I’m unclear about which points you are making because you tend to put in long quotes instead of summarizing what you think are the salient points.
On the first quote: This guy doesn’t understand that the concept of regression to the mean obviously samples asymmetrically. That’s the whole point. Outliers regress to the mean. It is a statistical phenomenon that applies at a group level and does not apply to a given individual. Duh. That’s true of all these arguments which is why I try hard to always put in the word “average.”
On the second quote: I am not sure of the point being made here. One oft-quoted study, used here, is the one with WWII black GIs and German wives. The problem with that study is not self-selection for IQ; it’s US Army selection for IQ. The Army required intelligence tests to get in, so the black GIs were not a cross section of all US blacks. As to the general notion that an admixture of black and white ancestral groups should produce an average somewhere in between both groups once self-selection is accounted for, I agree. I haven’t seen any persuasive studies that actually look at genetic admixture instead of a proxy like skin color. Do you have any? My observation across the world is that in most places, a general tier of success in society puts admixed biracial groups somewhere above african source populations and below european or asian source populations. Do you have some studies to the contrary? Because of the complexities involved, including self-selection for IQs across all population mixtures, I consider this sort of study rather hard to do unless you look at a specific genetically-based estimation of genome makeup and combine it with some sort of fairly measurable quantification of a skillset.
This, and the accompanying assumption that for different populations there are different genetic means, so to speak, for intelligence, is the controversial statement.
We’ve had this argument before, but this would also be expected if there are culture/nurture factors intrinsic to the “black experience” (and separate from parenting) that serve as obstacles for black intellectual development; that is, that any black person with high intelligence is more likely to have sibilings who fail to overcome these obstacles then a white person with equally high intelligence. So it’s not evidence for just one explanation vs the others, which is an example of why such sociological data tells us nothing about genetics.
I think this is a bit of a stretch.
You’ve advanced three specific environmental considerations, via Frank Sweet, that he feels have withstood examination: lousy parenting in young kids, low teacher expectations, and oppositional culture.
If black siblings of high IQ outliers regress toward a lower mean, and you want to argue that these siblings have environmental reasons to have that lower mean, you are down to arguing that they had teachers with lower expectations than their siblings had, and were unable to overcome oppositional culture even though their siblings could.
So now we have to say, “Well; we didn’t check the teachers. Maybe the bright kid got the high-expectation teachers. We didn’t check to see if the bright kid believed the parents who coached him to blow off ‘oppositional culture’ but the siblings bought into it.”
Just another example of stretching, and stretching, to me. There’s just no end to the machinations you are willing to put up with instead of accepting a far simpler explanation: different populations with different gene pools.
I’ve also offered a very general category of things intrinsic to the “black experience” that obstruct intellectual and academic development. Of course, I take no strong position until there’s actually good evidence for an explanation for the test-score gap.
It’s a very easy argument to make- even if some black kids “slip through the cracks” of the obstructions like lower teacher expectations (maybe the higher-scoring kid had a good teacher, and his siblings didn’t) and oppositional culture, then you’d expect more of their siblings then high-scoring white kids’ siblings to be obstructed.
Machinations… LOL. There’s no evidence for your explanation. There is evidence for some environmental factors, even if the entire gap has not been explained yet. No, you’re simply convinced for other-than-scientific reasons that black people are, on average, inherently genetically dumber. Would it be that shattering to your world view were you to discover that, in fact, black people might not be inherently genetically less intelligent, on average?
It may surprise you to know that I don’t pay any attention to this issue in daily life. There are too many stupid whites and highly intelligent blacks in my daily life for it to even register.
I am involved in this issue because it directly affects getting black kids into, and through, school, and my career has been involved with higher education. I believe we need to make social policy based on the world as it is, and not wishful thinking.
And no, I couldn’t care less if by some magical miracle it turns out blacks as a population are at the top of the intelligence pecking order. The average intelligence of an entire population is a question for population genetics and statistical averaging, and has no bearing on an individual, and I spend my life with individuals.
These would be reasonable conclusions drawn from an impartial analysis of the literature, in particular data derived from tests demonstrating mean reversion. Nothing is preventing different test outcomes generations into the future, of course. Perhaps at that time, the playing field will have evened in the 100m sprint, and more than two caucasians will have entries in the top 500 100m times.
Not true, when one looks at the mixed race cases from the GI’s in Europe the point that is missed is that the black fathers are outliers, you know, selected by the military, if genes drive the differences in intelligence and there was a regression then the genetic difference would be noticeable.
The reality is that there was no significant difference in the measured intelligence.
The most likely reason why they remain so close? They had a similar environment and educational support.
Perhaps what is happening here is just once again the generalization fallacy that insists that if there are genes that are found to influence physical attributes (and even this is not as strong as it is assumed) that then one can apply the same to differences in intelligence between races, no evidence there.
But this is a single, small, old study, not reproduced anywhere else. Going on nearly 60 years later, this study of under 200 kids is still the main one cited to support this point. Where are the rest? The answer is that they don’t exist. Much larger, broader, more detailed studies haven’t supported an environmental cause for IQ and other test score differences.
Here are some of the criticisms of the Eyferth study, from Wikipedia:
*"Arthur Jensen has pointed out that the white girls in the study obtained an average IQ eight points below that of the white boys, suggesting a sampling error, because in the WISC standardization sample the average IQs of boys and girls are equal (among the mixed-race subjects in the Eyferth study, there was a small sex difference of 1 point, favoring boys). He has also noted that the IQs of the children’s mothers and fathers are unknown, and that white and black G.I.'s in Germany were not equally representative of their respective populations, since about 30 percent of blacks, compared to about 3 percent of whites, failed the preinduction mental test and were not admitted into the armed forces. He further argues that the selective preferences of the German women with regard to sexual partners may have influenced the results in an unknown manner. Moreover, nearly all of the children were tested before adolescence, i.e. before the genotypic aspect of IQ has become fully manifested. Finally, Jensen suggests that heterosis may have enhanced the IQ level of the mixed race children in the study.
Rushton and Jensen have further pointed out that 20–25% of the fathers in the study were not African Americans but rather French North Africans."*
Against this are studies involving thousands and thousands of subjects; for example, SAT scores from high black SES groups against low white SES groups.
As to the idea that children should have regressed to a mean, but didn’t, you are incorrect. The fathers are hardly high-IQ outliers. Regression to the mean refers a tendency to regress to the mean of a population, and it’s hard to predict exactly what happens if you admix two populations. Finally, if the fathers had a mean somewhere around under 100 and the moms were somewhat higher than a hundred (assuming there’s no heterosis) the children would be somewhere in between the moms and the dads. In any case, the study is probably too small to draw much of any conclusions at all.
The discredited sources continue being relied by you. and it was you who pointed out that the army selected them, by your own words they were outliers.
You see, if this is not important in real life for you, it is even more pathetic to continue to rely on what many others that look at pseudoscience point as such. Why should I fear such a pathetic display of the same old, same old, as being important?
The reporters of the data you use to suggest that the SIRE group of “black” does not underachieve on the LSAT explicitly say that data points are NOT necessarily representative of the SIRE group of “black.” Also, I like how the emoticons look. The two - having data suggesting that blacks do not underachieve and liking how emoticons look - are not mutually exclusive.
:smack:
Here, let me filter out the filler. Perhaps four sentences were too many for you to comprehend in one sitting.
You continue to confuse terms.
In the sibling study from Jensen that I cited for regression to the norm, “outliers” were very high IQ individuals, with IQ’s in the 120+ range. In the army study, individuals were screened out for low IQ and rejected. This hardly makes the remainder outliers.
You also tend to use this idea of ‘discredited’ as if an objection to Jensen’s conclusions means his research was bogus. I do not find this sort of ad hominen attack persuasive. Find some contradictory studies, and post them. Stop relying on editorials that reassure you someone’s research or methods are incorrect because their conclusions are uncomfortable for the editorialist.
The charge of “pseudoscience” is a cheap charge unless it is accompanied by specific evidence of where a given study is flawed. It’s a meaningless slur that is a sop to an uneducated public in an effort to reassure them.
If for example, Jensen’s regression study is flawed, all that needs to be done is an alternate study with an alternate conclusion. This would be neither expensive nor difficult. The problem is that these sorts of alternate studies come to the same conclusion. I gave you an excellent example earlier when the folks from JBHE decided to “put a nail in the coffin” of those who hold to a genetic explanation. They found a group they thought had perfect environmental equality (children in army schools overseas). When the data still showed a gap, they were pretty frustrated. The environment improved black scores, but did not get rid of the gap, and this has been a very consistent conclusion.
“Here blacks have a very high degree of educational, economic and social compatibility. We thought it possible that the SAT data might finally put an end to The Bell Curve thesis that lower SAT and IQ scores are a matter of race rather than environment. No such luck…The goal of putting to rest this abhorrent thesis will have to wait til another day.”
Their search to “solve the puzzle of the racial scoring gap” continues. I submit it will continue until the look at genetics as the missing piece.
Perhaps you would like to discredit their pseudoscience?
If race is not a factor in intelligence, then all races are exactly equal in intelligence, and apparently intelligence only, since race can be shown to be a factor in so much else.
The proposition that race is NOT a factor in intelligence is vastly less logical than that it is. When you boil the argument down to a claim that all races are equal in intelligence, it looks absurd on its face, and clearly political rather than scientific.
ps - Anyone who refers to any hypothesis as “abhorrent” is obviously to scientist.
You are either confused by a technical clarification or trying to make an entire case out of a molehill. But I suggest you stop using emoticons that give the impression you are gobsmacked with horror that I would not notice my obvious error and can’t read english. It just makes your counter argument look even feebler.
If you are trying to pretend that, because the subgroups are voluntarily self-identified there is some secret data out there showing that the SIRE group of black actually performs equally on these various exams, but preferentially chooses not to identify themselves as black, you are either naive or grasping at the most pitiful straw I’ve seen grasped at in the thread so far.
Here’s the straw you are clutching at: “As a result, differences in LSAT performance across regional, gender, or racial/ethnic subgroups cannot be attributed to those subgroups in general, but merely to representatives of those subgroups who chose to take the LSAT and identified themselves as belonging to those subgroups.”
This is technically true. A minor portion of all test takers choose to opt out of self-identification, so there is always an “other” category. It’s pretty silly that you would clutch onto this as a possible reason to discard all the data.
Every leading researcher in this country accepts these race category data. Every individual in the field trying to improve results accepts this data. The gap according to SIRE group is real, it’s wide, it’s persistent, and it’s resistant to closure. It is not an artifact caused by opting out of self-disclosure for SIRE category.
The ignorance you show in smacking yourself with a little emoticon as if you’ve suddenly stumbled upon an obvious error that thousands of other researches missed suggest a rather naive and undereducated grasp of the problem.
Here’s an ACT gap graphto give you a better idea of the size of gap being struggled with by educators. Perhaps the pretty colors and nice picture will help you abandon the idea that there’s no real data such a gap exists. This gap, seen in every widely-administered academic exam, is not just an artifact resulting from the preferential choice of black students not to self-identify. In the case of the LSAT, such self-identification gives them a leg up in the admissions process.
No, there’s not that many things that race is a factor for.
There’s no genetic evidence that black people are inherently genetically dumber, on average.
Until there is, there’s no reason to believe it. Test-score gaps, and other sociological gaps, have been around for all of history, and most ethnic groups have been at the top and bottom at various times.
Not you- I recognize that most people who are convinced black people are inferior are not going to change their mind. Mostly, I want to point out the weakness and pseudo-scientific nature of the “blacks are genetically dumber” crowd’s arguments to any other curious readers out there.
Well, but isn’t this the kettle calling the pot black?
You consider black people markedly inferior, ascribing to them an average IQ of 85.
For some reason, you think it’s more acceptable if this is the luck of the environment instead of the luck of the genes.
But I’m not so sure that gets you into some kind of separate and more noble category.
Regardless of whether the reason is a lousy environment or a lousy gene donation from parents–neither of which is the individual’s fault–you consider “black people” markedly inferior mentally, with half their entire population performing under an IQ level that is at the border of mentally challenged.
LOL. IQ is a test score. No, I don’t think anyone is inferior for scoring lower on a test. I guess you think IQ tests are magic, or something, but I don’t.