The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea

Why aren't African Americans a race?

 

Solid data? Like the ethnographic record from an anonymous "French Army Surgeon" documenting differences in penis hardness, angle and length between races?

Applicable Theories? You mean like Rushton's claim of an inverse correlation between brain size and penis size?

Rushton was a joke. His data was tainted and his theories were refuted.

 

Rushton had about a thousand data sources, so no I mean all of them. You can only nitpick one? It's the same with Rushton's theories. You just select some minor aspect and hold it up for sexual ridicule. Your posts are cheap and completely dishonest.

 

I just did a keyword search of that PDF file you showed me for Race, Evolution and Behavior. Rushton uses the word penis about 24 times. He had an obsession with "Negroid penis." There are countless errors and absurdities in the book. Yes it has over 1000 references, a lot of it to blatantly racist literature of no serious scientific value. Rushton boasts around 60 variables of supporting data for his theories yet he doesn't even list them! How are we supposed to analyze his data if he doesn't summarize it? The only thing we are given that comes close to a summary of his evidence is this chart:



Among his variables we once again see his obsession with sex in the form of the section titled "reproductive effort."

His variables include traits such as size of genitalia and intercourse frequencies. Well we know where he got his "data" on genitalia. I believe the frequency of intercourse is based on survey data which he was reprimanded for by the University of Western Ontario for unethical research practices. He actually asked students and strangers questions like how many sexual partners they had, how often they had sexual fantasies and how far they could ejaculate.

If you think I'm simply appealing to sexual ridicule you need to take a deeper look at Rushton's work because in general it is ridiculous.

 

Another post so riddled with dishonesty it shouldn't be dignified with a response.

 

You acknowledged the fact every cognitive test to date shows racial discrepancies in ability, but you counter this fact with a vague reference to 'plenty' of research.

What research simultaneously shows environment is the sole cause for the cognitive performance gap and that Northeast Asian environment is more advantageous than White environment than Black environment?

In fact, I'm curious for you to name a single variable affecting performance on cognitive ability that works in favor of Northeast Asians over Whites over Blacks.

 

it is a culture that its members happened to be of the black race

 

Many tests of intelligence have been done to show that IQ tests essentially are biased. When one tests people under different circumstances, such as black people who have moved from the south to the north, their test scores improve. Also, blacks in the north have higher IQs than whites in the south, simple because the education system is better. IQ scores have gone up over the years. IQ scores are simply biased based on the background of the people being tested. Anyone who believes that IQ scores mean anything beyond the cultural background of the person being tested just does not understand IQ scores. Have you ever taken the IQ test which measures your "street" understanding. You would fail it because you know so little about street smarts. All of you who are caught up in IQ scores must read the many books written on the biases of intelligence tests and the many studies that show this.

 

There is a real problem when someone keeps insisting that one relates such things as race to intelligence scores and IQ tests. Why is this so? Because no one can relate race (which is biologically a myth to intelligence scores or IQ tests (which is also a biological myth). Again, I have traced these two phenomena in my book and given many, many other authors who have done the same. On another point, one of you says that African American is a culture and that you don't like that culture. Does this mean that you don't like African American's who commit crimes. Does this mean that you don't like all African Americans, even those who are great actors, teachers, sportsmen, etc. What does that mean. Do you realize that there are many different types of "African Americans" just as there are many different types of "White Americans." What do you consider "Jewish Americans"? What is a Jewish American who really has a Jewish, Polish, Italian mother and a Scottish, Chilean, Japanese father? Does it matter if they are Jewish or agnostic? In other words, you are simply prejudice, don't know why you are prejudice and don't seem to want to fix it. In any case, none of the science that people tell you will make a difference. Finally, whatever Graves in telling you about Rushton is absolutely correct! Many, many scientists have answered his completely biased and unscientific approach to questions of race and have shown that he was completely wrong! For example, please look at my book and some of the references that I give in it: Weizmann et al. 1990 [1999], and on brain size etc. Herskovitz 1930, Tobias 1970, Brace 1999, 2005, Beals, Smith and Dodd 1984, Graves 2002 a and b, etc. If you are enamored by The Bell Curve, please see the book by Jacoby and Glauberman 1995. If you are among those that believe that Jews are simply defending the bias against race so that they are not racially discriminated against, (then you are really sick) but simply read the scientific opinions of those that you think are not Jewish! The Jacoby and Glauberman book is edited.

 

Everything I said is factual. You can't respond because there is no argument for you to make.

Try this article:

Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments

Higher academic standards.

CNN.com - The U.S. must start learning from Asia

 

Why don't you bother naming one?

[/quote]

So where does your straw-man show increased academic standards (strangely, US Northeast Asians have the same IQ as Chinese, Koreans and Japanese) result in higher performance on cognitive tests, including backward digit span and reaction time?

 

Naming what? You asked for research supporting my claim and I gave it to you.

What strawman?

You asked for an environmental variable that impacts East Asian cognitive performance over Whites and I gave it to you. It's higher academic standards.

 

Answers to three questions:

Gould criticism of Morton. It might be true that Morton's methods were done properly (putting seeds in the skulls of old, collected materials). However, the problem was how were these skull collected. Collecting skulls from various places in the 1840-1850s was not controlled and one would assume came from various assorted collections. A skull from a white American could not be assumed to have the same environmental background as a skull from Egypt, and there is no way to find out what or where Morton's collections came from. Thus, although Morton might have taken the correct measures, the identity of his collection in not known. Gould was a terrific scholar and did tremendous work throughout his career. No good scientist would deny that.

The answer to the question as to how would I assess Graves interaction with Rushton. Well, Rushton was not a scientist and made tremendous errors in judgement, choosing his resources, and his assessment. He uses old racist stereotypes to develop a theory that posits a continuum of life history strategies within humans to which "blacks" are considered to be r-selected. Than he asserts that r-selected traits are related to the easy life of the tropics. Both of these assertions show a lack of understanding of evolutionary process and the data, and ignore anthropological, cultural, and paleontological literature. The idea of r vs. K selected theory has been continuously shown to be incorrect and the idea that living in a tropical vs. a non-tropical environment is easier or harder is ridiculous. Rushton, in all of his writings, was simply absurd.

Finally, a good book to read on race and intelligence is: Jefferson Fish (2002) Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth.
On this question one might also see: “Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]
In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.
Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)
As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.
People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.
"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science....
“...."There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.”

Relating race, whatever that may be (not just related to ones skin color), to intelligence when both race and intelligence are assumptions in our heads, is simply absurd. Reading the "Culture of Critique" is simply absurd. There are so many exceptional books that one could read, by real scientist that will give you good solid information and data on these subjects and nullify the arguments in that essay. If you really want a good start, with exceptional references to read on the subject of race, please read "The Myth of Race: The Troubling Perspective of an Unscientific Idea" and the references it provides. The repeat of prejudicial ideas is simply annoying. We no longer live in an era of American Eugenics or Nazi Germany, and if you are anti-black, anti-brown, anti-Asian, and anti-Semitic you are still a very lost and irrational person.

 

You gave me a red-herring.

How does the link actually show "environment is the sole cause for the cognitive performance gap and that Northeast Asian environment is more advantageous than White environment than Black environment?"

I asked you to show what environmental factor results in better performance on a wide array of cognitive testing.

You provided an opinion piece with no data that better schooling raises adult IQ, improves performance on backward digit span tests, or reaction time. In fact, the Op-Ed doesn't even address these concerns; neither "intelligence" nor "IQ" are even mentioned in the article.

On top of that, you were oblivious to the simple observation that Northeast Asians in the West have similar IQ to Japanese, Chinese and Koreans.

 

How does this response address the actual question regarding Gould's fabricated data?

 

China’s old imperial examination system is the model for Asian nations and Asian students have to go through a continuing stream of exams since their early childhood, which may make them more proficient at exam-taking skills compared to their Western counterparts, thus resulting in their higher IQ scores. The negative aspect of Asia's exam culture is the lack of innovative thinking in general and Kim Dae-jung is the only Nobel Prize winner from Korea so far despite the country's high average IQ score of 107.

 

I notice Sussman brings little to the table other than cheap disparaging epithets. His disfavored scholars "ignore" evidence, have "ridiculous" ideas, are "absurd", "incorrect". Bob sadly fails to explain in much detail why that is.

He seems to dismiss r/K out of hand. Before getting to that, does Bob have a problem with the data and heritability estimates Rushton's application of the theory is based on?

And I notice EJ's "argument" is now "Rushton said penises lol", with a strawman misrepresentation and pointless disparagment of heritability copy paste from that charlatan Lewontin thrown in for good measure.

A good thread where this was all already dealt with is Mootsf's "Rushton's 60 variables in Race, Evolution and Behavior". Anyone interested can google and check it, there is a link to Rushton's book.

Ad nauseam is such a cheap tactic.

 

Wouldn't individuals suited to that conformist/memorising (Chinese Imperial exams involved memorising Confucius) culture have been genetically selected over the last few thousand years? A kind of culture/genes feedback loop.

- - - Updated - - -

Reading Bob's book is not absurd. Those who disagree are absurd. And the truth is never "anti" Bob.

 

You understand that spending 12 hours a day memorising stuff doesn't boost your IQ?

 

Congrats--- I wasn't aware that you have completely decoded the human genome, and have a perfect understanding of how each brain gene may, or may not go forth to create every cell of the human brain from conception onwards. You and you fellows would have to know this to say with certainty that IQ cannot follow inherited patterns in the major human racial groups (at least these mythical groups that just so happen to share so many similar traits).

Just in a small portion of human eye, the retina, in a small portion of the human brain--- has over 100 different types of cells within the thin layer. As you obviously know all about these cells and the genes that influence them, perhaps you could share you knowledge to expand upon the 35 known genes that operate in inherited and "racial" patterns to produce over 150 types of retinitis pigmentosa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa

I hardly think your bosses at Washington U. or the very Left-of -Center editors in "Psychology Today" would allow for any modern DNA-based IQ testing. Not even for the most basic, most non-cultural aspects of intelligece, such as memory---that can be done with digit span testing. This is the real prejudice---the real taboo---that is holding up accurate research.

For someone who professes the myth of races, that you would bring up an amorphous ethnic group like the Jews, and then project the idea that anyone who would investigate racial IQ difference is some kind of evil person, or anti-Semtic, is troubling.

Once again, MODERN IQ testing must include samples of young individuals in their 20's, who have been screened for significant "environmental stressors" such being rasied in an abusive home, malnurished, and so on. Test subjects should be from major "racial" groups worldwide. Genetic markers are well known, and each subject can have his/her ethnicity well established. MRI's of subject's brain structure would also add more weight to the studies.

The idea that poverty and lack of educated parents being the central problem with low IQ's may sell books, but it certainly didn't stop Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, da Vinci, Ben Franklin, and so many others who esentially taught themselves:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autodidacts

 

You can in fact boost your fluid intelligence through studying.

Iqtestexperts.com - Can IQ Be Improved?

 

cool source bro

 

It is, isn't it?

The ability to raise fluid intelligence is also documented in Nisbett et al. (2012).


Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments

 

By the way Mikemikev I replied to your thread on Sciforums. Would you like to continue our debate there?

http://www.sciforums.com/threads/human-races-are-real-according-to-evolution.143924/

 

It isn't me it's an impersonator, probably Atlantid. Perhaps you could mention that.