“The inheritance of intelligence is probably the most controversial topic in the whole of science,” wrote geneticist Adam Rutherford, “and when it is combined with the study of population differences, evolution, and race, there we have the prospect of a perfect storm.”
This September will mark 30 years since the appearance of a widely publicized and controversial entrance into the storm: The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Its authors were Harvard University animal-learning psychologist Richard Herrnstein and conservative U.S. political scientist Charles Murray. Herrnstein passed away shortly before the book was published in 1994. Murray has been active since then. In their 800+ page book, they argued that IQ tests measure “intelligence” and that IQ is a strong predictor of school and career achievement. They claimed that IQ is “substantially heritable” (roughly 60%)—a long-disputed yet standard conclusion found in many psychology textbooks.
The authors, however, went further by claiming that IQ is largely unchangeable, and by reviving the old IQ hereditarian argument that “dysgenic” effects of higher birth rates among people and groups with lower IQ scores threaten to reduce intelligence levels in the U.S. “Something worth worrying about is happening to the cognitive capital of the country,” they wrote. Without referring to them as eugenic, they supported policies encouraging the reproduction of people with high IQ scores and discouraging the reproduction of people with low IQ scores. In Chapter 21, they painted a bleak picture of the future, where differential reproduction patterns among what they called the genetically “dull” and the “cognitive elite” would lead to the creation of a U.S. genetic “custodial state” that would resemble a “high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation’s population.” For Herrnstein and Murray, such an outcome would mainly be the result of heredity, not political decisions and policies causing greater economic inequality and poverty. Inequality by political “design,” as one group of Bell Curve critics described it.
The most controversial aspect of The Bell Curve was Herrnstein and Murray’s position on IQ racial (ethnic) differences. “It seems highly likely to us,” they wrote, “that both genes and the environment have something to do with [IQ] racial differences” between U.S. Whites and Blacks (African Americans). Like psychologist Arthur Jensen before them, they claimed that genes for cognitive ability play a role in causing higher White versus Black group IQ differences. They were only unsure about what the gene-environment “mix” might be.
I recently co-authored a preprint article with Ken Richardson, formerly Open University UK (now retired), entitled “The Bell Curve at 30: A Closer Look at the Within- and Between-Group IQ Genetic Evidence.” We focused on the genetic research cited in the book, including some relevant history of the IQ genetics debate. The larger question of whether or how heredity influences human intelligence was beyond the scope of our article.
Like many previous reviewers, we concluded that Herrnstein and Murray produced no valid evidence that the IQ “gap” between ethnic groups is caused in any part by genetic factors. IQ hereditarians often say the existence of the gap is undisputed and that the debate centers only on its causes. However, the gap’s existence is disputed by those who argue that “race” is invalid as a biological variable and that IQ tests don’t measure “intelligence.” Moreover, some argue that IQ tests are designed to reproduce assumed ethnic and class differences in intelligence.
In addition, unlike most previous reviewers, we concluded that Herrnstein and Murray produced no valid evidence that genes influence within-group IQ score differences. The key evidence they cited consisted of “twins reared apart” studies and, to a lesser extent, family correlations, reared-together twin studies, and adoption studies. Aided by concepts developed in science’s ongoing “replication crisis,” we argued that the genetic findings reported in these studies do not hold up under critical examination due to environmental confounding, a reliance on uncertain or false assumptions and concepts, the use of questionable research practices (QRPs), and other problem areas. In the language of psychometrics and behavioral genetics, we argued that Herrnstein and Murray presented no valid evidence in support of above-zero IQ heritability. This conclusion, of course, automatically invalidates claims about genetic group differences.
Because IQ molecular genetic research was at an early stage in 1994, Herrnstein and Murray did not cite any IQ gene (genetic variant) associations or discoveries. The behavioral “candidate gene” era, also at an early stage in 1994, turned out to be an expensive and embarrassing “flop.” For example, the title of a 2012 article read, “Most Reported Genetic Associations with General Intelligence Are Probably False Positives.” The subsequent genome-wide association (GWAS) and polygenic score studies Murray promoted in his 2020 book Human Diversity are subject to low scores, environmental confounding, and other significant problems described by the scholars we cited in our article.
We showed that the “Flynn effect” finding of “massive” IQ score gains over time (3-5 points per decade), which Herrnstein and Murray discussed and did not dispute, undermined the central Bell Curve arguments. Moral philosopher and IQ researcher James Flynn called the world’s attention to the fact that, due to these gains, IQ test creators periodically revise their tests to make them more difficult. They do so to maintain a mean score of 100 and a bell-shaped score distribution. Based on 1948-era IQ tests, in 2008 Flynn calculated that U.S. Blacks of 2002 would have outscored U.S. Whites of 1947-48 by 4.3 IQ points (Full-Scale Black IQ 104.3 versus White IQ 100). Flynn proposed selecting a representative sample of contemporary U.S. Blacks and giving them the old IQ test to confirm his calculation. “Frantic appeals,” he discovered, “have not located anyone interested.”
Theoretically, using the same IQ test version and due solely to the Flynn effect, if previously studied reared-apart identical (MZ) twin pairs had been born two generations apart, the younger twins would have scored about 15 points higher than their genetically identical co-twins. The Flynn effect (plus several other shared birth-cohort environmental influences we described) indicates that a good chunk of the reared-apart identical twin IQ correlations Herrnstein and Murray cited as the “most unambiguous” evidence in favor of strong genetic influences on IQ can be explained not by the genes twins share, but by the birthday they share. The Flynn effect sent a wrecking ball into Herrnstein and Murray’s already crumbling within-group IQ genetic evidence, and supplied the final nails in the coffin of their genetic ethnic and class differences in cognitive ability claims.
The question remains why, despite three decades of criticism, the book remains “alive.” One answer is that although the Bell Curve arguments rested on massively flawed research, its misguided message is needed to maintain and support institutional racism and neo-colonialism, and to inspire “race scientists.” In 2023, a former U.S. President, running for reelection, spoke of immigrants as supposedly “poisoning the blood of our country.” A few months later, a major U.S. poll found that almost half (47%) of registered voters endorsed this statement. Even more reason to embark on yet another in-depth critical examination of this book.
In 1976, evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin wrote that critics had found in IQ genetic research “a pattern of shoddiness, carelessness, miserable experimental design, misreporting, and misrepresentation amounting to a major scandal.” Four years later, sociologist Howard Taylor defined “the IQ game” as IQ genetic researchers’ “use of assumptions that are implausible as well as arbitrary to arrive at some numerical value for the genetic heritability of human IQ scores on the grounds that no heritability calculations could be made without benefit of such assumptions.” The Bell Curve continued both dreadful traditions and helped disguise politically and even militarily imposed social, political, economic, and international inequality as biological inequality.
***
Link to the full preprint article “The Bell Curve at 30: A Closer Look at the Within- and Between-Group IQ Genetic Evidence”: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jz7ku
Are you arguing that IQ has no genetic component at all? That would be astounding, and big claims demand big evidence.
Report comment
Jay (and I, and others) have argued that heritability scores for human beings are meaningless. None of the studies (family studies, twin studies, and adoption studies) used to measure “heritability” control for environmental variation. All are fatally flawed, and repeating the same fatally flawed studies gets us no closer to the truth.
The fundamental assumption underlying family studies — that familial equals genetic — is false.
The fundamental assumption underlying twin studies — the equal environment assupton — is false.
The fundamental assumption underlying adoption studies — that adoption randomizes environmental variation — is false.
Plus such studies do not allow for genotype-environment interactions, which for complex traits such as IQ probably are the rule rather than the exception.
The only legitimate use of heritability scores is predicting the results of controlled breeding experiments on plants and animals in factory farms, where environmental variation can be assumed to be negligible. And even there, the heritability score applies only to that particular population of plants or animals on that particular factory farm. It is not a “nature-nurture” ratio.
Psychologists and psychiatrists have unthinkingly applied this concept to human beings, who experience many orders of magnitude more of environmental variation and can make conscious choices to change their environment.
I know of no benefit that has ever accrued to mankind by calculating heritability scores for human beings. It’s time to move on.
Regardless of what you think of them morality of eugenics programs, that fact is they don’t work.
If a trait is caused by a dominant gene, you’ll never get its frequency below the mutation rate, and it is unlikely to be very much above that in the first place.
If a trait is caused by a recessive gene, it is easy to show mathematically that it would take hundreds of years of selection against the homozygote to make a dent in that gene’s frequency. And if you select against the heterozygote, you’d have to kill off everybody, several times over, because we all have some unpaired bad genes.
And for complex traits like IQ, forget it. There are too many potential confounding factors to make it feasible to make any significant directed changes in the human gene pool, within any meaningful time horizon.
Let’s do a better job of shepherding the gene pool we have.
Report comment
No. As stated in the MIA article and in the full preprint article, “The larger question of whether or how heredity influences human intelligence was beyond the scope of our article.” We focused our analysis mainly on the supposed within-group and between-group “IQ heritability” presented in The Bell Curve.
Report comment
Although the new article focuses mainly on evidence cited in The Bell Curve, I did address the larger question of hereditary influences on cognitive ability in a 2023 MIA article, an interview with Mary Boyle: https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/06/mary-boyle-interviews-jay-joseph/
“Psychiatric and behavioral geneticists argue that heredity plays an important role in producing “individual differences in behavior.” To understand how these differences arise, they say we should focus on reared-together twins, reared-apart twins, adoptees, brains, genes, IQ scores, biological-relative IQ correlations, “personality,” a range of statistical modeling techniques, “mental disorders,” crime statistics, GWAS hits, polygenic risk scores, and heritability estimates. Supporters of this approach sometimes depict those who focus on environmental causes of behavioral differences as suggesting that people are born as psychological “blank slates.” Steven Pinker attributed this view to environmentalists in his 2002 book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, and it has continued since then.
However, so-called “blank slatism” is a straw man because few who focus on environments hold such views as they relate to cognitive and other abilities and temperament. They usually argue that while there may well be inborn differences among people in these areas, it is perinatal, family, social, cultural, religious, educational, geographical, and political environments (including oppression) that together play a decisive role in shaping human behavior and abilities, and that focusing on “individual differences” and problematic heritability estimates implies limited changeability and distracts our attention from the need to improve or radically change these environments.”
Report comment
Jay:
I’ve just finished reading the full preprint. Great job, as usual. With pin-point accuracy you have devastated genetic determinist views of human behavior.
Along with the meaningless concept of “mental illness,” it’s time we laid the meaningless concept of “race” to rest for good.
Instead of obsessing over the supposed genetic deficiencies of “those people,” let’s start doing a better job of shepherding the gene pool we have.
Pat
Report comment
Thanks Pat.
Report comment
We know the conditions human beings need to thrive. It’s not rocket science. Children need first and foremost to be sheltered and protected from harm. They need to fed wholesome foods in appropriate quantities, they need clear boundaries, consistent discipline, and LOTS of outdoor free play time every day. Barring the tiny minority of children born with rare monogenetic disorders or chromosomal aberrations, show me a child who is provided with all these things who fails to thrive.
Let’s work on making these conditions available to all children. Blaming our problems on our supposedly faulty gene pool is a preposterous distraction from doing that.
Report comment
Right on!
Report comment
Jay and Patrick:
I will need to go further and reread the article! Though in living in Louisville when the Bell Curve articles and stream of discussion occurred 30 years ago and before, the local well known civil rights activist would take to task the author. Meaningless? No, though what is the better place to realize gainful understanding for the role of stats in application as well as theoretical advancement? For while protests could be stirred up, the challenge to the laws aligned with civil rights through the Federal Courts, just who can understand civil rights and the capacity to recover and deeply understand the roles of piercing the corporate veil (see Adam Winkler) while coming to understand understanding as work/play in need of appropriate capitalization for LIFE? (See Robert Reich (The System).
Hence, can you elaborate a little more on how and why there is only a Bell Hill that ignore a Bell Hell? The collection of data to be mapped along the lines of evolved academia when explained by W. Edwards Deming unveils many flaws as well as infinite opportunities for improvement.
And from my research, the schizophrenia that can emerge in an altered state is recognized as one of the more creative spaces to be in, though can be a challenge to 1) accept one’s self, 2) accept what is happening outside of self and 3) realize systemic change for others since threads of community still abound. Perhaps the madinamerica gathering is not so mad after all for the challenge to broaden the understanding in the course of realizing the deepest of justice for all.
Report comment
Have you heard that iq tests are made to target the mechanical mind such that these people get high iq scores and foremostly misogynist in that women have been historically denied development in these areas…as in electronics etc the male dominated fields…in this bias that only addresses one form of intelligence that historically has been male.
Report comment
Attacking accepted pseudoscience at the heart of our prejudices against the marginalized is valuable work that should become increasingly appreciated; thank you!
Report comment
Thanks, Steve.
Report comment
Absolutely awesome essay, thank you very much, indeed!
Since coming to the US from Ireland (where our constitution, in my opinion, effectively stated that all citizens shall be considered equal, apart from those clearly not) 2009, I have asked many Americans, almost every one of them a perfect stranger, if we are all equal.
The only consistent answers I have received have been Huh?, frequently, and No!, twice.
I’ve had Equal in God’s eyes (or was it Eyes?) and In opportunity more than once.
I have not redone single, solitary, satisfactory answer – meaning, I suppose, one which fully coincided with my own very considered and not particularly humble opinion/s.
One guy, interestingly, probably following a Huh?, when, as usual, I had pointed out that the Founding Fathers had pointed out that the fact that we had all been, and presumably would continue to be created “equal,” and or BUT that this was supposedly so “self-evident” as to justify or require explanation, however novel a concept it might seem, that the Constitution and all laws, I guess, were based on this entirely religious notion…replied that, when those Fathers asserted that we – “white” men, at least(!!!!!!!) ; were all all “created equal,” merely meant that none of us was/were created with a divine, royal right to rule.
My opinions, for what they are worth as priceless treasures, are that we all equal as immortal, infinite, “divine” beings, neither created nor begotten, but, as it seems Emperor Constantine managed to coerce his First Council of Nicaea to agree that ONLY Jesus of Nazareth and none of the rest of us, not even Julius Caesar, were “of one being/substance with The Father.”
I believe we are equal in wishing to serve one another, and im being willing sacrifice equally in human/animal/divine suffering over however many human lifetimes it takes: one former president, in his apparent misery and frustration, id therefore much like…Jesus in his!!!!!!!
Praying he may soonest find relief, and likewise all of us, by rediscovering how best to use our supreme and supremely equal though varied intelligence, to most joyfully serve all, and with heart- and soul-felt thanks to Jay Joseph, Jesus, MIA and all our former presidents, Founding Fathers and ALL,
Tom.
Report comment
…….PS: And, while the wisdom of certain “Native American s” as Chief Seattle strikes me as unsurpassable, no doubt, regardless of any genes, we are all nowadays rapidly becoming more infinitely intelligent – unconditionally loving – as our egos are transmuted to smarts in the fires of our emerging Consciousness….
Thank you, ALL, again!
Comfort and joy, and “God” rest ye all merry!
Tom.
Report comment
Jay Joseph has spent decades successfully debunking “hereditarian” viewpoints, especially the fake science of “twin studies.” In this MIA article, he asks: “The question remains why, despite three decades of criticism, the book remains “alive.” One answer is that although “The Bell Curve” arguments rested on massively flawed research, its misguided message is needed to maintain and support institutional racism and neo-colonialism, and to inspire “race scientists.”
Every kind of oppression requires an ideology that shifts the blame away from the oppressors to the oppressed. For many centuries now, “biological reductionism” has served as this ideology: our mistreatment of a particular class of people is because of the inherent characteristics of that class: It’s their fault that we are forced to treat them this way.
With psychiatry, biological reductionism claims that the people we are involuntarily diagnosing, committing and treating must be treated this way because they are biologically different and incapable of a) understanding their true illness, and b) changing their behavior in the ways that we demand.
The Big Lie of psychiatry is that people who behave in ways society finds offensive are considered biologically different and inferior. Psychiatry per se is now 200 years old and has yet to provide any substantial, conclusive scientific evidence to support its main thesis.
Report comment
Thanks, Keith.
You make several important points.
Report comment
If those among us with Down or Down’s syndrome are more unconditionally loving than the rest of us, perhaps they are more intelligent than us, and perhaps there may be perceived to be a genetic correlation and/or cause for this & as well as demonstrating how foolish our “intelligence tests” truly are?
But, to the extent that such human beings, like the rest of us, are simply always doing their best and, like any blade of grass pushing up through cracked asphalt, following their nature, and being true to themselves as we all are, perhaps even they may not be our superiors, either?
On Our Unequivocal Ultimate Infinite Equality:
Confucius, I guess: YES, HE knew:
“Young man who fancy pretty nurse
He must be patient, too!”
Lao Tzu? Totally knew!
Caesar? – Julius? – I’d say, too.
Rumi? EViidently knew.
Carl Jung? Yep! Exposed it, too.
And Archbishop Des Tutu.
Jesus, how HE preached it! – PHEW!
Who understood him? Few! Few! Few!
The Buddha, he most clearly knew.
Buddhists, tho’? Perhaps? Some, too?
The Sioux? TOTALLY! Told it, too…
Very much as gnostics do.
Descartes and then John Paul Sartre
Don’ talk to me about those two:
Blew it! Blew it! Merde de DIEU!
?SOME? dear old Founding Fathers – WHO!?
IF they did, they chose not to
Share it with all doubters who
“Self-evidence” would quite eschew
So that we might now live to rue
Their desperate refusal to
‘Lucidate for motley crew
How candidates who hatred spew
Can be praised by those who view
Them and selves as saintly few..
But that, maybe, WE ought, too?!
References:
Tzu, Lao: “At the center of your being you have the answe: You know who you are and you know what you want!”
Caesar, Julius: Please see what he wrote of the druids under “Philosophy “ here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid
Rumi, Jalal al-Din Muhammad: ‘This is what is signified by the words Anā l-Ḥaqq, “I am God.” People imagine that it is a presumptuous claim, whereas it is really a presumptuous claim to say Ana ‘l-‘abd, “I am the slave of God”; and Anā l-Ḥaqq, “I am God” is an expression of great humility. The man who says Ana ‘l-‘abd, “I am the servant of God” affirms two existences, his own and God’s, but he that says Anā l-Ḥaqq, “I am God” has made himself non-existent and has given himself up and says “I am God”, that is, “I am naught, He is all; there is no being but God’s.” This is the extreme of humility and self-abasement.’ https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rumi
Jung, Carl: “I don’t believe….I KNOW!” “In all chaos, there is a cosmos; in all disorder, a secret order!” Etc.
Tutu, Desmond: *Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”
Of Nazareth, Jesus: “You are the Light of the World!”
Of Nazareth, Jesus, acc. to Luke, 17:21:”Neither shall they say, ‘Lo here!’ or, ‘lo there!’ for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you!”
Of Nazareth, Jesus, acc. to Gnostic Gospel of Thomas ‘Jesus said, “If those who lead you say, ‘See, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.”’
Buddha, Gautama’ “Enlightenment is the end of suffering!”
Sioux, A Story from: ‘The Creator gathered all of Creation and said :
“I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they create their own reality.”
The eagle said, “Give it to me, I will take it to the moon.”
The Creator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”
The salmon said, “I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean.”
“No. They will go there too.”
The buffalo said, “I will bury it on the Great Plains.”
The Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the Earth and find it even there.”
Grandmother Mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said, “Put it inside of them.”
And the Creator said, “It is done.”’
Sioux, Dakota: *We will be forever known by the tracks we leave.
Seathl, of Susquamish, Chief: https://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/seattle.htm
When is a square equal to a circle? When infinite.
So are all presidents, presumably, too – equal as immortals – and perhaps as mortals, too – iif ONLY they could all remember that!
“What we do in life echoes in eternity!” – Maximus Decimus Meridius/Russell Crowe as Gladiator in “Gladiator.”
“Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good. Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life.”
– Marcus Aurelius, from whom also:
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
…by learning to truly GIVE!
“Those who WOULD govern us are the last people we should ever trust TO government us!” – John Cleese?
Me? I pray for Messrs. Putin and Trump, and for their enlightenment, and for the enlightenment of their and or our worlds, and for the empowering faith that stranger things have happened and must happen, and that we all can and will all help MAKE them happen!
Peace!
Tom.
Report comment
Please let me know if I did this wrong, Tom.
Report comment
Absolutely not – not wrong, Steve, thank you.
Truth to tell, I very much doubt you COULD do wrong, in my eyes.
And I do sympathize that you are so much put up on, not least by Yours, truly, Tom Kelly, Steve.
Mind you, in my final analysis, and to quote Luke Kelly,
“EV’RYbody’s got a right to go wrong,” given that we must all have at least one eternity in which to learn to set things right – right?!
https://youtu.be/AoCagUKAhik?si=uDILTgD43cfyFwz0
Sincere apologies for having you work so late.
Tom.
Report comment
Not a problem. All part of my day.
Report comment
…and nights, seemingly.
Steve, I think the following is about 64 minutes and may be way, way, way beneath your pay grade to browse, but, if you feel you care to watch it, and if you then feel it may be helpful, then please feel free to publish it here or elsewhere.
While thinking we have but one short lifetime to get stuff done may empower us and light fires under us, in time, realizing we have eternities, I think, may help us hold our fire, and love our love, instead – or as well?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hefh6OeSzs
Thank you SO very much for all you and MIA do, for us all!
Tom.
Report comment
Thanks, Keith. And thanks for your interesting comment.
Report comment
Big thanks Jay Joseph! Screw the I.Q test, it’s as misleading an indicator of intelligence as it is a distortion of intelligence; a veritable political weapon masquerading as a social tool.
On a personal note-to Keith’s and Patrick’s and others comments: my IQ tested at 86 when I was 12. When I told my therapist this “fact” when I was 37 (I did so in an attempt to get him off my back about about my living and “working” below my intelligence), he made a wager that made it worthwhile for me take the dam test (with a colleague of his). If my IQ came back under 120 I won, and if over 120 I lost: I lost. But my point here is that I took the IQ test as an abused kid on Thorazine, and that fact registered not one whit with “anyone” (teachers, etc.), save only heap more shame on me. I can more than imagine the legions of abused or developmentally marginalized kids that, over the past 50 years, were further dumped upon by 2 (as the sum usually is) bloody meaningless digits…
Report comment
That’s an amazing story. I’d love to learn more. Would you consider sharing this in a blog post for Mad in America?
Report comment
Hi Patrick, if your referring to my comment, I actually did share my story in a ‘Personal Story” from an April 9th 2021 post (Bearing False Witness: Childhood Psychiatry, Trauma, and Memory). That said, perhaps a more well written story/blog or two may be more informative/helpful for readers surrounding the issues and challenges generally undertaken here at MIA?
But, FWIW, if this subject matter is of further interest, I recommend the memoir “Life Inside” by Mindy Lewis. Lewis was a 15 y/o kid diagnosed schizophrenic in 1967, drugged with Thorazine for 2 and a half years (or was it longer?) on a NYC psych-ward. The problem was that not only did Lewis never (remotely) display symptoms “associated” with schizophrenia, but that the “counternarrative” life she had after leaving that psych ward a testament to the breathtaking institutional incompetence of psychiatry, as well as the “human” cost left in its wake…
Report comment
It’s interesting that those who deny the 60-80% heritable IQ that Murray et al claim, cant come up with any experimental evidence to validate their perspective. Holding a viewpoint that has no evidence to support it sounds like a religion, not science.
Two easy examples: To assert that the Flynn effect invalidates Murray’s argument is silly. The Flynn Effect showed increase in IQ due to black kids being raised in better environments during the 40s, 50s, etc. And then the effect ended, leaving us where we are today, with a 15 point difference in average IQs. Doubters can watch an hour long discussion between Murray and Flynn on YT. Pretty conclusive.
Two, we know that the cells in our bodies, including our brains, are made by our DNA. We know that the environment influences the cell activity, but that the DNA defines the limits within the environment can work. Human height, for example, can be increased when nutrition is adequate, but no amount of nutrition will produce 12 foot tall humans. You have zero evidence that our brains dont behave in exactly the same way. And in fact, if you somehow discovered it, you would be Nobel Prize winners.
Why? Because what you would be showing is that somehow the development and functionality of a human organ is independent of the DNA that created it, which is, of course, absurd.
The science is perfectly clear, and gets clearer every year. Your ideologically driven perspective gets weaker, the arguments for the heritability of human intelligence grows stronger. And thats a trend which will only accelerate.
Report comment
The statement “IQ is 60-80% heritable” is pseudoscientific claptrap, and belies a basic understanding of what the concept of heritability means.
Heritability is a concept developed by the geneticist Sewall Wright in 1920 to enable agricultural scientists to predict the results of controlled breeding experiments on factory farms. All it tells you is the amount of variation in a given trait for a given population of plants and animals on a given factory farm. It is not a “nature-nurture” ratio. And heritability estimates are not constants, like the density of water or the speed of light.
This concept was applied, completely unthinkingly, to human beings, who experience many orders of magnitude more variability in their environments than do plants and animals on a factory farm, and who can make conscious choices to change their environments.
The studies used to estimate heritability for human beings — family studies, twin studies, and adoption studies — all are fatally flawed, and all are fatally flawed in the same ways.
The fundamental assumption underlying family studies — that familial equals genetic — is false.
The fundamental assumption underlying twin studies — the Equal Environment Assumption — is false.
The fundamental assumption underlying adoption studies — that adoption randomizes environmental variation — is false.
None of these studies adequately control for environmental variation. And repeating the same fatally flawed studies over and over again gets us no closer to the truth.
We’ve been measuring the heritability of IQ for a century now. What has this taught us about how to teach a child to read? This is just not a productive line of inquiry. It’s time to give the matter a rest.
Indeed, two hundred and fifty years of race pseudoscience have yet to yield even a coherent definition of the word “race.” Heritability is not a “nature-nurture” ratio. And heritability estimates are not constants, like the density of water or the speed of light. How can anyone be said to study something he cannot even define?
There is no point of rarity between the “races.” The history of mankind is one of constant gene flow between adjacent populations. Anyone whose pursuit of happiness is contingent upon some meaningless notion of “racial purity” is setting himself up for a lifetime of disappointment. Again, it’s time to give the matter a rest.
We know the conditions required for human beings to thrive. It’s not rocket science. Instead of moaning about the quality of the human gene pool, let’s work on making those conditions available to everybody.
Report comment
Actually, the vast majority of the science supports exactly that. This is an emotional subject for many, and that makes it challenging to avoid logical errors. I would point out that while critics can always nit-pick around the edges of the heredity argument, they can produce zero research that indicates in any way that intelligence is NOT largely inherited. And that is a disqualifying flaw in their position.
Here I used AI to help me analyze your comment. I did so because AI is better at both the logic and the organization of the reply. I would be interested to read your response –
So here, with help from Le Chat …
1. “IQ is 60-80% heritable is pseudoscientific claptrap.”
False. Heritability estimates for IQ in the range of 50-80% (depending on age and population) are well-supported by decades of behavioral genetic research, including twin, family, and adoption studies. Heritability is a statistical fact for IQ, not pseudoscience.
Caveat: Heritability does not mean IQ is fixed, immutable, or unaffected by environment. It describes population-level variation, not individual potential.
2. “Heritability is only about factory farms and doesn’t apply to humans.”
Misleading. Heritability was developed in agriculture, but it is widely used in human genetics (e.g., for height, disease risk, and cognitive traits). The concept is not invalid just because humans are more complex.
Key Point: Heritability estimates vary by population and environment. For example, IQ heritability increases with age (as people select environments matching their genetic predispositions), but this doesn’t make the statistic meaningless.
3. “Family, twin, and adoption studies are fatally flawed.”
Overstated. While these studies have limitations (e.g., the Equal Environment Assumption for twins), they are not “fatally flawed.” Meta-analyses and large-scale studies (e.g., N > 10,000) consistently find significant genetic influence on IQ.
Reality: No study is perfect, but the convergence of evidence across methods (e.g., molecular genetics, GWAS) supports heritability estimates.
4. “Heritability is not a nature-nurture ratio.”
Technically true, but misleading. Heritability does estimate the proportion of variation in a trait due to genetic differences in a population. It’s not about “nature vs. nurture” for individuals, but it does inform how much genetic differences contribute to observed differences.
Analogy: Saying “heritability isn’t nature-nurture” is like saying “calories aren’t about weight loss”—technically correct in a narrow sense, but unhelpful in practice.
5. “Heritability estimates are not constants.”
Correct, but irrelevant to their validity. Heritability varies by context (e.g., in impoverished vs. enriched environments), but this doesn’t make the estimates “pseudoscience.” It means they are context-dependent, like most biological statistics.
6. “This line of inquiry is unproductive.”
Debatable. Understanding genetic and environmental influences on cognition has practical applications, such as:
Identifying children who may need early educational interventions.
Designing personalized learning strategies.
Informing public health policies (e.g., lead exposure, nutrition).
Ignoring heritability risks misallocating resources (e.g., assuming all cognitive differences are purely environmental).
7. “Race pseudoscience has no coherent definition of race.”
True, but a red herring. The heritability of IQ within populations is not about race. Conflating the two is a logical error. Most researchers explicitly reject applying heritability estimates to racial groups due to genetic overlap, environmental confounds, and historical abuse of such ideas.
8. “There is no point of rarity between races.”
Correct, but irrelevant to IQ heritability. Genetic variation is continuous, and “race” is a social construct. This does not invalidate heritability studies within populations.
9. “Focus on thriving conditions, not the gene pool.”
Agreed, but not either/or. We can both study genetic/environmental influences and improve conditions for all. For example, knowing that dyslexia is highly heritable helps target early literacy programs—it doesn’t justify ignoring social factors.
Report comment
It is not the job of critics to prove that IQ is NOT inherited. It’s the job of those claiming it to prove that it is. Most folks don’t seem to get this fundamental point of science. The “null hypothesis” would say that IQ is NOT inherited. It’s your job to overcome that assumption with clear and convincing evidence. If you don’t, then we have to consider IQ NOT to be inherited. And you haven’t make the case.
Report comment
Decades of research (e.g., twin studies, adoption studies) show that IQ is partially heritable. Heritability estimates for IQ typically range from 40% to 80%, depending on age and environmental factors.
The argument dismisses the well-established evidence that IQ is heritable to some degree. The debate isn’t about whether IQ is inherited but how much and how it interacts with environment.
Even rats inherit their smarts from their parents. And the effect can be seen within just a couple generations. Rats that run a maze faster than peers produce rats that do too.
Every aspect of human appearance and abilities are governed by our DNA. To make the claim that our intelligence is exempt is bizarre without evidence.
Report comment
I am not denying that IQ has some level of heritability. I’m merely stating that you can’t state that someone being unable to disprove your assertion makes it scientifically true. You don’t seem to get that concept.
Report comment
Steve. You are absolutely correct. In our main article, which is now Chapter 23 of the book “The Heredity Hoax,” Ken Richardson and I closely examined the “IQ heritability” evidence from twin and adoption studies. We concluded that these studies provide no evidence in support of above-zero “IQ heritability.” I put that phrase in quotes because IQ and heritability are disputed concepts. We did not conclude that there is no within-group
genetic contribution to intelligence, but only that behavioral genetics and other fields have produced no scientifically valid evidence in favor of that position.
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jz7ku_v1
Report comment
That is very well stated.
Report comment
“Heritability estimates for IQ in the range of 50-80% (depending on age and population) are well-supported by decades of behavioral genetic research, including twin, family, and adoption studies.”
The point of our preprint, now a chapter in the book “The Heredity Hoax,” is that this statement does not hold up when one examines the evidence closely, regardless of what AI or anyone else says. People can
read the preprint/chapter and make specific points on where they think we were wrong. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jz7ku_v1
I’m not planning to argue with AI.
Report comment
The Flynn Effect is only one of many reasons why Murray’s and other IQ hereditarians’ arguments fail. Described in detail in our preprint, which is now a chapter in “The Heredity Hoax.”
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jz7ku_v1
Religion is about faith. What we did was to closely examine the evidence behind those who faithfully cling to “60%-80% IQ heritability” claims without reading, or reading critically, the original research publications purported to support that unsupportable position.
Report comment
Not at all. Listen to the Flynn VS Murray debate (link below). The Flynn Effect actually lends evidence for the hereditarians point of view. While IQs of blacks increased in the US through the 40s, 50s, the gap between white and black remained significant regardless.
The evidence is simply overwhelming that IQ is very largely heritable, with environmental factors contributing, but not dominating. And, this makes perfect sense, since the brain structure is determined by the individual’s genetic make up. Asserting that the brain is DNA but intelligence is not is like saying muscles are DNA, but speed is not. Not rational.
The Flyyn VS Murray debate is pretty much conclusive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dXsHTtI7qs
Report comment
“Blacks” are not a legitimate genetic grouping to measure. This completely contaminates any statements made about the “gap between black and white” being related to genetics. The idea is, dare I say it, pretty racist.
Report comment
“The Black librarian who rewrote the rules of power, gender and passing as white:”
https://theconversation.com/the-black-librarian-who-rewrote-the-rules-of-power-gender-and-passing-as-white-246469
Touche, McCrae!
When I heard this story on NPR, something about it that I couldn’t quite…really got to me.
Then I read it in “The Conversation US,” and it was as though…I don’t know.
My mind or soul could not let it go.
And then, FINALLY, it came to me, Bro!
“One drop of blood makes you “Black,” though
ANY number of “White” ones…not so!
Since then, I have, I guess, been more intelligent, understanding more deeply our universal equality as humanity and that it took an army of (probably “Black” female) muses to get through to me, and to hopefully epigenetically, switch on genes in me which, off, caused my stupidity!?
FUNNY world!
Thank you for your geniuses and muses, Steve McCrae!
Tom.
Report comment
It’s not the least racist. Calling people racist in order to stop a discussion is too common, and never helpful. If the definition of what is meant by the term is understood among those who are discussing it, then there is no problem. In this discussion, for example, the term is easily defined as the group of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, or descendant from those people. If anyone used the term in any other way, they would clarify how their use differed from the commonly accepted definition.
Report comment
I’m not calling it racist in order to stop a discussion. I’m stating that assuming “black people” are a genetically distinct group is based on some highly racist assumptions regarding the nature of “race” and the involved genetics. Genetic analysis of those identifying as black vs. white in the USA at least shows that there is very little overlap among group members beyond skin color/hair/eye color genetics. Hence, there is no such thing as a “black race” genetically, and trying to measure this group is based on racist assumptions regarding supposed genetic differences supposedly attributable to being “black” that don’t actually exist.
And of course, you accept without question that IQ tests are somehow culturally neutral and unbiased, which is another incorrect assumption.
I’m assuming (perhaps incorrectly) by your positions and comments that you don’t actually believe that racism exists in our current society. It would be, of course, impossible to recognize the presence of racism if one denies the possibility that it factually exists.
Report comment
I just re-read your last comment.
So a black person is ANY descendent of someone living in sub-Saharan Africa, regardless of the degree of relatedness? So if a person has a 4th degree great grandmother who lived in sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest of his/her relatives are of European or Asian descent, s/he’d still be “black?” Sounds like the “one drop rule.” Which anyone who actually recognizes the existence of racism will allow is most definitely a racist definition, created for purposes of intentional discrimination back many decades ago.
“The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of Black African ancestry (“one drop” of “black blood”)[1][2] is considered black (Negro or colored in historical terms). It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.[3]
“This concept became codified into the law of some U.S. states in the early 20th century.[4] It was associated with the principle of “invisible blackness”[5] that developed after the long history of racial interaction in the South, which had included the hardening of slavery as a racial caste system and later segregation. Before the rule was outlawed by the Supreme Court in the Loving v. Virginia decision of 1967, it was used to prevent interracial marriages and in general to deny rights and equal opportunities and uphold white supremacy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
Report comment
?Needless to say, IQ tests may test one type of intelligence or cognitive ability, of course, but not all?
And the fact that some monozygous twins may seem so very different from one another suggests to me further support for a suspicion that we do not come here as tabulae rasae or clean slates but as immortal psyches, each carrying with us at least some trace residues/memories of previous lifetimes?
I think this might help explain otherwise inexplicable phobias among other things, and perhaps proclivities, idiosyncracies, fetishes.
I have found that certain odors, fragrances, those of gun powder, fireworks, booze and musk, included, seem to have such unit and profound effects on me to that I wonder if they hearken back to former lifetimes.
I have also had lifelong phobias around alcohol and recreational drugs of any kind. Oh, and double-headed calves, too, of course!
If we come here as “old souls,” our interactions with both Nature and Nurture, and the testing intelligences we exhibit, are likely products of many past experiences, remembered or forgotten – as well as of our place in a family (firstborns tending, I think, to be driven to display type A traits more than later sibs or those raised, say, by grandparents?
One thing for sure, the more scared I am, the stoopider I seem to get. Be. Act. Feel.
Just sayin’….
Comfort and joy!
Tom.
Report comment
Your comments prove my point. To extrapolate from animals living extraordinarily impoverished environments (such as rats living in cages or animals on factory farms) to human beings is pseuodscientific claptrap.
The whole notion of “the environment” as a monolithic entity is nonsense. Anyone who knows anything about life as it is lived knows that “then environment” is not the same for siblings living in the same family, let alone “blacks” and “whites” living in the same city, let alone people living in different countries at different times in history.
Yes, we know, DNA influences every trait, including IQ. Go to the head of the class. But in the case of human beings experiencing many more orders of magnitude of environmental variation than rates living in cages, it is meaningless to put a number figure on how big that influence is. As I said, “heritability” is not a nature-nurture ratio. Under different starting conditions, the heritability for any given trait could be anywhere from zero to one hundred percent. The same studies that have “proven” that IQ or “mental illness” are hereditary conditions have also “proven” that pellagra is a hereditary condition, and that tuberculosis is a hereditary condition. That strongly suggests that whatever these studies are measuring doesn’t mean anything.
You stated that GWA studies have supported that conclusions of family, twin, and adoption studies. That is false. In the case of “mental illness,” they have gone over the human genome with a fine-toothed comb and the genes aren’t there. The purported “effect sizes” f the “schizophrenia-associated” alleles are ridiculously tiny, on the order of one in five hundred or even less. The same is true for depression, “ADHD,” etc. To call them “genes for mental illness” is stretching the notion of cause and effect into meaningless.
And even their aggregate effect size in tiny — on the order of a couple of percent. And as more and more of these alleles are discovered, not only do their individual effect sies diminish, so does their aggregate effect size. Again, this strongly suggests that whatever it is they are measuring is meaningless.
Rather than admit the whole enterprise has been a failure, the doyens of this field have been reduced to blathering about the “missing hereditability” of these conditions. At this point, the whole matter becomes a matter of faith, not science.
I am all for troubled children getting help. But we can do that without calculating heritability scores or telling children they were born with defective brains.
We’ve been calculating heritability scores for humans beings for a century. Billions and billions of dollars spent, entire lifetimes of research consumed, without a single benefit accruing to mankind. At this point, the whole enterprise has come to resemble nothing so much as a virus, which has no purpose other than to perpetuate itself. It’s time to give the matter a rest and turn our attention to more productive lines of inquiry.
I arrived at these conclusions by reading the scientific literature and conducting interviews with experts. I didn’t use ai to write this.
Report comment
I can tell that you have a great deal of emotion around this issue. No doubt, that is a big part of the problem we have separating fact from wishful thinking. We humans are forever guilty of emotion clouding our ability to reason. And maybe thats OK, as a world full of purely rational beings may not be all that fun.
But I can assure you, watching the mental gymnastics so many in the West have undertaken to “prove” disparities in IQ, academic achievement, etc are not the responsibility of the person, but the system (as in systemic racism) has cost us just as much, and hurt just as many.
A recent “diversity audit” at my son’s school district cost $250K, and concluded that the very considerable disparities in graduation rates, test scores, etc were 100% the fault of racist teachers and a racists system. Even though no one could identify any racism in any teacher, nor any racism in nay aspect of any school in the district.
The findings “shocked the community” and led to two years of rewriting the curriculum, hiring diversity directors, hiring principles and superintendents who were black, hiring people based solely on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.
And the results were disastrous, as anyone could have guessed.
The truth may sometimes be uncomfortable, but not nearly as much as cleaning up after being blinded by wishful thinking.
Report comment
It is not surprising to see the “racist” card come out, even among people who pretend to be arguing the facts rather than the emotion. But to argue that race doesnt exist, and using race to define groups is not rational.
Of course there is a great deal of variation within racial groups and of course different racial groups sometimes blend where they meet. Day and night blend where they meet too, but that doesnt man day a night do not exist.
Medical researchers understand the important of including blacks in their trials because blacks are genetically distinct enough that not including them and evaluating them as a distinct group would be malpractice.
The folks who couldn’t find evidence that intelligence wasn’t largely inherited, and so resorted to only nitpicking around the edges of the evidence that it was, have further retreated to an even less tenable position – that race doesn’t even exist!
Their hope, no doubt, is to deflect away from an argument that science makes increasingly dubious with every advancement.
Is it racist to say that “Black men without prostate cancer have higher PSA levels than White or Hispanic men”? Of course not. And anyone who asserts that it is is clearly motivated by a fear of loosing the argument, not clarifying the science.
Report comment
“Racism” is not a “card.” It’s something that people do. It’s an action, and is definable. Your choice to apply the ‘one drop rule’ to your definition of “blackness” is racist. It’s an action that is intended to create a belief system that “race” is some kind of genetic inheritance like blue eyes or curly hair or height, and that every single descendent of your sub-Saharan population you selected is “black”, which is, of course a ridiculous way to select a genetic grouping. Race does not, in fact, exist as a genetically distinctive group. It certainly exists as a social factor and of course affects health outcomes in a big way, since prejudice toward people with darker skin is still extremely prevalent.
I notice that you completely avoided the question as to whether you personally believe racism exists. I’d love to hear your answer, and if you say “yes” to hear an example or two of how you see it applying in modern society. If you are taking the position that race exists but racism doesn’t, I’d say you’ve given up any right to keep pretending you are being objective or scientific in the slightest. But that’s my bet on your real beliefs. Your comments suggest you have an axe to grind, as the saying goes.
Report comment
Of course I believe racism exists. Ive watched as very many people were denied jobs because of the color of their skin. Who people of the preferred race were available, many who were equally or even more qualified were shut out because they were white.
Ive seen lowered academic standards designed to benefit those of a specific race, or skin color. Ive seen unqualified people hired because of their skin color. Ive seen curricula re-designed in order to benefit one race over another. And I have seen poorly performing employees given a pass because the boss was afraid to fire them, for fear he would be called a racist, or face a lawsuit.
And of course I could go on.
Nowhere did I apply a one drop rule. Thats your head fake. I simply pointed out what is obvious to everyone whose vision isnt blurred by ideology: race exists, just like fruit trees exist. There may be no way to define the group uniformly, there may be great variation within the group – even more than there is between apple trees and ash trees, but none of that negates the simple and obvious fact that “fruit trees” is a real an useful category of trees with some things in common. Things that are of critical importance when we are talking about “fruit” in its general sense.
But the logic of those for whom reality is too uncomfortable is so convoluted that none actually believes what they say.
Report comment
Well, you’ve made your views clear. Unfortunately, you’ve made it clear that racism is central to your philosophy, though of course you are unable to observe it in yourself. Apparently, racism ONLY applies against white people, which is in and of itself a highly racist viewpoint
It is obvious by your definition of blackness that you ARE applying the one-drop rule. You stated that anyone who is descended from someone in sub-Saharan Africa is black. Anyone. That’s your definition. You stated it. Doesn’t matter how much European or Asian or South American ancestry exists, they are “black.”
I also never said that race is not a useful category, only that it is not a useful genetic grouping, as it is way too heterogeneous to be of any use scientifically. This is especially true in the USA, as almost all “black” people have large amounts of European ancestry. Looking at race as a social category has value, of course. There are SOME benefits to considering health outcomes by “race,” but again, we are more likely talking about the effects of social discrimination than any kind of inherent genetic differences, as there is clearly insufficient overlap in genetic inheritance to make such generalizations of the slightest use.
Let’s take a very obvious example. The Watusi Tribe is uncommonly tall, with members sometimes exceeding 7 feet. The Pygmy Tribe is uncommonly short, rarely exceeding 5 feet in height. So are black people short or tall? Which is it? What meaning would there be in saying that “black people average 6 feet in height” as a result of the data obtained from Pygmies and Watusis being averaged?
I have nothing more to say to you. You have made your biases eminently clear and talking further with you will obviously not be productive, as you already seem to “know” everything and be completely disinterested in any other viewpoint.
Report comment
Yes of course, because I pointed out obvious racism against white people, I am a racist. And if I would have pointed out racism against blacks I would not be. See how fundamentally flawed your paternalistic wishful thinking ends up being?
And yes because bananas are long and yellow and apples are round and red there cant possible be a useful category called fruit.
Again, notice how irrational your arguments are?
And, yes, since you refused to allow my AI assisted critique of the article in question, even while your own posts utilize technical assistance made it obvious you didnt plan to allow a fair discussion of this matter.
Calling me a racist and then bowing out is pretty much the way any discussion with any far left liberal ends the days.
Report comment
I didn’t call you a racist. I specifically outlined racist viewpoints you are espousing. And you’ve done nothing to correct them. You clearly DO believe that racism only exists against white people. That’s a racist BELIEF. I am not calling YOU a racist, I’m calling out that claim as a racist claim. Using the claim that anyone mentioning racism is avoiding the conversation is, ironically, a great way to avoid the conversation.
BTW, your fruit analogy utterly fails because “fruit” is a higher order GENETIC organization that both apples and bananas clearly fall into. However, it seems obvious that studying the genetics of “fruit” in detail would be, well, relatively “fruitless,” as fruits have a huge genetic variation within their ranks, let alone one fruit from another. Your argument would be more akin to studying “fruits that at some point grew in South America,” clearly a genetically heterogeneous grouping! And a study of “yellow fruits” would be even more ridiculous, because there is no reason to believe that yellow fruits have anything genetically in common with each other.
Besides all of which, I made it clear in my comments that I DO allow that “black” is a useable category, just not for genetic analysis. Which statement you either ignored or didn’t bother to read.
It is fairly typical for a person making your kind of arguments to pretend that racism against darker-skinned people doesn’t exist. I also note that you have avoided verifying if that is your viewpoint or not. Distracting from the actual arguments of your antagonist is hardly a good way to make your point stick. It is obvious that you aren’t really willing to engage on these points, which is the reason for my desire to end the conversation. If you actually want to have a meaningful discussion of whether or not racism only applies to white people, or explain how your statement that anyone descended from a sub-Saharan African stock is automatically black does NOT invoke the “one drop rule,” I’d be happy to engage. But so far, you’re simply repeating and insisting on your viewpoint and using ad hominem or emotional attacks to distract from your failure to address the legitimate concerns raised in your arguments. So why would I want to continue talking with you if you aren’t really willing to exchange views?
For the record, I’ve had many extended conversations with people whose views I personally consider racist. I don’t end a conversation on such a meager basis. The end comes when it becomes apparent that the person involved is so utterly inflexible and fixated in his/her views that meaningful discussion is impossible. That is the case here.
Report comment
I think when one side resorts to name calling it’s time to close the discussion. (Pretending one isnt name calling when they obviously are isn’t a very effective defense). I’ll just end by pointing out the paper in question can be rather easily and thoroughly critiqued by AI. And in fact, I submitted just such a critique here, but the moderator refused to allow it.
AI isnt perfect, but in a case such as this its a very helpful tool for understanding the missing logic, the half truths, the lack of balance in an ideologically motivated bit of “research” as this paper obviously is.
And yes, AI is rapidly becoming a left wing bias trap, in part because of it being trained on left wing Wikipedia, and part because of the invisible system prompts that the AI company’s lawyers insist on.
But at any rate, arguing that there is no such thing racial groups, that our brain springs from DNA but our mind doesn’t, and that theories with no evidence to support them are still valid, just doesnt pass the sniff test.
The ideological fervor with which the anti-science ideologues argue reminds me of other great belief systems struggles with the facts. They all eventually give way to reality, as Im sure this one will too.
Report comment
I will note in closing that you have completely avoided addressing the concrete issues raised with your arguments. Arguing, for instance, that anyone with heritage from sub-Saharan Africa defines being black is, from a GENETIC perspective, a nonsensical claim. Such a group clearly will be so genetically diverse as to have practically nothing in common. One doesn’t have to resort to the concept of racism (which is an actual concept and not just a name to call someone) in order to see that this assertion leads to an absurd conclusion that all persons with the slightest genetic influence from sub-Saharan Africa are closely related. As a good friend of mine likes to say, “That’s just silly!”
Report comment
With regard to race and I.Q.: It is an immutable fact that genetic differences are greater within any single given race construct (i.e., Asian, European White, et al.), than between different race constructs. Now, I’m neither a statistician nor a genetic scientist, and am only an expert on matters of snack foods. But I’m hard pressed to understand how I.Q. could either be race-construct genetic determinate or implicate. So, at this juncture it seems to me most discourses surrounding race and I.Q. are actually political discourses (and, I would add, largely in the vein of Jamison’s “Political Unconscious”). Though I do hope to be educated on the matter by anyone if my 86 I.Q. has missed or otherwise misconstrued something.
Next up, with regard to the comment thread here, the issue of I.Q. as a qualitative measure/metric of intelligence. For example, let us consider the person with the highest “known” recorded I.Q., one Marilyn Vos Savant (what are the odds of that surname!). So… Miss Vos Savant has an I.Q. of 228. Yet, to my knowledge, she has never had any scientific or other discovery, solved the Riemann Hypothesis or the Goldbach Conjecture or any other outstanding mathematical equations, invented anything, written a novel or a book of poetry, or otherwise weighed in on several crisis that beset the human species (climate crisis, social breakdown viz. technological advancements, pandemics, etc.). What Miss Voss Savant has offered was a column in a weekly national rag-insert that answered questions any moderately motivated person could answer, as well as written a couple of books that I’m embarrassed for her to have put her name on (they are intellectual pabulum even to my working-class intellect).
I very well understand my above example is frivolous and gratuitous! But the reality is that there are not a few people walking around with high I.Q.’s who bring nothing to the intellectual and social table- or worse create havoc in demonstrably breathtaking and often unconstrained ignorance. Malcom Gladwell’s “Outliers” dedicated two chapters to geniuses, the second titled, as I poorly recall, the problem with geniuses. The point therein is that I.Q. intelligence is a double-edged sword that cuts viscously both directions squared. In todays world, for example, I believe Einstein (and I’m rather well read on him and his life) would likely be institutionally eviscerated before he had any chance to “be Einstein” (ODD, autism, ADHD, etc., and psychiatric drugs not unlikely, the institutional compulsion towards technological fundamentalism, neoliberal acedia, e.g., careerism and multiple forms of compulsory and rewarded institutional mediocrity, etc. just too proliferate these days).
Though I’m always grateful that commenter’s like Patrick take the time to make the ‘principled’ distinctions and counterpoints in this forum, I find myself despairing that, in general, the subject matter at hand is often contextually suspect and narrowly considered-however otherwise critically essential. For me Iain McGilchrist (a polymath and psychiatrist, and, imo, brilliant dude) brain hemisphere thesis suggest to me that I.Q. is a predominately left hemisphere metric of intelligence; the atomizing rational brain that constrains the belief that the static part is the eternal dynamic whole. In this respect, the right hemisphere’s ability to imagine, conceive, relate, and create are the values and questions that have neither been asked “nor imagined” by the Left hemisphere (a distinction that is on full hapless and horrifying display throughout our 21st century world; this discussion thread notwithstanding…)
Sorry for the rant! But I find this I.Q. discussion a breed of an infuriating bore.
Report comment