The argument about IQ and race isn't about individuals. I can't understand why people can't understand this basic fact--perhaps too much emotion about it. Anyway, people keep bringing up anecdotal evidence, but that doesn't alter any of Saletan (et al.'s) arguments, which are about groups and averages.

Let's say that the stats about IQ are really right. And almost everyone with enough knowledge agrees that they are--even James Flynn, who is the one who came up with the Flynn effect (the fact that IQ scores have been going up). The only differences are about the issue of genetics vs. environment and also the relative importance and predictive value of IQ.

Here's a video of Flynn and Charles Murray, by the way.

<link>

Breaking down a normal curve of African-American IQ, 14% will have IQs over 100 (over the Caucasian statistically average), 2 percent will IQs over 115, and 0.1% or so will have over 130.

If there are 30 million or so African-Americans in this country, that means that 4.8 million will be over the Caucasian Average. 600,000 will be above 115 and 30000 or so will have over 130. That is a lot of people and a lot of room for individual variation.

But this is about group averages and parity in economics, professions, and economics. Go to your local university physics department--you aren't going to find people there with IQs much below 130 (at least). Law, medicine, and other high paying jobs also have a heavy cognitive load. Given these facts--whether the issue is entirely environmental/cultural or genetic--the overall outcomes will be problematic.

The main issue I have with all of these stats is how people are classified into these groups. What is an African-Americans? What is a Caucasian? How is one placed into said groups?

One should use DNA to classify people by race not any survey or self classification. Most people define race by looks and then culture. Self classification is not reliable. For example, how many so called African Americans can be 100% sure they have no Caucasian DNA?

For these test to measure innate abilities people need to be classified based on biological criteria, like DNA.

The points you made haven't been lost on anybody. Everybody seems to be well aware of them. At least the people still discussing this.

You've unwittingly identified one of the main reasons many people are so upset about Mr. Saletan's articles. As you so rightly point out, few people seem to make the distinction between averages and individuals. That's why it's incredibly irresponsible and destructive to go around broadcasting to the general public "findings" that black people on average have low IQs, particularly when there really isn't a scientific consensus on whether and to what extent such IQ findings are the result of genetic differences.

What I get from your post is that the general public is too ignorant to understand and interpret these findings. I agree that the media does a piss poor job when it comes to science and the issues of complex research studies and findings.

But who is being irresponsible and destructive, people like Saletan?

I guess I just missed those points since I'm late joining this discussion.

Do you know of any studies of IQ that used DNA as a classification method?

In a word. Yes.

Hi.

First, it is important to be clear that a hard notion of race--as in distinct "species-like-groups" has been dead in the water for ages. No one believes this version of race and I find it pretty despicable and intellectually indefensible to boot.

However, the notion of race as describing some overall, small genetic differences between historically separated populations has been gaining a lot of momentum with the research. And it basically works through self-identification. Those of Asian, those of African descent, and those of European descent when tested show some variations according to the latest genetic research.

Saletan links to one such article in his text. The researchers doing this work are very, very mainstream by the way--this one is published in Science (along with Nature, one of the two most prestigious journals in the world). It is all basically an outcome of the sequencing of the human genome and the related work. Here is the link to that article.

<link>

This article also supports one of Saletan's contentions, that genes are linked to average brain size and that this has to do with IQ (a moderate correlation). I'm not saying this settles the issue. Just that there is actual science in here.

To a certain extent, I agree with you.

However, the "elephant in the room" of the race issue is that minority groups are constantly trumpeting their group status. African-Americans and Asians are always identifying themselves by their group memberships. That's fine in and of itself, except when it comes around to the liberal explanations for racial economic disparities. The default setting there--what happens when no response is given--is that black persons fail because of white people (who are oppressive, evil, etc.) and that Asians persons succeed simply because they work harder than white people (who are lazier and have everything handed to them).

By the way, there is no good empirical evidence for this anyway (see "Winning the Race: Overcoming the Crisis in Black America). Not that anyone seems to care about evidence.

Anyway, I happen to be a therapist, and these notions in therapist culture are so widespread as to be unquestioned dogma. I can't tell you how many attractive, bright, Asian Ph.D.s tell you with a straight face that they are oppressed by white people (even though they out earn whites in my part of the country). And white people float this line as well--they have completely bought into the white guilt (as Shelby Steele would have it). Or they feign believing in it to protect themselves

So personally I would be happy to drop all discussions of group identification--whether cultural, genetic, or whatever--if I weren't so often accused of being racist, sexist, etc. because of my own unannounced group identification (my whiteness).

That is, most of the very same people who are saying "why can't we get past race?" with so much feeling are the ones who are keeping it alive by stereotyping white people and blaming the ills of the world upon them. The hypocrisy and denial are awesome in scope.

This article also supports one of Saletan's contentions, that genes are linked to average brain size and that this has to do with IQ (a moderate correlation). I'm not saying this settles the issue. Just that there is actual science in here.

The reality that genes regulate brain size is wholly accepted. Genes regulate everything in our bodies. Nowhere in the abstract did I see any mention of IQ.

If a gene fails to regular properly and instead of a normal size brain, somebody has one that is smaller, it's quite possible there is an IQ correlation just as their would be if somebody was malnourished and their brain didn't develop to it's potential.

The fact that people found to have half of their brain missing who have lived normal lives indicates that the brain and it's functions go beyond simple size - it suggests that even when the brain is incomplete parts of it compensate and go into overddrive to pick up the slack for what's missing. Thus, on the face of it, it's really a proposterous notion that there is any meaningful relationship between brain size and mental ability. Even if a small correlation was found, it's meaningless because no matter what, you cannot attribute somebody's brain size with their intelligence - correlation isn't causation.

Further, we know that human physiology is different between groups - such as skin. If one was to find a small difference in average brain size between populations, this could reflect physiology but not have anything to do with their mentality. As I stated above, it's very possible that brains in some populations are on average smaller to compensate for any number of evolutionary pressures, but leaves 'intelligence' intact/unaffected.

Simplistic notions of brain size and intelligence really should remain the domain of discredited phrenology.

The article doesn't mention IQ, but the connection is there to be drawn when you look at the research on brain size and IQ.

And that connection may sound preposterous until you read the research. Have you read the article Saletan posts by Rushton and Jensen and particularly that section? It is pretty convincing (even if Rushton is racist) and they site a number of credible sources.

Clearly "size isn't everything"--no one is claiming that it is. A correlation of .4 between size and IQ, which the research seems to suggest, is just modest. It is the same correlation of grades and IQ, by the way, and thus we will have the same issues where individuals conflict with and group averages. If this research is right, we would expect that some people will be exceptions and have smaller brains and yet higher IQs (Einstein might be one famous exception). But taken over large populations even this modest correlation (as with grades) would lead to quite substantial differences.

So the genes article, if you read it (or summaries of it), says that the genes for larger brains are more widely distributed in Asian than European populations and more in European than African. And Rushton and Jensen's article discusses how brain size, according to multiple studies, moves in that order as well. And all IQ studies suggest that exact same order of IQ distributions (Asian highest, etc.).

This is all very easy to connect--don't you see it?. It requires some kind of kind of scientific response from critics (I have yet to hear a good scientific, non-anecdotal, non-morals based response). In the journal with Rushton and Jensen's article, several scholars did respond but none actually countered that evidence.

>(I have yet to hear a good scientific, non-anecdotal, non-morals based response)

I hate to hype Shalizi's blog again, but seriously, look at his IQ posts.

The article doesn't mention IQ, but the connection is there to be drawn when you look at the research on brain size and IQ.

And that connection may sound preposterous until you read the research. Have you read the article Saletan posts by Rushton and Jensen and particularly that section? It is pretty convincing (even if Rushton is racist) and they site a number of credible sources.

You wanted a study so here's one: <link>

Conclusion: "Several recent studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have indicated that a substantial correlation (mean r = ≈0.4) exists between brain size and general cognitive performance, consistent with the hypothesis that the payoff for increasing brain size was greater general cognitive ability. However, these studies confound between-family environmental influences with direct genetic/biological influences. To address this problem, within-family (WF) sibling differences for several neuroanatomical measures were correlated to WF scores on a diverse battery of cognitive tests in a sample of 36 sibling pairs. WF correlations between neuroanatomy and general cognitive ability were essentially zero"

So, no there isn't necessarily a meaningful correlation between brain size and IQ.

The second confound that the studies Rushton and Jensen cite is that comparing brain sizes WITHIN groups is different than comparing brain sizes BETWEEN groups. The fact that Eskimos have the largest brains in the world, yet score low on IQ tests is proof of this (it's actually mentioned in Lynn's book as an anomoly). The same is true for other populations in Siberia who live in very cold regions. Their heads are larger but their IQ is the same as other European populations. Environment has selected for head size in these particular populations and not in others - so there is no valid comparison between brain sizes of populations.

Clearly "size isn't everything"--no one is claiming that it is. A correlation of .4 between size and IQ, which the research seems to suggest, is just modest. It is the same correlation of grades and IQ, by the way, and thus we will have the same issues where individuals conflict with and group averages. If this research is right, we would expect that some people will be exceptions and have smaller brains and yet higher IQs (Einstein might be one famous exception). But taken over large populations even this modest correlation (as with grades) would lead to quite substantial differences.

The study above addresses the confounding variables that give the .4 correlation. When those are controlled for, the .4 correlation disappears.

So the genes article, if you read it (or summaries of it), says that the genes for larger brains are more widely distributed in Asian than European populations and more in European than African. And Rushton and Jensen's article discusses how brain size, according to multiple studies, moves in that order as well. And all IQ studies suggest that exact same order of IQ distributions (Asian highest, etc.).

If this was true, we would expect Ashkenazi Jews to have the largest brains. Do they? I've seen no evidence. Did Einstein? No.

This is all very easy to connect--don't you see it?. It requires some kind of kind of scientific response from critics (I have yet to hear a good scientific, non-anecdotal, non-morals based response). In the journal with Rushton and Jensen's article, several scholars did respond but none actually countered that evidence.

I cited a study above. The relationship between IQ and races is also not clear because there is cultural bias in the IQ tests. When they are addressed the disparities in IQ disappears. Here's a study about it: <link>

That study is essentially the anti-thesis of Jensen's hypothesis regarding IQ and g. There are also methodological problems inherent with g as statiticians point out: <link> as do other psychologists: <link>

The problem with Saletan's article is that he did not bring up any of this, so well meaning people like you have clearly been mislead. That's not to say some of the assertions don't have any basis - there are some ambigious questions but at least present more than one side of the story.

Hi.

Thanks for the reply. I'll get to reading this stuff. If these articles are good, you have done a better job countering the scientific arguments than a lot of people who do this professionally (don't know why it is so hard for them to link a few studies).

"I cited a study above. The relationship between IQ and races is also not clear because there is cultural bias in the IQ tests. When they are addressed the disparities in IQ disappears. Here's a study about it:"

I had time to read this study now, and I think it says something, but I am not at all sure that it says what you think it does. In fact, I think your line that "disparities in IQ disappear" is badly overstated.

The authors studied essentially constructed one or two quasi subtests that are found on IQ tests--depending on the test there are many more--and appeared to do so with items that were limited in range of difficulty and within one relatively small college aged population (n of about 70). This is hardly enough to turn over a huge body of research showing average IQ differences that are pretty resistant to change (a difference of a standard deviation).

So this is one rock on a pile and I'm curious to see more, but science these days is done by consensus and it will take more than this to overturn such a standard finding.