May I recommend reading the article I cited? I’d particularly suggest the section beginning on P 479, with “We consider in detail a practical concern about a highly polarized research topic. Is it ever ethical to assess population-group (racial or ethnic) differences in intelligence.” By all means, form your own opinion of prevailing scientific thought, and the degree to which research scientists are sensitive to the “ethical” issue of researching genetically-driven intelligence differences among “race” and other populations.
Then ask yourself a couple questions:
If there aren’t any differences at all, why is there an ethical dilemma?
If researches in the field aren’t concerned that population-based genetically-driven intelligence differences will be expanded and elucidated rather than erased, why wouldn’t they be eager, instead of reticent, to pursue the research?
Dude, nothing is “wrong with me”. I just refuse to argue back and forth with two man-children about a topic you gleaned from Wikipedia. Nor am I try to “win” an argument, far as I’m concerned, you two have already won it by default. You’ve proved without of a shadow of a doubt that genes work the way you think they do, I’m nearly certain one of you will be receiving your honorary doctorates from Princeton.
I finished my master’s thesis in 2.5 years with three abstracts, two published papers, and a book chapter. I’ve added to the field of knowledge and my work has been cited providing the framework for other studies (“On the shoulders of giants” as they say); or do you think the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, by the way, not a satellite campus) just gives out biology degrees? What field are you? What is your substantive contribution your field?
You may not think people in “real-life” don’t care about my accomplishments, but the PhD admissions committees at Loyola, University of Chicago, an Northwestern would disagree with you as well as my employer.
Sure, in the mean time, stop trying to hide your racism and ethnocentrism under the cloak of science.
Dude, if you’re a doctor and you believe, “Genes change with evolution, and descendant pools are recipients of those changes, with prevalences for the new variants driven by things such as environmental pressures and the relative advantageousness of the new mutation for driving reproductive success,” is indicative of AMA dropping the ball on training M.D’s.
For the record, everything from 3-6 is flat-out wrong. See, the problem, Chief Pedant is that your MO is to move the goal-post whenever you’re proven wrong. I don’t have time for that shit. This is why I’m not participating in the debate, in fact, I suspect we’ll end up moving this to the Pit.
(bolding mine)
…
(bolding mine)
Heh. You sure it’s called a nickname or do you think biologists (i.e. Gene Nomenclature Committee) have come up with a formal term to describe what you refer to as a “nickname”? Did you learn about “gene nicknames” in medical school or did you come up with that term by yourself? You clearly learned a lot during your medical school education. In this spirit, I will now dub “hissing black cuff” as a nickname a for term blood pressure.
I’ve never claimed there aren’t any differences (if the question is “are different outcomes due to different average tendencies towards having certain genes that are involved with intelligence/aggression/etc”), despite the strawman argument you often assign to me. I genuinely don’t know. But until there’s actually evidence for it (in the form of all of the genes found and populations analyzed), then (obviously) I have no reason to believe it. Also, just because these researchers claim there’s an ethical dilemma doesn’t mean there actually is one. If there’s evidence, good researchers will find it (they haven’t yet), regardless of any political/ethical dilemmas.
Maybe some researchers are concerned about this, but so what? The concern of researchers is not evidence for your genetic explanation.
Your explanation might be true. But until there’s evidence for it, then I have no more reason to believe it then I have to believe in any other explanation. There is, of course, plenty of evidence for racism and different societal and economic circumstances playing at the very least a large part in these different outcomes. You’re confident that researchers have already eliminated the “nurture” element (a nebulous concept that I guess includes every single thing in the universe that can affect economic/educational/criminal outcomes besides genes) in some studies. I don’t believe they have come close to eliminating “nurture”- and short of the “biosphere” type thought experiment I posed earlier, I’m not sure how they would.
You (and others) have posed a hypothesis to explain differing outcomes. This hypothesis is testable- and one doesn’t even need to do my “biosphere” thing- one just needs to find the genes, and then find their relative prevalence in different populations. A big task, of course, but why should I believe your explanation before your hypothesis is tested?
Um…which of us has posted original cites to articles, and which of us keeps using Wikipedia? Go through your and my posts for the answer.
On the “nickname” front: I’m trying to help you understand the difference between the idea that we give genes a casual nomenclature which includes multiple variants with disparate phenotypic expressions under the same name so that we don’t have too large a number of names to keep track of. Thus, the “MCPH1” variant gene which gives rise to microcephaly is distinct from the “MCPH1” variant gene that does not. At both a molecular and functional expression level, they are not “exactly the same gene” and only someone with a completely inadequate grasp of genetics would confuse that (see your statement to the effect that all humans have exactly the same genes). The HMGA2 with cytosine substituted for thymine in one of its sections is NOT “exactly” the same as the one with thymine in the same position, even though both are nicknamed (labeled) “HMGA2.”
Here’s an idea: stop prattling on about your education and begin defending your points. Stop trying to present yourself as some sort of expert explaining to the simple-minded they have it “wrong” and instead actually make a case for a particular point. Stop focusing on the banal, such as how to use the term “nickname,” and instead focus on content, such as whether or not two genes with the same taxanomic nomenclature but different molecular makeup, coding for different expressions of phenotypic outcome, are different genes or not.
If you can’t figure out the difference between the substance of an argument and a petty difference over words, there probably isn’t much hope you’ve come to a real understanding of how genes work. You’ll just continue to live in a world that thinks two people both named “Timmy” must be the same person.
Lame.
If you are interested in a reasonably recent (2004) review of genes and their role in brain function, let me refer you again to the Gray/Thompson article I cited earlier. At one point you wanted to “draw a picture” for me. I’m too lazy to do that for you, but there is a nice set of pictures on P 475 labeled “Linking genes, brain structure and intelligence” that is well done. The authors cite evidence that at least 40% of general cognitive ability can be attributed to genetic factors, and the illustrations expand on that.
Now, I don’t want to embarrass you too much (OK; OK; I do) but the word “variability” means “not identical.” If you have some sort of cite–even Wikipedia, if you are desparate–that there is no variability in the genes that make our brains what they are and drive how well they work, by all means post it for me to read.
One more thing. Exactly which part of my statement about evolution is so incorrect that the AMA* dropped the ball on my education?
*Hey; why shouldn’t I blame the AMA, too? Apparently Honesty thinks they are in charge of medical education, and I’m not that fond of 'em anyway…let 'em take the heat, I say
This is the sort of statement (as I’ve said before) that makes me feel like I’m arguing with anti-vaxers.
I’ve given you a very simple, well-documented example to chew on:
Black children born to wealthy and well-educated parents underscore white children born to poor and undereducated parents on the SAT. And at every level of socio-economic status, the general rank order of asians over whites over blacks holds true for quantitative testing, particularly in STEM fields.
If I recall correctly, you raised the potential confounders of nutrition and parasitosis, and didn’t get back to me when I was incredulous about those two putative and untested confounding variables for nurturing in the above example. I await other suggestions from you for confounding nurturing variables.
I’ve given you evidence that human populations are separated by tens of thousands of years, and examples of genes that vary among those population. These genes (haplogroup D MCPH1, for example) show us that new mutations developed in separated populations show up only in populations descended from the one in which the mutation arose. The persistent prevalence differences show us that gene admixture due to migration and interbreeding among these populations are nowhere near creating homogeneous pools of genes. When you raised the notion that a relatively recent Most Common Recent Ancestor might create such an admixture, I gave you some contradictory cites which you found “interesting.” You were going to get back to me, but did not.
It’s your choice to cling to the hope that some sort of secret confounding variable creates the observed differences in population outcomes. I find the evidence slim for that, and I am confident that current genetic research will shortly drive a nail into the coffin containing the last best hope of Egalitarians and Creationists: that we all have about the same genes, coding for about the same outcomes, in about the same distributions.
Not a single piece of the story in the evolution of life here on earth supports that view as the simplest and most elegant one. It’s just the most feel-good one.
Unfortunately, as we are about to find out when Fisher v UTexas gets resolved by SCOTUS, the egalitarian argument is going to bite us in the ass if we want a diverse society. We will be much better off adressing what mother nature gave us, and finding ways to move on from there. When SCOTUS decides only opportunity–and not race alone–should count for things like who to hire and who to accept for admission into university, race-based AA will be forcibly abandoned and a leap forward we have already made will be lost.
Dude, I have no idea what your point is with that.
Do you dispute that it’s sometimes possible to know that the frequency of some allele differs between groups even without identifying the specific gene and alleles at issue?
Do you even understand the difference between a gene and an allele?
By bad, the AAMC dropped the ball. Unlike you, my friend, I can admit when I’m wrong. Hopefully, one day, you’ll learn that genes have their own nomenclature that real scientist learn about in graduate school. There’s a way scientists denote transcript variants of a gene. In the mean time, you just keep using those ‘nicknames’ you learned at medical school, they actually suit you and the erudite image you’re trying to project here.
While interesting, so what? I’ve never said anything contrary. I’ve agreed that disparate outcomes exist. Repeating different examples of disparate outcomes (which I’ve already agreed exist) is not evidence for any particular explanation for those outcomes. You’ve provided a hypothesis, which is testable- I’m just asking for evidence (of which you have none).
More disparate outcomes. Feel free to not bring up any more examples of the disparate outcomes we all agree exist.
I don’t care if you’re incredulous- the genetic explanation (your hypothesis) has no more evidence for it than the nutritional or parasite hypothesis (or the alien matrix hypothesis, or the “God is a racist” hypothesis, etc). I don’t support any one of these hypotheses, by the way- I want see them tested, and examine the results.
I’m still reading. I’ll get back to you in the next few decades when I think I’ve read enough on human evolution and pre-history- a topic I find endlessly fascinating.
I’m not clinging to anything. Your explanation has no supporting evidence. I’m not claiming it’s disproven- just that to support your hypothesis, you need a list of genes that affect intelligence (and, obviously, supporting data on how those genes are determined to be linked to intelligence), and then a broad survey showing the prevalence of these genes in different populations. So get to work! Science is hard.
More straw-man links to Creationists (though you’ve switched to anti-vaxxers as well)… very ironic coming from a supporter of a hypothesis that hasn’t been tested.
Go on and bring up more disparate outcomes- you’re not arguing with me. I don’t have an explanation for all of it, though it’s very possible (and probably very likely for some of these) that racism, motivation, cultural differences, parental involvement, study time, or even things like nutrition are involved. It’s also possible that genetics is involved, but I’m not going to believe it until there is genetic evidence. I have nothing invested in this- I won’t be “shocked” or “saddened” by a determination that one of these (or many of these) are involved in disparate outcomes. But I think you’re deluding yourself the same way Creationists and anti-vaxxers are; scientifically you’ve put the cart before the horse. The conclusion comes after the hypothesis has been tested, not before. You should ask yourself why you’re so confident about this, despite the complete absence of supporting genetic evidence. To me, it seems awfully convenient that outcomes now in history just happen to accurately reflect genes- as opposed to perhaps every other period in history in which outcomes were entirely different (you should also reflect about your own biases when you dismiss any achievement that historians and archaeologists show that “black” civilizations made).
Lol, do you admit that allele frequencies for blood types vary between different groups?
If Chief Pedant really used the wrong word for a concept, you should just assume for the sake of argument that he used the correct word and respond to his actual substantive argument. As opposed to nitpicking his post and completely ignoring his substantive argument.
Yes. Counter-question: do you know the difference and the relationship between a gene and a protein?
I don’t know, brazil84, there’s over 30,000 genes, and these wild goose chases are getting tiring. Why don’t you go ahead and give us 300 examples (or about 0.03% of the genome) to start us off? Both you and Chief Pedant are screaming about your hypothesis on genes but you’ve yet to provide any examples that these genetic differences are encoding for differences in proteins.
Protein are what matter.
What matters is the protein
Las proteínas son la expresión física de nuestros genes
Amino acids, which comprise a protein, are the expression of the gene.
Phenotype = Protein
Proteine sind sehr wichtig in biologischen Prozessen
Hopefully, the German makes the point clearer but I don’t think a thunderstorm of biology textbooks raining on your house could not possibly reduce your or his ignorance on this subject. You’ll continue to point at the differences genes yet remain curiously silent when tasked with finding mutation that not only retained protein function but also exhibit novel activity AND are concentrated to a concentrated geographic region. You will remain silent because the list of such mutations are excruciatingly small, though I encourage you to the first 300 (0.03% of the genome) if you can.
No, not after what he’s said. I’m not going to assume anything. Far as I’m concerned, if Chief Pedant wants to pretend he is a biologist, he better damn well talk like one. He’s had a similar undergraduate training as I did plus he scored in the 90+ percentile on the MCAT and is presumably a M.D, so there’s no fucking excuse. Quit making excuses for him, God knows you wouldn’t if he was Henry Louis Gates Jr. or Neil deGrasse Tyson. God definitely knows that.
Well then perhaps you should have spelled out your point.
Rather than simply quoting me, bolding a sentence, and noting that you had added the bolding.
It’s not my job to guess at what you are trying to say. Please spell out the point you were trying to make.
If you understand the difference between a gene and an allele, then why won’t you accept that (1) it regularly happens that different alleles have measurable phenotypical effects; and (2) allele frequencies vary from group to group?
Were you seriously never taught this?
I do. And now another question for you:
If different alleles generally don’t make a difference because they usually end up in the same proteins being created, then why do researchers bother to study allele frequencies?
Also, how is it that different people have different blood types?
You seriously don’t know whether it’s sometimes possible to know that the frequency of some allele differs between groups even without identifying the specific gene and alleles at issue?
Seriously?
Lol, I am happy to give two or three examples of any claim I have made. Just quote the claim in question.
Sure I have. For example, consider two people, one with alleles which result in having Type A blood and one with alleles which result in having Type O blood.
There is a measurable phenotypical difference between the two people. Since the effects of their genes are felt through creation of proteins, there must be different proteins being created. That’s the only possibility.
I’m not sure what you mean by “concentrated to a concentrated geographic region,” but anyway, as noted before, it’s not necessary for me to point to a specific allele. It’s possible to know that the difference in alleles exists through indirect evidence.
You are the one claiming that all people have essentially the same alleles. Your claim is ridiculous and wrong.
:shrug: He already explained to you what he meant. And you did not respond to the substance of his argument.
ETA: Also, please answer my question:
Do you now admit that allele frequencies for blood types vary between different groups? Or do you still insist that all people have essentially the same alleles?
Possibly, or possibly not (especially if you are talking about the Ashkenazi sub population of Jews).
Conflating religious affiliation with SIRE groups is even an even cruder method of getting at biologically-based grouping than SIRE groups. Certainly as a rule of thumb, both east asians and south asians are on the top of the food chain for SIRE-based group academic performance across the board. But if you parse out a relatively specific population (say, Ashkenazi Jews) and stack 'em up against all-comer “asians” I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Ashkenazis come out on top for some fields.
In any case, the College Board (which owns the SAT) stopped disaggregating this sort of data for publication–and of course, they never asked for religious affiliation. They are in enough heat already without allowing their data to be used for this kind of study anymore, and have learned their lesson, so to speak: If you measure human groups for performance, you aren’t gonna get an egalitarian’s hoped-for result.
It turns out it’s not all that popular to have it be your data that shows performance differences are not a result of opportunity differences.
In desperation, you are flinging mud all over the place, but it’s pretty lame mud. When you are challenged with a single example (HMGA2 and cytosine for thymine substitution making a difference in brain size and IQ in a European population), you pretend you don’t have time to track down every wild goose chase. Then you pretend there are NO specific examples.
When you confuse the fact that many gene variants coding for completely different outcomes are lumped under the same genetic nickname (shorthand name) for the parent gene group, you pretend I have no idea how genes work because I use the term “nickname” (which is what it is), and that your study of the field renders your position more worthy.
I give you a well-respected review on Neurobiology and Intelligence published by Nature containing cites and explanations for dozens of associations between genes and intelligence and brain functions, and you dismiss this point as “patently false”: (by CP) “4. There are genes “involved in intelligence,” and that’s why we are smarter than cockroaches. No one I know thinks all the genes are worked out; no one I know thinks genes are unrelated to an organisms intelligence (or any other skillset).”
You have made the inane statement that “all humans have exactly the same genes.” This statement is so patently ridiculous that no scientist who saw it would think it is anything but a naive statement from a third grader. It was that statement which led me to try and help you understand the difference between a nickname for something (the shorthand version of a gene category) and the critical point that the gene “name” does not mean every variant of that gene is exactly the same, or codes for the same outcome.
Now, you’ve managed to hit a new low. You’ve sunk to this comment: (by Honesty) “(You are) screaming about your hypothesis on genes but you’ve yet to provide any examples that these genetic differences are encoding for differences in proteins.”
You bolster this insight by explaining that genes code for proteins (an insight with which I have never argued), apparently in the hope that this helpful explanation will get you off the hook somehow. To add to your silliness, you try to apply a veneer of sophistication with some German, and you repeat the same concept (proteins are what actually matter) six times after the fashion of a madrasa student hoping his rote recitation is all that is required in a theological argument.
Let me summarize something for you:
If you don’t think that variant genes–even ones lumped under the same common name–often code for different proteins that drive different outcomes, your grasp of genetics is not just rudimentary. It’s wrong.
Inkorrekt.
You are asserting that, unless I give you a specific example of a specific gene mutation with an elucidation of the exact protein change driving the phenotypic variability, there’s no evidence gene variants are at work in phenotypic differences. This position is about as ignorant as it can be.
We know roughly how genes work. We have very good examples of specific nucleotide substitutions driving specific protein differences driving phenotypic differences. We have very good evidence inherited differences underpin a large proportion of our traits, including personality, physiology and intelligence. We even have an example of a very specific gene (HMGA2) with a very specific substitution (C for T) driving IQ and brain size differences of about 2.5% (In the case of people getting 2 Cs instead of two Ts) in a cohort of 20,000 people. The neurobiology of intelligence is only beginning to be worked out at a gene level, but no researcher holds a position that all humans have exactly the same genes for intelligence. No researcher thinks that gene mutations have no effect (via variant protein mediators) in driving differences.
How do you think we got our big brains and intelligence in the first place, Honesty?
Hint: Our genes mutated, causing the expression of different proteins, in turn causing the expression of different phenotypic outcomes. These gene variants–even ones under the same label (“nickname”)–are not “exactly the same in all humans.”
In the interest of focusing the discussion (and maybe helping you not blow your PhD application), let me ask you to defend or retract the underlined statement.
Hint: We do not all have the same set of genes. We all have (mostly) the same collection of genes with the same name, but they are often different–sometimes very different–from one another, even when they have the same name.
I believe this is your fundamental point of confusion, and I hope this helps.
Those similarly-named variants can be single nucleotide substitutions (C for T at a specific point in an HMGA2 gene) or more extensive mutations. Since genes mutate all the time and interact with one another to drive phenotypic changes, and since we all have thousands of genes, it turns out none of us–even clones–have the same genes. The proof that many of those variant genes code for different proteins causing different phenotypic outcomes is all around you.
It’s known to a certainty that different variations of the same gene can and do drive different outcomes. For example, people with a pair of genes (technically “alleles”) for type A blood, generally end up with type A blood. Similarly, people with a pair of genes for type O blood generally end up with type O blood.
Now it’s been asserted that genes affect outcomes only through the synthesis of proteins. Assuming this is true (and I will accept that it is true), there is only one possible conclusion, which is that a pair of genes for type A blood result in different proteins being created than a pair of genes for type O blood.
There is no need to identify the specific proteins in question. Different proteins must be being created.
(It’s also worth noting that there is not just one allele for each blood type. Sometimes different alleles do produce the same protein.)
What’s fascinating is that Honesty refuses to grasp this extremely simple and obvious point.
I think what happened is that he learned in school that changes in DNA typically result in negligible change in the proteins which are created and assumed that this point is relevant to the question of racial differences without giving it much thought. After all, he KNOWS that there are not any significant racial differences which are genetic and the point about proteins seems to superficially support this knowledge.
So he blurted it out without giving it a lot of thought, but now that Honesty has trumpeted his credentials so loudly, it’s psychologically impossible for him to back down. He just has too much of his identity invested in his ridiculous position.
He definitely seems like one of those folks whose circle must include sycophantic or uneducated underlings (pupils, maybe?) who do not challenge his statements.
As a consequence, when he is challenged, his initial response assumes the challenger is under-educated. If that assumption fails, his first plea is to his own authority, and he is apparently not very used to being forced to actually back up a point.
He’s now backed himself into an indefensible position that makes him look like a third-grader who’s been taught “we’re all created equal” without the refinement “equal in value.” So now he’s stuck defending this lame position that all genes with the same name are equal (and presumably wanting to leave the inference that all humans are genetically equal for the same outcome potentials).
I won’t be spending too much time thrashing this position further, since he is either unwilling or unable to review even the most basic science around how genes mutate and express different proteins that then drive different outcomes for individuals with a particular set of genes.
I understand the anxiety around research into genes which drive intelligence differences, and I accept that many people will want to see very specific examples all the way to an exact elucidation of how a given variant gene changes a protein structure, how that protein change interacts with the rest of the organism to effect phenotypic changes, and how those gene variants are present only in a specific population without equivalent mutations being expressed in an alternate population. That flood of information is coming; HGMA2 is simply an opening trickle. Science pretty much always wins in the long run.
In the interim, I don’t think Honesty will do himself too much good pretending that his authority is sufficient to make correct the statement that “every human being on this planet has the same genes.” That kind of statement, all by itself, brands the owner as devoid of understanding, particularly when they refuse to clarify that what they meant to say was “names for genes” and not “functions driven by genes.”
Yes, some people will always demand actual evidence to support your position. It’s lucky for you that you’re just brilliant enough to know what the science will conclude before the hypothesis is tested. And once it’s tested, we’ll all be smart enough to say that West African civilizations borrowed from the Arabs and no African society ever had advanced technology for the day, or other things that just happen to both dismiss black achievements (because it can’t be possible that there were smart, advanced black people in the past, can it?) and defy historical and scientific evidence.
I’m taking you two racist assholes to the Pit soon as I get home from work. My first and (hopefully) only Pit on this message board in over 12 years participating on this forum. That should tell you something. I’m tired of idiots like you fucking up my favorite message board with your cloak-and-dagger racist bullshit. This shit will end now, even if I get banned in the process. I’ll see you two ladies later today and will post a link of the Pitting here.
