Saletan approvingly quotes Metcalf's comment "It's a conflict between science and science." More exactly it is a conflict between two opposing scientific theories, the Galtonian theory of racial/ethnic differences in intelligence that sees a strong role for genetic differences (but also sees some role for cultural/environmental differences) and the Boasian theory that denies any racial/ethnic differences in IQ-modulating genes and instead sees differences in cultural/environmental factors as accounting for 100% of the commonly observed racial/ethnic group IQ differences. But unfortunately for the Boasians, their theory is just not holding up very well to scrutiny, instead essentially all of the empirical evidence favors the Galtonian theory. (the theory names come from the early illustrious proponents of the two theories: Francis Galton and Franz Boas)

In this comment column, it is amusing to read the many messages from Boasian ignoramuses who are now eagerly forgiving Saletan but are at the same time totally oblivious to the fact that Saletan has not actually retracted his prior statements.

Saletan: "I can't honestly renounce the evidence I presented. That evidence, which involved the proposed role of heredity in trait differences by race, is ... not dismissible...".

So please note that Saletan apparently still agrees that modern Galtonians (Jensen, Rushton, Gottfredson, Lynn, Levin, Harpending, Herrnstein, Murray et al.) are probably factually correct. He also correctly recognizes that the Galtonian theory is a blatantly racist theory. So Saletan has been faced with a conundrum: The Galtonian theory is the (or "a") truth--but it is also a racist theory. Racism is supposed to be bad, so how can the truth be bad? There must be something wrong with this Galtonian theory... Well yes perhaps "wrong" in the moral sense (bad/pejorative/non-normative) but not in the scientific sense (incorrect/untrue/false). Scientific facts do not always turn out to be nice and cheerful. The theory of human-caused global warming is probably scientifically true, even though for future humans it is a bad, hurtful, and unwelcome scientific fact. Saletan's attempt to escape from his uncomfortable conclusions is to proclaim that it should now be against the rules of polite discourse to talk about race/ethnicity, instead we should just frame all of our statements in complicated population genetics jargon that nobody but academic scientists can comprehend and in this manner we can expect that fewer of the common people will get hurt feelings.

Saletan: "In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn't mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals." Translation- If you are a Galtonian scientist you do not really HAVE to keep your mouth shut but it really would be best if you could submit to self-censorship so as to possibly prevent members of less intelligent groups from suffering injustice and hurt feelings.

Saletan: "On the right, it leaves the question of whether genetic generalization and determinism are wrong." Here we must assume that Saletan is again using "wrong" in the moral sense and not in the scientific sense. So Saletan is allowing that the Galtonian theory is probably scientifically true, but it is also racist and [to him morally] wrong and therefore Galtonian theory must be suppressed.

Perhaps the solution is that we attempt to differentiate "benign racism" (belief in the reality of racial/ethnic differences but still having a basic love and goodwill for all people) and "malignant racism" (belief in the reality of racial/ethnic differences but also having hatred for some racial/ethnic groups). In this manner I suspect that most Galtonians are benign racists (e.g. Jensen is well known for his liberal views on creating optimal opportunities for all racial/ethnic groups and his great respect for civil rights leaders such as Ghandi).

Below is an interesting statement on these issues by James Flynn, who by the way has often voiced his immense respect for the brave and scholarly work of Galtonians such as Jensen and Murray. I agree with most of what Flynn says except for his statement "The truth can not be racist". Assuming it is racist to believe that most Blacks are inherently less intelligent than most Whites, and assuming that this may turn out to be the actual truth (and Flynn allows that Jensen just possibly might be right), then how the Hell can anybody conclude that "the truth can not be racist"? Perhaps Flynn should have said that he hopes that the truth will not turn out to be racist.

James Flynn (from article in 2000 American Psychologist): "I was a late entry into this debate because only in 1977 did I become aware of Arthur Jensen's seminal 1969 article in the Harvard Educational Review (Jensen, 1969). Jensen argued that even if environments were equalized, the 15-point IQ gap between American Whites and American Blacks would only be reduced to something like 10 points. Having been a chairperson for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) in a Southern state at the time of Martin Luther King (Flynn, 1967, chap. 6-7), I believed that many Blacks suffered from low self-esteem. I was certain that they were discriminated against because of their group membership. Therefore, Jensen's thesis was unwelcome. It was a blow to Black pride. It implied long-term below-average group achievement by American Blacks. This is significant because even unbiased people are likely to judge individuals by group performance rather than by personal traits (Flynn, 1996). However, no one has the right to attack scholars simply because their research has led them to unwelcome conclusions. The truth can not be racist, nor can anyone be held suspect for telling the truth as they see it, unless their assessment of evidence falls below the minimum level we expect of a competent scholar. Jensen's case was clearly too powerful to fall into that category.

A short digression is relevant. If Jensen's thesis is correct, the path to social justice will be more difficult. However, if he is correct, he has done us the favor of forcing us to face a facet of reality many are reluctant to accept. Would anyone holding humane ideals prefer to pursue them in a fantasy world rather than the real world? The reluctance to give Jensen a fair hearing is proven by the popularity of bad arguments designed to make the genetic equality of groups an undiscussable dogma. The usual ones are that the concept of race is not biologically respectable, that all human groups share most of their genes, that the concept of intelligence is culturally relative, and that current theories of intelligence have not given an adequate pretheory definition of the term. Brief rebuttals to these arguments run as follows: The races investigated are defined sociologically. Despite their similarity, human groups show enough genetic variation to cause statistically significant differences for other traits, like occurrence of sickle cell anemia, so why not intelligence? Black parents want their children to excel in the kind of intelligence that pays dividends in America and France, not in some preindustrial society. Finally even the hardest sciences do not give elaborate pretheory definitions of their key concepts. Newton did not wait to refine the concept of celestial influence before embedding it in his theory of gravitation (Flynn, 1987c, 1994a)."

Some links to recent debates and writing on this topic:

Good debate with Gottfredson (a Galtonian) trouncing Turkheimer (a Boasian)-

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Boston Onpoint radio show on race-IQ controversy (a one-sided show since they did not invite a Galtonian guest, they should have included comments by Gottfredson, Murray or Rushton)-

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Murray (a Galtonian) on the unrealistic "romantic" aspirations of Boasians with regard to education achievement inequalities-

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galtonian:

Saletan's attempt to escape from his uncomfortable conclusions is to proclaim that it should now be against the rules of polite discourse to talk about race/ethnicity, instead we should just frame all of our statements in complicated population genetics jargon that nobody but academic scientists can comprehend and in this manner we can expect that fewer of the common people will get hurt feelings.

Saletan: "In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn't mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals." Translation- If you are a Galtonian scientist you do not really HAVE to keep your mouth shut but it really would be best if you could submit to self-censorship so as to possibly prevent members of less intelligent groups from suffering injustice and hurt feelings.

1. Complicated population genetics jargon? C'mon. Smart thinker like you, it shouldn't be too hard to see that I'm talking about organizing the data around genes, not populations. The latter's at best a research step toward the former.

2. Less intelligent groups? See, there's my problem. Talking in terms of "less intelligent groups" is, well, less intelligent than talking in terms of less intelligent individuals. Scientifically, fine-grained is better than coarse.

3. Injustice and hurt feelings are not trivial. Any child who thinks he can't succeed because of the color of his skin, or who is judged by that standard, is a terrible tragedy. Maybe you could justify overriding this, if race were a more scientific and productive way of organizing the data than genes are. But it isn't.

Galtonian, what in your mind are the implications, in particular the ethical imperatives, arising from the Galtonian view? You seem to dance around this.

People such as yourself spare no effort to push the evidence for a socially relevant hypothesis, one which was used in the past by adherents to create situations of extreme injustice for other groups, and then say no more. What are you hiding? What do you think should be done? How do you think this information should be used?

Show some courage. Go further. Saletan did.

"Genetics jargon"??

Um, don't you think the more potentially destructive an argument is, the higher the obligation to be as precise as possible.

Ordinary people can understand basic genetics. It will eventually become such a large part of the culture that speaking and thinking about genetic markers will be commonplace.

If you tried to teach a highly intelligent 19th Century adult how to use a laptop, it would be like teaching a dog to dance due to their unfamiliarity, but any 11-year-old growing up in the computer age does it easily.

Don't be so down on humans' mental adaptability.

Both Saletan and Brooklyn Dude seem to be interested in knowing if there could ever be any redeeming social benefit to widespread acceptance of the Galtonian view compared to the currently dominant Boasian view.

The Galtonian view which sees race, genes, IQ, and SES as one interconnected integral system provides a cogent and true explanations and predictions for how and why IQ varies with racial/ethnic and social class divisions (especially within meritocratic societies). The Boasian view is filled with disconnected and ad hoc explanations, it provides conflicting and false predictions and creates a false sense of unfairness that needlessly breeds resentment among members of lower IQ racial/ethnic groups and among lower SES people in general. Here I compare the Galtonian and Boasian views regarding racial/ethnic and social class inequalities.

• 1) Racial/ethnic divisions- The various racial/ethnic groups seem to vary in IQ and IQ-related achievements (achievement test scores, years of education, admission to college/graduate/professional school, occupational prestige, income level, value/ownership of home, etc.-Note these factors comprise what we refer to as "socioeconomic status" and they are all strongly impacted by IQ).

Galtonian View: With regard to the gene allele differences that modulate IQ-type intelligence, the racial/ethnic groups with higher average IQ and higher average SES (e.g. Jews and East Asians) have greater frequencies of the high IQ-associated gene alleles and conversely the racial/ethnic groups with lower average IQ and lower average SES (e.g. Hispanic and Blacks) have lesser frequencies of the high IQ-associated gene alleles. Racial/ethnic groups with high IQs are more likely to emphasize "highbrow" activities such as literature, fine arts, politics, economics, and philosophy (they probably enjoy NPR radio). Conversely racial/ethnic groups with low IQs are more likely to emphasize "lowbrow" activities such as professional sports, popular music, TV shows, and fundamentalist religion (they probably enjoy Pop or Christian radio). In a free meritocratic system we should expect that Jews and East Asians (because they tend to have higher innate intelligence) will secure more spots in elite universities and have higher representation amongst the entrepreneurial, scientific, professional and intelligentsia classes. Conversely we should expect that Blacks and Hispanics (because they tend to have lower innate intelligence) will secure fewer spots in elite universities and have lower representation amongst the entrepreneurial, scientific, professional and intelligentsia classes.

Boasian View: The racial/ethnic groups with higher average IQ and higher average SES (e.g. Jews and East Asians) have special ancient cultures and parenting practices which encourage learning; these cultural practices tend to raise their IQs so that they may seem to be more intelligent but actually they have no innate tendency to be smarter. Racial/ethnic groups with lower average IQ and lower average SES (e.g. Hispanic and Blacks) suffer from historical and current discrimination, low self esteem, and cultures and parenting practices that discourage the type of learning valued in Western cultures, this lowers their IQs so that they seem to be less intelligent but actually they have no innate tendency to be less smart and in reality they are just as intelligent as any other groups, also the tests are very biased and do not really measure true intelligence which can not be defined anyway. The fact that Jews and East Asians are over-represented and that Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented in elite universities and occupations is obviously unfair and we need to institute quotas and affirmative action programs so as to immediately rectify this imbalanced and unfairly biased system. We should not be satisfied until all racial/ethnic groups show achievement levels that are proportional to their demographic proportion. Most elite universities and occupations are 30 to 60% Jews and Asians. Instead since these two groups actually are no more intelligent than any other group they should only be allowed to have about 8% of these elite positions. Most elite universities and occupations are about 10% Hispanics and Blacks, instead these groups should be granted at least 30% of the elite slots in these schools and professions.

• 2) Social class divisions- The children from various social classes vary in IQ with wealthier children tending to have higher IQs than poor children.

Galtonian View: High SES parents are more likely to have the higher IQs that enabled them to gain the academic credentials and professional degrees needed to have high prestige occupations with higher incomes. These higher IQ/higher SES parents often transmit their high IQ-associated gene alleles to their children. The high SES children therefore tend to have higher IQs than poor children who tend to receive fewer high IQ-associated gene alleles from their predominately lower IQ high school drop-out parents. Although higher IQ/higher SES parents tend to read more to their little children, this actually has little or no lasting effect, the important thing is that they transmitted their high IQ genes to their offspring. Schools filled with high SES children are considered to be "good schools", and schools filled with low SES children are considered to be "bad schools", not because the school buildings or teachers are significantly different but rather the salient difference is that the high SES children tend to be way more intelligent than the low SES children. (This was proven during the 1960s by the famed sociologist James Coleman) As long as the schools feature adequate IQ-based tracking, parents of high IQ children can be confident that their children will be given challenging work in the high IQ-tracked classes, even if many low IQ children attend the same school in the low IQ-tracked classes. Tracking fosters success when schools attempt to integrate children of varying SES.

Boasian View: High SES parents are more likely to read to their children and to use big words and lots of questions when they speak to them. Low SES parents read to their children less, tend to spank their children more and they mainly use terse commands when they talk to their children. If only we could permit low SES children to be exposed to the stimulating environment found in high SES homes then they would all grow up to be geniuses. Low SES children are forced to attend bad schools, but if only they could attend good schools then they would all get high test scores. Oh wait a minute, the data have shown that they still get low scores even in the good schools, well then of course it is because of the bad home environment found in low SES families. The solution is to have mandatory early preschool for all children, so that children from all SES levels will be raised during the day in government run preschools. In this way the children from low SES homes will grow up to have the same IQs as children from high SES homes. Also all IQ-based tracking should be forbidden and all students, regardless of their IQ, should be given the same curriculum. If we try hard enough then finally all class divisions in American society will be overcome. Of course all those ultraliberal Boasian high SES parents will undoubtedly be happy with this new fairness-based system and take immense comfort in knowing that their darling little rich boy from the fancy neighborhood has the same chance at becoming a high school dropout as the little poor boy raised by the welfare mom. So please let us all look forward to that time when we are able to get all of these pesky environmental inequalities ironed out, then finally everyone will be able to enjoy a truly classless society.

[As an aside: Saletan should know that social scientists (and every day people too) love to think and talk about race and ethnicity, so his idea what we should drop race/ethnicity from our discourse regarding social inequality is not at all realistic. Especially with sociologists, education department faculty, and public health researchers, about half of the articles in their journals are focused on something to do with race/ethnicity and inequality. Asking social scientists to stop talking about race/ethnicity is about like trying to get biologists to stop talking about cells.]

Galtonian, I don't think anyone would call Saletan a Boasian after his series. I think one implication of his points, however, is that ultimately social scientists will need to dispense with their traditional methods for uncovering the relationship between race and achievement because genetics science is set to expose the utter crudity of their equipment for dealing with it. (In the end, the non-experimental social sciences must adapt. Think about how psychology has exposed the limits of the "rationality" assumption in economics.) Likewise, our discussions of race and intelligence will become more abstract due to increasing precision and the incorporation of finer elements of causality. Is that a bad thing, or isn't that how science inevitably advances into any subject? Or would you prefer to keep things simple, just so people don't forget that "blacks are dumb?"

In any case, you are STILL avoiding the big question. Let's say there is a persistent average achievement gap between races caused by the distribution of genes. What do you think is good policy? What do you think is the moral imperative? I'm not talking about what you should say out loud and what you shouldn't. I'm talking about what you DO. That is the important question. Ultimately, we all want to create a just society. Most of us think that means not judging an individual by their race. What does that mean to you? Until you answer that, there can be no more discussion. (Or are you afraid to answer that, for fear of being exposed?)

On the (apt) "What is good policy" question, see this paper by Sternberg rebutting Rushton and Jensen:

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Galtonian you still haven't responded to the central question: if there is a genetic predisposition to lower IQ, that predisposition is the product of genes. So why not talk about those genes instead of race? Race, as has been pointed out many times, is a vague and socially constructed term. Race has extremely limited scientific value as a descriptive term. So why not talk about genes, genotypes, and alleles, which have scientific value and have much more utility as distinguishing characteristics? Even the most dedicated "Galtonians" will tell you that there are hundreds of thousands of black people in the world with above average IQs. The statement "black people are likely to have a low IQ" has no scientific value. So why the focus on race and not on actual genes, alleles and genotypes?

Fine, lets talk about gene allele differences that modulate IQ; that is a very interesting topic and research in this vein will soon help answer two interesting scientific questions:

1) What explains intragroup differences in IQ (i.e. the IQ differences between individuals of the same racial/ethnic group)?

2) What explains intergroup differences in IQ (i.e. the differences in average IQs between racial/ethnic groups that probably account for most of the racial/ethnic group differences in academic achievement and socioeconomic class)?

Freddie, you and Saletan like to pretend that you are really not interested in answering 2) -- but in fact I suspect that you are both actually very interested in finally understanding why racial/ethnic groups show such striking differences in IQ, academic achievement and socioeconomic class. For most social scientists the topic of racial/ethnic inequalities is often a major focus of attention and interest. For example Harvard has even started a new interdisciplinary program called The Achievement Gap Initiative. Boasian social scientists like to pretend that the highly plausible Galtonian/hereditarian hypothesis was not proffered almost 40 years ago (Jensen, A. R. (1969). How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39, 1–123) and for these Boasians it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the abundant supportive evidence for Jensen's position which has since accrued.

Jensen and other Galtonians have hypothesized that the same gene allele differences that account for intragroup IQ differences will also explain intergroup IQ differences. Science can not answer 1) without producing the information that will also answer 2) because the racial/ethnic differences in virtually all sites of genomic allelic variation have already been catalogued. The only remaining question now is which of these genomic allelic differences are actually the particular ones which modulate IQ? Massive Genome Wide Association Studies ("GWAS" projects) are already underway to answer this question, and we will almost surely get the answer within the next two years.

"If you tried to teach a highly intelligent 19th Century adult how to use a laptop, it would be like teaching a dog to dance . . . ."

To the contrary, I suspect that Charles Babbage or Pascal would take to the modern computer like a duck to water. I also suspect that intellectuals of almost any century (at least postdating written language and invention of the zero) could and would learn to use a laptop just as easily as any intelligent modern person.

How Boasian to think that our capacity to learn is a function of our "familiarity", i.e. environment.

Even "primitive" peoples have been shown to adopt modern technology quite readily.

Excellent post, galtonian. This is the most concise summary of the two opposing views, and their implications, I have read.

"Fine, lets talk about gene allele differences that modulate IQ"

We're waiting...

"[T]he Boasian theory that denies any racial/ethnic differences in IQ-modulating genes and instead sees differences in cultural/environmental factors as accounting for 100% of the commonly observed racial/ethnic group IQ differences. But unfortunately for the Boasians, their theory is just not holding up very well to scrutiny, instead essentially all of the empirical evidence favors the Galtonian theory."

It might be hard to recognize, but this faulty characterization of the environmentalist position makes it impossible to be proven correct using common quantitative methods. It's a common trick to make one's own theory unfalsifiable; it's rather the same to misrepresent an opposing theory in such a way as to make it unprovable.

If one were to run a regression on a statistical model and report an R-squared of 1 (thus accounting for 100% of the variance in the dependent variable), one's paper would end up on the trash-pile. Put simply, the reviewer would conclude that one had simply constructed a tautology.

On the other hand, an equivalent statement could be written as follows: "Boasians believe that 0% of intelligence is determined genetically." This is a statement that statistical regression tools simply cannot test. You cannot prove the non-existence of a relationship using the tools favored by quantitative social scientists, some of which happen to be tools devised and developed by none other than Francis Galton.

"To the contrary, I suspect that Charles Babbage or Pascal would take to the modern computer like a duck to water. I also suspect that intellectuals of almost any century (at least postdating written language and invention of the zero) could and would learn to use a laptop just as easily as any intelligent modern person."

Epicurus, with all due respect, I think you are arguing against the obvious. It doesn't support your case that you need the examples of the one-in-a-billion 19th Century person who first contemplated the modern computer (Babbage) and the brilliant French mathematician (Pascal). I'm talking about run-of-the-mill, highly intelligent people. I stand by my claim that a 19th Century adult would be utterly mystified by a computer, even if highly intelligent, and would require long, unpleasant practice to become facile, while their 8-year-old would pick it up much more quickly. Familiarity is important, which is why good IQ test questions end up being so abstract and non-contextual.

(As a case in point, when VCRs were still in wide-spread use, remember that intelligent adults had to have their 10-year-olds program them for him, or even just get them to stop blinking 12:00? My own parents are much, much less facile with technology than I am, even though they are just as intelligent. You'd find the same story all over the place if you looked for it.)

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That said, I am not necessarily a "Boasian" (which I think is a straw man anyway), unlike your and Galtonian's suggestion. I do, however, take exception to swallowing individuals into statistical/political abstractions purported to be linked to immutable physical traits, as it does not make for good policy or ethics.

My belief is that differences in mean IQ among what we think of as races is a socially incendiary curiosity, not that interesting scientifically and not very fruitful otherwise. I am aware that some "Galtonians" did not necessary ask for this debate, but it just does not seem intelligent to compare races as if they are competing sports teams, especially when members of these different races overlap, cooperate, mate, and trade in complex patterns within the same society. It makes absolutely no difference to the IQ of an individual person what the average IQ of a person in their "race" or ethnic group is, and races themselves don't have IQs. Older male siblings have a higher mean IQ than younger male siblings, and lawyers have a higher mean IQ than firefighters, but no one cares because it's not socially poignant.

Most of us ground our ethics in the Enlightenment tradition. I believe this ethical tradition actually does favor a prior "Boasian" assumption of the capabilities of men and women, given the primacy it places on protecting the rights of the individual. I think it would also reject reverse-engineering to force desired final outcomes, which is something I think "Galtonians" can appreciate.

I don't entirely trust this research for several reasons, but if a stance had to be taken I may be Galtonian. In its defense:

If there is a gene or set of genes associated with intelligence, it must follow the rules of all other genes and be passed based on selection. There were periods of time where the smartest could not survive the troubles plaguing their "race" - for Europeans, many of the best genes may have been lost during the Dark Ages or the deadly Black Plague. Perhaps the intelligent, seeking to find cures, had the fastest rate of infection. Africans have been struggling with inter-tribal warfare, diseases that they had no immunities to and slavery. That's a lot of potential for the best genes to be wiped out.

Every race has had a period where their best and brightest were not allowed to survive, but it seems like Africans have had more of that share than the residents/descendant of any other land.

HOWEVER-

I believe IQ tests to be inaccurate because A) different tests have been shown to lean toward different socioeconomic groups and B) different areas of the world have different educational standards. Researching this data in America, for example, whose educational system is flailing and known to be unequal in areas with different racial backrounds, seems foolish. It doesn't help either that no one can tell me exactly what an Intelligence Quotient is - the ability to reason? Who defines such?

Anyone who wanted to convince me of either side of this argument would need to show me 1) how Race is defined in the study and 2) some hypothesis for why the results skew this way.

For the record, race as defined by the color of one's skin takes about a half dozen genes. Other traits, such as the size of our noses, mouths, ears and eyes are rapidly becoming harder to distinguish. How do we define race as anything more than a social construct when the social barriers between the races are (slowly?) melting away?