The Pseudoscience of J. Philippe Rushton

Discussion in 'Race Relations' started by Egalitarianjay02, Sep 8, 2014.

  1. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    On October 2, 2012 one of the favorite sources of internet racists, Canadian Psychologist John Philippe Rushton, died of cancer. Rushton was a notorious academic racist who developed theories concerning racial differences in intelligence and behavior. He made infamous evolutionary arguments such as proposing an inverse correlation between penis size and brain size, the bigger the penis the dumber the man. Rushton was obsessed with sex and was twice reprimanded by his school, the University of Western Ontario for conducting surveys that asked inappropriate questions such as how many sexual fantasies a person had and how far they could ejaculate. Rushton was also known for citing pornography as a credible source of information on sex differences between races. In his book Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective Rushton proposed that human races differed in reproductive strategy applying the ecological concept of r/K selection meant for between species comparisons to different racial groups.

    He also stated, applying the African origin of human migration theory, that as humans migrated out of Africa they began to develop different survival strategies to deal with the new climate they encountered. According to Rushton cold winters created the need for humans to develop better planning skills in order to survive the harsh conditions that they faced. This lead humans to develop larger brains, making them smarter and eventually leading to the development of civilization. Rushton believed that differences in human behavior are racially ordained and that they form a hierarchy with East Asians at the top, White Europeans in the middle and Black Africans at the very bottom. Rushton's work is almost entirely fixated on the intellectual and moral inferiority of Black people. While he claimed to only be telling the truth about racial differences it is clear that much of his work was fixated on seeking a genetic basis to racist stereotypes.

    It must be remembered that Rushton was a psychologist not a geneticist or biologist. Many of his critics are experts in those fields. In the grand scheme of things Rushton was a racist ideologue with an axe to grind. Rushton's legacy was a distortion of the biological sciences in order to denigrate people of African descent. Rushton work was textbook pseudoscience so divorced from legitimate scholarship that he was met with literally dozens of criticisms and became the laughing stock of public debates where he aired his racist drivel. When you see a poster on this forum cite Rushton you know that person is a racist. The purpose of this thread is to explore Rushton's work and help others understand that it is pseudoscience.

    Let's start with Race, Evolution and Behavior.....


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    This racist book is a hodgepodge of data on alleged racial differences in intelligence and behavior. It full of shoddy sources and bizarre theories which arrive at one conclusion, Black people are stupid and violent because of their evolutionary lineage. I had the privilege to speak with one of Rushton's most outspoken critics, Joseph L Graves, a prominent evolutionary biologist who refuted Rushton's evolutionary arguments exposing him for the quack that he is.

    Here is a summary of his arguments:

    One of Rushton's supporters who I debated on another message board actually got Rushton to respond to Graves critique as he had never issued a rebuttal in print. This is Ruston's response:


    I forwarded the message to Graves and this was his response:

    I also forwarded Rushton's email to another scholar and this is his response:

    As you can see Rushton's work is pseudoscientific, racist garbage which is full of errors. If you want to read more detailed critique of Rushton's research by Graves I recommend the following work:

    1. What a tangled web he weaves: Race, reproductive strategies and Rushton's life history theory Anthropological Theory Vol 2(2): 131–154

    2. The Misuse of Life History Theory: J.P. Rushton and the Pseudoscience of Racial Hierarchy, in J. Fish (ed.) Race and Intelligence: Separating Myth from Science . Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Also watch this video where Graves debates Rushton:

    [video=youtube;lUjo31DChcE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUjo31DChcE[/video]

    Other Criticisms of Rushton's work:

    - Ahmad, W. (1995, July 22). Race is a four letter word. (Review of the books The Bell Curve Wars and Race, Evolution, and Behavior.) New Scientist, 44-45.

    - Armelagos, G. J. (1995). Race, reason, and rationale. (Review of the books The Evolution of Racism, Human Biodiversity, The Bell Curve, and Race, Evolution, and Behavior.) Evolutionary Anthropology, 4, 103-109

    - Barash, D. P. (1995). (Review of the book Race, Evolution, and Behavior.) Animal Behaviour, 49, 1131-33.

    - Brace, C. L. (1996). Racialism and racist agendas. (Review essay of the book Race, Evolution, and Behavior.) American Anthropologist, 98, 176

    - Blinkhorn, S. (1994). Willow, titwillow, titwillow! (Review of the books The Bell Curve, Measuring the Mind, and Race, Evolution, and Behavior) Nature, 372, 417-19.

    - Lewontin, R. C. (1995). Of genes and genitals. (Review of Race, Evolution, and Behavior). Transition (69).

    - Palmer, A. (1995, February 18). Does white mean right? The Spectator.

    - Relethford, J. H. (1995). (Review of the book Race, Evolution, and Behavior.) American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 98, 91-94.

    - Sperling, S. (1994, November 28). Beating a dead monkey. (Review of the books The Moral Animal, Race, Evolution, and Behavior, and The Evolution of Racism.) The Nation

    - Wahlsten, D. (1995). (Review of the book Race, Evolution, and Behavior.) Canadian Journal of Sociology, 20, 129-33.

    - Jacoby, R., & Glauberman, N. (1995). The Bell Curve Debate. New York: Random House.

    - Kamin, L. (1995). Lies, damned lies, and statistics. In R. Jacoby and N. Glauberman (Eds.), The Bell Curve Debate (pp. 81-105). New York: Random House
     
  2. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    Jeez. How embarrassing. I asked u to name one study rushton ignores and u still can't respond. Why is it I found examples of nisbett cherry-picking studies buy u can't find a single instance of rushton doing so?
     
  3. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    Rushton was a dishonest researcher who distorted the results of Beals, Smith and Dodd (1984). So there you go. There's one instance of Rushton misinterpreting the work of another researcher which is far worse than cherry-picking.

    By the way this is a new thread with a new topic. If you're here to defend the research of Rushton do that. Try not to resurrect old debates in a new thread.
     
  4. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    So the Beals study contradicts Lieberman's claim of no racial hierarchy for brain volume as your copy-paste explicitly states brain volume has low correlation with race?
     
  5. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    Beals et al. (1984) does not claim a racial hierarchy in brain volume. They claim a low correlation for race and cranial size and a high correlation between cranial size and latitude postulating that in Northern climates crania become more spherical in order to adapt to cold temperature.

    Do you not understand that this conclusion is inconsistent with Rushton's crania/brain size and intelligence relationship?
     
  6. mikemikev

    mikemikev Banned

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  7. mikemikev

    mikemikev Banned

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    So there is a brain size/IQ relationship, just not a perfect correlation. And there is some variation by race. Most of the brain consists of non-cognitive matter. So there could be variation by thermoregulation, variation by race, and variation by intelligence. Did Rushton say something different?
     
  8. mikemikev

    mikemikev Banned

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    http://www.mootsf.com/index.php?/to...riables-in-race-evolution-and-behavior/page-2

     
  9. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    What's your point?

    Rushton said that Beals, Smith and Dodd (1984) supported a racial hierarchy in cranial size which is a blatant distortion of what they actually reported. There's no causative relationship between brain size and intelligence which is a conclusion that they came to.
     
  10. mikemikev

    mikemikev Banned

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    No they didn't. Where's the quote?
     
  11. mikemikev

    mikemikev Banned

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    Aggregation of data is normal science. There is nothing wrong with the vast majority of Rushton's thousand odd sources and claiming otherwise is a bare faced lie. Note how Morpheus references others asserting such but provides no valid criticism of any of Rushton's sources. When asked he may dubiously question one or two.

    Fail...
     
  12. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    Right here:

     
  13. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    Aggregation of data is only valid if there is some degree of control and comparability being exerted over the data. Rushton does not do this therefore his principle of aggregation lacks scientific validity. I read Race, Evolution and Behavior from your link. There is indeed a lot of trash but as you say there are over 1,000 sources so it would be very time consuming for me to go over all of it. I don't think anyone has done so in print as it's beyond the scope of a normal article. Instead they stick to addressing his main points which I have outlined with my quotes of relevant scholars. You can read the links I provided for more detail. If you want to get in to specific issues we can do so but asking me to address EVERY source I have a problem with is unfair and unrealistic.
     
  14. ThirdTerm

    ThirdTerm Well-Known Member

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    Ancient Asians' interbreeding events with the Neanderthals resulted in their greater cranial capacities and higher IQ scores compared to other ethnic groups (Asians 106; whites 100) and the origin of haplogroup D common in East Asia was traced back to the Neanderthals by Evans et al. (2006). The study found that the microcephalin D allele, a gene regulating brain size, was copied into the genome of H. sapiens around 37,000 years ago through an interbreeding event occurred between the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans in Asia. Laptops with larger amounts of memory work more efficiently than their cheaper alternatives and modern humans with larger brains tend to be smarter than those with smaller brains on average.

    http://www.politicalforum.com/science/293202-origin-our-species-14.html
     
  15. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    Therefore a racial hierarchy.

    How is Beals' conclusion inconsistent with Rushton's claims that Whites have higher IQ than Blacks partly because they have larger brain volume?
     
  16. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    Post the quote by Beals that there's no causative relationship between brain volume and intelligence.

    Why would an anthropologist from 1984 be an authority on the topic of neuroscience?
     
  17. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    No.

    They conclude that cranial capacity is not a causative factor in intellectual capacity and that cranial variation between populations strongly correlates with latitude.
     
  18. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    I already did.

    As opposed to a psychologist?! :roll:

    The relationship between brain size and intelligence can be addressed by a multidisciplinary approach. This is not exclusively a topic for neuroscience. Beals and his colleagues were qualified to conduct the research that they did.
     
  19. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    Individuals who aren't brain dead know that a correlation shows a 'hierarchy'. What part of your quote stating a low correlation between race and cranial capacity don't you understand?

    Post the quote by Beals instead of a summary written by another author that doesn't address causative relationships between brain volume and intelligence.
     
  20. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    I will take a look at that study but the research I'm familiar with indicates that modern humans were more intelligent than Neanderthal and interbreeding between the subspecies was so miniscule as to have no evolutionary effect on the offspring.

     
  21. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    No you didn't. You're unable to understand the subject material.

    Yes, as opposed to a psychologist. The quote doesn't say what you claim it says; it actually says what I've posted long ago: the correlation coefficient between cranial capacity and intelligence/IQ is low.

    For instance, muscle mass is a function of testosterone levels. That doesn't mean there will be a 1.0 correlation coefficient for muscle mass and testosterone levels.

    That you do not understand repeated explanations speaks volumes of your poor grasp of the topic.
     
  22. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    Low correlation does not mean that there is a racial hierarchy in cranial size it means that there is very little relationship between cranial size and race.

    Here you go:


     
  23. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    Uh yeah; it does mean that. What it simply means is that, if graphed, the slope is simply flatter compared to a higher correlation coefficient. What don't you understand exactly? Graphs?

    Too bad the author didn't find a zero correlation coefficient between cranial size and IQ, or that current scientific consensus on the correlation between brain volume and IQ blows his claims out of the water.

    But again, he's not a neurologist, so can't address the points mikemikev brought up.

    Btw, why did you flee the other thread when asked to provide a study you claim Rushton ignored after originally claiming Rushton ignored many studies cited by Nisbett?
     
  24. Egalitarianjay02

    Egalitarianjay02 Banned

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    What it means is that a lot of the data doesn't fit the pattern of a racial hierarchy hence a low correlation.



    What current scientific consensus are you referring to?


    He doesn't need to be a neurologist to address brain size and intellectual capacity.

    I got bored of that discussion and decided to tackle Rushton's racist propaganda in one thread.
     
  25. rayznack

    rayznack Well-Known Member

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    Actually, that means the data fits a pattern if there is a correlation. That's what a correlation means.

    Two dozen studies on brain volume and IQ.

    You need background in a relevant field to interpret data/give analysis.

    So you weren't bored from repeatedly claiming Rushton ignored studies, but found yourself bored when asked to provide a single example?

    I think you mean you fled after you were called out (again).
     

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