Matt Nisbet asks the following question over on his blog.If race is a biological fiction, what are the reasons for persistent belief in this social myth?He answers the question by linking to the opinion of his colleague, Tim Caulfield, a lawyer at the University of Alberta [Why the Biological Fiction of Race Persists].
Now I ask you, dear readers, would you rely on a lawyer to decide whether there was such a thing as races in the species Homo sapiens? The only thing lawyers are good at is framing .... hmmmm.
Personally, I rather ask a biologist [Changing Your Mind: Maybe Human Races Do Exist After All] [Is Race a Biological Concept?] [Genetically Speaking All Races Are Equal].
The title of Matt's posting, "Why the Biological Fiction of Race Persists," leaves no doubt about where his bias lies. Matt has fallen hook line and sinker for the false frame about biological race. Those framers wanted to convince everyone that there was no such thing as biological races in humans in order to advance their political agenda; namely, opposition to racism directed mainly against Africans. Matt is so gullible, here's how he ends his posting ...
What do readers think? Is race a biological fiction? If so, what strategies can we pursue to re-frame the nature of genetic differences in news coverage and public discourse?That's right, Matt. It's just a framing problem to you isn't it? Do you even give a damn about scientific truth?
Biological races in humans exist, Matt, whether you like it or not. Frame that.
P.S. Guess whose photo Matt uses to illustrate his point about the biological "fiction" of races?
[Photo Credit: Matthew Nisbet]
So what if you have a biological category called ‘race’? Until such time as you can partition the phenotype of every human individual into genetic and cultural components, the category can be challenged on multiple non-biological grounds because as a biological category it has little if any instrumental value, and not for the least because geographical variation between peoples continues to diminish. I challenge you to (a) unambiguously name a race and (b) psay something useful about it.
ReplyDeletelol.
ReplyDeletegreat post, man
My old prof used to say that for human populations, within-group variation is larger than between-group variation.
ReplyDeleteAs such groups may have genetic propensities but that information tells us little about individuals.
I think the more interesting question is not whether races exist, but whether genetically-determined "races" correspond with socially-determined "races".
So where is the stable, tested, consensus racial classification of H. sapiens? Is it one of the literally dozens of mutually contradictory attempts that anthopologists have produced over the years? Is there a new one, well supported by genetic data, that you can link to? Or is this just an expression of faith that such a thing can be achieved?
ReplyDeleteThe present state of play is that "race" is essentially a sociological, not a biological, category. Data will convince me otherwise- if they exist. Assertion will not.
Steve LaBonne asserts,
ReplyDeleteThe present state of play is that "race" is essentially a sociological, not a biological, category. Data will convince me otherwise- if they exist. Assertion will not.
Let's assume that you trying to identify a murderer based on DNA fingerprinting. The results of extensive tests come back from the lab and they indicate that the murderer is Asian.
Do you ignore those results on the grounds that race can only be a sociological, not a biological, category?
Nobody is denying that "race" is also a category that's abused in society. You have only to look at the leading contender for the Democratic nomination to see a prime example of that. (Obama is white because half his genes come from his mother, right?)
But people are being far too politically correct when they deny that there is no biological category of race among humans. To deny that would mean that humans are somehow special and different from all other species that have demes, populations, races and subspecies.
So where is the stable, tested, consensus racial classification of H. sapiens? Is it one of the literally dozens of mutually contradictory attempts that anthopologists have produced over the years? Is there a new one, well supported by genetic data, that you can link to? Or is this just an expression of faith that such a thing can be achieved?
This is one of the more pernicious manifestations of political correctness. You are arguing like a creationist.
Biology is messy. It's almost impossible to draw tidy neat boundaries around something like race (or demes). If that's what you want then you will never be satisfied with any description of a human race. But that's a sociological excuse for political correctness, not a scientific one.
There are literally dozens and dozens of alleles whose frequencies in people of Asian, African, and European descent differ. Some are found exclusively in one group and not others and that's why genetic testing companies can tell you where your maternal ancestors came from by examining your mitochondrial haplotype. Most, however, are just more common in one group than in another.
That's exactly what you expect in populations that have diverged from a common ancestor but are not so isolated that they become species.
Many people don't understand the concept of demes and races. They think that these populations have to be composed of genetic differences that are exclusively found in only one group and not in another.
That's why you see the common argument about diversity within a population being as great or greater than the differences between groups. That's a fallacious argument and it cannot be used as evidence that races are mythical. One of the key events in speciation, for example, is the isolation and subsequent evolution of a small founding population that, by definition, is less diverse genetically than the main population from which it is derived.
At the point before it becomes a species that less diverse population is a race. Now don't jump all over me for claiming that humans races are about to become species. That's not going to happen because we are now seeing much more gene flow between races than we ever saw in the past. In a few thousand years there might not be any races in humans.
In today's world the biological distinctiveness of people from Europe, Asia, and Africa is still quite evident. When I look at students in my classroom I don't have much trouble identifying where their ancestors came from. True, my guess isn't 100% accurate in all cases because there's a lot of mixing going on, but I still get it right quite often.
Apparently you can't tell from looking at someone whether their ancestors likely came from Europe, Africa, or Asia. You may think your "color blindness" is a virtue. I think it's stupid.
Race is an inbreeding sub-group. Given this definition (which I found on Wikipedia), then a person can change race by behavior. When a European and Asian breed, they break previous racial identity. The are no longer inbreeding within their sub-group, thus no longer in either of those races. ummm, which race are they then?
ReplyDeleteThe results of extensive tests come back from the lab and they indicate that the murderer is Asian.
ReplyDeleteThere are no such tests. The Brits have been experimenting with calculating likelihood ratios based on the (not enormous) population differences in STR allele frequencies; I haven't been impressed with their results. So there's your first problem- I asked for real data, you gave me a hypothetical result from something that doesn't exist.
Here's your second problem. We all know there's plenty of genetic substructure in the human population. Duh. That's not at all the same thing as saying that there are genetic data to show a) that the complex population history of the species (see e.g. the well-known book by Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza, and subsequent DNA-based extensions of this pioneering serological work) divides up neatly into anything like traditional "racial" classifications; b) the reality of the usual socially recognized "racial" categories. Feel free to link to anything you regard as remotely definitive on these questions.
Yes indeed, biology is messy. (Do you have any idea how complex the structure of the "African" population is? Sure I can recognize that both a Kikuyu and a !Kung come from Africa; that doesn't mean they're close cousins genetically. They ain't. Now, it happens that people of African descent in the west mostly have ancestors from a fairly restricted area of West Africa, and therefore have some cohesion as a genetic grouping. THAT is a social / historical fact, not a biological one. ) And the messiness is exactly what honest biologists need to stress, rather than lending bogus support to "racial" folk biology.
anonymous says,
ReplyDeleteI challenge you to (a) unambiguously name a race and (b) say something useful about it.
Historically, Asians are far more likely to have mated with other Asians than with people from Africa or Europe. The result is that Asians form a genetically identifiable sub group within the species Homo sapiens. We can call this group a large deme, or a race, using terminology commonly used with other species.
Some of the genetic characteristics that are commonly, but not exclusively, found in Asians include: a low frequency of the O-type blood allele, a high frequency of certain Y-chromosomal haplotypes, an allele for black hair, high frequency of an allele for a flattened nose bridge and an epicanthal fold, etc.
The combination of several of these genetic characteristics can easily be used to identify people whose ancestors were Asian with an extremely high probability of success.
If you don't believe me then perhaps you'd like to put your money where your mouth is? How about we get someone to pick at random 100 people whose ancestors came from Asia, Africa, or Europe and we try to guess where they came from?
I'll bet you $10,000 that I'll get more than 50% of them correct. You, I assume, will only get 33% of them correct because you can't see any biological differences between races.
Deal?
Let alone "(East) Asians", not even "Chinese" names a biological rather than social category. Northern and Southern "Han Chinese" are genetically quite distinct populations with very different genetic histories, whose closest affiliations are Mongolian and Southeast Asian respectively. What unites them? History and culture, not biology.
ReplyDeleteAgain, the question is not whether population substructure exists. It's whether it falls at all neatly into the traditional racial classifications of folk biology. The answer is no.
steve, you are not taking into account modern techniques such as snp analysis that allow you to examine hundreds of thousands, even millions of loci, rather than the small number (often mitochondrial or Y linked) that have been used previously. The limited data using this type of methodology is revealing many more alleles (in addition to the obvious skin or hair color or lactose tolerence alleles) that are present at different frequencies in different demes.
ReplyDeleteSteve, you are mixing politics and biology in a way that suggests a deliberate attempt to obfuscate. I hope that's a false impression.
ReplyDeleteYou say,
Again, the question is not whether population substructure exists. It's whether it falls at all neatly into the traditional racial classifications of folk biology. The answer is no.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that I agree with you; the popular impression of races isn't the same as the real biological divisions.
So what? Does that mean that biological races don't exist just because the general public doesn't understand population genetics? That would be like saying that evolution doesn't exists just because the general public gets it wrong.
Please stop using silly arguments like that in this forum. They do not contribute to the debate.
I am also aware of those (after all, some companies are offering commercial "ancestry tracing' services based on them.) No doubt the Brits, who generally lead the way in pioneering such things, are even now investigating their forensic usefulness.
ReplyDeleteAgain, "different demes" != support for traditional racial classifications. It may well become useful for law enforcement to place an unknown subject into a deme that partially overlaps with socially recognized groupings (most likely as investigative information rather than admissible evidence). That does NOT justify flat, and misleading, statements to the effect that "race is real", which do not accurately sum up the messy reality.
Does that mean that biological races don't exist just because the general public doesn't understand population genetics?
ReplyDeleteWould your care to point to the place where I said that? Don't start acting like some of your more asinine commenters and putting words in people's mouths.
What I did say is that talk of "races" does not accurately and non-misleadingly sum up the real pattern and extent of human genetic diversity. As far as I know, most of the best-qualified geneticists would agree. If you have evidence to the contrary, produce it.
Some please give a full and proper definition of race as a biological term.
ReplyDeletesteve, you seem to be mixing up the popular notion of 'race' with the way it is viewed or used in practice by geneticists. Do you honestly believe we cannot take a blood sample from a native of Zambia, Finland and China and work out which 'race' the samples came from with almost 100% accuracy?
ReplyDeleteAs the anonymous commenter said above, it's any inbreeding subgroup. Simple as that. As the same commenter pointed out, this means that in humans "racial" identity can be changed by SOCIAL behavior. If one were to make a serious attempt at a "racial" classification of humans the result would be both quite complex and quite fluid, and as I said, far from neatly congruent with the folk biology in which "race" is reified into some kind of archetypal category.
ReplyDeleteThe word IMHO has pretty much been drained by its checkered history of any usefulness as a result of its history- it's virtually guaranteed to mislead.
martinc- quite the reverse. I'm trying precisely to keep that distinction clear. It's those who casually toss around references to the reality of (undefined) "race" who risk causing this confusion. (I could also tell a Northern from a Southern Chinese by appropriate genetic tests- so what?)
Some of the genetic characteristics that are commonly, but not exclusively, found in Asians include: a low frequency of the O-type blood allele, a high frequency of certain Y-chromosomal haplotypes, an allele for black hair, high frequency of an allele for a flattened nose bridge and an epicanthal fold, etc.
ReplyDeleteI don’t dispute that you can sort people into boxes, only that the boxes are arbitrary categories without instrumental value; there is no evidence of genetic differences between broad racial groups in the sense that members of population 1 have mutation X and members of population 2 do not. What’s so special about an apicanthal fold? You can probably think up in a day sufficient phenotypic markers to split humanity into thousands of “races.” Indeed, you can probably split Asian alone into a thousand races, if you really wanted to, and thereby prove Rutherford’s quip about biologists as stamp collectors. People generally mean something stronger than stamp collecting when they refer to racial divisions. And what they mean, well, it isn’t true.
Questions for Larry Moran:
ReplyDelete1. How many human races are there?
2. Do their differences mainly represent a) drift, b) sexual selection for arbitrary traits, c) ecological adaptation?
3. It is an empirical fact that races have different mean IQs. Do human races have different genetic potential for intelligence?
4. What do you think of the theory that races represent different life history strategies - different patterns of mating and parental investment (quality vs quantity of offspring) that are expressed in traits like intelligence, social behavior, aggression, and sexuality?
I'm not endorsing any particular view; I'm asking what yours are.
Tupaia
By the way, notice what the actual geneticist cited by Larry in his earlier "Changing Your Mind" post really said: "What this all means is that, like it or not, there may be many genetic differences among human populations — including differences that may even correspond to old categories of 'race' — that are real differences in the sense of making one group better than another at responding to some particular environmental problem." Earlier in the same piece he says "Flawed as the old ideas about race are [italics mine - S.L.], modern genomic studies reveal a surprising, compelling and different picture of human genetic diversity."
ReplyDeleteNotice all the qualifiers that Larry would prefer to ignore when he dogmatically states "Biological races in humans exist, Matt, whether you like it or not. Frame that."
I think it's the lack of real boundaries of the categories that's responsible for the difficulties in identifying and characterizing races; the boundaries allow mixing of members as well as broad variations in features.
ReplyDeleteI've decided to get a dog, and I've been looking at various breeds. It's easy to tell apart an Anatolian Shepherd and a Chihuahua standing next to each other, but when you check out the breed labels applied to dogs listed at rescue/adoption Web sites, it appears that a lot of imagination (or randomness) is applied to the labeling.
Steve, the problem is not whether genetic differences exist, it is about the current way society interprets the term 'race'. If, for instance, James Watson did have an African great grandparent and whose genes for skin color he inherited, then he would most likely be termed 'black' rather than 'white' according to current societal conventions. This is based on a mistaken idea of 'purity' - the notion that one cannot be of the white race if you dilute it with black blood.
ReplyDeleteObviously in genetic terms this makes no sense, there is no such thing as purity in terms of a single human 'race' and yet this is a necessary factor for terms like miscegenation to have meaning.
If one examines the evidence it becomes clear that we are dealing with a snapshot of current humanity, a population in constant flux, yet we can only deal with what we have at the moment. What we have at present are global populations that have been at least partially isolated from others, primarily due to geographic reasons, and these populations have real biological differences (statistical frequency of groups of genetic alleles) that can be shown by laboratory tests.
The average number of differences between populations will most likely fall as current migration trends continue to end the relative isolation of various populations but dealing with what he have at this moment in time there is enough societal and genetic data to unambiguously identify the relatively recent continental ancestry (a longhand definition of race) of almost anyone.
Larry wrote, "The only thing lawyers are good at is framing...."
ReplyDeleteThat, and helping to keep religious claptrap out of classrooms in a nation where the President thinks it would be a fine idea to teach the religious claptrap, and most folks don't "believe in" evolution (as if evolutionary theory and its factual supports would somehow be altered by opinion).
Shorter version: The only thing lawyers are good at is framing...until you need one.
anonymous asks,
ReplyDeleteRace is an inbreeding sub-group. Given this definition (which I found on Wikipedia), then a person can change race by behavior. When a European and Asian breed, they break previous racial identity. The are no longer inbreeding within their sub-group, thus no longer in either of those races. ummm, which race are they then?
Their offspring are a mixture of European and Asian and therefore do not belong to either race. Just like Barack Obama is neither African nor European from a biological perspective.
What's your point? Are you confused about the difference between race and species? In a species there is no gene flow but in races some gene flow is allowed.
Steve LaBonne says,
ReplyDeleteAgain, "different demes" != support for traditional racial classifications. It may well become useful for law enforcement to place an unknown subject into a deme that partially overlaps with socially recognized groupings (most likely as investigative information rather than admissible evidence). That does NOT justify flat, and misleading, statements to the effect that "race is real", which do not accurately sum up the messy reality.
Big demes are called races.
Your major complaint seems to be that what the general public means by "race" isn't the same as what scientists mean when they identify humans races.
So what? I really don't care what the men and women on the streets of Philadelphia think about when they talk about races.
What I care about is when people like Matt Nisbet claim that science says that biological races don't exist. Read his claim very carefully. He says that race is a biological fiction.
That's just plain wrong.
Does that mean that biological races don't exist just because the general public doesn't understand population genetics?
Would your care to point to the place where I said that? Don't start acting like some of your more asinine commenters and putting words in people's mouths.
I still believe you are mixing the two different perceptions of race. You frequently bring up the idea that the general public's view of race doesn't correspond to any biological definition and you do this in the context of discrediting the biological concept of race as it applies to humans.
If you don't want to give the impression that I perceive, then please stop talking about what the general public thinks and concentrate on whether there is a scientific reason why races aren't allowed in the human species.
Statements like the one below are easily misinterpreted.
Again, the question is not whether population substructure exists. It's whether it falls at all neatly into the traditional racial classifications of folk biology. The answer is no.
anonymous asks,
ReplyDeleteQuestions for Larry Moran:
1. How many human races are there?
I don't know for sure. I tend to think of race as the category right under species. Demes and populations are subcategories under races.
The question is, what is the minimum number of large groups (races) that we can use to encompass the entire species?
It's pretty clear that there are three main races, European, African, and Asian. I think that native Americans are probably a subset of the Asian race.
Cavalli-Sforza discusses the question in The Great Human Diaspora. In the section on "When Did the Races of Humanity Separate" he points out that the Oceanian (Australian) Aborigines separated from the large non-African group before that group split up into Asians and Europeans.
Thus, if we are going to count Europeans as a separate race then we also have to count the Oceanian Aborigines. That gives four races.
One could make a case for only two races, African and non-African.
2. Do their differences mainly represent a) drift, b) sexual selection for arbitrary traits, c) ecological adaptation?
Mostly drift, in my opinion.
3. It is an empirical fact that races have different mean IQs. Do human races have different genetic potential for intelligence?
I don't know whether different races have different average IQ's. It's not unreasonable that they could since there is clearly a genetic component to intelligence and there is variation between individuals that appears to due to different alleles.
It seems extremely unlikely that the frequencies of these allele would be exactly the same in all races.
4. What do you think of the theory that races represent different life history strategies - different patterns of mating and parental investment (quality vs quantity of offspring) that are expressed in traits like intelligence, social behavior, aggression, and sexuality?
I don't know whether those characteristics have a genetic component. I doubt it.
jud says,
ReplyDeleteLarry wrote, "The only thing lawyers are good at is framing...."
That, and helping to keep religious claptrap out of classrooms in a nation where the President thinks it would be a fine idea to teach the religious claptrap, and most folks don't "believe in" evolution (as if evolutionary theory and its factual supports would somehow be altered by opinion).
In most civilized nations the religious claptrap is kept out of the schools without the help of lawyers.
In the USA religious claptrap permeates the society and evolution isn't taught in the schools. There are tons of lawyers working furiously to turn America into a theocracy where children will be brainwashed in the public schools.
One of these days they might just succeed, especially if a Supreme Court Justice dies in the next few months.
Tell me again what lawyers are good for? :-)
I still believe you are mixing the two different perceptions of race.
ReplyDeleteThat is a classic case of projection. You are using the scientific definition (a very wobbly one- which is is why Futuyma's book says the word is no longer really in professional currency- let's call it race1) which amounts to "anything we can somehow recognize as a subpopulation". Your next step is to correctly point out that indeed we can define human subpopulations (hell ,we can define them in 1001 ways!) that are genetically distinguishable. Then you take the step that's simply not legitimate- you move by subterfuge from race1 to the sociological concept- call it race2- that John Q. Public envisions when he hears the word, and you try to claim that failing to automatically apply results, that genuinely apply to race1, to the popular race2 definition, somehow reflects a lack of commitment to scientific truth. This is bullshit.
Now what you want to claim, if you are really trying to make a scientific claim, is that subpopulations more or less congruent to the race2 groupings 1) somehow are more "real" than the many other ways in which the human population could be divided into subpopulations with positive inbreeding coefficients; and 2) in support of this reality, can be shown to account for the majority of between-group genetic variance for a wide range of markers. Note that I very well COULD be convinced of the truth of these propositions by data, but none adequate to the task seem to exist and you certainly haven't pointed to any. And notice that in an earlier comment I quite explicitly opposed any attempt to discourage the collection of such data, so you have no bone to pick with me there- I'm not interested in shutting down any area of science due to political sensitivities. So what exactly the hell IS your problem anyway?
Steve wrote:
ReplyDeleteThat is a classic case of projection. You are using the scientific definition (a very wobbly one- which is is why Futuyma's book says the word is no longer really in professional currency- let's call it race1) which amounts to "anything we can somehow recognize as a subpopulation".
Pigliucci and Kaplan (2003) disagree with Futuyma.
"For a concept that is allegedly in disuse in biology (Futuyma 1998), an awful lot of papers in the nonhuman biological literature have been published in the last five years which include the term ‘‘race’’ in their title or abstract."
Their suggestion is using the "ecotype" concept (often used synonymously with race for nonhuman animals, but not having the implication of subspecies).
windy: I might be favorable to "ecotype" but that suggests ecological adaptation, which doesn't appear to be compatible with Larry's view that these differences are mainly due to drift.
ReplyDeleteGood point (although Larry might be wrong about that ;)
ReplyDeleteLarry postulates:
ReplyDelete"In most civilized nations the religious claptrap is kept out of the schools without the help of lawyers. "
You mean, in Western europe,right? Well, we are reaping the consequenes of that: islamo-nazism is filling the void left open by the Judeo-Christian worldview. The diference is that while the Judeo-Christian worldview was the soul of europe for centuries, islamo-nazism is more like the cancer of europe.
"In the USA religious claptrap permeates the society and evolution isn't taught in the schools."
There was a time when evolution was not taught in public schools in the USA. Contrary to darwinian predictions,the USA did FAR BETTER in scientific achievements than the rest of the "civlized world" (Nobel prizes in relevant fields).
"There are tons of lawyers working furiously to turn America into a theocracy where children will be brainwashed in the public schools. "
Yes, there are plenty of ACLU lawyers working hard to keep the darwinian theocracy in public schools, thus brainwashing the children into atheistic fairytales disguised as "science".
"One of these days they might just succeed, especially if a Supreme Court Justice dies in the next few months."
Well,given that darwinian nonsense plays no part in the advance of science, the USA would go on just fine if one day evolutionary religion was dismissed, or if it started to be openly criticized without fear of the Darwin Only lobbysts.
"Tell me again what lawyers are good for?"
Ask Judge Jones and the ACLU lawyers.
It's amazing that a darwinist complaints about lawyers,when the first thing he does, when public school teachers question evolution,is to appeal to the Law.
ReplyDeleteI guess the Law, and lawyers in general, are only good when they have deep faith in Darwin.
There was a time when evolution was not taught in public schools in the USA. Contrary to darwinian predictions,the USA did FAR BETTER in scientific achievements than the rest of the "civlized world" (Nobel prizes in relevant fields).
ReplyDeleteThat's irrelevant. When 50(+?) perecent of the population don't accept the theory of evolution you have to ask how would the US have fared without the religious claptrap.
I think nobody in a his right state of mind can wonder why do we have lawyers. Like religion, you may not like it, but it's inevitable and you have to deal with it.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of sad to see many scientists have just ZERO political maturity and can only defend evolution or their atheism in an easy, puritanical and unrealistic way.
Too many scientists act just like teenagers. Babies with moustaches. No to be taken seriously.
mats wrote:
ReplyDelete[I]slamo-nazism is filling the void left open by the Judeo-Christian worldview. The difference is that while the Judeo-Christian worldview was the soul of europe for centuries, islamo-nazism is more like the cancer of europe.
Since Nazism was born and thrived in Christian central Europe, to equate Islam with Nazism while counterposing Christianity is not sensible or valid in view of history. This is not to equate Christianity with Nazism either; it is simply to say self-identification as Christian is not an inoculation against evil.
Jud said:
ReplyDelete"[I]slamo-nazism is filling the void left open by the Judeo-Christian worldview. The difference is that while the Judeo-Christian worldview was the soul of europe for centuries, islamo-nazism is more like the cancer of europe."
Since Nazism was born and thrived in Christian central Europe,
Just like modern science, which was "born and thrived in Christian europe"
"to equate Islam with Nazism while counterposing Christianity is not sensible or valid in view of history."
Actually, since the two ideologies are similar its supremacist intents, it's rational to equate them.
"This is not to equate Christianity with Nazism either; it is simply to say self-identification as Christian is not an inoculation against evil."
No one said it was.
"I don't know whether different races have different average IQ's. It's not unreasonable that they could since there is clearly a genetic component to intelligence and there is variation between individuals that appears to due to different alleles.
ReplyDeleteIt seems extremely unlikely that the frequencies of these allele would be exactly the same in all races."
I can only shrug to larry's frozen misconceptions on the problem of human determination of intelligence. .
I think any honest scientists, and one that is truly aware of the basic flaws of evolutionary psychology, shuold be quick to poit out than, other than genetic changes that severely disrupt normal brain development, the evidence for "intelligence genes" is actually as "good" as the evidence for instance ofro gay genes or drug-addiction genes (BTW, some japanese dudes juts claim to have evidence of 200-so genes that affect drug-addiction)
By this we mean that a statistical correlation for a smal effect is all the "evidence". This means that eve if simply accept the evidence as true, all we can say is that the gene may "help" to develop a small increase in intelligence. It does not DETERMINE an increase of intelligence. You may have the gene and be a total dumbass.
Doubtless, other events in life history can be presented at the same level as the "intelligence genes". For instance, breastfeeding may help you be intelligent, but obviously it does not do so every time. Yes, you may find a statistical correlation with small increases in IQ, but it is not DETERMINED.
These are what I call the almanque of studies in the style of "scratching your ass will make you live longer" that plague medicine, and who no one knows just how seriously to take.
THIS is the kind of evidence larry is clinging on to to still maintain open the possibity of genetic differences of inteligence have evolved between races.
Of course, a little savvy about brain development helps alot to understand WHY that is false and no good evidence has ever been able to be presented to back that claim.
But Larry can keep on waiting for the "evidence". 25 years form now, it will still be non-existent.