# The looming crisis in human genetics

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-looming-crisis-in-human-genetics/519571>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [December 1, 2009, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-looming-crisis-in-human-genetics/519571 "2009-12-01T09:22:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 244

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**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-looming-crisis-in-human-genetics/519571/244 "2009-12-17T17:11:19Z")

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> [@What Do PHILOSOPHERS DO?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-philosophers-do/57641/30):
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> What both of you are discounting is the fact that the NBA is a career–not just a “sport” and you seem to make the assumption that whites do not choose a path toward that as a primary choice.

Rapping is a career, too. And.? Doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to expect white kids to choose this path in parity with black kids any more than its reasonable to expect the same with basketball.

> [@](#):
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> Sure; if a kid decides at age 6 that all he wants to be is Michael Jordan, an educated parent with connections would try to steer him toward alternate choices and a black kid might not have that sort of family structure. No argument there and it’s fair to say the white kid does have more alternatives.

Okay, no disagreement from me either.

> [@](#):
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> But that’s not exactly what happens. What happens is that the white kid is given every advantage to determine whether or not he has potential and only when it becomes evident he is not going to reach the top tier are alternatives explored.

And this is where you stray into unreasonableness. White kids are given _every_ advantage to determine all of their potentials? Really? Not only are you using absolutes like “every” and “only”, but you even go so far as to emphasize the absolutes, which further reduces the credibility of what you’re writing. Moreover, it can’t be reconciled with what you wrote just a paragraph before.

A child of two physicians very well might be the next Michael Jordan. But how he is going to be given _every_ advantage to determine his potential in athletics when his background so heavily favors an academic/medical career track? These parents aren’t sending him to basketball camp, when they’d rather have him in the hospital shadowing Daddy. It’s unlikely that the child of hockey fans is going to be groomed for basketball either.

> [@](#):
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> To your point about this being a non-sequitur for success in other endeavors: of course an NBA skillset is unrelated to success elsewhere. But I have used it as an archetype because it so obvious an example for disparate outcomes NOT being the result of skewed opportunity.

It’s not an _obvious_ example of disparate outcomes being the result of reasons other than skewed opportunity (as its just as contentious if not moreso than the theory that some races are smarter than others), so perhaps it’s time you pick another example to work with.

Your basic argument is pretty simple: it’s possible that there is a gene or genes related to intelligence that are found disproportionately in some racial groups than others.

All it takes to support this argument is citing _known_ (as opposed to _speculative_) examples of such a phenomenon. For example, it is a documented fact that Asians as a group as less able to metabolize [alcohol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction) due to a lack of certain enzymes. This is largely why alcholism is less prevalent among Asians. This is a reason that has more to do with _nature_ than _nurture_.

Ergo, therefore, yadda,yadda, it is _possible_ that intelligence follows a similar mechanism.

See how easy it was for me to put together a straightforward, noncontroversial argument to support _your_ position? There is absolutely no need to appeal to the mythology of the “dumb brute”, which is a trap you fall into time and time again when we debate this subject.

When you find yourself drawing the same kind of speculative conclusions that pundits did decades ago when assessing all those Jewish basketball players, consider that it’s time to start thinking like a scientist in the 21th century.

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