Atrios Responds, but Leaves Questions Unanswered
Andrew Sullivan linked to my last post regarding research into group differences in IQs. In noticing this, Atrios then linked to my post, I guess because he sort of starred in it. He then wrote that discussions about IQ differences “brings out the stupids”. Dang my feelings are hurt.
Atrios also left a comment in the comment section of my last post. But he left some gaping questions unanswered. So I will ask him the questions here. I think that these are fair questions.
#1 - Atrios writes in the comments section of my last post:
“I’ve never argued that the basic research questions asked should be off the table. I’ve never said it was taboo.”
I would say that you do it indirectly. If the subject of IQ differences can only be researched and discussed in the context of “well, of course there are no differences” - that is the same as “taking it off the table”. There is no point in doing research, because if you somehow found group differences in IQs, then you are labeled a racist.
So I will assume that you aren’t opposed to this research. Great, so please give one example of a researcher that you support that is actively investigating IQ differences among groups of people, including in genetics. This is a person who has written numerous specific articles in academic journals regarding his/her research into IQ differences.
#2 - Atrios writes in the comments section of my last post:
“Certainly I’ve never suggested that race is non-existent … ”
From your site this week you approvingly quoted this:
“But, here in the United States, particularly as it pertains to African-Americans and Mexican-Americans, a genetic definition of “race” is a useless and phony construct. Murray and his ilk apparently don’t care to admit that the “blood” of both of these races has been mixed with European “blood” for so many centuries that it is virtually indistinguishable from his own.”
I may be dumb, but not that dumb. So how do you explain this quote?
#3 - Atrios writes in the comments section of my last post:
“… none of that is a defense of the very shoddy “scientific” work of Murray and Hernstein, and none of that provides a defense of the racist political content of the book.”
I agree that there is certainly a political element to the book. It has a libertarian or conservative (choose your own label) angle to it that implies policies like affirmative action might not make sense. Readers can make their own judgments on whether they agree with this political element. Many will disagree.
However, regarding the science, the book really is not original scientific research. It aggregates research and then offers interpretations. If you are going to attack the book as “shoddy scientific work”, then you have to go after the people in the footnotes - the researchers that conducted the various original studies. I have never seen you do this. You simply paint the book as “shoddy scientific work”. Please tell us exactly which pieces of research in the book’s footnotes are shoddy.
I am not kidding - this could really clear the air on this topic once and for all. The footnotes are full of studies that show group differences in IQs. Please tell us which research is shoddy.
#4 - Atrios writes in the comments section of my last post:
“I say I steer people away from it as a public service because I have the education and training to understand why the book is bad, something most casual readers don’t.”
In all branches of scientific research, people carry with them strong biases. It is very difficult to be a purely objective scientist, especially in the social sciences. People looking at the same data can draw very different conclusions. It takes many many repeatable studies before a new scientific understanding of a phenomenon emerges, and a new scientific consensus is built. Only then are the biases finally peeled away.
The study of group differences in IQs is as emotionally charged as an issue can get. Are you somehow immune to biases on this subject? You may have training in the study of econometrics, but you are also a man of very strong political beliefs. So what makes you immune to these biases when looking at the data for studies of IQ differences among groups?
August 30th, 2005 at 1:43 am
i was right. you weren’t up to the challenge.
August 30th, 2005 at 2:07 am
Atrios writes:
“But, here in the United States, particularly as it pertains to African-Americans and Mexican-Americans, a genetic definition of “race” is a useless and phony construct. Murray and his ilk apparently don’t care to admit that the “blood” of both of these races has been mixed with European “blood” for so many centuries that it is virtually indistinguishable from his own.”
According to the best on-going DNA study, this is not true. Among self-identified black adults in the US, only 10% are less than half black. The average African-American is about 82% sub-Saharan by descent. Among self-identified white adults, the vast majority are over 90% white, with the black admixture level down around 1%. For details, see my UPI article:
http://www.isteve.com/2002_How_White_Are_Blacks.htm
Mexican-Americans are quite different, with the typical Mexican-American being a little over half European, a little under half Amerindian, and perhaps somewhere in the range of 5% African. http://www.isteve.com/2002_Where_Did_Mexicos_Blacks_Go.htm
August 30th, 2005 at 2:12 am
It would greatly help if those who want to participate in this debate over Charles Murray’s new article actually _read_ the article before denouncing it. You can find it at:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/production/files/murray0905.html
Atrios, for example, would discover that Murray is not only perfectly well aware of the different levels of racial admixture in African-Americans, but that he has proposed using that phenomenon to test the controversial theory that some of the IQ gap between whites and blacks stems from genetic differences. Murray proposes:
“To the extent that genes play a role, IQ will vary by racial admixture. In the past, studies that have attempted to test this hypothesis have had no accurate way to measure the degree of admixture, and the results have been accordingly muddy. The recent advances in using genetic markers solve that problem. Take a large sample of racially diverse people, give them a good IQ test, and then use genetic markers to create a variable that no longer classifies people as ‘white’ or ‘black,’ but along a continuum. Analyze the variation in IQ scores according to that continuum. The results would be close to dispositive.”
August 30th, 2005 at 2:21 am
It appears that the Comment software stripped the underscores out of the URLs in my earlier comment, so to find my UPI articles on DNA research into racial admixture, go to Google and enter:
sailer shriver dna black
and you’ll find three articles.
August 30th, 2005 at 3:33 am
Atrios appears to be uninformed about the current state of human population genetics. Here’s a quotation from a review paper published yesterday by a working group at the National Human Genome Research Institute.
“Although the genetic differences among human groups are relatively small, these differences nevertheless can be used to situate many individuals within broad, geographically based groupings. For example, computer analyses of hundreds of polymorphic loci sampled in globally distributed populations have revealed the existence of genetic clustering that roughly is associated with groups that historically have occupied large continental and subcontinental regions (Rosenberg et al. 2002; Bamshad et al. 2003).
Some commentators have argued that these patterns of variation provide a biological justification for the use of traditional racial categories. They argue that the continental clusterings correspond roughly with the division of human beings into sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans, western Asians, and northern Africans; eastern Asians; Polynesians and other inhabitants of Oceania; and Native Americans (Risch et al. 2002).”
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v77n4/41888/41888.html
August 30th, 2005 at 3:38 am
For consideration of the admixed “black” and “Hispanic” populations of the U.S., a paper published by Janurary with senior author Neil Risch pretty much knocks it out of the park. Here’s a quotation from an interview with Risch in PLoS Genetics:
In our own studies, to avoid coming up with our own definition of race, we tend to use the definition others have employed, for example, the US census definition of race. There is also the concept of the major geographical structuring that exists in human populations—continental divisions—which has led to genetic differentiation. … You’ll like this. In a recent study, when we looked at the correlation between genetic structure [based on microsatellite markers] versus self-description, we found 99.9% concordance between the two. We actually had a higher discordance rate between self-reported sex and markers on the X chromosome! So you could argue that sex is also a problematic category.
http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0010014
August 30th, 2005 at 4:23 am
In the Bell Curve’s discussion of ‘ethnic differences in fertility’(pp. 352-354), Murray says we will have completed information on the dysgenic fertility pattern found with black women above the average IQ of their group, by now. Currently, in note 44, he gives this figure as 3 1/2 points of widening of the b/w IQ gap per generation. If this be the final ascertainment promised and delivered, the next step is to look for the cause. Affirmative action selectively recruits, quite heavily, black women with IQ above the norm of their group; into colleges, graduate programs, employment and promotions . It causes their careers to often not plateau until they are infertile. Murray himself indicates an effect of this nature. May it now be concluded that affirmative action is causing a widening of the basic gap, that public policy seeks to lessen, and in a manner which could last for centuries? Oh the tangled web…
August 30th, 2005 at 8:41 am
Steve Sailer above quotes Murray’s suggestion that IQ test results be compared to the racial admixture of test takers to see if there is a correlation between degree of racial admixture and IQ scores. This, according to Murray, would settle the question of whether the black/white IQ disparity is genetic once and for all. But this is only true from a scientist’s perspective, not a liberal social contructionist perspective. Liberals would argue that a “black” man who is only 20% black would tend to have an IQ higher than a black who is 80% black, simply because the 20% black man will have lighter skin tones and more European features, which will have caused greater acceptance by the whites around him and therefore a better education, job, etc, which would raise his IQ score above the darker skinned 80% black man. So you’re back to square one.
Besides, how would you get blacks to participate in such a study. Are there ethical guidelines requiring researchers to reveal why they want DNA swabs from the participants? If not, there probably soon will be.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:57 am
“Kathleen” says: “how funny that you (‘nospeedbumps’) would criticize Atrios with nothing more than your own name calling. Address his points, if you dare. i doubt you are up to the challenge.”
Then, after Nospeedbumps produced a specific, point-by-point challenge to Atrios, Kathleen says: “i was right. you weren’t up to the challenge.”
Let me be blunt here: that is pathetic. The followers of this “Atrios” are the least informed, most name-calling and reactionary group I’ve ever encountered on the Internet. I mean, really, come on “Kathleen”, point out something specific. Make an argument. A conclusion with no support is useless and lame.
August 30th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Rag Times asks: How could a DNA study account for varying prejudices within the African-American community based on skin tone? In a footnte, Murray explains how to make his test even more sophisticated:
“57 The results of such a study would be especially powerful if the study also characterized variables like skin color, making it possible to compare the results for subjects for whom genetic heritage and appearance are discrepant. For example, suppose it were found that light-skinned blacks do better in IQ tests than dark-skinned blacks even when their degree of African genetic heritage is the same. This would constitute convincing evidence that social constructions about race, not the genetics of race, influence the development of IQ. Given a well-designed study, many such hypotheses about the conflation of social and biological effects could be examined.”
August 30th, 2005 at 11:04 am
” He then wrote that discussions about IQ differences “brings out the stupids”. ”
How’s this for a rallying cry: Only stupid people can possibly believe that intelligence, let alone IQ, even exists!
August 30th, 2005 at 11:20 am
There is definitely a contradiction in terms contained there. It would be even more explicit if they were to say that there is no merit in saying that there is any merit.
October 31st, 2005 at 3:32 am
Intelligence quotient is not something you can achieve rather it is God gifted.
November 15th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
[...] believe that race is just a social construct? For more on this taboo topic, see here and here. This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 at 8:50 pm [...]
December 19th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
[...] for case-control association studies are discussed. Contrast this with the race deniers. Here is a quote taken from left-winger Atrios’s website: But, here in the United States, particularly as i [...]