New study answers the black/white athletic performance difference question - It's just physics

[shiftless]

@DanBlather

@shiftless

In the end I have to question the motives of people who waste their time on such studies. Do they want to prove that us white folks should stick to swimming and yachting and leave running to black people? Do they want separate white and black sports leagues? Even if everything they claim is 100% true, what is its use?

Damn Howard University and their racist studies.

Setting aside the snark I thought it would be interesting to see if this is really a “Howard University study”. Only one of the listed authors of the paper (Adrian Bejan) is actually a member of the faculty of his listed university (Duke.) He seems to be prolific though. His Wiki says he has published over 500 papers.

The Howard guy (Edward Jones) is not on the faculty of the department of Nutritional Studies there but he seems to have gotten a BS in nutritional studes there at one point. He is currently at Cornell.

Jordan Charles is currently a senior at Duke and a pretty good swimmer there, which may have something to do with the subject matter.

I have to wonder who actually wrote the paper. In any case, there is a very little fact and a whole lot of fluff and speculation in this paper. It is a very long stretch for the Slate article to suggest that Howard and Duke have teamed up somehow and an even longer stretch to suggest that they have actually proven anything about racial differences. And why did Slate use a picture of Micheal Phelps when Phelps wasn’t even one of the listed record holders?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@shiftless

And if you want to know why the all the elite swimmers in the world are white, all you have to do is go to a swim meet. ALL of the participants are white, for whatever reason.

Have you been to a swim meet outside the US? I suspect that the participants at swim meets in China, for example, are largely nonwhite.

[Snickers]

I don’t get how having longer limbs (as blacks are stated to have) necessarily equals “worse in swimming.” Isn’t this pretty much the opposite of how it works in swimming? Phelps and Van Den Hoogenband (and Ian Thorp and Gary Hall, Jr. and lots of examples before them) are all hugely tall. Indeed, every four years we get a new story about some swimmer whose “wingspan” is legendary. I’m thinking that longer limbs equals better swimmer, and not the opposite.

I’m also not certain I buy sprinting as being a function of falling, but whatever.

[Chief_Pedant]

@Chronos

Of course, this still doesn’t imply that there are significant differences between the “races”, as they’re usually construed. For instance, the statement that “blacks have a higher center of gravity” is absolutely ludicrous if you don’t first exclude the Pygmies.

I didn’t get the math gene, unfortunately, but this is not correct. An average is…an average. What you don’t get to do when creating an average is exclude the outliers, and of course it’s true the Mbuti are outliers. There just aren’t enough of them to affect the mean (and it’s not likely anyone has actually identified a true mean for all blacks, I realize). I do agree that not looking at the mode or the median cause you to lose information.

@Chronos

But then, if you take almost any human trait, and look at the population which has the most extreme values of that trait, you’ll almost always find that it’s a subset of “black”, simply because the genetic diversity of African populations is far greater than that of the rest of the world combined.

Blond, straight, fine hair, for instance? Cystic fibrosis?
Genetic diversity alone–however you decide to define that–does not somehow confer access to the same source library of all possible genes. You could have a large population of incredibly diverse dogs and a second population which is much less diverse, but has in its gene pool a geneset for blue tongues, say. If that geneset is not present in the pool of genetically diverse dogs, the fact that the pool is genetically diverse does not make it more likely you’ll find the bluest tongues among the genetically diverse cohort of dogs.

The two broadest human groups (sub-saharan Africans and non-sub-saharan Africans) split before most modern sub-populations are considered to have split. Genes acquired by either of those groups post-split (or any other grouping post-split) will not be in the general pool of any but descendant populations (obviously, except where mixing occurs).

[Chronos]

Which is why I said you’ll almost always find that it’s a subset of “black”. There are some novel genes that show up most often in white populations, but there are a lot more novel genes that show up most often in black populations. That’s what it means to say that the “black” populations are more diverse.

[DSeid]

So back to the article’s claim that being long limbed and possessing a relatively shorter torso is somehow a disadvantage in swimming. As I asked earlier: do elite swimmers have a lower than average center of gravity as a result of shorter limbs and a longer trunk?

And it has been studied. (pdf) And the answer is, no, not anything close. They are just wrong.

a number of somatic traits have been reported consistently in the literature pertaining to competitive swimming. Elite swimmers tend to be taller than a non-competitive cohort and have a greater arm to height ratio. This is true for both males and females.

[Chief_Pedant]

@DSeid

So back to the article’s claim that being long limbed and possessing a relatively shorter torso is somehow a disadvantage in swimming. As I asked earlier: do elite swimmers have a lower than average center of gravity as a result of shorter limbs and a longer trunk?

And it has been studied. (pdf) And the answer is, no, not anything close. They are just wrong.

a number of somatic traits have been reported consistently in the literature pertaining to competitive swimming. Elite swimmers tend to be taller than a non-competitive cohort and have a greater arm to height ratio. This is true for both males and females.

Perhaps they are wrong, but a wrong explanation for the physiologic reasons underlying the performance differences is not what is “controversial” here. The hot button is the acceptance and propagation of the fact that substantial differences do exist among SIRE populations, and that those differences have underpinnings which derive from the fact that gene prevalences for physical differences vary even at the level of race groups.

Among the strategies advanced by race egalitarians is the idea that all race groups are more or less equal and draw from more or less the same genetic pool. Studies such as this advance the alternate position: races do not contain the same prevalence of genes coding for the same phenotypic outcome for traits.

In short, even races have average differences, and those average differences create real outcome differences.

“Anthropometric measurements of large populations show that systematic differences exist among blacks, whites and Asians. The published evidence is massive: …”

That’s the part that gets egalitarian blood churning; not whether or not a particular difference is the exact explanation for an outcome difference in a particular sport.

[DSeid]

Actually CP what was shown in this thread was how uncontroversial the premise of the study is, so long as it is stated with some scientific accuracy and precision. The problems posters have with this study are the sort that I have brought up: just that it is a badly thought out study that does not support the conclusion they claim.

Interestingly the the only agenda driven blood churning created was that of people, like you, reacting to “egalitarian” objections to the concept that did not appear, and (stretching it to look for something that might be considered agenda driven) a post or two wondering why the question is considered important any way.

The problem is that some come the discussion having the agenda driven conclusion in advance of data that supports it that

given any two SIRE groups, when we find patterns of average performance differences, we can often show genetically-based underpinnings for those differences

Now there seems little doubt to me that there are significant genetic contributions to performance differences between individuals. And that genetic variation is heterogenously distributed between variously human subpopulations, with some slight differences between frequency means and distributions about the means. That much seems uncontroversial. But that is a long way from saying that these “willy-nilly … assorted very loose and very irregular categories” are a meaningful or useful way to categorize those differences in prevalences, or that those differences are large enough to be the basis of performance differences between those loose and irregular groupings, rather a host of very significant sociocultural factors.

It is also very questionable whether average differences are at all relevant to questions of elite performance. The elite are not made of of average individuals; they consist of the sigma outliers. And the number of sigma outliers depends more on: the variation about the mean, the number of subjects, and the number of subjects who are placed in a circumstance that allows that trait to be developed to its fullest.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@Snickers

I don’t get how having longer limbs (as blacks are stated to have) necessarily equals “worse in swimming.” Isn’t this pretty much the opposite of how it works in swimming? Phelps and Van Den Hoogenband (and Ian Thorp and Gary Hall, Jr. and lots of examples before them) are all hugely tall. Indeed, every four years we get a new story about some swimmer whose “wingspan” is legendary. I’m thinking that longer limbs equals better swimmer, and not the opposite.

Sure, height helps in swimming, but it is the unusual length of the torso in champion swimmers that appears to be consistant.

Peter van den Hoogenband

Michael Phelps

[Chief_Pedant]

@DSeid

Actually CP what was shown in this thread was how uncontroversial the premise of the study is, so long as it is stated with some scientific accuracy and precision. The problems posters have with this study are the sort that I have brought up: just that it is a badly thought out study that does not support the conclusion they claim.

Interestingly the the only agenda driven blood churning created was that of people, like you, reacting to “egalitarian” objections to the concept that did not appear, and (stretching it to look for something that might be considered agenda driven) a post or two wondering why the question is considered important any way.

The problem is that some come the discussion having the agenda driven conclusion in advance of data that supports it that

given any two SIRE groups, when we find patterns of average performance differences, we can often show genetically-based underpinnings for those differences

Now there seems little doubt to me that there are significant genetic contributions to performance differences between individuals. And that genetic variation is heterogenously distributed between variously human subpopulations, with some slight differences between frequency means and distributions about the means. That much seems uncontroversial. But that is a long way from saying that these “willy-nilly … assorted very loose and very irregular categories” are a meaningful or useful way to categorize those differences in prevalences, or that those differences are large enough to be the basis of performance differences between those loose and irregular groupings, rather a host of very significant sociocultural factors.

It is also very questionable whether average differences are at all relevant to questions of elite performance. The elite are not made of of average individuals; they consist of the sigma outliers. And the number of sigma outliers depends more on: the variation about the mean, the number of subjects, and the number of subjects who are placed in a circumstance that allows that trait to be developed to its fullest.

It seems to be so difficult for an average egalitarian to admit that the average differences are substantial and pervasive throughout all levels.

Their fallback positions when presented with this sort of data are that,

1. While genetic differences may exist, the categories of race are too loose to make them meaningful, or
2. The differences are minor, or
3. The differences may only be significant at some “elite” level.

Not a single one of these assertions hold up. Not in this study; not in all studies across the board. The differences themselves are so huge in effect that whole groups find themselves with enormously disparate success rates for a given skillset, and those differences repeatedly and predictably fall along the exact race lines over which complaints are made that “there is no such (biological) thing as race.” And the differences are pervasive; it’s just nonsense to pretend that high school sprinters and swimmers are all about equally successful by race but it just happens that a teeny fraction of outliers at the top are disproportionately enabled genetically.

Is the question important? Well, it’s important if we want to come to honest and scientifically-supported reasons why race groups are disproportionately represented in terms of success for various pursuits. If we’re OK w/ not claiming non-genetic reasons for disparate success, then of course it’s fine to drop the whole topic. If we demand diversity in the name of social justice and proclaim that we should see proportionate representation because there can be no non-racist explanation for disparate representation, then we do have to have this frank discussion about race…

Races are disparately-enabled, on average, by their genes.

[Chronos]

The premise of this study (when stated with sufficient precision) might be uncontroversial, but the idea that athletic ability is correlated with race is still controversial. The problem is that the effects the study is talking about aren’t really related to “race”, as that term is usually defined.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@Chronos

The problem is that the effects the study is talking about aren’t really related to “race”, as that term is usually defined.

But they are related to race if we want to answer the question as to why elite swimmers and sprinters appear to break significantly along racial lines.

If the observations are true, random sampling of soldiers in the army, and the sample is large enough, I don’t see why the differing torso/leg length ratio between blacks and whites would not be a contributing factor.

[DSeid]

@Chief_Pedant

It seems to be so difficult for an average egalitarian to admit that the average differences are substantial and pervasive throughout all levels.

It is hard for me to admit to anything in advance of data that supports or contradicts a claim. The claim that most performance differences between SIRE performances is genetic in origin is not impossible but it has little evidenciary support.

Their fallback positions when presented with this sort of data are that,

1. While genetic differences may exist, the categories of race are too loose to make them meaningful, or
2. The differences are minor, or
3. The differences may only be significant at some “elite” level.

This particular data got a very fair hearing and no one took those positions in evaluating it. The problems with the data is that it is, in this particular case, not data, but a speculation that does not hold up when actual swimmer somatatypes are analyzed. Swimming may in fact be an example of the counterpoint: Blacks may be under represented in swimming mainly for sociocultural and socioeconomic reasons. The claimed (and possibly true even though no evidence was offered to support the claim) tendency for Blacks to have longer limbs would otherwise be an advantage in elite swim competition, and Blacks should be over-represented otherwise.

As far as analyzing human sub-populations it is true that “race” is so loose a grouping as to be of little meaning. Why not just go with the genetic markers themselves, however they fall out in the different sociocultural groups?

The differences may or may not be of minor performance significance. I cannot accept a presumption that they are of major significance any more than I can an assumption that they are not.

OTOH we do know that cultural and environmental factors play a major role in what activities populations engage in and what opportunities they have to optimize those predispositions with training.

Is the question important? Well, it’s important if we want to come to honest and scientifically-supported reasons why race groups are disproportionately represented in terms of success for various pursuits. If we’re OK w/ not claiming non-genetic reasons for disparate success, then of course it’s fine to drop the whole topic.

Now you see that’s where the agenda comes in. I can accept the possibility that genetic predispositions play a significant role in performance outcomes between subpoplations (however they get defined), pending actual evidence that supports the claim. But such a possibility in no way discounts the influence of non-genetic factors. Why would you think it would?

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@DSeid

Now you see that’s where the agenda comes in. I can accept the possibility that genetic predispositions play a significant role in performance outcomes between subpoplations (however they get defined), pending actual evidence that supports the claim.

Well, a lot of evidence has been presented. Scientific evidence in fact. Disparities in twitch muscles and disparities in centre of gravity

But such a possibility in no way discounts the influence of non-genetic factors. Why would you think it would?

No one is arguing against cultural influences even though the evidence for it is subjective.

You can’t explain why 70 blacks of West African origin , predominantly from the United States and Nigeria versus 1 white from France only a few weeks ago have broken the 10 second barrier in pursuit of the title as the world’s fastest man.

[you_with_the_face]

The red flag of this work is that the conclusion is derived completely from theory even though the more obvious study design would involve using actual subject data. A mathematical model based completely on assumptions is all fine and dandy when it’s infeasible to collect data that directly verifies your hypothesis, but such a condition does not apply when we’re taking about human characteristics can that can easily be determined with a measuring tape. How hard it would be to measure the pertinent dimensions of say, a cohort of college-level track runners or swimmers, and determine how L1’s correlate with their times? Not very difficult at all. So it’s really suspicious that the authors sidestep this type of analysis in favor of more speculative and theoretical analysis.

The authors seem to be engaging in some type of fallacy that I would probably know the name of if I were a lawyer. Suppose we were to swap L1 with BMI. Using the same logic employed in the study, we should conclude that whites have an advantage over blacks in sports that favor low body weight, because in the general population, whites have lower BMI’s than blacks. But I’m gonna say this conclusion is flawed.

[DSeid]

@The_Flying_Dutchman

No one is arguing against cultural influences …

No?

@Chief Pedant

If we’re OK w/ not claiming non-genetic reasons for disparate success …

Onwards.

[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
You can’t explain why 70 blacks of West African origin , predominantly from the United States and Nigeria versus 1 white from France only a few weeks ago have broken the 10 second barrier in pursuit of the title as the world’s fastest man.
[/QUOTE]
Why do I have to? I can readily accept that a particular subpopulation of West African origin has some tendency to produce individuals that are sigma outliers in that sport. That may be that the mean is different, or that the variation about the mean is different, or both. And there may also be cultural contributors in that sprinting is a more common activity to attempt to excel in among those of that origin in a diverse set of societies, than say, competitive swimming is - which those same individuals might also excel in if that was what they had applied themselves to. But that subpopulation does not equal the subpopulation of “race” nor does a reasonable presumption that biologic/genetic factors play a significant role rule out other factors or inform us how much is due to what.

Can you explain, using genetics alone, why two of the three male fastest times are held by Jamaicans, and that of the fastest 7 times only one calls Africa home?

[Ruminator]

@DSeid

Can you explain, using genetics alone, why two of the three male fastest times are held by Jamaicans, and that of the fastest 7 times only one calls Africa home?

Afro-Jamaicans

[DSeid]

@Ruminator

@DSeid

Can you explain, using genetics alone, why two of the three male fastest times are held by Jamaicans, and that of the fastest 7 times only one calls Africa home?

Afro-Jamaicans - Wikipedia

And that answers the question how? Do most of those with West African ancestry in the world hail from Jamaica? Why the concentration of fastest humans in Jamaica, rather than spread out evenly across the distribution of West Africans, and why not some of the top three fastest men from, say, West Africa, is the question.

[Chief_Pedant]

@DSeid

@The_Flying_Dutchman

No one is arguing against cultural influences …

No?

@Chief Pedant

If we’re OK w/ not claiming non-genetic reasons for disparate success …

Onwards.

[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
You can’t explain why 70 blacks of West African origin , predominantly from the United States and Nigeria versus 1 white from France only a few weeks ago have broken the 10 second barrier in pursuit of the title as the world’s fastest man.

Why do I have to? I can readily accept that a particular subpopulation of West African origin has some tendency to produce individuals that are sigma outliers in that sport. That may be that the mean is different, or that the variation about the mean is different, or both. And there may also be cultural contributors in that sprinting is a more common activity to attempt to excel in among those of that origin in a diverse set of societies, than say, competitive swimming is - which those same individuals might also excel in if that was what they had applied themselves to. But that subpopulation does not equal the subpopulation of “race” nor does a reasonable presumption that biologic/genetic factors play a significant role rule out other factors or inform us how much is due to what.

Can you explain, using genetics alone, why two of the three male fastest times are held by Jamaicans, and that of the fastest 7 times only one calls Africa home?
[/QUOTE]

I have never argued that there are no nurturing influences–cultural or otherwise. I do argue that genetic differences exist and provide a stronger and more consistent explanation.

Consider sprinting. Sprinting exists as a sport in every high school in the country (more or less). Really competetive sprinters have a chance at track and field scholarships, so there is a strong motivation for any competetive sprinter to excel to the best of his ability and win a scholarship. If you look at grade schools on up, you’ll see a proportionate representation (at least) of races at the lowest level, and by the time you get to the most competetive colleges you will see a substantially disproportionate representation of blacks in sprinting. Racism directed against whites and asians? I doubt it. Cultural? What culture, exactly, supersedes an ordinary desire to win and get college paid for? The answer is rather more obvious: more blacks than whites are gifted genetically for sprinting. It’s as simple as that.

And that difference shows up at every level; this notion that some teeny outlier handful is out there but every other person is average completely misses the point: the bottom 25% of blacks are better than the bottom 25% of whites, for example, and it shows up at every track meet across the whole country. It may not be that every subpopulation of blacks is better than every subpopulation of whites, but if you take those two groups, blacks are better. They are better because they have a higher prevalence of the right genes for that skillset.

I know you want to minimize race differences. But the donkey is braying in the back yard against your protest that you did not steal it–ordinary everyday evidence stares you and other egalitarians in the face.

By some utter ironic chance, I came home, plopped into my fat man’s chair and turned on ESPN. Track meet; college. 200 Meters. Every single athlete in the race was black. I had to chuckle out loud. I guess those lazy whites forgot to practice again. Must be their culture that would rather lose races, ignore training regimens and pay cash for college. Or maybe they just don’t have access to good coaches and good facilities.

Or wait…wait. Maybe those guys weren’t black, because black is only a cultural phenomenon.

[kingbighair]

@Chief_Pedant

By some utter ironic chance, I came home, plopped into my fat man’s chair and turned on ESPN. Track meet; college. 200 Meters. Every single athlete in the race was black. I had to chuckle out loud. I guess those lazy whites forgot to practice again. Must be their culture that would rather lose races, ignore training regimens and pay cash for college. Or maybe they just don’t have access to good coaches and good facilities.

Or wait…wait. Maybe those guys weren’t black, because black is only a cultural phenomenon.

I had a different channel on tonight - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHynWVNDUGc