PZ Myers has stirred up a hornet'e nest by quoting Jim Watson's politically insensitive comments about race and IQ [Eminent scientist behaving badly]. As usual, the dispute rages around the question of whether Africans have lower IQ's than Caucasians or Asians.
Meanwhile, the connection between race and intelligence often goes unchallenged when it comes to other ethnic groups. For example, in the posting on the Ashkenazi Jewish Population I mentioned some explanations for higher intelligence among this group and not a peep was raised about IQ and race [Evolution in the Ashkenazi Jewish Population]. Isn't this strange? If it's okay to talk about one race having a difference in IQ then why isn't it okay to talk about another? [Let my meaning be clear. I doubt very much whether there's a real difference in intelligence between Askenazi Jews and other "races" but I'm willing to entertain the possibility.]
Here's the abstract of a paper by David and Lynn (2007).
A number of studies have found that Ashkenazi Jews in the United States have a high average IQ. It has been proposed by Cochran, Hardy and Harpending (2006) that this can be explained by the occupational constraints imposed on the Ashkenazi for many centuries in Europe, when they were largely confined to money-lending. They propose that this selected for the high verbal and mathematical intelligence that has several times been found in American Ashkenazim. The current study investigates how far this theory holds for European and Oriental Jews in Israel. A review of studies shows that Oriental Jews in Israel have an average IQ 14 points lower than that of European (largely Ashkenazi) Jews. It is proposed that this difference can be explained in terms of the Cochran, Hardy and Harpending theory because Oriental Jews were permitted to engage in a much wider range of occupations and hence did not come under the selection pressure to develop the high verbal and mathematical intelligence that was present for Ashkenazim.It seems pretty silly to me but it still got published in the scientific literature. Jared Diamond has also favored explanations like this for the higher IQ of this population.
So, the question of the day is why don't we see the same storm of criticism over a paper like this? Basically what they're saying is that the non-Jewish Europeans had lower IQ's than the Jewish population. How is this more politically correct than saying that blacks have lower IQs than whites in America?
David, H. and Lynn, R. (2007) Intelligence differences between European and oriental Jews in Israel. J Biosoc Sci. 39:465-73.
30 comments :
"Isn't this strange? If it's okay to talk about one race having a difference in IQ then why isn't it okay to talk about another?"
Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, it's because in one case you're flattering a minority group by alleging that its members are smarter than average, and in the other case you're insulting a minority group by alleging that its members are dumber than average. People are understandably more put off by the latter than the former.
From a scientific standpoint of course it shouldn't matter. But I seriously doubt Watson has a real handle on what the scientific evidence is here, he's just talking out of his ass like he usually does.
I'm from Lake Wobegon.
Jared Diamond favoured evolutionary explanations purporting to explain differential intelligence? I've read Guns, Germs, and Steel and that doesn't sound like him. I've skimmed the article, and I find it odd that they don't consider cultural effects in their discussion. If the Ashkenazim were more office-bound than other Jewish groups, any inherited effect on "intelligence" would more likely be cultural. They don't mention that the IQ test may favour one group over another, which gets into the sticky issue of the definition of intelligence. Finally, the degree of intelligence difference they're talking about, if it exists, is such a small advantage that I'm skeptical that it can be selected for especially in such a small group. Smart people don't procreate more than dumb people, to my knowledge.
While I don't think there aren't biological effects on intelligence, this paper invokes the spectre of biological determinism. Maybe that's why it's in the Journal of Biosocial Science...?
The near absence of criticism in the comments of the earlier post could be because it criticized the veracity of the result and the proposed mechanisms.
I note one (late) such comment.
aren't we all Africans?
Watson was not merely "politically unsensitive". What he said is demonstrably false. He is a racist that does not care about evidence yet believes he has science on his side. I think he is the perfect example of scientism-fascism.
Racial genetic differences have nothing against the evidence of the effect of environment and education. Alleged "intelligence genes" have low effects, if any.
The genes that any racial group may carry (including africans and jews) won't save their intelligence if they are raised with bad nutrition and poor education, nor can it hinder them from the benefits of better conditions.
If the question is, are european jews genetically smarter than other people, the answer is, it cannot be so by much. Truly insignificant if we compare to the difference between good vs. bad education.
The educational culture and demanding trade of the ashkenazim jews, and not the particularities of their genetic history, is the main responsible for their high IQ's.
I suspect it's also because the question of Jewish intelligence has been tied to neurological maladies as well as the supposed higher IQ. It makes it a much less threatening proposition.
Compare and contrast:
"Those Jews, eh? Brilliant at maths - too bad it also gives them OCD"
"Those black people, eh? Lovely muscles, good runners - not so hot on the brain front"
(I do hope I don't have to add the disclaimer that these are not my views!)
Dunbar, actually Jared Diamond does entertain such thoughts about intelligence differences due to different selection pressures. He writes in "Guns, Germs and Steel" that his personal experience is that hunter/gatherer people are more lively and intelligent and he proposes an evolutionary explanation. According to this, intelligence is more important for hunters/gatherers, because the main reasons for premature demise are more linked to intelligence than they are in a dense society in Europe, where resistance to epidemic diseases played a larger role and intelligence was no factor as far as reproduction is concerned.
But he does not back this up with evidence.
I think many of us tend to judge these things on personal experience, whether or not it's scientifically or statistically valid - even though we may not like to admit it. I once worked with a black person who was extremely bright IMO, which suprised me because I was probably a bit of a racist at the time. I've also worked with very smart jews, and with one ashkenazy jew who I thought was the biggest bonehead I ever met. Go figure.
I'll add my two cents: in the United States, we have an unfortunate history of overt discrimination against African Americans, and their supposed inferiority was one of the rationalizations.
As an aside, it was once thought that African Americans would be inferior athletes! (think: the Hitler Olympic Games and Jessie Owens)
And, the current sad fact is that African American achievement in the intellectual areas continues to lag behind the rest of society (on the whole) and any hint of chalking up this lag to genetic factors would look too much like "just giving up and making excuses" instead of working hard to tackle this problem.
Sanders says,
Watson was not merely "politically unsensitive". What he said is demonstrably false. He is a racist that does not care about evidence yet believes he has science on his side. I think he is the perfect example of scientism-fascism.
David and Lynn are scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Are they racists for claiming that one race is more intelligent than another?
I have not read their paper but they seem to acknwoledge they have no conclusive evidence, only "informed speculation" whatever that may be.
This is not necessarily motivated by racism.
This is totally different from watson saying that people who work with blacks find them to be less intelligent. Such conviction, in extrapolating from personal experience to genetics, is not science. It's pure and simple racism born from the personal despise of watson for blacks. And his personal love for himself as a white scot descendant. Fool.
I will say, hwevrr, that this kind of thing is more akin to selectionists evolutionary psychology and thus is in the fringe with pseudocience, and particularly vulnerable to elitists motivations ( as usually is the case with IQ studies). As usual, their distancign form science is made by the menas of ignoring that the influence of the environment on IQ is much greater than that of rcaial differences in gene composition.
They need to ignore that to say a given race is GENETICALLY smarter in any significant way. So yes, I consider this "informed speculation" an exercize in bad science. The evo-pshycho selectionist kind.
I think it's scandalous for this kind of research to come out of an Israeli University, given the history of "scientific" theories about Jewish behavior.
In a number of situations in which there is an association of an ethnic group with lower socioeconomic status due to historical factors, that group tends to have lower IQ. Irish in the UK, African-Americans in the US, Oriental Jews in Israel. That is not evidence for the hypothesis that genetic differences are responsible for IQ differences between populations and races. In the case of Irish and English, or Oriental Jews compared with Ashkenazi Jews, the groups being compared are already very genetically similar, although they have differentiated culturally.
"Jews & IQ" appears to be a growing genre: Harpending et al., Entine, now this. Far worse is Kevin MacDonald's antisemitic so-called Jewish 'group evolutionary strategy.'
To answer Larry Moran's question, Watson's racist theories are especially noxious because he is saying that an entire subcontinent is stupid, not that a sub-group totaling a few million (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews) is little bit smarter (than, for example, other Jews).
Tupaia
Tupaia,
To answer Larry Moran's question, Watson's racist theories are especially noxious because he is saying that an entire subcontinent is stupid, not that a sub-group totaling a few million (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews) is little bit smarter (than, for example, other Jews).
Fascinating. I'm really looking forward to seeing how people squirm their way out of this one.
Let's call this excuse #1: Racism is okay as long as you're only saying that a small ethnic group (Ashkenazi Jews) is smarter than other ethnic groups (Christian Europeans). It's not okay if it's a big ethnic group (e.g, Asians) that's supposed to be smarter than another big group (Caucasians).
Have I got it right?
BTW, Watson is not a racist, just in case you're interested in the truth.
Larry Moran: "Racism is okay as long as you're only saying that a small ethnic group"
Please reread my comment. I called the David and Lynn paper "scandalous." Yes, it's racist, and an insult to Oriental Jews. And yes, there are degrees of virulence of racism. For example, J.P. Rushton's scientific racism is on the high end of virulence.
Use Google to survey the track record of Watson's remarks on race over the years. Surely you will detect a pattern.
Tupaia
Let's be clear on one thing. People are welcome to discuss possible evidence for genetic racial differences in intelligence, yes; if ashkenazis, within their collection of weird genes, have some brain genes , a discussion of how could affect thir intelligence is interesting, and has to be carried out. There is no bannig on this topic.
Upon close inspection, however, we realize that David and Lynn have no evidence. Moreover, anyone familiar with the IQ literature knows there is no such thing as genes capable of greatly increasing intelligence, and that the contribution they make (if any) is negligible compared to environmental conditions. So, there is good reason to suspect that these genes do not confer ashkenazis with any significantly greater intelligence.
In fact , I think apt reviewers would never allow publication of this paper without at least some substantial "disclaimer" paragraph about it's speculative and inconclusive nature.
Watson is acompletley different situation. He is just talking out of his ass because he has had bad experiences with black people and thinks there is a genetic reason for this. A racist in a nutshell, Larry. This is very different from constructing a possible argument for differential intelligence becuase jews have soe weird brain genes. No, watson's is the, low-brow, black-hating racism of always. If you think that if I accept discussing david and Lynn's argument, we ought to take take watson's oral defecations seriously....well, what can I say, Larry.
Tupaia,
You think Hitchesn is OK?
I have no doubt it is just a matter of time before he says something else outrageous. And I'll tell you "I told you so".
Sanders says,
Watson is acompletley different situation. He is just talking out of his ass because he has had bad experiences with black people and thinks there is a genetic reason for this. A racist in a nutshell, Larry. This is very different from constructing a possible argument for differential intelligence becuase jews have soe weird brain genes. No, watson's is the, low-brow, black-hating racism of always.
I've known Jim Watson for 37 years. Admittedly, I haven't talked to him on more than a dozen occasions but I can assure you that he isn't a racist. He's arrogant. He's provocative. He's sarcastic—with a gleam in his eye whenever he says something that will get you going. He's sometimes naive. And he's always going to speak his mind especially when he's tweaking the politically correct crowd who he despises.
In this interview he jerked everybody's chain and just as he would have expected they all started howling. He's having a good laugh, although I hope for his sake that he begins to realize that he went too far.
Perhaps he trusted that his former student would realize that he was being provocative and wouldn't print his comments.
Now, that doesn't condone what he said. I think he needs to be a lot more careful about how he behaves in public. But, having said that, most of you are being quite foolish to accuse him of being a knee-jerk racist.
Think about it for a minute. How long would he have survived in the places where he's been if that were really true? The people who know him realize that he's a loose cannon but they would never tolerate a racist.
Larry:
You cannot say straight up racists things and then wonder why people consider you to be racist. If Watson crossed the line, that's it. Let's not fool ourselves about it any longer, lets.
If they REALLY never would tolerate a racist, they should ask him to leave now. Or they should at least produce a disclaimer, you know, like they had to do with Behe: that they do not share his racist views.
The second author of David and Lynn 2007 is Richard Lynn, notorious scientific racist. Lynn is author the books Dysgenics and Eugenics, publishes in white separatist publication American Renaissance, and is on the board of directors of the racialist Pioneer Fund.
Tupaia
I think we should have this conversation in ten years time and see who has made fools of themselves. Just remember Galileo.
yeah, wel,, during these netx ten years, you could medidate upon why discussion of IQ in terms of real, molecular genes has had so poor "preliminary" results.
We should have seen advances years ago.
It just so happens that none of several candidate genes has been demostrated to have any considerable effect on intelligence. The best they can get is a statistic correlation (yes, soft science) with SLIGHT differences of IQ... at best, the effect of any gene is low.
By the way, did you guys know that accents in language have "high heritability"?
Maybe in 10 more years the geniuses of eugenics will junt down the genes and explain us the mechanisms by which their mutations determine the accents (hehehe)
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Calculating heritability is quite a different thing than discussing actual genes.
The evo.psychology school basically thrives on the popular “urban myth” that genotype=phenotype.“It’s all in the genes”.
Despite the fact that genes are involved in almost any process, not all differences in phenotype are due to genetic differences.
Yet evolutionary psychology will swipe aside the evident effect of the environment and insist that traits like differences in IQ only find “evolutionary explanation” if they are brought down to molecular-genetic changes. They never loose hope the genes WILL be found; and further tend to pose as if molecular –genetic explanations are the only proper scientific explanations
But see, genotype= phenotype…is simply false.
Sanders: "The evo.psychology school basically thrives on the popular “urban myth” that genotype=phenotype.“ ... evolutionary psychology will swipe aside the evident effect of the environment"
You're using the term "evolutionary psychology" as a catch-all that includes psychometry, behavior genetics etc. To be sure, there are some problematic features to "evolutionary psychology in the strict sense" especially its Chomskian-cognitivist domain-specific modules. To be fair, "evolutionary psychology" has acquired a generic meaning of "Darwinian approaches to human behavior." And sometimes the worst studies in that genre gain infamy.
At its best, modern human behavioral ecology is about developmental plasticity, reaction norms, learning, condition-dependent strategies, and cultural traditions, not inflexible, hard-wired, ultra-specified behaviors.
Any biological paradigm can be subverted to support racism. Racist pseudoscience can be Lamarckian, mutationist, neo-Darwinian, group selectionist. .. There are even non-biological "intellectual" racisms, like the notion of "spiritual race."
Tupaia
Flattery is probably a large part of it. On the one hand, suggesting one group is smarter than other groups is always inherently less offensive.
But biologically: This paper argues that traits of intelligence were selected for over the centuries. Watson's statement tends to take the opposite tack, that intelligence was selected against.
How would that work?
Africans seemed to do really well until the European colonial powers came along and introduced guns and European-style politics. Who says the Africans are inferior? Inferior to Europeans who keep killing each other over differences in religion, disputes about who should follow a father, and language differences?
Darwin argued that the "savage" races would be wiped out by "civilized" races. By savage, he meant aboriginals. It was not due to the aboriginals being inferior in any way. Darwin noted that, in the case of Tasmanians, for example, the aboriginals were evolutionarily superior to Europeans, for life in Tasmania. Superior genes and culture cannot stand up against guns, Darwin said. Guns win.
I once heard of a tribe of Africans who were taught to play checkers. Non-Africans found games very frustrating. The tribe quits playing after three or four moves. They can tell by those moves who will win, 20 or 30 moves later. One conjecture is that they need such skills to hunt lions and game for food.
Europeans would probably say, "Buggers don't play fair! Don't know how to play checkers like a civilized person!"
The African tribesman might say, "Why throw good moves after bad? Any economist could understand why we quit. Don't you guys have economists in your culture?"
Who is the dummy there?
At the risk of being called a racist, studies also show that Chinese children score a median of 109 on IQ tests, while Japanese kids score a median of 111. This is almost as large as the alleged IQ difference we see in Ashkenazim. I find it particualrly interesting that while researchers appear to have embarked on a frantic quest to identify alleged mutations that would produce superior brains among Ashkenaism, no researchers seem to be in a frenzy to find alleged genes which would generate brain mutations producing congitive superiority in Chinese or Japanese populations.
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/NationalIQs.aspx
PCness has run amok. If you point out there exist documented biological brain differences between males and females, you're a "sexist." Whether these biological brain differences have any significance for cognitive tasks or for social status remains another question entirely. Human brains are notable for their plasticity; hydrocephaly in very young children resulting in a resction of half the brain or more does not appear to affect cognitive function. The rest of the brain apparently rewires itself to take over the functions of the part that have been resected. So moving from biological brain differences in men & women to heritable differences in cognitive function or social rank is quite a leap.
http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/nature2
Larry Sumemrs' statements about women appear to derive from studies like this, which claim a higher variance for males than females on IQ tests:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-4JF8H28-4&_user=10&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=114000ab531d25cebea23f94b6ec07a0
On the other hand, these kinds of stiatistical claims have been crticized for bad use of statistics, numerical legedermain, and generally shoddy methodology, such as tossing out excessive numbers of scores as "outliers" without solid justification:
http://pyjamasinbananas.blogspot.com/2007/10/sex-and-iq.html
If you cite the Ardent and Plomin paper, you're called a "sexist," whereas if you point out problems with statistical methodology, you're a good person and a friend to mankind.
Pythagoras and his followers claimed that odd numbers were male and even numbers were female, so presumably anyone who lives in a house with an odd-numbered address should be classified as a sexist who despises women.
And so it goes.
First,
Jewish people are the most intelligent. They win almost 40% of the Nobel Prize's and they have a small population of only 14 million. So by far they exceed the other races in intelligence. The other races having huge numbers and such small contributions.
Second,
IQ tests, test intellectual conformity, not creativity and originality. This would explain the Asian high IQ's. They as a people are the ultimate conformists.
In IQ tests there is typically only one answer to the problem. That problem being a social conformity to reason. But everyone knows that Genius's and all of the greatest developments in the world are not the product of conformity. Conformity never breeds creativity. We can see this in the lack of influence the Asian population has had on Science. China used to be called the "sick man" of Asia. Their population is massive and their contribution to innovation is almost nil. We can see this lack of originality in their adoptation of European philosophies, I.e. Communism.
Friedrich Nietzsche and other Philosophers have critized Asians. Nietsche used the words "Pallid osification" to describe Orientals.
Pallid: lacking sparkle or liveliness.
Osification: The process of becoming set and inflexible in behavior, attitudes, and actions. Inflexible conformity, rigid unthinking acceptance of social conventions.
The reality is Asian people have yet to understand that laws and rules are arbitrary. Europeans make the rules and Asian's follow them.
It also doesn't make sense that Asian's are considered smart because of the fact that they have destroyed their own countries. This is due to over-population and their basic lack of enviromental understanding.
It is also common scientific fact that women who have many children are ignorant, and those who have less children are more intelligent. This has already been proven in studies. So it seems strange to say that Asians are smart when the obviousness of their backwards countries, and medieval lifestyle makes them contrary to that premise.
Europeans have the most advanced civilizations and every other race has yet to meet these levels other than the Japanese. The Japanese only being good at copying other people's inventions and making them better. Other than that their original creativity is lacking as well. They took American cars and made them better. They took the German camera and made it better. And they took German steel and made it better. Otherwise the greatest advances still come from Europeans and Jews. Other than that the Orientals have yet to produce an Einstein or a Thomas Edison.
When it comes to Black people. It makes sense that they have low intellectual comformity, I.e. IQ tests. They are far too creative to be trapped in this unoriginal form of conditioning. You can tell their creative capacity in their athletics, music, dance, and the way they talk. They by far exceed the Asiatic races in these areas. Being better singers, musicians ect. Blacks far exceed Asians in emotive expression. In all of North America there is only one or two famous high-paid Asian actors.
Reality, Europeans rule the world and they have allowed others to exist only out of desire for economic bennifet. They, (Europeans) are also the physically strongest, winning the Strongest Man competitions again and again.
The greater the conformity, the weaker the race. Thus we see the races as they are today. The wild animal being bred out of man, and the physically impotent, conformist thriving.
Otherwise "Group psychology" is the most destructive thing in the world. All these stereotypes are false when it comes to the individual. Individualism is the most important thing for this time. All countries, Religions, groups need to dissolve for man to live in peace.
www.truenewspaper.blogspot.com
"Admittedly, I haven't talked to him on more than a dozen occasions but I can assure you that he isn't a racist. He's arrogant. He's provocative."
And he was correct about the research. Also, that person who commmented on Richard Lynn. Regardless of what you think about him most of his critics have disapeared since the TIMMS & PISA results came out. Turns out his regional iq estimates were bang on.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
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