Nope, you are still contradictorily jumping from ethics and politics to scientific studies, the point stands, and it was already shown before in other studies that you already quoted and I used to report that the inferred genetic differences in intelligence among races is a moot point, you are demanding to do something that was already dealt with and wasting time.
As reported before, it is not my problem that you are relying on cites that are discredited, not only scientifically, but suffer even more when taken to the light of ethics and politics.
No, I don’t think that’s it. To me, a regression to disparate means for siblings (or offspring, as I suggested) could indicate that the disparate means are driven by environmental factors- so smart black parents and smart white parents with the exact same genes for intelligence (as an extreme example) would have children whose test-scores would show regression to different means (a higher value for the white children) because something (or many things) intrinsic to the “black experience” reduces educational and intellectual development and intelligence. I don’t see why this would necessarily point to genetics.
The “nurture” includes the total environment, not just the parenting- so because high-IQ black parents would have high-IQ genes, their children should have the same tendency towards high IQs that the children of high-IQ white parents- inheriting the genes from the parents. But if it’s “environment” (total, including the hypothesized things intrinsic to the “black experience” that might obstruct development and performance), then it would affect all black kids- including the children of smart black parents.
The only argument that I can imagine against this (and this may be Rushton’s argument) is that there is something genetic intrinsic to black people, such that black people, even black people with high IQs, have inferior genes for intelligence to non-black people. Is this your argument? If so, I can understand why you might be reluctant to say it in public… not only would Rushton (and perhaps you) be saying that “black people are inherently genetically dumber, on average”, he (and perhaps you) would be saying “all black people, even the smartest ones, have inferior genes for intelligence compared to non-black people, by virtue of being black”.
Where, specifically, has the study about sibling regression to disparate norms been discredited?
It is not I who am jumping to ethics and politics.
It is you who have no data, and so you resort to ad hominem attacks.
If you have alternate data, feel free to post it. If you don’t have any studies, feel free to continue to rely on a vague assertion that mine are “discredited” studies. If you don’t actually produce those studies, I’ll assume you have based your position on hearsay. But I personally find that approach unpersuasive, particularly since you have intimated that your grasp of what science is, is somehow superior.
Let’s see…you are saying that high-IQ black parents have high-IQ genes driving their own intelligence, but the lower (regressed) intelligence of their kids is from crappy environments? Hunh…
As your buddy Sweet put it, dumb parents tend to have dumb kids and smart parents tend to have smart kids. Intelligence is heavily influenced by hereditary genetic factors. But as with other traits (height, e.g.), the mixture of genes which occurs with reproduction produces offspring who regress toward the mean of the gene pool. A couple of below-mean IQ parents will have offspring whose average IQ is higher than theirs, just like a couple of really short parents will have offspring whose average height is taller than they are.
So whether you are black, white or asian, if you have a high intelligence it’s driven by genes. Your children are more likely to have higher intelligence than normal–they get some of the genes you had, but if you are an outlier, they will not average to that exceptional level because they don’t get your exact mix. They get some new combination. If your children have lower intelligence than you it’s because they have regressed toward the mean. Nothing to do with some special genetic exception for black SIRE groups. All groups operate the same.
With parents and offspring, the nurturing environment of the next generation could be different than the parental one, so to preclude that set of variables, Jensen’s study looked at siblings of high- and low-IQ cohorts. What he found was that siblings regressed toward different means, suggesting that the baseline mean was different for different SIRE groups.
If you want to breed a fast race-horse, you need to find good parental stock, but finding the fastest mare and stallion won’t mean the colt is just as fast. He will likely be faster than average, but the average for all colts from such a superfast-parent union will regress toward the slower mean for that horse breed, and only a smaller number of colts from that union will themselves be superfast outliers. The same would be true if you were breeding plodders (their colts would average faster than the mare and stallion) but of course we don’t do that in the horse world.
No, you’re not getting what I’m saying. This different mean doesn’t necessarily have to come from genetics- the different mean could be from environment- so that any black person has obstacles due to environment (like the hypothesized factors intrinsic to the “black experience”) that might reduce intellectual or educational development. So in this environment, even if the genetics are identical, black people on average will have lower scores and regress to a lower mean.
I’m saying even if Jensen’s study is accurate, it says nothing about genetics. The disparate means can be just as easily explained by environment as by genetics.
So you’re saying two hypothetical high-IQ black people, because they are black, will pass on (on average) inferior genes for intelligence to their offspring then non-black people with the same IQ. Or, for another hypothetical example, you’re saying that a high-IQ white or asian person looking to maximize the chances of having high-IQ children should choose another high-IQ white or asian person to marry rather than a high-IQ black person. Please, correct me if I’m wrong about what you’re saying, but I don’t see how to read it differently.
Well, now you are going the other way, indeed to discourage others to read what the article is using to support what they reported, By the way, the author is Blake Emerson a fellow at the Department of Political Science at Yale University, citing, among others, Professor Nisbett of the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan:
This is a typical editorial opinion, but not an alternate study.
There is no dearth of commenters rushing to editorialize, but in my view what they should undertake are studies that show the opposite.
You’ll see this sort of opinion cited over and over again. “There’s nothing for you over there. Don’t read those studies. Their interpretation is all wrong…”
Still, the patterns that reflect this genetic interpretation persist, and they persist despite all the pooh-poohing that the studies providing evidence for a genetically-based difference can’t possibly be right.
One of the earliest crap-outs that occurred was when we all assumed we’d get rid of the gap simply by normalizing opportunity. After that failed so miserably, the attack against a genetic explanation simply shifted to ad hominem attacks or demands for researching ever more subtle nurturing explanations.
Anyway, all efforts to the contrary, not a single nurturing approach has succeeded in eliminating these fundamental gaps, despite no shortage of criticism about how “wrong” the various studies are that support a genetic explanation.
I’m not saying that. The data says that. As I said, I haven’t seen any regression studies for siblings or offspring that show otherwise. The data says that offspring will regress to the mean of a population because parents carry a host of genes that reflect their source gene pool. Those source gene pools contain different prevalences by populations, so regression to the mean would be the mean of two populations.
Try a non-sensitive genetic example using animals:
Assume the genes involved in horse speed are multifactorial, complex, and interact with one another. I have an appaloosa mare and an arabian stallion. The appaloosa mare is particularly fast; as fast as the arabian stallion. Their average speed of their colts will regress to a mean somewhere in between the two means for those two populations of horses.* Assuming the appaloosa mean is not as fast as the arabian mean, breeding the fast arabian stallion to an equally fast arabian mare is more likely to produce colts regressing to a faster average mean than breeding the fast arabian stallion to the equally fast appaloosa mare.
Each of those two parent horses will contain a prevalence of gene variants that reflects their respective populations, and the colts are unlikely to get exactly the combination of a parent. So the offspring reflect the parent pools of genes; not just the exact geneset the parents had. That’s why there’s any regression in the first place, and why we breed horses for characteristics the way we do.
In human populations it’s not typically that pure, of course, but the genetic principle is exactly the same wrt regression toward a mean. We don’t get our parents exact geneset; we get a brand new geneset that reflects the whole milieu of what they carry. That milieu, in turn, reflects their own population background. The regressions that would occur at the human individual level would become fairly trivial since we are already only talking about differences of 5-10% on average, and regression differences of even precisely-matched “intelligences” (and how the heck do you do that an an individual level?) would be small.
One of the reassuring things for me is the observation (and I think this has been studied) that intelligence as a mate selection criterion is reasonably powerful. That is, highly intelligent blacks tend to be comfortable pairing with highly intelligent whites, and the same thing happens at the um…lower end. So with any luck, we’ll get these damn populations admixed a whole lot better over the following few years, and you and I can quite sniping at each other–at least, in the US. In my (professional) circles, nobody seems to give a rats butt about what color you are, but they are very sensitive to how educated, cultured and intelligent you are. Long gone are the divisions by SIRE group; the divisions by social caste do remain, however (on average).
*Of course, it might also be the case that an appaloosa/arabian combination produces some heretofore highly advantageous interaction, and we end up with a brand new horse that has a hybrid vigor that kicks everyone’s ass. (Pun intended). But I’m just laying out a simple example.
The data doesn’t say that, but at least I understand your position better. I used to think you believed something along these lines: the black gene pool (and population as a whole) has fewer of these supposed high-intelligence genes- so a smaller number of black people get these genes, and a smaller number of black people are smart. My assumption was that while you thought there were fewer black people of genetically high intelligence, you accepted that smart black people’s genes for intelligence were just as good as smart non-black people’s genes. But now I understand a bit better. You believe that even among people who score the same on IQ tests, black people have inferior genes for intelligence to pass onto their children.
And I haven’t seen any reason to believe that regression to disparate means implies a genetic cause rather than a non-genetic cause. I don’t see why environmental causes couldn’t also cause regression to disparate means.
Nope, commentaries like this are damming for the papers at hand, they are a way to demonstrate who is getting support where it counts, your peers. Most researchers dismiss Rushton on both counts, the scientific and the ethical and in places where skepticism and reason counts, they have his number:
LOL. You’re still either generally confused or trying to throw out a deliberately pejorative obfuscation as a strawman. Not to worry; I’m used to that sort of approach from folks who don’t have alternate data to present. It isn’t the specific “high-IQ” gene that is crummier; it’s the entire gene pool carried by parents that has different genes (because of different prevalences among populations) and of course children inherit some mix of those genes. They do not necessarily inherit the exact gene combination a parent has. The whole idea of sexual reproduction is to mix up the genes from the parental pool in every generation.
If you–or any egalitarian–doesn’t like what regression to the mean studies show (and remember; you brought up the topic), then the scientific remedy is to do a study that provides an alternate conclusion. Otherwise the study stands. It’s actually a pretty simple study, but it’s the kind of study that egalitarians are highly unenthusiastic about doing because it does not help their egalitarian agenda. Much safer to stick to soft measurements about teacher expectations and the like.
So…if we look at siblings of high-IQ black-white cohorts the average sibling IQ is different by population. Since this sibling pool has similar nurturing (literally within the same family), and since we are no longer selecting specifically for a high-IQ subset, we get an idea of what the average IQ is for offspring of the parents of that high-IQ outlier. That average is lower for blacks. If we look at low-IQ cohorts, the sibling IQs regress to a higher mean for whites. What you are getting with the sibling IQ is a regression toward the mean of the population, influenced by the exact mix of genes the parents carry. As Frank Sweet says, “smart parents tend to have smart kids,” so parents of the high-IQ kids will themselves tend to be smart, and their kids will tend to average higher IQs than the average population group from which the parents are drawn. But if you compare parents from two different populations, the average IQs of those populations will be different, so a genetic prediction is that the regression will reflect that population mean.
If you want to argue that nurturing is still a variable, you can, but now you are on even shakier ground. Those black parents raised a high-IQ kid, so the IQs of the other siblings are unlikely to be low because of lousy parenting or crappy teacher expectations, or oppositional culture…All the kids would have been raised in about the same environment. Intra-family IQ differences are much less likely to be environmental. I think even our pal Frank Sweet would accede to that.
If, therefore, the siblings of high-IQ comparison cohorts regress to a different mean, that is strongly suggestive that that the means themselves are driven by genetic differences. It’s clutching at a pretty thin straw to argue that all those siblings somehow had disparate nurturing from their high-IQ sibling.
Oooohhh…now there’s a nice, thoughtful, unbiased cite. Where do you even find that kind of crap (“pathetically transparent attempt by bigots”) and what in the world makes you think such editorializing is a substitute for a thoughtful and well-designed study?
Perhaps you could present a study, instead of a commentary on someone else’s research. As I pointed out to iiandyiiii, it’s very easy to correct bad studies by doing better ones. Scientists love to be the one who unambiguously proves a controversial point.
With the sibling regression to the mean studies in particular, all that has to be done is to show this data is wrong.
But the data is right, and there isn’t that much enthusiasm to fund studies which are likely to simply reinforce it. So what’s left for egalitarians is to sneer. Have at it. If all you want is support for opinions about how terrible Jensen must be, you’ll find plenty of company. I am unpersuaded by opinions tossed out there when, over the last forty years, there has been plenty of opportunity to simply correct any bad data.
I await your cites of that data. You are wasting your time scolding me and mustering opinions. There are plenty of opinions out there that egalitarians also have their blind spots and their agenda. I’m uninterested in opinions.
LOL at you continuing the “egalitarian” straw man. I’m not supporting or certain (like you are) in any particular explanation; I’m just pointing out the lack of evidence for yours. And I just re-stated what I thought you believed; you don’t even deny believing it.
No- the exact same results would be predicted if the cause were environmental (like things intrinsic to the “black experience” that serve as obstacles for intellectual and educational development to black children)- one would expect that, even if one black sibling got “lucky” and had a very high IQ, his/her siblings would still score lower then comparative white siblings of someone with a very high IQ- even if they had the exact same “genetic potential” for intelligence as the white siblings, the environment could obstruct them enough to lower their scores, on average. There’s far, far more to “nurture” then just parenting (or even schooling).
One could think about it in another mathematical way- if, due to environment, white children have a 75% (just throwing these numbers out) chance to reach their full “genetic potential” for intelligence, but black children only have a 25% chance, then those black children who manage to slip past the obstacles and reach their full potential will still be more likely to have siblings that don’t reach their potential then white children with the same IQ. So there’s no reason that those results aren’t compatible with an environmental explanation. Once again, you are unable to support your explanation without genetic evidence- and there’s no reason to believe it until such evidence is found.
It’s perfectly appropriate to editorialize against bad science. You have no actual evidence for the genetic explanation, so you embark on a Gish gallop of only marginally connected research, often by researchers whose conclusions directly contradicts yours. You’ve presented no actual evidence for the genetic explanation (and when I repeat this over and over again, I mean you’ve presented nothing that supports the genetic explanation to the exclusion of all other explanations).
It’s also perfectly appropriate to editorialize (or mock) such ridiculous assertions as “widespread acceptance of the average genetic intellectual inferiority of black people will help black people”.
Sure- and you’ve proven nothing, obviously. Not even close. You’ve offered nothing that doesn’t also support environmental explanations.
Or demonstrate, as I have, that this data supports environmental explanations just as much as it does the genetic explanation.
May I ask you to put in a source for your quotation? I don’t believe that phrasing is mine, and when you put it into a reply addressed to me, it leaves that implication. I’m sure you didn’t mean that, but I do think we need to be careful who we attribute quotes to.
I sort of a agree with the first sentence of yours here. I think where we disagree is whether or not I’ve presented studies to show the genetic explanation is the most reasonable and parsimonious one. The standard historic “opportunity”-based explanations have long since been thoroughly discredited and discarded. These are the knee-jerk explanations most broadly accepted by the public unfamiliar with the actual studies. As we’ve discussed, exploration of every single theoretically possible environmental nuance is not realistic, although these nuances must be presumed to exist in very unlikely scenarios. For example, we’d have to presume that black parents who raise a high-IQ child have environmental nuances at work for other children raised in the same household to explain a sibling regression to a lower SIRE mean for that situation. While you can say that such variables have not been formally studied to absolutely rule them out, it isn’t likely they’d turn out to be an explanation. As I said before, the good and obvious environmental/nurturing explanations are all gone. We’re down to grasping at straws. Moreover, no effort of any kind has succeeded in closing these gaps, and those efforts have been intense and expensive. That, itself, is evidence against environmental explanations, and it’s disingenuous to keep repeating there is “no evidence.”
You didn’t use those words- I meant to sum up (what I believe to be) a ridiculous assertion in one statement. Do you believe that black people would benefit if everyone accepted your assertion that they are inherently genetically less intelligent, on average?
Obviously I believe this is false.
There’s evidence that the gap has shrunk. In addition, I believe that the efforts, in general, have been weak and half-hearted- they’ve been largely politically motivated, with all the problems of the political process, rather then with “pure” motives.
I don’t believe it is, especially considering that the gap has shrunk by many measures.
If this is true, I agree it’s strong evidence that much of “the gap” is genetic in origin.
On the other hand, if it’s really true (as claimed by belowjob2.0) that the test score gap in black Americans follows ethnic identity, not African ancestry, it would be strong evidence in the opposite direction.
I’m still waiting for belowjob2.0 to back up his claim, but I am starting to think he’s just confusing his own wishes with reality.
The “crap” you refer to is just evidence of another point: The denial that what the researchers are actually concluding can not be reported by others.
You see, this is actual evidence that you are avoiding skeptical and reason sites that look at controversies, and it does not matter that they link to the scientific sites or researchers that point at how off base Rhuston and others are. What we see here is only monumental ignorance of the fact that most scientists looked at the data from Rhuston and others report that their conclusions are not supported, point being that it really stretches your credibility that you are not aware that they apply the same methodology to report that Astrology or other pseudo-sciences are out there, fooling many people. They are a way to look at were the support or validity of something is among the experts.
And this is evidence that you in reality does not know what science is, the data was already reported, the conclusion was that any differences in intalligence among races has very little to do with genes, and it is a moot point.
But in the matter of Rhuston the issue is more dramatic, it is the data from Rhuston that has been used to conclude that:
The problem here is just that you forget that the data used is the data from the racialists themselves.
You’re still either generally confused or trying to throw out a deliberately pejorative obfuscation as a strawman. Not to worry; I’m used to that sort of approach from folks who don’t have alternate data to present. It isn’t the specific “high-IQ” gene that is crummier; it’s the entire gene pool carried by parents that has different genes (because of different prevalences among populations) and of course children inherit some mix of those genes. They do not necessarily inherit the exact gene combination a parent has. The whole idea of sexual reproduction is to mix up the genes from the parental pool in every generation.
Where do you even find that kind of crap (“pathetically transparent attempt by bigots”) and what in the world makes you think such editorializing is a substitute for a thoughtful and well-designed study?