PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: Becky (My pronouns are Assigned/By/God) on January 16, 2019, 02:07:41 PM
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He’s live tweeting his unpersoning.
Revered genetic scientist tweets his thoughts as he becomes reviled for his position that there are IQ differences in races.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JamesWatsonIQ/status/1085199658773815296
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His views haven't a shred of data to support them. Just racism with a dusting of scientific jargon to make it shiny. I'm glad the Nobel committee decided to strip him of his laurels. He's an embarrassment to the scientific community.
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Steingar -
Given that the science here is right up your alley, I'd be interested in some of your detailed comments.
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Just spent a productive half hour or so researching. Plenty of evidence that Watson is referring to solid studies. Used DuckDuckGo, not Google.
Obviously, cucks for the narrative, like Steingar, are out there blathering against him. But the studies are also out there.
Cue Steingar calling me a moron and linking to his preferred take on the matter.
So unnecessary. Reminds me of the James Damore firing, but fits in well with the Gillette ad. Let’s just ignore biology, folks!
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So because his findings as a legitimate scientist don't support the PC narrative that there CAN NEVER be any differences in the races due to genetics, he is demonized. Hmmm sound strangely familiar, just like man made climate change "deniers".
So since there are obvious physical differences between the races, that means that beyond a shadow of a doubt there CAN NOT be any mental, and/or psychological differences? I am not saying there are, but does not the possibility exist?
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Steingar -
Given that the science here is right up your alley, I'd be interested in some of your detailed comments.
Were I to forward such a hypothesis, I would need to know:
What genes are associated with or cause intelligence
Which alleles of those genes are associated with intelligence
The distribution of those alleles within populations
Whether the subject populations are indeed bereft of these alleles, as Watson claims
Personally, I think the biggest problem with this whole thing is the definition of intelligence itself. I don't think you can so easily put it in a box. IQ tests sure as hell don't work, they exhibit a hideous cultural bias.
Moreover, I doubt very strongly that intelligence even has a genetic basis. I suspect that true genius intelligence, like Einstein or Newton, might be. But I think average run of the mill intelligence is a very different animal. Indeed I ran an experiment not long ago that supported my hypothesis.
I've read that first born children are often the most driven or "intelligent". Sure worked for my family, my sister was a PhD, full professor and Chair of her department. I feel my students are very intelligent indeed, they had to get through a lot of very difficult science courses to get to me, and my course is yet again quite a bit more difficult. I asked the class, very informally, how many were first born children. Almost everyone raised their hands. I then told them the reason behind my request.
Oldest children have no special alleles, they do have a different (and somewhat common) environment. And human beings are very, very sensitive to their environment.
The people that Watson disparages have been victimized by systemic racism that is ongoing still. I suspect very strongly that such strong environmental influences can easily mask genetic ones.
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So because his findings as a legitimate scientist don't support the PC narrative that there CAN NEVER be any differences in the races due to genetics, he is demonized. Hmmm sound strangely familiar, just like man made climate change "deniers".
So since there are obvious physical differences between the races, that means that beyond a shadow of a doubt there CAN NOT be any mental, and/or psychological differences? I am not saying there are, but does not the possibility exist?
Please feel free to cite Watson's "findings" in this area.
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Just spent a productive half hour or so researching. Plenty of evidence that Watson is referring to solid studies. Used DuckDuckGo, not Google.
Obviously, cucks for the narrative, like Steingar, are out there blathering against him. But the studies are also out there.
Cue Steingar calling me a moron and linking to his preferred take on the matter.
So unnecessary. Reminds me of the James Damore firing, but fits in well with the Gillette ad. Let’s just ignore biology, folks!
I know you're not a big fan of Steingar, but calling him simply a "cuck for the narrative" when this is literally his area of expertise seems a bit much.
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I know you're not a big fan of Steingar, but calling him simply a "cuck for the narrative" when this is literally his area of expertise seems a bit much.
Yes it does, doesn’t it? Thinking people have by this point seen so many “experts” doing just that, though, that it begins to make sense to be skeptical. That’s why I suggested researching it.
As well, cultural, heritable and environmental factors are considered, not ignored.
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Please feel free to cite Watson's "findings" in this area.
I was discussing yours and other leftists dismissal of even just the possibility that there may be something to his findings. You and many others obviously have NO objectivity, which, I thought was a basis for the scientific method.
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His views haven't a shred of data to support them. Just racism with a dusting of scientific jargon to make it shiny. I'm glad the Nobel committee decided to strip him of his laurels. He's an embarrassment to the scientific community.
Take any group of people and arbitrarily segment them and and you'll find strengths and weaknesses in the groups. Correlation is not causality.
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Watson showed no malice, and can be called brilliant with no argument, given his accomplishments.
If stating what the data tell you gets you pilloried, what does that say about the openness of minds, and about freedom to explore theories and findings?
When we say the data show preferences by genders, we are sexist, and when the data speak to IQ we are racist. It’s absurd, counterintuitive and chokes progress.
Those narrative controllers who have boxed us into this corner have done a grave disservice to humanity and to all future scientific endeavor.
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The science is absolutely solid that IQ is heritable, but we've not identified the genes associated with it, and it is no doubt highly polygenic with thousands of genes involved. There are also environmental influences that can be substantial, but they can only dumb you down. You can never take a person born with a maximum potential IQ of only 100 and turn him into someone with an IQ of 130. But you can sure lower his IQ to 70 through poor nutrition, etc.
Most cultural bias has been removed from IQ tests. Bias used to be a big problem but it is no longer. Environmental influences have also been controlled for and still the results are the same. Blacks average lower than whites, whites lower than Asians, and the highest of all are Ashkenazi Jews.
Anyone who tries to use that to discriminate is racist. These are averages and say nothing at all about an individual, there is much overlap. Those who use these results to imply one race is inferior to another don't understand how averages work. I am not familiar with Watson and can't speak to whether he made racist comments. Anyone who uses IQ to try to justify denying a race equal opportunities is racist. But to simply admit what the data shows is not racist.
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One can NEVER expect a liberal to have an open mind on any subject.
Liberal (modern, not classic) is the definition of closed minded, bigoted, self-serving, egotistical and racist with regard to anything that doesn't rigidly follow the dogma.
thinking steingar would respond with anything containing a shred of objectivity is like expecting nancy pelosi and chuck schumer to tell the truth about border security. It is impossible.
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Just spent a productive half hour or so researching. Plenty of evidence that Watson is referring to solid studies. Used DuckDuckGo, not Google.
Obviously, cucks for the narrative, like Steingar, are out there blathering against him. But the studies are also out there.
Cue Steingar calling me a moron and linking to his preferred take on the matter.
So unnecessary. Reminds me of the James Damore firing, but fits in well with the Gillette ad. Let’s just ignore biology, folks!
Since you seem to believe that you're an expert Geneticist, I invite you to cite Watson's peer-reviewed findings in this area. I doubt there are any, since he hasn't done any active bench research in decades. He was instrumental in moving the human genome project forward, and his was the first genome sequenced.
The big difference between you all and me is that unlike you, I've met the man. I also know a lot of the folks who worked around him at Cold Spring Harbor, they told fun stories.
What none of you grasp is that I have only said he hasn't the data to back up his contentions. Had he I would object strongly to the Nobel committee taking away his award. Data is neither liberal nor conservative, and it is always, always correct.
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Data is neither liberal nor conservative, and it is always, always correct.
Unless it contradicts political correctness and points out the lies related to mmgw...
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Data is neither liberal nor conservative, and it is always, always correct.
You can't believe that. Data may, or may not be true, or it may be somewhere between true and false. It is just data, and the manner in which it is collected, and other factors can affect its accuracy. Also what assumptions, and other factors you apply to that data in an analysis affect the integrity of that analysis. So data is neither right nor wrong, it is just data.
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Were I to forward such a hypothesis, I would need to know:
What genes are associated with or cause intelligence
Which alleles of those genes are associated with intelligence
The distribution of those alleles within populations
Whether the subject populations are indeed bereft of these alleles, as Watson claims
This MIT article says 500 genes have been tied to performance on IQ tests:
“DNA tests for IQ are coming, but it might not be smart to take one”
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610339/dna-tests-for-iq-are-coming-but-it-might-not-be-smart-to-take-one/ (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610339/dna-tests-for-iq-are-coming-but-it-might-not-be-smart-to-take-one/)
However, future studies needed to get more detail are already frowned upon, as you well know. Some have even proposed government suppression of any research into genetic contribution to intelligence. Even mainstream media such as National Geographic had noted the calls for suppression of such research:
“Are There Genes for Intelligence, and Is It Racist to Ask?”
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151211-genetics-intelligence-racism-science/ (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151211-genetics-intelligence-racism-science/)
The punishment taken against Watson indicate not mere objective scientific disagreement, but a highly emotional subjective reaction. Science is not advanced by such actions - indeed the clear intent is to make him an example in order to halt scientific inquiry. I wonder if the next step will be to hang his carcass where all behavioral geneticists see it and despair.
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This MIT article says 500 genes have been tied to performance on IQ tests:
“DNA tests for IQ are coming, but it might not be smart to take one”
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610339/dna-tests-for-iq-are-coming-but-it-might-not-be-smart-to-take-one/ (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610339/dna-tests-for-iq-are-coming-but-it-might-not-be-smart-to-take-one/)
However, future studies needed to get more detail are already frowned upon, as you well know. Some have even proposed government suppression of any research into genetic contribution to intelligence. Even mainstream media such as National Geographic had noted the calls for suppression of such research:
“Are There Genes for Intelligence, and Is It Racist to Ask?”
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151211-genetics-intelligence-racism-science/ (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151211-genetics-intelligence-racism-science/)
The punishment taken against Watson indicate not mere objective scientific disagreement, but a highly emotional subjective reaction. Science is not advanced by such actions - indeed the clear intent is to make him an example in order to halt scientific inquiry. I wonder if the next step will be to hang his carcass where all behavioral geneticists see it and despair.
Your are correct. There are drives underway to use genetic resources (which at present are slim at best) to find genes linked to what we perceive to be intelligence. Again, I question the metrics used so far, but I admit to my own lack of expertise in the area. However, none of the other postulates I mentioned in my first post have been met. First, the genes involved have not been characterized as of this writing. They probably will be by this time next year thanks to the NHS. But it is still necessary to determine the distribution of the relevant alleles throughout target populations to be able to make the sweeping statements Watson has. Without that data what he has done isn't science, its veiled racism and nothing more.
Moreover, Watson has been saying these awful things for years, long before any of this was discovered.
And I stand by what I said. If the data indicate that people of African ancestry have genetically lower intelligence, than that's the data. That said, I doubt it in the strongest possible terms. Africans have the greatest genetic diversity of all humans by far. I find it very difficult to believe that a population that diverse could be screwed in one direction or another.
And data is neither liberal nor conservative. Data is never racist, feminist, fascist or anything else. Data simply is, and it is ALWAY correct no matter what. Data is simply what we observe with our senses. And if we can't trust our senses to observe the world then we're done.
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The punishment taken against Watson indicate not mere objective scientific disagreement, but a highly emotional subjective reaction. Science is not advanced by such actions - indeed the clear intent is to make him an example in order to halt scientific inquiry. I wonder if the next step will be to hang his carcass where all behavioral geneticists see it and despair.
The term “behavioral geneticist” will no longer exist, for reasons obvious. All hail the unquestionable King Data!
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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And data is neither liberal nor conservative. Data is never racist, feminist, fascist or anything else. Data simply is, and it is ALWAY correct no matter what. Data is simply what we observe with our senses. And if we can't trust our senses to observe the world then we're done.
I hate to break it to you, but we can’t trust our senses. That is not even Reality 101, it’s Reality 99. Our senses give us data but it is not by any means complete or even defensible in many critical discussions. Your statement makes me shudder, considering your profession, and want to caution all young and their parents to avoid funding you and your ilk.
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And data is neither liberal nor conservative. Data is never racist, feminist, fascist or anything else. Data simply is, and it is ALWAY correct no matter what. Data is simply what we observe with our senses. And if we can't trust our senses to observe the world then we're done.
Unless manipulated in a way to provide the answer one wants.
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I hate to break it to you, but we can’t trust our senses. That is not even Reality 101, it’s Reality 99. Our senses give us data but it is not by any means complete or even defensible in many critical discussions. Your statement makes me shudder, considering your profession, and want to caution all young and their parents to avoid funding you and your ilk.
When you read the comments his former attendees posted about his classes, you would be even more frightened of what people like mikey are teaching.
The most common seemed to be, "RUN, don;t walk, away from this clown, with absolutely no idea what he is talking about, or supposed to be teaching,
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I hate to break it to you, but we can’t trust our senses. That is not even Reality 101, it’s Reality 99. Our senses give us data but it is not by any means complete or even defensible in many critical discussions. Your statement makes me shudder, considering your profession, and want to caution all young and their parents to avoid funding you and your ilk.
Our sense are all we have, and what we see is correct. Yes, what we see can lead us to incorrect conclusions. But what we see is correct. That's how science works, and is an integral part of the scientific method.
Personally, I think it works pretty damn well. We've placed folks on the moon and bots on Mars. We've harnessed the power of the atom, worked out the human genome, and cured lots and lots of horrible diseases.
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The science is absolutely solid that IQ is heritable, but we've not identified the genes associated with it
Maybe. Part of what we measure in IQ is just learning, what you know. Children of well off parents tend to have a better early development environment than children whose parents are not well off. So what may appear as inherited genes could just be a better environment while the early development cycle is forming the brain.
Put into another form, there probably isn't a fat gene, we just learn to eat fatty foods and not exercise from our parents.
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The science is absolutely solid that IQ is heritable, but we've not identified the genes associated with it, and it is no doubt highly polygenic with thousands of genes involved.
I'd like to see a citation for this, I have really strong doubts. That there are alleles that promote intelligence I don't doubt, but humans are sufficiently regulative in their behavior to think that the heritability of intelligence is really that high. I could be wrong, but I honestly don't think the data are sufficiently solid to make any firm conclusions.
Anyone who uses IQ to try to justify denying a race equal opportunities is racist. But to simply admit what the data shows is not racist.
This is in a nutshell what Watson has done.
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Maybe. Part of what we measure in IQ is just learning, what do you know. Children of well off parents tend to have a better early development environment than children whose parents are not well off. So what may appear as inherited genes could just be a better environment while the early development cycle is forming the brain.
Put into another form, there probably isn't a fat gene, we just learn to eat fatty foods and not exercise from our parents.
They have controlled for environment and upbringing. The differences are still there. Unless you torture the data with interpretation such as "I know you raised this black twin in a white family but he was probably treated differently than the white kid and that's what accounts for his lower IQ". There is no perfect environmental control but we do the best we can and the differences keep surfacing.
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They have controlled for environment and upbringing. The differences are still there. Unless you torture the data with interpretation such as "I know you raised this black twin in a white family but he was probably treated differently than the white kid and that's what accounts for his lower IQ". There is no perfect environmental control but we do the best we can and the differences keep surfacing.
Scientists can't even predict what's happening with the weather and climate, how can they predict what behavior is inherited or not?
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Our sense are all we have, and what we see is correct. Yes, what we see can lead us to incorrect conclusions. But what we see is correct. That's how science works, and is an integral part of the scientific method.
Personally, I think it works pretty damn well. We've placed folks on the moon and bots on Mars. We've harnessed the power of the atom, worked out the human genome, and cured lots and lots of horrible diseases.
I am not a scientist although I have studied science, and apply scientific methodology to my work, and what you say SCARES ME. If other scientists believe what you believe about analysis, data, and scientific method then we as a society are in trouble. Wow.
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Scientists can't even predict what's happening with the weather and climate, how can they predict what behavior is inherited or not?
First, we can predict weather pretty damn well. Second, climate is fantastically complex and chaotic in nature. and things like that are very difficult to fully understand.
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I am not a scientist although I have studied science, and apply scientific methodology to my work, and what you say SCARES ME. If other scientists believe what you believe about analysis, data, and scientific method then we as a society are in trouble. Wow.
Talk to any scientist about data and they will say the same as me. I don't understand any of you. Science has taken huge leaps in the last part of the last century and the first part of this one. Dreaded diseases that used to cripple and kill many are now distant memories. We've stood on heavenly bodies. We understand the atom. Why would unbiased examination of the world around us scare you'll so when it leads to such utterly fantastic success?
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Much of Science seems to have become corrupt, and all about money and funding. Scientist are now greedy, and biased in many instances. Ethics have taken a back seat to greed, and personal gain.
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I am not a scientist although I have studied science, and apply scientific methodology to my work, and what you say SCARES ME. If other scientists believe what you believe about analysis, data, and scientific method then we as a society are in trouble. Wow.
How do you suggest we carry on the entire portion of scientific observation called qualitative observation without our senses and trust thereof? And how do you suppose we view and interpret the measurements from quantitative observation without our senses and trust thereof?
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Much of Science seems to have become corrupt, and all about money and funding. Scientist are now greedy, and biased in many instances. Ethics have taken a back seat to greed, and personal gain.
I'm sorry you feel this way, since you couldn't be more incorrect. Were I in it for the money I'd have gone into medicine or business. I recall my pal Johhny Flynn, who did the business route while I did the academic back in my youth in So Cal. I had a subsidized apartment at the beach. He had two condos at the beach. I rode a piece of shit motorcycle. He had two race bikes. I was perennially single, he had the hottest girlfriend. Materially, he did far better than I.
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https://www.icr.org/article/study-shows-many-scientists-manipulate
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/02/06/whistleblower-noaa-scientists-manipulated-temperature-data-to-hype-global-warming/
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/data-manipulation-tool-science-p-hacking/
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Your are correct. There are drives underway to use genetic resources (which at present are slim at best) to find genes linked to what we perceive to be intelligence. Again, I question the metrics used so far, but I admit to my own lack of expertise in the area. However, none of the other postulates I mentioned in my first post have been met. First, the genes involved have not been characterized as of this writing. They probably will be by this time next year thanks to the NHS. But it is still necessary to determine the distribution of the relevant alleles throughout target populations to be able to make the sweeping statements Watson has. Without that data what he has done isn't science, its veiled racism and nothing more.
Moreover, Watson has been saying these awful things for years, long before any of this was discovered.
And I stand by what I said. If the data indicate that people of African ancestry have genetically lower intelligence, than that's the data. That said, I doubt it in the strongest possible terms. Africans have the greatest genetic diversity of all humans by far. I find it very difficult to believe that a population that diverse could be screwed in one direction or another.
And data is neither liberal nor conservative. Data is never racist, feminist, fascist or anything else. Data simply is, and it is ALWAY correct no matter what. Data is simply what we observe with our senses. And if we can't trust our senses to observe the world then we're done.
I agree with you about trusting our senses although technically the others' criticism of that statement is valid because it's very difficult to disentangle our prejudices from what we think the data says. I have read numerous studies where the researcher, in the conclusion paragraph, or the synopsis, contradicts his own data. This is where his bias shows up, but even more important is that bias will happen before the study is even done, in the way of who funds it or conducts it or which studies are published. Cherry picking studies is a huge problem.
Africans do have the greatest genetic diversity but there is a huge problem using data from Africans. There is an approximate 20 point drop between African blacks and American blacks and environmental causes are almost certainly 100% to blame. Until that continent solves its poverty and it's lack of connection to the modern world, data from Africa needs to be ignored in the debate. Genetic differences are overwhelmed by environmental ones. But in studies of American blacks where environment and upbringing is controlled the difference is still there.
It's possible there was a genetic bottleneck of sorts bringing blacks to America. Say for the sake of argument the more intelligent ones lacked physical strength and so were more likely to die during the passage. That would leave the remaining population with a lower average potential IQ gene set to pass down to the current population. So then you will say originally the black IQ was equal to the white IQ until you messed with it environmentally. True! But by messing with it you did create a genetic heritability that is now passed on to descendants. And if you buy that logic, you must also admit that there could have been other population bottlenecks back home on the continent that occurred after the people who dispersed out of Africa to eventually evolve white skin.
Or conversely something happened to the population that left Africa to evolve an enhanced intelligence. Maybe they encountered Neanderthals and were hunted and eaten by them so maybe those with higher intelligence avoided being eaten and passed on their higher intelligence to their descendants.
The Ashkenazi Jews evolved their ten point advantage over other Jews in only 500 years, but the black and white and Asian races split from each other tens of thousands of years ago. Plenty of time to evolve differing minds as well as differing bodies.
A lot more research is needed to understand this completely but by denying it exists at all is ludicrous and amounts to applying completely different and imaginary evolutionary processes to humans than to every other animal. We readily admit some dog breeds are smarter than others and they are the same species. Maybe we did that through deliberate breeding but accidental environmental events can do the same thing and we all know this, anyone who knows anything at all about animal evolution knows this. It must take deliberate donning of blinders and massive cognitive contortion to tell yourself the same evolution cannot also apply to humans.
Now there are definitely different types of intelligence. Populations of any species evolve higher and lower sub-types of intelligence to fit their environment and humans are no exception. Chimpanzees have a better eidetic memory than humans. Maybe it helped them memorize the exact times and locations of fruitings in their environment. But the general intelligence as we think of it is lower in the chimpanzee than in the human.
However you cannot keep redefining intelligence in an effort to contort the facts and force human races to always come out equal to each other on tests. Human intelligence is understood to be what humans need to function in human society. The data on this is incontrovertible: high IQ is strongly associated with success in career and other life endeavors. You won't find a CEO with an 80 IQ.
And yes IQ is partly memorized generally available information but it is pretty clear that the ability to gain and retain that information is associated with a fixed inherited ability. Smarter people tend to read more by nature and dumber people don't. Trying to deny that is grasping at straws and this has been controlled by things like whether your parents read to you when you were a baby. Such controls affect adult IQ very little, it may make a 5 point difference but it does not make a 40 point difference. You will never turn an 80 IQ baby into a 120 IQ adult if he was not born with the right gene set in the first place.
Denying these inherent differences leads to wasted resources and the biggest example is our misguided assumption that every child can get a post doctorate degree or work as a professional at high levels. No, not everyone can do this, and it has led to a lack of resources for the types of jobs the less smart can do and want to do, like skilled labor.
No child should be assumed to have a lower IQ and every child should have the opportunities afforded smarter people, should he want them, because individual differences within races mean there are high IQs in every race. But it doesn't help those with lower intellectual potential to try to force them into something they cannot handle, it ruins their self esteem and it denies them opportunities to do things in which they would excel.
We would do much better to admit that less smart people (of all races) exist congenitally and provide support for the types of jobs they want while also correcting the environmental problems that take a 120 IQ baby and turn him into an 80 IQ adult, such as poverty, bad nutrition and lack of early exposure to learning opportunities. But to deny that there are some people that no matter what you do will never be very smart is not good for them or society.
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Since you seem to believe that you're an expert Geneticist, I invite you to cite Watson's peer-reviewed findings in this area. I doubt there are any, since he hasn't done any active bench research in decades. He was instrumental in moving the human genome project forward, and his was the first genome sequenced.
The big difference between you all and me is that unlike you, I've met the man. I also know a lot of the folks who worked around him at Cold Spring Harbor, they told fun stories.
What none of you grasp is that I have only said he hasn't the data to back up his contentions. Had he I would object strongly to the Nobel committee taking away his award. Data is neither liberal nor conservative, and it is always, always correct.
Can you share with us the peer review findings of your experiment in your classroom that confirmed your findings about first born children? I’d love to read that.
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I'd like to see a citation for this, I have really strong doubts. That there are alleles that promote intelligence I don't doubt, but humans are sufficiently regulative in their behavior to think that the heritability of intelligence is really that high. I could be wrong, but I honestly don't think the data are sufficiently solid to make any firm conclusions.
I would love to chase down the books and studies I've read on the subject and list them for you but I've wasted enough time today on this forum and have actual real life work to do.
This is in a nutshell what Watson has done.
I looked him up a bit and admit he was an asshole at least the quick articles I found indicates that. This doesn't mean he's wrong though about some basic facts. That beauty is largely heritable for example is a fact I doubt you'd dispute unless you want to debate the definition of beautiful, but this guy says we should genetically select all females to be beautiful. That's abhorrent but it doesn't make any less true the fact that beauty is largely genetic.
I fully admit that terrible things can result from facing the truth about racial differences in general intelligence and I understand why that viewpoint is suppressed. But it may be doing more harm than good.
To deny that intelligence could be heritable at all because it raises the possibility that there might be racial differences is to throw the baby out with the bath water! There are inherited differences in IQ within races. Obviously. But because of the political racial sensitivity we are denying the entire enchilada. This conflicts with everything we understand about evolution, natural selection, sexual selection, etc. that we apply to every other living thing on this planet.
You have to convince yourself the Emperor is wearing clothes to square this logic. Scientists who recognize reality do not speak up for fear of vicious attack. Most research occurs in universities and now liberals who follow the politically correct party line on this subject vastly outnumber anyone who doesn't. Objective research on this is now very hard to do because of this initial bias and because any results not in compliance with accepted orthodoxy is attacked, trashed and marginalized.
But I concede that you seem open to objective data. It's there but you have to be willing to consider maybe the Emperor is wearing no clothes before it will make sense to you.
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Much of Science seems to have become corrupt, and all about money and funding. Scientist are now greedy, and biased in many instances. Ethics have taken a back seat to greed, and personal gain.
THIS is what concerns me most. Last night I took a red eye back home, and driving home from the airport I listened to Coast to Coast AM with some host named George something. He had a physicist with a Ph.D. In nuclear chemistry or geochemistry. I think his name was Marvin Herndon or something. Anyway, the discussion was on geoengineering and I shit you not, chemtrails. He had all kinds of information on some chemical from coal fly ash which is used to manipulate weather that was found in children, blah blah blah. He spoke about the “deep state perfect storm”, implying that government (military) manipulation of the weather is a direct cause of the CA wildfires, etc.
So here’s the problem. Just as some pilots are vastly better than other pilots, some PhD scientists are vastly different from other PhD scientists. Throw in government political motivation for a desired outcome, government research grants potentially impacting objectivity, and media into the mix, and you get at best something that we ALL should be skeptical about.
So Steingar ridiculed the scientist that
Is the topic of this thread. I ridicule the lunatic scientist on Coast to Coast. Steingar’s measure for incontestable proof is “peer review”, but punctuated by what he feels or believes. He used those terms above I believe. Yet are those peer reviewers pure as the wind driven snow, or are they potentially biased as well? Is Steingar at the top of the genetic scientist heap, or is he at the bottom? We don’t know, but I’m put on guard when he completely dismisses and ridicules the scientist in this article, or climate scientists that don’t happen to match his scientific world view on MMCC.
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Just FYI, for a taste of James Watson’s personality, I suggest reading his book “The Double Helix”. He does come across as an ass in several spots. He has clashed with others in his career. He says sexist things for example, but it isn’t clear if he commits sexist acts (e.g. during hiring or firing.)
I happen to think, though, that “The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology” by Judson is a great account for the general reader of the origins of modern biology. If you ever wondered how we came to know what we do about biology, it’s a good summary. Recommended. Watson naturally shows up there.
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THIS is what concerns me most. Last night I took a red eye back home, and driving home from the airport I listened to Coast to Coast AM with some host named George something. He had a physicist with a Ph.D. In nuclear chemistry or geochemistry. I think his name was Marvin Herndon or something. Anyway, the discussion was on geoengineering and I shit you not, chemtrails. He had all kinds of information on some chemical from coal fly ash which is used to manipulate weather that was found in children, blah blah blah. He spoke about the “deep state perfect storm”, implying that government (military) manipulation of the weather is a direct cause of the CA wildfires, etc.
So here’s the problem. Just as some pilots are vastly better than other pilots, some PhD scientists are vastly different from other PhD scientists. Throw in government political motivation for a desired outcome, government research grants potentially impacting objectivity, and media into the mix, and you get at best something that we ALL should be skeptical about.
So Steingar ridiculed the scientist that
Is the topic of this thread. I ridicule the lunatic scientist on Coast to Coast. Steingar’s measure for incontestable proof is “peer review”, but punctuated by what he feels or believes. He used those terms above I believe. Yet are those peer reviewers pure as the wind driven snow, or are they potentially biased as well? Is Steingar at the top of the genetic scientist heap, or is he at the bottom? We don’t know, but I’m put on guard when he completely dismisses and ridicules the scientist in this article, or climate scientists that don’t happen to match his scientific world view on MMCC.
The problem as pointed out by Jonathan Haidt who started out a far left wing liberal is that the centers of learning (universities) have become largely homogenous and no longer welcome open dispute from anyone not left wing liberal. Science that impacts public policy including MMGW and IQ is where they are most congealed in their orthodoxy and are completely hostile to any opposing viewpoint.
But entertaining opposing viewpoints is core to scientific discovery and progress and is supposed to be the core mechanism through which universities advance human knowledge. Haidt believes that the concentration of the political left in universities that has occurred within the past few decades is a crisis that is hampering its very mission. Though Haidt is on the left, he recognizes that the absence of conservative professors and researchers is having a terrible influence on what universities are producing: students who don't know how to look at all sides and think critically.
They are producing students who cannot tolerate hearing an opposing viewpoint much less be able to debate it intelligently. You have to learn about the opposition if you're going to make a good argument for your own side. But that's not what universities are teaching students in these areas, instead they are simply indoctrinating them to one side with a set of enshrined talking points.
When universities become 95% liberal and you spend all your time there you begin to believe theirs is the default reality (same with living in big cities) but America is consistently about 50/50 conservative liberal split. Universities are failing to expose students to a full half of the nation's point of view and that is a big problem. It's accelerating the divide and hampering constructive communication between the sides. There is evidence that being liberal or conservative is related to inherited traits such as openness to new experience, need for order, and other psychological tendencies and therefore the split is going to be with us for a long, long time.
It is also likely that a good mix of these same psychological characteristics are necessary for valid scientific investigation. This has traditionally been intuitively understood at universities but the now overt hostility toward conservatives is creating a closed unchallenged environment in certain subjects that is going to hamper progress in these areas and is creating a self amplifying closed loop of funding/ research that does little more than justify each other's prior biases.
It's not that conservatives are right and liberals are wrong or vice versa. It would be equally bad if it were a conservative takeover at universities. Objective fact may sometimes end up favoring one over the other but when one side completely shuts down talk from the other, as is what's happening - conservative speakers are being banned, conservative professors are being censored- then there is now ingrained institutional bias, and worst of all, the members cannot see their own bias because they isolate themselves from everything not supporting it. It becomes a self sustaining and self amplifying bias that eventually becomes political policy out in the real world.
Now you have policy based on conclusions that did not receive a full critique from fully half the nation's population and that is a very bad thing. If your science is wrong then your policy creates devastating harm. If your science is correct then you have arrived at it without consideration of the opposing side and caused half the nation to mistrust you. And when they mistrust you they create their own one sided theories and their own damaging policy. Either way it's a very bad problem.
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https://www.icr.org/article/study-shows-many-scientists-manipulate
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/02/06/whistleblower-noaa-scientists-manipulated-temperature-data-to-hype-global-warming/
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/data-manipulation-tool-science-p-hacking/
If whatever percentage of scientific results are utterly faked, as your sources indicate, can you explain the incredible scientific advances that continue to occur? This year has inaugurated immunotherapy for cancer, the Mars insight lander, a few asteroid flybys, and continued rewriting of human history. Future studies are always based on past ones, so if its all faked how do we keep going and get useful and meaningful results?
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How do you suggest we carry on the entire portion of scientific observation called qualitative observation without our senses and trust thereof? And how do you suppose we view and interpret the measurements from quantitative observation without our senses and trust thereof?
Trust, but verify.
Take an airplane into clouds with nothing but your senses and tell us how well that works out.
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Trust, but verify.
Take an airplane into clouds with nothing but your senses and tell us how well that works out.
Lots of people take airplanes into the clouds all time. They use their senses to read scientific instruments, just like scientists. Most get to where they're going and land safely.
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Lots of people take airplanes into the clouds all time. They use their senses to read scientific instruments, just like scientists. Most get to where they're going and land safely.
That is purest form of progressive cop out and typical of fascism in academia.
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Lots of people take airplanes into the clouds all time. They use their senses to read scientific instruments, just like scientists. Most get to where they're going and land safely.
Your reading comprehension skills fail you once more.
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If whatever percentage of scientific results are utterly faked, as your sources indicate, can you explain the incredible scientific advances that continue to occur? This year has inaugurated immunotherapy for cancer, the Mars insight lander, a few asteroid flybys, and continued rewriting of human history. Future studies are always based on past ones, so if its all faked how do we keep going and get useful and meaningful results?
To say that because scientific advances have been made, therefor no one is to question the motives or data of anyone in the scientific community, is pure bunk.
There are dedicated scientist. Then there are charlatans posing as dedicated scientist.
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I wonder if other scientists call our President names like "Mango Mussolini", so yeah, I'd really trust them to be unbiased.
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To say that because scientific advances have been made, therefor no one is to question the motives or data of anyone in the scientific community, is pure bunk.
There are dedicated scientist. Then there are charlatans posing as dedicated scientist.
Excuse me, but the claim has been made in this thread that up to half of all scientific data is bunk. I ask a very simple question. If this is true, how do we make continued progress?
As far as charlatans, I really can't see how they get very far. Either their data is sufficiently unimportant or uninteresting that no one depends upon or tries to replicate their findings, or they get discovered. For example, when I knocked out genes in mice, those animals went all over the world, as did the embryonic stem cells on which I based the knockouts. They've been used extensively by other investigators, as the results interested lots of people. Now had half of them been false, I would have easily been found out, since folks experiments wouldn't be working correctly and they'd want to know why.
Had the results been unimportant they'd have been published in loser journals that no one reads. They would have done me no good at all in gaining any sort of professional notoriety, the currency for which scientists most endeavor. That's the currency that buys grants and promotion. No one ever got that kind of notoriety from falsifying results.
I will admit the first thing we ALWAYS do when receiving reagents or animals from other facilities is a thorough analysis to make certain we got the right thing. Everyone makes mistakes, we're all of us human.
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I wonder if other scientists call our President names like "Mango Mussolini", so yeah, I'd really trust them to be unbiased.
That's actually pretty mild compared to the verbiage most commonly used by my colleagues to describe that creature. Most of the pleonasm I've heard about him involves words I'd hesitate to print here. But just because one disdains the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania avenue den's mean one can't be an objective scientist.
Of course, lots of scientists are accused of being less than objective, and there is probably some truth to it. We're all human, and we have our egos. Still, the process is really good. Our record of success speaks for itself.
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Your reading comprehension skills fail you once more.
Actually, I think it an apt metaphor and might use it in my instructional activities. We don't just look at the world with our naked eyes, we do so through sophisticated instruments. Often novel approaches and results come from advancements in technology. A really good example is the recent rewriting of human history, with Neanderthals not being a close relative wiped out by our ancestors, but our ancestors in fact. These results came about because of new technology in retrieving and analyzing ancient DNA for archaeological and paleological sources, new rapid and highly parallel DNA sequencing technology and new ways in which we use sophisticated algorithms to analyze the data.
In many ways it is very similar to how novel navigation technologies allow pilots to fly into airports under conditions they couldn't in the past. In previous years you had to see where you were going. With the advent of gyro approaches you could fly in the clouds, but couldn't navigate. AN ranges improved that, VOR's improved it further. Some airports got ILS systems, those that didn't were difficult to get into if conditions were low. Now with LPV approaches there are lots of airports you can get into under very poor conditions. Just like how scientists can make new discoveries with new technologies.
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Actually, I think it an apt metaphor and might use it in my instructional activities. We don't just look at the world with our naked eyes, we do so through sophisticated instruments. Often novel approaches and results come from advancements in technology. A really good example is the recent rewriting of human history, with Neanderthals not being a close relative wiped out by our ancestors, but our ancestors in fact. These results came about because of new technology in retrieving and analyzing ancient DNA for archaeological and paleological sources, new rapid and highly parallel DNA sequencing technology and new ways in which we use sophisticated algorithms to analyze the data.
In many ways it is very similar to how novel navigation technologies allow pilots to fly into airports under conditions they couldn't in the past. In previous years you had to see where you were going. With the advent of gyro approaches you could fly in the clouds, but couldn't navigate. AN ranges improved that, VOR's improved it further. Some airports got ILS systems, those that didn't were difficult to get into if conditions were low. Now with LPV approaches there are lots of airports you can get into under very poor conditions. Just like how scientists can make new discoveries with new technologies.
Nice jumbo jumbo there perfesser.
If you had actually read the reply on flying, it was suggested to fly in the clouds using only senses, not by instruments.
Amazing that you teach with such a low reading comprehension.
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Nice jumbo jumbo there perfesser.
If you had actually read the reply on flying, it was suggested to fly in the clouds using only senses, not by instruments.
Amazing that you teach with such a low reading comprehension.
You’re wasting your time.
The egomaniac living inside mikey is far too into himself to bother with things like intelligence, comprehension, integrity, or lucidity to be capable of correcting himself.
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That's actually pretty mild compared to the verbiage most commonly used by my colleagues to describe that creature. Most of the pleonasm I've heard about him involves words I'd hesitate to print here. But just because one disdains the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania avenue den's mean one can't be an objective scientist.
Of course, lots of scientists are accused of being less than objective, and there is probably some truth to it. We're all human, and we have our egos. Still, the process is really good. Our record of success speaks for itself.
So does the record of the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I think we can agree that success can be achieved under adverse circumstances.
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If you had actually read the reply on flying, it was suggested to fly in the clouds using only senses, not by instruments.
Doesn't matter what the suggestion was. It well-proved my point. Qualitative observation uses only our senses. And even quantitative observation utilizes our senses to read and interpret the measurements. I'm sure you'll agree that IFR flight would be wholly unsuccessful if we all closed our eyes.
"Trust, but verify" is a fair mantra. But it does not invalidate the point that our human senses are critical to scientific exploration and success.
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Nice jumbo jumbo there perfesser.
If you had actually read the reply on flying, it was suggested to fly in the clouds using only senses, not by instruments.
Amazing that you teach with such a low reading comprehension.
When you use instruments you do so with your senses. Indeed, the big problem in flying in limited visibility is that you are deprived of your most important sense, sight. You can’t see outside the aircraft. Were you a pilot you’d understand this, and what flight instruments are for.
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When you use instruments you do so with your senses. Indeed, the big problem in flying in limited visibility is that you are deprived of your most important sense, sight. You can’t see outside the aircraft. Were you a pilot you’d understand this, and what flight instruments are for.
Please read this:
Trust, but verify.
Take an airplane into clouds with nothing but your senses and tell us how well that works out.
Reading comprehension seems to be your weakness. The poster said "nothing but your senses".
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Please read this:
Reading comprehension seems to be your weakness. The poster said "nothing but your senses".
Why deal with the facts when he can make up shit and pretend he is smarter than everyone else?
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I get what he means. Nothing but your DIRECT senses. Michael is correct that you're still using nothing but your senses even when you fly on instruments. The instruments become proxy for directly visualizing the horizon but you're using your sense of sight to see the instrument display.
Why are y'all arguing about this, you know what each other mean.
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I get what he means. Nothing but your DIRECT senses. Michael is correct that you're still using nothing but your senses even when you fly on instruments. The instruments become proxy for directly visualizing the horizon but you're using your sense of sight to see the instrument display.
Why are y'all arguing about this, you know what each other mean.
Thats exactly what I was thinking. No point.
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Please read this:
Reading comprehension seems to be your weakness. The poster said "nothing but your senses".
My reading comprehension is just fine. Its just that I'm a pilot and you're not, so we see these things very differently.
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My reading comprehension is just fine. Its just that I'm a pilot and you're not, so we see these things very differently.
So how do you know I'm not a pilot?
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So how do you know I'm not a pilot?
Old joke. How do you know if there's a pilot in the room? Don't worry, he'll tell you.
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When one does not know what they do not know it is very easy to misinterpret what our senses are telling us.
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When one does not know what they do not know it is very easy to misinterpret what our senses are telling us.
Quite correct, which is why data can be misleading. But the data are still correct. The interpretation can be wrong though.
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Quite correct, which is why data can be misleading. But the data are still correct. The interpretation can be wrong though.
Agree completely. The whole story can be misleading if you pick and choose what data to consider.
It's very true that a local power plant is contaminating the groundwater under a ranch and the rancher is bitching about it ruining his land. That's all that's reported in the local paper. You are all sympathetic for the ranch owner, right?
But what's withheld from the article is decades ago he was about to lose his land because he couldn't pay property taxes and so he sold off some of it to build the power plant in the first place and then rented more of his land to dump their ash. He saved himself from foreclosure and losing his land entirely by doing this. THEN... along came fracking, oil companies put wells on his land, and now he is a multi-millionaire. Kind of changes entirely my level of sympathy for the guy.
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Teaching about DNA structure today, so I of course had to discuss Watson and Crick and had to address Watson's racism. I used to think that intelligence was genetic, smart people had smart kids etc. But more and more of my own readings have suggested that human neuroanatomy and neurophysiology is far more plastic than I at first realized. For example, I have read that first children are often more serious, driven, and intelligent than those born later. I therefore told my class I was conducting an experiment, and told them why. They are all of them try bright individuals, they couldn't get to me if they weren't. I therefore asked how many were oldest children. Almost every hand in the room went up. That is the second time, thus the N=2.
I of course told them I was a youngest child and ha uno business instructing them. Of course my older sister was the firstborn, and was a full professor and chair of her department while she was alive.
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That last epistle deserves the sound of no hands clapping.
What a pile of self serving, tripe.
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Teaching about DNA structure today, so I of course had to discuss Watson and Crick and had to address Watson's racism. I used to think that intelligence was genetic, smart people had smart kids etc. But more and more of my own readings have suggested that human neuroanatomy and neurophysiology is far more plastic than I at first realized. For example, I have read that first children are often more serious, driven, and intelligent than those born later. I therefore told my class I was conducting an experiment, and told them why. They are all of them try bright individuals, they couldn't get to me if they weren't. I therefore asked how many were oldest children. Almost every hand in the room went up. That is the second time, thus the N=2.
I of course told them I was a youngest child and ha uno business instructing them. Of course my older sister was the firstborn, and was a full professor and chair of her department while she was alive.
For first children, serious and driven may well have something to do with growing up "in charge" of the mob (the younger siblings) but intelligence, I understood varied only by 2 points in first borns. That small amount is indeed probably due to environment.
Good discussion:
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Teaching about DNA structure today, so I of course had to discuss Watson and Crick and had to address Watson's racism. I used to think that intelligence was genetic, smart people had smart kids etc. But more and more of my own readings have suggested that human neuroanatomy and neurophysiology is far more plastic than I at first realized. For example, I have read that first children are often more serious, driven, and intelligent than those born later. I therefore told my class I was conducting an experiment, and told them why. They are all of them try bright individuals, they couldn't get to me if they weren't. I therefore asked how many were oldest children. Almost every hand in the room went up. That is the second time, thus the N=2.
I of course told them I was a youngest child and ha uno business instructing them. Of course my older sister was the firstborn, and was a full professor and chair of her department while she was alive.
What does birth order have to do with race? Other than that you felt you “had to address Watson’s racism?”
Watson was looking at large numbers of people, some of them on vast continents, not sitting in one specialized classroom.
Mind you, I know there’s a lot we don’t know. But inserting racism into an interpretation of data, as we discussed above, is not necessary.
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What does birth order have to do with race? Other than that you felt you “had to address Watson’s racism?”
James Watson was one of a team of researchers who worked out the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. It was a watershed accomplishment, though they didn't work alone. Many other researchers contributed to their success, notably Rosalind Franklin, who produced the first X-Ray crystallographic pictures of DNA. Without her contribution Watson and Crick would not have worked out the structure, and would have probably been beaten by Linus Pauling. Had she lived (she died young from breast cancer) she would have certainly shared the Nobel. Im mention her prominently because Watson disparaged her appearance, clothing choices and demeanor in his book The Double Helix. I know its off the subject, but does give some pattern to Watson's behavior, which has been going on a long time.
Cold Spring Harbor's actions concerning him have been in the news recently, hence I didn't feel I could just ignore it. Had I, I would be implicitly giving my seal of approval to his racism, which I cannot do. So I addressed the issue head one, which I felt was the correct choice of action.
As for birth order, I have made the ascertain that I suspect "intelligence", or at least what we measure as intelligence, is far more nurture than nature. That is my own personal view, and unsupported by any data save two observations made by me myself. There is some support for this ins scientific literature, but like anything involving human cognition it is both complicated and fairly controversial. I have an interesting experimental population, college students in an upper division STEM classroom. I make one assumption in my experiment, that my students posses what we would measure as intelligence. To get to me they have had to pass through a great deal of very rigorous STEM material, and getting through me is no joke either. If you don't believe me I can post some exam questions. They have therefore demonstrated scholastic intelligence.
I have read from a number of sources that birth order can affect intelligence, due to interfamilial dynamics. I therefore made a very simple hypothesis, that my students, who have undergone a selection for intelligence (having to pass numerous University STEM classes) would be enriched in first born children. I therefore told my students my hypothesis and told them why i was conducting the small experiment I did. I then asked all of the oldest children, that is, those who were first born in their families, to raise their hands. Just about the whole room raised their hands.
This was an entirely informal experiment. I have no quantitative data, and it is all self reported. I report my findings nowhere but here. But they are striking, even if my N is only 2.
Watson was looking at large numbers of people, some of them on vast continents, not sitting in one specialized classroom.
Watson has looked at nothing and done nothing. He used his celebrity to accelerate work on the human genome and his was the first genome sequenced. He has conducted no experiments, gathered no data. What he has said about race and intelligence is based on his views alone.
Mind you, I know there’s a lot we don’t know. But inserting racism into an interpretation of data, as we discussed above, is not necessary.
That's absolutely silly. Of course we should insert racial identity into data analysis, people of different racial makeups respond to stimuli and get disease differently. For example, people of African ancestry tend to disproportionately suffer diabetes, even accounting for socioeconomic disparity. Ignoring that would be stupid, it is an opportunity for us to determine the genes responsible for diabetes and perhaps find a way to prevent its onset.
Here's the thing, my saying African Americans suffer diabetes at a higher rate than other ethnicities is not racism. Its a simple fact. If Watson confined himself to the data, that people of African ancestry tend to score lower on IQ tests, then I would have no qualms at all. The problem is he's gone well beyond that data saying people of African ethnicity have genetically lower intelligence, i.e. they're genetically inferior. And that trope goes back a long way.
The problem with that is what I addressed in my little experiment. Intelligence is part nurture, perhaps a big part if my results mean anything (actually, they don't. My experiment is too loose to be taken seriously. No quantitation, no other data collection). Still, it is pretty easy to envision socioeconomic disparity affecting IQ scores (they do, e.g. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976 (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976)) or that IQ tests themselves have strong cultural bias (again, they do e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/468479 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/468479)). Any of those things are sufficient to explain the disparity in measured IQ.
Indeed it is very difficult to envision people of African Ancestry lacking in alleles for intelligence, since Africa has the most genetically diverse population on Earth.
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If Watson, as you say, looked at nothing and has done nothing, why did you feel the need to put racism into a situation where there was nothing?
Racial identity is a scientific fact (unless you are someone like Rachel Dolezal and her ilk). Racism is prejudice against a race or races.
Many factors affect DNA as has been mentioned, including the effects of physical surroundings and of course diet. It’s perfectly possible that a vast population could decline in intelligence over time due to just one shared factor alone. I see that just such a possibility has been posited by genetic scientists for years. But we are talking about data observed today, and current populations.
I thank you for your reply. It caused me to do some reading and internet-fu yesterday that I otherwise would not have.
And I found that Watson was indeed an accomplished and respected scientist, that intelligence is indisputably heritable, and that birth order is apparently nonexistent in discussions involving intelligence as it relates to race.
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If Watson, as you say, looked at nothing and has done nothing, why did you feel the need to put racism into a situation where there was nothing?
Because there were recently stories about it in the news that my students had seen. I therefore strongly felt the need to address the issue. Some may be copacetic with racism, the Steinger is not.
Racial identity is a scientific fact (unless you are someone like Rachel Dolezal and her ilk). Racism is prejudice against a race or races.
Racial identity and those biological factors that go along with them are indeed factual. Saying that African Americans have darker skin tones than their caucasian counterparts is fact. One can even extrapolate some, for example it is very likely that people of African ethnicity are more resistant to UV radiation than those of European extraction. the pigment that gives skin color, melanin, is our defense against UV.
Ascribing unfounded qualitative characteristics, like intelligence or morality, is simple bigotry.
Many factors affect DNA as has been mentioned, including the effects of physical surroundings and of course diet. It’s perfectly possible that a vast population could decline in intelligence over time due to just one shared factor alone. I see that just such a possibility has been posited by genetic scientists for years. But we are talking about data observed today, and current populations.
Environmental factors like poverty and malnutrition can indeed have effects on population intelligence levels, and would be expected to do so. But keep in mind that the alleles for high intelligence are still resident within the members. Remove the pejorative environmental conditions and they would be expected to respond like anyone else. Thus by continuing the poverty to which these people are held we deny ourselves the benefits of potential intelligent people.
I thank you for your reply. It caused me to do some reading and internet-fu yesterday that I otherwise would not have.
Always glad to be of service.
And I found that Watson was indeed an accomplished and respected scientist, that intelligence is indisputably heritable, and that birth order is apparently nonexistent in discussions involving intelligence as it relates to race.
The amazing thing about Watson is he did his magnum opus, the structure of DNA, when he was in his 20's. I imagine the factors that affect African American families are largely the same ones that affect all families. But I strongly suspect the effects of poverty are far reaching.