Observer, it’s rather fascinating that you feel the need to run around putting your copy-and-paste spam everywhere that Mismeasure of Man is mentioned.***

Stephanie, I will stop running around when people stop citing it! Although I can see it probably seems a little unnecessary.

Greg,

Yes, I saw your comment on another thread about Mismeasure not being that useful. I didn’t mean to imply you were recommending it. In terms of your comments:

***1) The twin studies are useful but not definitive at all. Ideticality of genes results in greater similarity of environment (even the twin studies people acknowledge this). Neruologically, the fact that the brain grows to meet, and adapts to, its physical and cultural/external environment (and thus most variation from one person to the next can be explained by environment rather than genes) is fully in accord with a greater similarity between genetically identical vs. less identical people.

2) Twins separated at birth and raised in “different” settings are very rarely rased in different settings. They usually knew each other, were raised by different parts of the same family, wen to the same schools, etc. etc.***

I agree that these studies aren’t definitive. In terms of whether the twins raised apart are in different settings, there is a comment here by Frank Sulloway responding to Kaplan:

“Bouchard and his colleagues also tested the possible contribution made to IQ by pre-separation and post-reunion contact between the twins, another of the key issues raised by Professor Kaplan. Total contact time between the twins averaged 5.1 months prior to separation and 20.3 months following first reunion, when the twins were mostly in their late twenties and early thirties. Degree of contact accounted for almost none of the similarity in the twins’ IQs (r = .14, which was not significantly different from zero).”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19985

There is also an interesting exchange here between Dan Agin and Sulloway on the twins that share the same placenta and those that do not. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20731

****4) Citing Herrnstein’s opinion or interpretation as supportive of genetics determining IQ is like citing Nixon as a source in support of increasing the powers of the president. Or Bernie Madoff in support of letting white collar criminals off easy.***

Fair enough, but I only refer to Herrnstein in relation to his paper about the role of psychometric tests in the passing of the 1924 Immigration Act.

***5) Jews are distributed over a very large area historically, but those referenced in the studies you mention are part of a subset of Jewish culture that everywhere and for the entire time period has promoted and supported a home environment condusive to learning in ways that ultimately match very well with the expectations of IQ tests, so of course these numbers are as you suggest they are (to some extent). Again, environment is affecting measured intelligence.***

I don’t mean to deny that it does. My point was simply that Gould and Kamin apparently misrepresented Goddard’s findings.

***6) Your characterization of the early days and uses of IQ is a bit understated and you’ve left quite a bit out. I’ll just say this: When racist white supremasists such as yourself use the early IQ data, they pick and chose, don’t they! Low IQs of groups you want to have low IQ’s get cited and cited again and again (from the same original source, such as Yerkes) and thus, are said to be ferified in “dozens” or “hundreds” of papers, though they are only repeated in those papers. IQ’s from the early days that show low values (such as all those white populations with low IQ’s only one of which you’ve mentioned) are explained away and not cited again and again.***

In terms of citations, I think the main one I’ve referred to is the 30 year Review paper by Rushton & Jensen. They cite a 2001 meta analysis by Philip L Roth which looks at 6,246,729 people from corporate, military, and higher education samples (Personnel Psychology, 54, 297-330).

In terms of older samples Jensen has written about how some results (rural Georgia for example) were clearly depressed by poor environmental conditions.

***10) Intelligence is likely heritable (genetically) to some extent. But not to the extent you need it to be to advance your political agenda, and the majority of variation in intelligence measured between groups is clearly and demonstrably caused by non-genetic factors.***

I agree non-genetic factors are important but I don’t think you can be confident they cause the majority of variation. In any case I don’t think I’ve made any political comments here.

Even if it turned out that variation was 100% genetic it doesn’t follow that you should not provide people with good pre-natal care, early childhood education & access to learning etc. A point that Jensen makes is that siblings often vary by about 12 iq points – that doesn’t mean you just favour one sibling and provide them with all the opportunities. You try to give people the best chance to succeed.

I want to point out a couple of considerations that anyone reading your long diatribe should consider.

1) The twin studies are useful but not definitive at all. Ideticality of genes results in greater similarity of environment (even the twin studies people acknowledge this). Neruologically, the fact that the brain grows to meet, and adapts to, its physical and cultural/external environment (and thus most variation from one person to the next can be explained by environment rather than genes) is fully in accord with a greater similarity between genetically identical vs. less identical people.

2) Twins separated at birth and raised in “different” settings are very rarely rased in different settings. They usually knew each other, were raised by different parts of the same family, wen to the same schools, etc. etc.

3) The fact that the above two caveats are NEVER mentioned by those citing twin studies is a matter of serious intellectual dishonesty and should make us seriously question the validity of the source.

4) Citing Herrnstein’s opinion or interpretation as supportive of genetics determining IQ is like citing Nixon as a source in support of increasing the powers of the president. Or Bernie Madoff in support of letting white collar criminals off easy.

5) Jews are distributed over a very large area historically, but those referenced in the studies you mention are part of a subset of Jewish culture that everywhere and for the entire time period has promoted and supported a home environment condusive to learning in ways that ultimately match very well with the expectations of IQ tests, so of course these numbers are as you suggest they are (to some extent). Again, environment is affecting measured intelligence.

6) Your characterization of the early days and uses of IQ is a bit understated and you’ve left quite a bit out. I’ll just say this: When racist white supremasists such as yourself use the early IQ data, they pick and chose, don’t they! Low IQs of groups you want to have low IQ’s get cited and cited again and again (from the same original source, such as Yerkes) and thus, are said to be ferified in “dozens” or “hundreds” of papers, though they are only repeated in those papers. IQ’s from the early days that show low values (such as all those white populations with low IQ’s only one of which you’ve mentioned) are explained away and not cited again and again.

7) Failure to treat the above mentioned (in #6) issues honestly is a signal. Shame on you.

Brain size is not like you say it is. There are some studies that show a low degree of effect of brain size. One problem wiht brain size research is that the Genes = IQ people have notoriously fudged the data in such a way as to require that brain size be a factor, so all brain size research by them is now necessarily suspect. It is too easy to fake these data. It turns out that the details of brain size and intelligence are much more complex, though interesting.

9) Brain size is not espcially heritable. The relationship between brain size and intelligence might exist under certain circumstances, but outliers are so servere that the biology of this relationship is probably spurious. In other words, there is some subset of data that are skewing the results.

10) Intelligence is likely heritable (genetically) to some extent. But not to the extent you need it to be to advance your political agenda, and the majority of variation in intelligence measured between groups is clearly and demonstrably caused by non-genetic factors.

1. Gould’s allegation that Morton had doctored his skull collection was re-investigated by John Michael. Michael found very few errors & those that were found were not in the direction Gould claimed. Michael found Gould was mistaken & that Morton’s studies were conducted with integrity. Michael JS 1988. A new look at Morton’s craniological research. Current Anthropology 29: 349- 54. In the 1996 edition of his book Gould completely avoids Michael’s study.

2. Galton (1888) observed a brain size/cognitive ability relationship. Modern MRI imaging has confirmed a positive correlation. Gould managed to omit a major literature review on the correlation between brain size and cognitive ability by Van Dalen (1974). In his 1996 version Gould simply deleted the whole section as the MRI evidence on brain size & IQ was obviously damaging to Gould’s position.

Recently Richard Haier, at Brain Research Institute, UC Irvine College of Medicine, found that general human intelligence appears to be correlated with the volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain.

” By comparing brain maps of identical twins, which share the same genes, with fraternal twins, which share about half their genes, the team calculate that myelin integrity is genetically determined in many brain areas important for intelligence. This includes the corpus callosum, which integrates signals from the left and right sides of the body, and the parietal lobes, responsible for visual and spatial reasoning and logic (see above). Myelin quality in these areas was also correlated with scores on tests of abstract reasoning and overall intelligence (The Journal of Neuroscience, vol 29, p 2212).

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126993.300-highspeed-brains-are-in-the-genes.html

Also, see this summary of the neurological basis for intelligence by UCLA Neuroscientist Paul Thompson and Yale Psychologist Jeremy Gray.

http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/PDF/nrn0604-GrayThompson.pdf

3. Gould’s criticism of factor analysis (and ‘g’) is flawed: see John Carroll’s review Intelligence 21, 121-134 1995 and also Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.

David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has written a textbook on factor analysis, also explains in “Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies” explains where Gould goes wrong in this area.

4. Gould suggests that Jews tested poorly in the 1920′s & this lead to the Immigration Act 1924. Both are incorrect.

5. The idea that Jews tested poorly is actually based on a misrepresentation of a paper authored by Henry Goddard in 1917. Goddard gave IQ tests to people suspected of being mentally handicapped. He found the tests identified a number of such people from various immigrant groups, including Ashkenazi Jews. Leon Kamin in 1974 reported that Goddard had found Jews had low IQ scores. However, Goddard never found that Jews or other groups as a general population had low scores. There is other information that contradicts the idea that Jews did poorly on IQ tests around this time. In 1900, in London, Jews took a disproportionate number of academic prizes in spite of their poverty (C Russell & H.S. Lewis ‘The Jew in London’ Harper Collins 1900). Also, note that by 1922 Jewish students made up more than a fifth of Harvard undergraduates & the Ivy League was already instituting policies aimed at limiting Jewish admissions (the infamous ‘Jewish quotas’). Also, a 1920′s a survey of IQ scores in three London schools with mixed Jewish & non-Jewish student bodies – one prosperous, one poor and one very poor – showed that Jewish students, on average, had higher IQ’s than their schoolmates in each of the groups (A Hughes 1928).

- see also: G. Cochran, J. Hardy, H. Harpending, Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science 38 (5), pp. 659-693 (2006).

6. The other misconception is that this contributed to the 1924 Immigration Act. However, Herrnstein & Snyderman found this was not the case (Intelligence Tests and the Immigration Act of 1924′ American Psychologist 38, September 1983).

7. Although it was claimed Cyril Burt made up data for his twin studies, subsequent investigations have cast doubt on this. See the book Cyril Burt ‘Fraud or Framed’, edited by Nick Mackintosh former Chair of Psychology at the University of Cambridge.

8. In 1981 Gould had suggested that twin studies could be useful for considering hereditary factors. Yet in his 1996 version Gould omitted the entire Minnesota Twin Study.

9. Burt’s findings regarding hereditary appear to be very consistent with subsequent twin studies. Steven Pinker wrote in the NY Times earlier this year:

“To study something scientifically, you first have to measure it, and psychologists have developed tests for many mental traits. And contrary to popular opinion, the tests work pretty well: they give a similar measurement of a person every time they are administered, and they statistically predict life outcomes like school and job performance, psychiatric diagnoses and marital stability. Tests for intelligence might ask people to recite a string of digits backward, define a word like “predicament,” identify what an egg and a seed have in common or assemble four triangles into a square.

The most prominent finding of behavioral genetics has been summarized by the psychologist Eric Turkheimer: “The nature-nurture debate is over. . . . All human behavioral traits are heritable.” By this he meant that a substantial fraction of the variation among individuals within a culture can be linked to variation in their genes. Whether you measure intelligence or personality, religiosity or political orientation, television watching or cigarette smoking, the outcome is the same. Identical twins (who share all their genes) are more similar than fraternal twins (who share half their genes that vary among people). Biological siblings (who share half those genes too) are more similar than adopted siblings (who share no more genes than do strangers). And identical twins separated at birth and raised in different adoptive homes (who share their genes but not their environments) are uncannily similar.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11Genome-t.html

(see also

“Multivariate genetic analyses indicate that general intelligence is highly heritable, and that the overlap in the cognitive processes is twice as great as the overall phenotypic overlap, with genetic correlations averaging around .80.”
Plomin et al (2004) “A functional polymorphism in the succinate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase genes is associated with cognitive ability,” Molecular Psychology 9, 582-586.)

You commented above here:

race is a fuzzy but measurable category

.

In the methods section of your paper you say:

Race was self-reported from among the following categories: White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, and Other.

As a complete non-expert in this area, but also as a person with an awareness of the “stakes” that are in these discussions for the kind of society we want to live in, I would like to ask you the following unsophisticated lay-person’s question.

In relying on “self-reported” “race” identifications made by your test subjects, how were you intending to differentiate between such “race” selections being based on a social construct, or being based on meaningfully different genomes? If “race” is a fuzzy but “measurable” category, with an apparently meaningful effect on your reaction time scores, why was the “self-reporting” of the subjects the only measure of it you felt it necessary to provide?

To my layperson’s eyes, it would be very difficult to argue that the list above relates to real, discretely separate genetic populations. (The “Hispanic” label, for example, would not relate to any longstanding – ie more than a few generations – separation of a population such that it could approximate a “race” – rather it could only refer to a recent mixture of previously separated populations comprising three of the other selections on your list, if for “White” you read “European”, for “Black” you read “African” and for “Indian” you read “Native Hispano-American.” Likewise, people of rather mixed extractions (more the rule than the exception in the US) must have, in accordance with your “methods” restricted themselves to a single choice. Rather that being based on the kind of long isolated population which could give the term “race” a possible “genetic” meaning, your list simply appears to differentiate categories that relate to the social or “tribal” groupings that have a contemporary sort of validity in US culture by virtue of the historical conflicts that have gone into constructing them. People may include themselves in or out of these groups based on a range of personal characteristics, family histories, etc, without these groups having much bearing on the presence or absence of any particular gene or set of genes.

So, what does it mean to you, when you say that “race is a …. measurable category?”

If you want to correct me by pointing to someone who has actually done what you claim, feel free. Otherwise, I’m chalking it up to the same impulse that made you insist I was questioning your credentials or Greg was unwilling to have his ignorance of…something…exposed in a debate, then apologize for them later.

Between the obama picture comment and your claim that I am somehow messing with google, I’m done here. You guys make for a fascinating illustration of groupthink.

# Illusion of Invulnerability: Members ignore obvious danger, take extreme risk, and are overly optimistic.

# Collective Rationalization: Members discredit and explain away warning contrary to group thinking.

# Illusion of Morality: Members believe their decisions are morally correct, ignoring the ethical consequences of their decisions.

# Excessive Stereotyping:The group constructs negative sterotypes of rivals outside the group.

# Pressure for Conformity: Members pressure any in the group who express arguments against the group’s stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, viewing such opposition as disloyalty.

# Self-Censorship: Members withhold their dissenting views and counter-arguments.

# Illusion of Unanimity: Members perceive falsely that everyone agrees with the group’s decision; silence is seen as consent.

# Mindguards: Some members appoint themselves to the role of protecting the group from adverse information that might threaten group complacency.

Thanks for not deleting my stuff; I’ll give you that. I’ll post in the 3 toed thingy til it dies; I suspect that’s coming soon.

Stephanie. I don’t understand what you are saying? This is the guy who had no idea what a google whack was so if you think I am doing internet trickery, please explain.

I have a deadline on a paper today and I doubt I will post much here or elsewhere, though I am curious about this google thingy.