets. The latter has much more sensitive ramifications.
- The majority of high-performing 100 meter sprinters are going to come from black SIRE groups-- “social construct,” nurturing, and Creationists be damned.
OK…I admit #7 is a bet. Want to take the opposite bet? Or are you content to just keep blustering about how we just don’t know for sure if it’s genes or not that drive average performances? Sure; nurturing makes a huge difference for any given individual. But that nurturing is layered upon a maximum ability that is defined by genes. And your SIRE group is a proxy for your odds of having a particular set of genes that enable higher maximum.
It’s actually pretty easy to tease out “what extent genetics plays in this.” Normalize the nurturing for whatever category you want to look at. While you can’t do this for an individual, you can easily do it for groups. It’s not that hard to show that black kids overcome incredible nurturing odds and still dominate the NBA while poverty-stricken whites outperform wealthy blacks on the SAT.
Further study for those convinced it’s genes for physical performance: Jon Entine’s Taboo.
Further study for those convinced we should find fancier explanations: Kenan Malik’s Strange Fruit.
Further study for those who just want to decide for themselves: http://www.webwallpapers.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/thunderwall1.jpg
They don’t have to be lazy, just persuaded that a different course would be better for their lives.
We have already seen where Jewish kids came to dominate the NBA and then stopped doing so. We have already seen where blacks first rose up in MLB while their numbers are now receding. We have gone through different eras when first Irish, then Italian, then black kids became the best boxers across all weight classes and now see differnt groups moving in to assert dominance.
Looking at a single sport in a single era and drawing a conclusion regarding what genetic types simply must dominate it finally comes down to cherry picking and special pleading.
Whatever the value of the rest of your arguments, this one is lacking.
The era of Jewish basketball success is always brought up, but it’s a distraction. The Jewish kids didn’t have to compete with any real umbers of black kids. You can’t just take a moment in time and look at who might be dominating the sport. You have to ask if at that same time all groups were competing in a serious way.
You could also put it the other way around: today’s black kids don’t have to compete with any real umbers of Jewish kids.