So that’s one possible explanation. But until you control for all aspects of culture and media (and things like lowered teacher expectations), there’s no way to eliminate those possible explanations. And until you actually find the genes and show their prevalences, you have zero evidence for your genetic explanation.
You have nothing but trying to pick apart competing explanations. No, you have no evidence.
There are two competeting explanations, which are not mutually exclusive from one another. Genes and environment.
The current evidence for genes rests upon the fact that outcome differences are persistent despite controlling for nurture. The evidence that gene pools differ by SIRE group is unassailable.
An exhaustive search for disparate nurturing variables, led by folks whose bias is toward negating a genetic explanation, has turned up nothing. Nada. Not a single nurturing hypothesis passes muster. Worse, many of the most cherished ones (such as SES) which were advanced for years, and accepted by egalitarians as the obvious explanations, have been so extensively tested and thoroughly discarded that even egalitarians (at least those who are familiar with the scientific literature) no longer advance them. SES explanations are so inculcated into the popular mind that they are the knee-jerk explanations for almost everyone…until they read the literature. Then the search for more obscure nurturing variables begins.
You yourself, a dyed-in-the-wool egalitarian, are down to “lowered teacher explanations” and “all aspects of culture and media” as if blacks are so stupidly incompetent they simply cannot or will not embrace schooling as a route to success. Millions upon millions of black students out there are apparently screwing up their opportunity to learn or write exams because all their teachers don’t think they are capable. Hundreds of thousands of teachers have all fallen into the trap of diminished expectations–only for their black students; not any other SIRE group–and permit these millions of students to wander along in their culture-driven scholastic lassitude. And these lowered teacher expectations and “aspects of culture and media” extend even to wealthy black children whose parents are well-educated. The vast majority of black students with Law and Medicine dreams–even when from privileged backgrounds–turn in lousy tests for STEM courses from elementary through high school, and then lousy MCAT or LSAT exams, because their teachers–even when those teachers were themselves black, and from HBCUs–thought poorly of them. Other black students got wrapped up in hip hop and disco, and neglected to study. Their culture–and only their culture–distracted them from working their ass off in school.
Pardon, but your bias is showing, and your mantra that “there is zero genetic evidence” is rather desperate bombast.
If what you are looking for is a scientifc paper saying, “In conclusion, the persistent underperformance of the SIRE group of black is genetic and immutable” you are right. No such paper exists, and no such paper is likely (ever) to get published. See my earlier cite on the ethical anxiety of even researching genes related to neurobiology, much less publishing incendiary conclusions. It would be academic suicide. Jimmy the Greek for even a tenured researcher.
It is very easy, though, to find research that genes drive outcomes; genes mutate among populations; gene prevalences for those mutated genes vary by population; and so on. And it’s very easy to find carefully-done research discarding every nurturing explanation that has been advanced. It’s very easy to show millions upon millions of dollars invested in ameliorating murturing variables with a stubbornly persistent gap remaining.
When scientific papers address “race”-based differences, they take the comfortable tack of simply reminding everyone that race is a social construct. Sort of like the police at the tape-line encouraging every gawker to step back…“There’s nothing for you there.” However, population geneticists have no choice (if they want to stay in the field) but to report what they find, and as the cites I’ve presented show, for them the idea that gene prevalences differ–including genes that drive neurobiology–by population is widely accepted.
What’s left, as iiandyiiii likes to harp about, is identifying exactly which genes drive exactly which neurobiological functions. If this is the standard (and for iiandyiiii, it is), it’s a safe harbour argument for now. If, instead, the standard is that what is not nurture must be genetic by the process of elimination, the overwhelming evidence to date–in thousands of studies–is that much of the disparate outcomes between SIRE groups is driven by fundamental genetic differences, and that SIRE groups end up sorting into pools with disparate prevalences for genes.
It’s a bitter pill for egalitarians, who for years have rested their case upon dismissal of race as a biological construct, and acceptance of SES as the obvious explanation for disparate outcomes among those socially constructed races. Now they have to accept population genetics and identification of hundreds (shortly, thousands) of disparately prevalent genes by SIRE group. They have to deal with evolutionary and anthropological studies that show population migrations and separations by tens of thousands of years, allowing for these gene pools to develop. They have to deal with extensive research–biased toward non-genetic explanations–demolishing cherished nurturing explanations one by one. And finally, of course, they have to deal with the utter persistence of this disparate outcome pattern; persistent over here for some physical abilities and persistent over there for some neurobiological functions.
Please feel free to give me an actual instance where I have “spun” a paper or given “half a picture.” I find it risible that “spinning” is apparently the domain only of creationists and climate change deniers, and that therefore if I spin, I must be a creationist. It is particularly laughable that you persist in this label for me without addressing a single one of the positions I listed earlier that are obviously antithetical to the entire creationist paradigm. If both the creationists and I eat chocolate cake, am I a creationist?
As to the climate change denier charge: that belongs in a different thread. But you won’t find me denying climate change. You’ll only find that I make an observation that part of it feels to me like a New Religion, or a Great Cause in terms of how it is being promulgated. I am critical of the emphasis on how anthropogenic it is without a concomitant emphasis on population control. And I am particularly critical that promoters like Al Gore consume so many resources this earth has to offer. What that has to do with gene prevalence differences is unclear to me, and I’ll leave further comments around that to an appropriate thread.
This is false- nurture has not been properly controlled for. This is not surprising, controlling for every single non-genetic factor would be a truly massive task, and probably impossible without a biosphere-type experiment.
This is also false. Lowered teacher expectations exist, and have not been controlled for. Cultural depictions and media stereotypes exist, and have not been controlled for. Oppositional culture peer pressure exists, and attempts have been made to control for it, but I don’t consider these rock-solid (though they raise questions and deserve further analysis). Lesser parenting skills may exist, and have not been controlled for.
Another false statement about me and my arguments, but this is just expected now coming from you. Zero for three so far.
Says the guy who thinks, with zero evidence, that blacks are inherently genetically stupider on average. No, I don’t think blacks are “so stupidly incompetent…”- you’re the one who is certain blacks are inherently dumber on average, not me.
We know for a fact lowered teacher expectations exist- and we know for a fact that lowered teacher expectations reduce students’ performance. Some kids rise above this, some do not, but it’s just another obstacle. I’m not certain that this or any other particular explanation answers the question, but they have far more evidence in support then your evidence-free genetic explanation. And these competing hypotheses are not excuses, despite your characterization- they simply attempt to find a solution. Obstacles for kids are not excuses, but inevitably the more obstacles thrown up, the fewer kids will get past them. Unlike you, I’m not at all confident or certain what the answer is. I try to analyze all hypotheses in the same way- and yours comes up woefully short.
Excuse me for actually demanding evidence in order to support a hypothesis you’ve made. You have none. My bias is towards good evidence and that’s it.
And apart from your lack of evidence, your insistence that everyone’s acceptance that “blacks are inherently genetically dumber on average” would actually help the plight of black people is one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever heard, and calls into question your judgment of reality or knowledge of the most basic facts of history and human psychology.
Appeal to conspiracy. How convenient that any good science that might support your (evidence-free) hypothesis would be “academic suicide”. That means you never actually have to have a big researcher or big paper to support you- you can always just say “if only Big Science wasn’t so biased against us…”
Just like Creationists.
Completely false, as I’ve said many, many times. Nurture has not even come close to having been eliminated.
Yet the evidence that would actually support your hypothesis hasn’t been found yet. I’m sure you’re confident it will someday, but there’s no reason to accept it until it happens.
You haven’t eliminated nurture- not even close. Your insistence that the category of “every possible cause but genetics” can be controlled for with a few small experiments is not credible. It would be a massive undertaking, and it hasn’t happened yet.
Again the implication that every single human characteristic must differ by population, genetically speaking. How ridiculous.
No, you haven’t controlled for “nurture”. No, you have no genetic evidence. No, sociological data does not and cannot tell us anything about genetics. All you have is your assumption that every genetic characteristic must differ between every human population, and you’ve used the test-score gap of the last few decades as an easy way to sort them into the smart and dumb populations. I don’t know what that is, but it’s not science.
Yes, let’s summarize the rantings of some mentally ill racist troll; sounds like a good use of both our time.
Also, I have no idea what an “egalitarian view” is. Is this a strawman point of view that you assign to your debate opponents because debating their actual views would be too difficult?
Yeah, those researchers that Chief Pedant was so quick to cite concluded in a later paper:
“On tests of intelligence, Blacks systematically score worse than Whites. Some have argued that genetic differences across races account for the gap. Using a newly available nationally representative data set that includes a test of mental function for children aged eight to twelve months, we find only minor racial differences in test outcomes (0.06 standard deviation units in the raw data) between Blacks and Whites that disappear with the inclusion of a limited set of controls. … A calibration exercise demonstrates that the observed patterns are
broadly consistent with large racial differences in environmental factors that grow in importance as children age. Our findings are not consistent with the simplest models of large genetic differences across races in intelligence”
Why is it that every single paper that tests the genetic component of the IQ gap finds no or very small genetic component? The only exceptions that I can find are dated in the 1920s. Yet, our “race realist” friends seem to think they have the science on their side because they can hypothesize a genetic explanation even though the data shows they’re wrong!
I guess their solution is to divert the discussion away from evidence of genetic basis for test differences and toward evidence of *some *genetic differences between groups, however meaningless, wave their hands, and say “some genetic differences=genetic differences in intelligence=blacks are less intelligent”.
And yet somehow, we’re the ones who aren’t facing the science. Right.
By no means do I support Chief Pedant’s position that gene prevalences (or whatever) best explain test score and achievement gaps. However, your continued statements to the effect that “sociological data does not and cannot tell us anything about genetics” makes me curious. This seems to imply that you reject the validity of indirect tests — that sociological data could not even in principle support genetic explanations.
I find that a bit extreme. Assume there are, broadly, two competing explanations, environmental and genetic. Whenever a specific hypothesis under one of the two explanatory regimes is put to data and rejected, some support (however small) is lent to its competitors. You don’t need to explicate specific genes to raise the level of confidence in genetic explanations — you need only demonstrate that environmental explanations are less likely. If you don’t like that, then take it up with Bayes (you’ll need a shovel and a ticket to Heathrow).
To put it another way, these are statements share an intimate isomorphism:
There, you’ve made me defend race realists. But being right doesn’t mean you get to employ shoddy philosophy of science in the service of rhetorical tricks (NO EVIDENCE NO EVIDENCE HAH).
As pointed before even by the scientists quoted by the Chief, there is not much of an effect there, for practical purposes, it is a moot point.
But there is a difference- there is lots and lots of evidence of environmental effects causing a test-score gap. So we know that at least some of the test score gap is caused by environment (or nurture, etc). However, when certain specific environmental hypotheses (like parental income, for example) are controlled for, a gap remains (even if it’s smaller then before income was controlled for). So we know that parental income is not the entire explanation for the gap.
So no, I don’t believe that eliminating any specific environmental hypothesis as an explanation for the entire gap lends any support to the genetic explanation.
My understanding of the scientific method is that a question is asked- in this case “What is the cause of the test-score gap between races/populations/SIRE/etc?”, and then a hypothesis is formed- in this case “The best explanation of the gap that remains after specific environmental causes are controlled for is differing prevalences for genes relating to intelligence”. So CP and his allies have formed this hypothesis- but I don’t believe they’ve gone any further. In order to test this hypothesis, one must fashion an experiment to eliminate ALL possible environmental causes (a nigh-impossible task) or actually find the genes for intelligence and test their prevalence in different populations (a very difficult task, but not impossible).
I don’t believe Bayes’ theorem or Bayesian probability is particularly applicable here, because there are an essentially limitless number of potential environmental explanations. Eliminating any particular one (or a dozen) would only raise the random statistical chance of the genetic explanation being correct by 1/infinity, which is zero. So I believe that the only thing that can support the genetic explanation is actual genetic evidence.
You (along with GIGObuster and a couple others whose comments are in a Pit thread) have apparently perused the paper cited in your quote here too rapidly. Perhaps you were only looking for a quick quote that supports a pre-existing view, rather than actually reading the paper.
The “minor (putatively genetic) differences” in black-white scores refers to intelligence testing at age 8-12 months. The issue that the authors go on to discuss is that a gap appears and widens over the following few years. The authors acknowledge the difficulty of identifying g-based intelligence in babies, and further concede that only a simple model assumes the brain is fully developed for intelligence functions at age 9 months (aside from the problem of quantifying that intelligence).
They go on to evaluate a number of putative environmental variables which might be the cause of the intelligence gaps that develop as babies grow. They discard–based on studies–“a host of demographic and socio-economic factors such as parental income, education, occupation, home environment, birth weight, region, and urbanicity” and state that by early childhood, “a substantial Black-White test score gap generally remains.”
So the question is, “Are we fully developed enough mentally by age 9 months to make an assumption that any further gap is purely environmental, and if we are fully developed neurologically by about 9 months, are our measurement tools good enough to evaluate g-based (higher-order) intellect by that age?”
The authors go on to say, “To the extent that some aspects of adult intelligence only emerge at later stages of development, or that these aspects go unmeasured in the early test of mental function, the genetic story cannot be definitively rejected with these data.”
In another of their papers, Fryer and Levitt look at putative environmental variables that might provide an alternate environmental explanation to the hypothesis that the brain simply continues to develop well past age 8-12 months, and therefore “intelligence” tests showing minor differences at that age are no more indicative of how the kid is going to end up than, say, a test for strength or motor skills. We’re still developing. They note, “By the end of third grade, even after controlling for observables, the black-white test score gap is evident in every skill tested in reading and math except for the most basic tasks such as counting and letter recognition which virtually all students have mastered. The largest racial gaps in third grade are in the skills most crucial to future academic and labor market success: multiplication and division in math, and inference, extrapolation, and evaluation in reading. Any initial optimism is drowned out by the growing gap.”
In this paper, they look at, and reject, the following variables:
Are Black students losing ground because they attend worse schools? Answer: No. White students at the same schools still show the same gap. “We conclude that
neither school quality nor tracking within schools is the primary explanation for black digression.”
Does the importance of parental/environmental inputs grow as children age? Answer: No. * “In fact, however, the residual gap increases more than the
raw gap contradicting this explanation.”
In short, if you believe the brain is fully developed by age 1 year, that we are able to adequately measure higher order brain functions at that age, and that a yet-identified environmental variable we have not thought of to measure is still out there, it’s OK to cling to a non-genetic hypothesis. However the work by Fryer and Levitt cannot be used to support the idea that genetic differences are minor. What their work says is that the measured difference for higher order functions at age 8-12 months is small, and that the gap grows without any environmental variables having been show to be the cause of that growing difference.
For this reason, I think a more parsimonious explanation is that we can’t measure high-order brain functions well in babies, and that the brain–like the rest of the body–continues to develop. If we look at gaps among other populations–whites and asians, say–it does not seem likely that whites somehow have environmentally-driven differences, and yet they still trend toward a lower outcome tier than do asians for certain skillsets. I do not find special use cases apparently only applicable to blacks persuasive.
As pointed before, it is better to spin around and ignore the conclusions made even by the researchers themselves, so no, they continue to report that while there is problems with environmental explanations for the difference, the genetic argument for those differences is largely moot.
But that way lies madness, because — for any set of observations — there are literally (not essentially, but literally) an infinite number of mutually incompatible explanations. To operate from the perspective of “the probability of the truth of any explanation is 1 / the number of possible explanations”, we should never get off the ground. Not only would we fail to support genetic explanations, but we would fail to support any environmental explanation either.
In fact, the prior probability that one assigns to some class of explanations could well be nontrivially greater than zero. Say that I believe with probability 0.3 teacher attitudes explain the score gap; I take various tests of this to data and reject every one. After exhausting various ways that teacher attitudes might cause the score gap, my confidence in such explanations will naturally decrease relative to competing explanations. I could say “Well, there are an infinite number of possible environmental explanations, so my confidence in environmental explanations should remain unperturbed”, but that ignores the fact that there are only so many reasonable kinds of environmental explanations.
Anyway, if the infinity of possible environmental explanations means that specific genes would have to be explicated, then the infinity of possible genetic permutations would mean that specific environmental explanations would have to be explicated. The sword cuts both ways.
No, because the reasonableness of an hypothesis is relative to whatever background knowledge and assumptions we bring to it. You don’t have to eliminate all possible environmental cause because not all environmental causes are equally rational. If I’ve rejected socioeconomic status, teacher attitudes, and whatever else, I can’t say “But wait! I haven’t tested the hypothesis that average maternal vocal range causes the gaps, so environmental explanations still have more evidence than genetic ones!”
In more ways than one.
If there is something I can glance with the evidence is that, just as the case of the medicine for blacks that turned to be actually as beneficial for all races, it is very likely that even that “moot” or slight effect by genes that is being observed will eventually be found to be coming from many genes and all over the genetic map, (This is also a point that creationists mostly ignore, the tasks genes have are not well designed, it is yet another evidence of evolution).
What one has to meditate on, is that is is very likely that a good chunk of all members of the human race will have some genes that are messing with their intelligence, whatever the race realists are trying to find is bound to also appear in many white folks as in minorities. As mentioned, it is a moot point as for practical reasons there are more basis to support the focus on other solutions that affect the societal factors or environmental ones, like controlling lead pollution that was more prevalent in poor areas with a lot of minorities.
I may not have a great understanding of Bayes- but I thought these tools were only particularly useful when one knew the discrete set of possible answers. For example, if you say “I have a pet”, I know that there is a limited number of possible pets, and X% of all pets are dogs, Y% are cats, Z% are fish, etc., and then if you say “my pet sleeps in my bed with me” then I can eliminate pets like fish, hamsters, etc., and use the remaining percentages to calculate the likelihood of which pet you have.
I don’t think we know all of the possible, specific answers to the question of “Why is there a test-score gap”.
I recognize the sword cuts both ways (although there already is data showing influence for environment on the gap, and there is no such data showing any genetic influence between populations). I’m not particularly confident in any individual explanation. But because the definition of “environmental causes” that we appear to be using includes every possible explanation except for genes, it seems like pure chance would favor some environmental cause that hasn’t been controlled for (not that I use such reasoning, but just to follow the Bayesian line of thinking).
Well we haven’t controlled for teacher expectations, or things like cultural stereotypes and media depictions, or parenting skill (which might include things like how much the child is read to, how much tv he watches vs interactive games and play, etc), so I don’t think the big category of “environmental causes” has taken a hit. Whatever the cause is (of the gap that remains after controlling for the factors we can control for so far), it’s inevitable that most environmental causes must necessarily fail the test, so I don’t see why the removal of any one in particular cause weakens the non-genetic case.
In fact, if we use a Bayesian line of thinking and divide the possible causes into “genetic differences”, “differences in parenting”, “differences in economic status”, “differences in teacher expectations”, “media/cultural attitudes, stereotypes, and depictions”, and “other”, then eliminating “economic status” as a possibility actually strengthens all the other possibilities, including the other environmental causes. I use this example not because I believe that eliminating economics actually strengthens the non-genetic explanation, but just to show that I don’t believe Bayesian thinking is particularly useful in this discussion.
So I think I can still say there is no evidence that supports the genetic explanation- only evidence that weakens a few other individual explanations (not to mention specific examples, such as those referred to by GIGOBuster, that do seem to explicitly weaken the genetic explanation).
See, this is the thing that bugs me, and it’s the same thing that bugs people arguing with anti-vaxers.
There are an infinite number of possible explanations, but each one has an increasingly diminished likelihood of being correct. Each one is grasping at a smaller and smaller straw.
For decades, the standard and knee-jerk nurturing disadvantage explanation was opportunity disparity. We all knew it was correct. It was obvious; it was wide; it was institutional (wrt the US gap, anyway). No “race realist” had a bat’s chance of complaining about that explanation. Until it was tested. Opportunity gaps were closed for much larger numbers than ever before, and narrowed the score gap (roughly the 60’s to the 90’s). Aha! Told you so! It’s SES! Then the gap remained constant; SES was normalized in large comparison groups, and as an explanation for the residual gap, it failed. Then, and only then, did we decide, “Well; its not about SES. It’s about something beyond that, such as parental education.” Then that failed. Then on to oppositional culture, with Ogbu. That crapped out. School differences. That crapped out. The damn gap is worse than the spot in the Cat in the Hat. It just won’t go away.
Now we are on to the softest explanations of all. “Teacher expectations.” “Cultural aspects.” What the heck? They don’t even come close to passing a sniff test. You take smart black kids from upscale families in suburban schools in liberal areas where it’s anathema to even consider a genetic difference. You’re gonna find that gap. You take underpriviliged white kids with ratty parents and half-assed “culture” and check their scores against the black peers in their schools. You’re gonna find that gap. You take asians kids across the entire spectrum of cultures–immigrants; 4th generation; poor; rich…you’re gonna find that gap. Juxtapose black kids in an HBCU against black kids in a more rigorous college: you’re gonna find a gap in favor of the kids in the rigorous college. Taking them out of “cultural influences” or “low teacher explanations” or any other soft, untestable explanation like that doesn’t fix fundamental capability. What drives successful academic outcome, given anything close to similar opportunity to learn, is how well-wired you are for that skillset, and millions of students from every SIRE group have proved that over and over and over again.
Yes, you have managed to find a non-nullifiable collection of “possible” explanations, but they are non-nullifiable because there is no upper limit to how many variables there are, and you have set a standard of exploring every variable. But you’ve only backed into that because all the good explanations crapped out.
I’ve been looking at this for a long, long time, and I spent years in the trenches, so to speak, interviewing candidates for med school and trying desperately to get our share of the minority candidates we thought we could get through med school. I don’t think anecdotes are necessarily persuasive, but the idea that these candidates suffered scholastically from low teacher expectations, low personal effort due to getting sucked into some sort of “cultural” incapacity to learn, or any other such thing is just ridiculous. They were motivated, came from the best schools, worked their ass off, and performed to their highest potential. But that gap was there, then and now, as it would be for me trying out for the NBA no matter how much coaching I had.
The anti-vaxer is really you, the gap was acknowledged a long time ago, repeating it does not do anything else but make you feel warm and fuzzy for the past decisions you took on allowing or denying some specific kind of people to get a shot at a better life.
Just like the anti-vaxer you are only tap dancing on the reality that while you can attempt to minimize all other evidence (in very pathetic ways so far) the reality is still that there is no good evidence for any specific genes explaining the intelligence gap properly. You are just in better company with Dr. Andrew Wakefield propping up a slight plausible explanation, supported by a gaggle of truly irrational folks that look high and low for even straws to grasp to find justification for their beliefs.
Nothing you’ve said here applies any differently to genetic explanations, if it applies at all. I could just as easily say the same about your hypothesis- especially considering the lack of evidence.
It was not nearly this clear-cut, and “oppositional culture” was not actually eliminated. One researcher thinks he has nailed down an incredibly nebulous and hard-to-quantify characteristic, but many others disagree.
Yes they do. Your sniffer is not properly calibrated. They are just as reasonable as your explanation.
None of this controls for or eliminates these hypotheses, much less non-genetic hypotheses in general. I don’t care that you don’t think it passes the “sniff test”- the judgment of someone who thinks that widespread acknowledgment of “blacks are genetically dumber on average” would actually help black people is clearly seriously out of whack.
There are many, many other things that also drive successful academic outcome. Your sociological data provides no data useful for anything about genetics, unless you find all the genes to correlate it to. Science is hard.
No, you are incorrect. I’m interested in data- you have none for your genetic explanation, and many researchers believe that they have eliminated it. We know lowered teacher expectations exist (for example), and we know they have an effect on childhood development.
Your anecdotal stories do not interest me. I think it’s the anecdotal stuff that leads you to your conclusions- it must be, because the data doesn’t point in that direction at all. Because virtually no researchers agree with you, you’re forced to spread conspiracy theories and fears of “academic suicides” to justify the complete lack of published research that actually states they supports the genetic explanation. And I’ll say it again- I really find it hard to believe that you actually believe that widespread acknowledgment of your “blacks are genetically dumber on average” hypothesis would be good for black people. That’s something that truly doesn’t pass the sniff test.
I’m curious which researcher you have found disagrees with any of the points I’ve cited.
As I mentioned earlier, a baldly-stated conclusion that there are genetically driven intelligence differences among populations will not be found. That conclusion is left for the individual to infer, and I’ve presented the arguments for it.
But which researcher disagrees with the hypothesis that there are genetically driven intelligence differences among populations?
It is essentially a taboo subject either way, and researchers usually disguise their comparative language with carefully constructed wording that creates a strawman of “biologically defined race” to knock down–not populations.
As to whether or not it’s academic suicide to be more blunt in stating a hypothesis of genetically-based disparity…go read Bruce Lahn’s story after he presented his findings on MCPH1.
Abstract:
Microcephalin, a Gene Regulating Brain Size, Continues to Evolve Adaptively in Humans
Patrick D. Evans,1,2 Sandra L. Gilbert,1 Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov,1,2 Eric J. Vallender,1,2 Jeffrey R. Anderson,1 Leila M. Vaez-Azizi,1 Sarah A. Tishkoff,4 Richard R. Hudson,3 Bruce T. Lahn1*
The gene Microcephalin (MCPH1) regulates brain size and has evolved under strong positive selection in the human evolutionary lineage. We show that one genetic variant of Microcephalin in modern humans, which arose 37,000 years ago, increased in frequency too rapidly to be compatible with neutral drift. This indicates that it has spread under strong positive selection, although the exact nature of the selection is unknown. The finding that an important brain gene has continued to evolve adaptively in anatomically modern humans suggests the ongoing evolutionary plasticity of the human brain. It also makes Microcephalin an attractive candidate locus for studying the genetics of human variation in brain-related phenotypes.
And that is because you only do your damnest to ignore that most of that research deals with with all humans and the differences are under a medical context, even your last citation does not mention race at all.
What you also continue to ignore is that the researchers tell you that, where intelligence is concerned, race differences are moot.
No wonder you can say that the cites can not be disagreed with, you already applied a very silly spin to make them report about race differences in intelligence when they are not making that separation. You are still under the mistake that researchers and people like me are ignoring evolution.
Wait—so you acknowledge that researchers do see genetic differences in intelligence in different populations, but argue that they are so small as to be moot? Is that right?
If so, it seemed that you’ve conceded the most fundamental point. Which would be a good thing.