saletan, your "political correctness" is showing. that's the proper word for self censorship when the facts (as best can be ascertained) collide with the feelings of a power group.

the impulse to withhold such facts is almost always motivated by the interest of self preservation - and reporters/columnists are no more immune to looking out for their own self interest as any other group.

those with courage speak truth to power. those who wrestle with the better angels of their nature - and lose - end up writing stuff that doesn't offend, or retracting that which does, even though it was truthful. (and those who are really shameful print lies, and call it speaking truth to power)

for decades and decades the US media supported jim crow laws, defacto segregation, separate but equal, the christian religion above all others, and so on and so forth.

now the pendulum has swung the other way, and inconvenient truths are carefully spun, or suppressed, in a laughable attempt to "preserve a social order" which some editor thinks is the pinnacle of american achievement.

while the left screams about the current administrations ability to spin the press, it's political minions talk up laws to criminalize putting viewpoints in print which the disapprove of (making "global warming" debate illegal, for example)

i could link you to that poll that shows only 20% of americans believe the media is "ethical and trustworthy", but no doubt you've seen in a million times.

suppressing scientific fact in the name of "social good" is right up there with forging documents about a president's past, or putting bombs in pickup trucks' gas tanks to make them explode on cue as part of an expose' on vehicle safety.

stop debating whether or not you should print the truth, and just do it . . . it'll make more interesting news, and you'll find there aren't as many "slow news days"

Hey ba,

I *think* he's saying what you said, but, that the truth in the case of these studies is that race is not really a good identifier for parsing any sort of meaningful data beyond very general stuff. In order to get at the real truths you mention, one must dig deeper into causes that transcend race--the real truth is that they're there.

~Smag

In order to get at the real truths you mention, one must dig deeper into causes that transcend race

Here's an idea-- when talking about genetic data, look at specific genetic markers, genes and chromosomes. Not only is that less "socially harmful", it's vastly more scientific and useful. Race is a broad term for certain combinations of alleles, such as skin color, face formation, height and weight, etc. I'm willing to consider, given proper evidence, the notion that people who share certain alleles tend to more often have lower IQs-- but in what sense is that a condemnation of a race? The genetic predisposition would come from individual alleles, not from "race", a vague and scientifically useless term. Low IQ wouldn't be anymore a function of "blackness" than a predisposition for Tay-Sachs disease is a function of "Jewishness".

And isn't that the point of the article? That we don't look at "race," but rather at the those things (genes, markers, alleles, etc.) that transcend race and get at the core of the causal issue?

That's fine, call them alleles or gene markers or whatever you want. I do not think that anyone who is interested in findings related to IQ is really interested in looking down on or up at a race of people or in applying racial generalizations to an individual. However, if it can be proven that people with certain genes are predisposed to have a high IQ or a low IQ relative to people without those genes, why is it so socially harmful to discuss it?

I think this assumption:

"I do not think that anyone who is interested in findings related to IQ is really interested in looking down on or up at a race of people or in applying racial generalizations to an individual."

is one part of the problem. I have no issue with discussing genetics, but too often people look at genetics through a racial or gender lens (just throwing that in there - not saying you actualy do that). Remember "The Bell Curve"? That was very much about using genetics to identify racial disparity. And the issue is that it's so easy to slip from a discussion of racial disparity to something much darker.

This combines with the second issue: a discussion of genes is fine if it is tempered with an awareness of just how little we know. We've advanced greatly in our understanding of the human genome, especially structurally (sequence, form, etc.). But its impact on human behavior - that requires a better understanding of the particulars of the environment and the roles/impact that DNA has in those environments. And we don't have that understanding yet.

So, let's say that people with a certain combination of DNA are predisposed to have a high IQ. Does that mean they actually do have a high IQ? No, it's just a predisposition. It requires work, study, diligence, etc. to bring that potential out. Does that mean that people without those particular combinations of DNA can't be as smart as those with? Again no.

Combining the two issues, this is how we often get to a form of genetic determinism that is...somewhat in vogue now. People don't realize the weaknesses in purely genetic explanations of human behavior or the general human condition, but believe in those theories because they reinforce a particular view about race, gender, etc. And it's very difficult to disaggregate those feelings from the actual evidence.

So, I agree, this is an important and interesting topic. But there's too much uproar about "genes, genes, genes" without a firm grounding in the limitations of that approach. For that, Saletan has taken a good first step towards building his theories based on a stronger perspective of the evidence.

However, if it can be proven that people with certain genes are predisposed to have a high IQ or a low IQ relative to people without those genes, why is it so socially harmful to discuss it?

I think most people would say that it is not socially harmful to discuss genes and predisposition for certain IQ level. Indeed, if we are discussing the affect of a genetic disease on IQ there is very little social harm involved.

The discussion of race and IQ as it has occurred to date, however, is not a discussion of people with a certain genetic makeup in relation to IQ. Our current definition of race does not really give that kind of specificity. An "African-American" person today, such as say, Barack Obama, may have two parents neither of whom were "african-american". His mother is considered a "white" american while his father is Kenyan (and presumably from a different genetic group than a person whose forebears were brought to this country during slavery . . . or not). Most people in this country are some version of Obama: mother Italian, father English; mother Russian, father Scottish; mother from El Salvador, father from Peru, grandfather from Trinidada, etc.

So that's a part of the "race" problem in discussing race and IQ. That doesn't account for every problem of "race" in the discussion and it doesn't begin to address the problems with quantifying "intelligence".

You said:

So, let's say that people with a certain combination of DNA are predisposed to have a high IQ. Does that mean they actually do have a high IQ? No, it's just a predisposition. It requires work, study, diligence, etc. to bring that potential out.

This repeats a common misperception about IQ. It's not IQ that's genetic! It's your basic temperament & motivational framework (the ability to study, to defer gratification, to focus) that's genetic!

Honestly, you are weak.

They are going to test people for IQ (with the same old tests) then they are going to run gels for gene markers that indicate intelligence in order to "discover" which genes are markers for intelligence.

This Tubbs is an intelligence test. Tell me what do you think this could "scientifically" lead to?

Wall Street:

That's fine, call them alleles or gene markers or whatever you want. I do not think that anyone who is interested in findings related to IQ is really interested in looking down on or up at a race of people or in applying racial generalizations to an individual. However, if it can be proven that people with certain genes are predisposed to have a high IQ or a low IQ relative to people without those genes, why is it so socially harmful to discuss it?

The harm comes not from the use but from the abuse of a simple theory, however well intentioned.

I'd like to use an analogy taken from your implied stomping ground, Mr Wall Street. I like this analogy because what we are really talking about here is in fact very much a question of investment, of our time, energy, votes and yes money, not in securities but in people. Let's take the efficient market hypothesis which I recently ran into again for the first time since since leaving college:

"Efficient market hypothesis (EMH) is an idea partly developed in the 1960s by Eugene Fama. It states that it is impossible to beat the market because prices already incorporate and reflect all relevant information. This is also a highly controversial and often disputed theory. Supporters of this model believe it is pointless to search for undervalued stocks or try to predict trends in the market through fundamental analysis or technical analysis." (<link>)

As with Saletan's data, the devil is in the detail. The fallacious conclusion that it is pointless to search for undervalued stock is based upon a misapplication of a useful theory. The statement "it is impossible to beat the market because prices already incorporate and reflect all relevant information," should have included the words, IN THE LONG RUN, somewhere. The other fallacy is buried even deeper in the theory. I think it is called begging the question. The theory begs the question that the investor is in fact competing with the stock market. The long term investor may in fact be doing just that, but the day trader and the swing trader is NOT competing with the market, which is simply an abstraction used to describe the activity of real people, he is in fact competing with all the other investors. He is not betting at all, he is surfing the waves, or depending on the fact that he is smart and alert enough to use current data to stay ahead of the pack which can be depended on to behave predictably in the long run, but not before he does. He is in fact counting the cards in a game where the only bouncers are the big players and organizations who can and do actually influence the market.

I went into all that detail about investing because that's where the devil is with respect to genetic data, in the detail. It is dumb to use that data to make predictions about Barack Obama, for example, or for his supporters, or to turn the data on its head and try to use it to hypothesize about those constituencies that tend not to support him, under-educated White and Latino voters.

So what is this data good for then if it can't make reliable predictions about real people or even about constituent groups as large as the state of Oregon, or Iowa? Genetic data can be used to to make general determinations concerning the efficacy of policy decisions. It can also be used, less reliably, as a weak caution, as I wrote elsewhere, that some measure may be effective, or to explain why not; that is, to simply expand the scope of our deliberations during decision making. It's not for making conclusions. Get the difference?

So the old lady who thought that Obama was a Muslim, was quite correct to consider that possibility, given his name (also a common Jewish name), but stupidly wrong not to pursue the thought a little further, to also consider that his greatest campaign problems were caused by his Christian pastor, and his attendance at a Christian church, for the past 20 years. Of course no one who read his book, "The Audacity of Hope," would be under any doubt as to Obama's patriotism. The whole book actually paints the biographical setting , providing a verbal background for the concluding sentence, "My heart is filled with love for this country(!)" (Barack Obama writing in "The Audacity of Hope").

Reverend Wright's unscientific diatribe concerning genetic differences between the races, might have some temporary application when applied to isolated peoples in Africa. (The research was probably scientific, Wright's conclusions were simplistic and misleading.) The same can be said for poison preached by the KKK. Similarly, it is certain that in other places throughout the world, the same kind of nonsense can be applied to gender differences, where women are excluded from educational and financial opportunities.

Obama and Hillary's joint candidacies themselves are the most salient and compelling demonstrations of the injustice and moral bankruptcy of using academic labels to exclude people from treatments or opportunities, or to include them in sanctions or even unequal scrutiny.

So that's why I began by stating: The harm comes not from the use but from the abuse of a simple theory, however well intentioned.