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Old 04-10-2003, 03:49 PM   #1
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Default Race and Rushton

I was curious as to everyone thoughts on the work of J.P. Rushton.

His book "Race, Evolution and Behavior" can be found here:
http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/reb.html
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Old 04-10-2003, 04:38 PM   #2
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Isn't this the guy who claims Negros have larger penises and this means something?

"Pseudoscientific Racism" seems to be the consensus. Science of Racism

See also the Pioneer Fund
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Old 04-10-2003, 04:47 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally posted by Toto
Isn't this the guy who claims Negros have larger penises and this means something?

"Pseudoscientific Racism" seems to be the consensus. Science of Racism

See also the Pioneer Fund
Not only is reflexivly labeling Rushton a "racist" in poor taste, it does nothing to add to the discussion, or response to my post.

It is no different, in my mind, than the neoconservative tendency to label any critic of Israeli foreign policy "anti-semitic", or the christian penchant for slandering atheists as immoral.

Professor Rushton is not some third-rate academic charlatan. He's no creationist hiding from peer-review. And its for this reason that i'm interested in seeing some informed opinions of *his work*.

You can read Rushton's response to the accusations leveled against the Pioneer Fund here: http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/fac...dfs/ALRpdf.pdf
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Old 04-10-2003, 05:02 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally posted by God Fearing Atheist
Not only is reflexivly labeling Rushton a "racist" in poor taste, it does nothing to add to the discussion, or response to my post.
So you concede the pseudoscientific part?

Quote:
It is no different, in my mind, than the neoconservative tendency to label any critic of Israeli foreign policy "anti-semitic", or the christian penchant for slandering atheists as immoral.

Professor Rushton is not some third-rate academic charlatan. He's no creationist hiding from peer-review. And its for this reason that i'm interested in seeing some informed opinions of *his work*.
Read the first link I gave you - scroll down or search for Rushton.

"Race" is not a scientific concept. His use of statistics is not scientific.
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Old 04-10-2003, 05:21 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally posted by Toto
So you concede the pseudoscientific part?
Not until I see the case against his work.

Quote:
Read the first link I gave you - scroll down or search for Rushton.

"Race" is not a scientific concept. His use of statistics is not scientific.
Its altogether quite interesting that the author of that piece cites no evidence for his claims. I dont know about you, but if i stumbled across a creationist page whos entire body of arguments were of the sort, "theres are tons of studies proving creationism is true," without actually referencing those studies and/or responses to them, i'd be more than a little skeptical.

Professor Rushton, on the other hand...
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Old 04-10-2003, 05:26 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally posted by God Fearing Atheist
....
Its altogether quite interesting that the author of that piece cites no evidence for his claims.
Perhaps you don't read too thoroughly.
Quote:
{from the cited link}

References cited

Crisp, L. 1989. Harvest of hate. The Bulletin April 4th 1989:42-49.

Day, David. 1996. Claiming a Continent: A history of Australia Sydney:
Harper Collins.

Ford, C.S. & F.A.Beach. 1951. Patterns of Sexual Behaviour. New York:
Harper and Row.

Gobineau, A.de. 1853-5. Essay on the Inequality of Human Races.

Gould, S.J. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. Penguin Books.

Groves, C.P. 1990. Genes, genitals and genius: the evolutionary ecology of race. Proceedings of the Australasian Society for Human Biology 4 :419-43''.

Lippard, J. 1998. Creationism and Racism. The TalkOrigins Archive

Mackay, J. 1984. The origin of the races. Creation ex nihilo 6 , 4:6- 12.

Pickett, W.P. 1968. Scientific evidence: negro is related to apes - not white people. The Thunderbolt, Issue no.101, May, 1968:5.

Reece, R.H.W. 1974. Aborigines and Colonists: Aborigines and Colonial
Society in New South Wales in the 1830s and 1840s. Sydney: Sydney
University Press.

Reynolds, Henry. 1995. Fate of a Free People. Ringwood, : Penguin .

Rushton, J.P. 1988. Race differences in behaviour: a review and
evolutionary analysis. Personality and Individual Differences 9:1009_1024

Ryan, Lyndall. 1981. The Aboriginal Tasmanians. Brisbane: University of
Qld Press (2nd.ed., 1996, St Leonards,: Allen & Unwin).

Stone, Sharman N. 1974. Aborigines in White Australia. South Yarra,
Victoria: Heinemann Educational Books.

Trott, R. 1998. Is the ICR's Henry Morris racist? TalkOrigins Archive
Plenty of evidence in the references. Maybe you should research more.
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Old 04-10-2003, 05:33 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally posted by Gurdur
Perhaps you don't read too thoroughly.
Plenty of evidence in the references. Maybe you should research more.
*For his claims about studies refuting Rushton's research*! Sheesh Gurdur...
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Old 04-10-2003, 05:43 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally posted by God Fearing Atheist

*For his claims about studies refuting Rushton's research*! Sheesh Gurdur...
*yawn*
The race question has been tackled repeatedly in science.
For some of the best summaries and further reading, see
The Mismeasure of Man , by Stephen Jay Gould.

But I bet you're more into simply trying to confirm your prejudices rather than actually researching.
I do hope I'm wrong about that at least.

Did you also check out the other threads Toto cited to you ?
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Old 04-10-2003, 06:30 PM   #9
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Quote:
Several authors have examined Rushton's model, and I make no apology for relying on my own critique here (Groves, 1990). . . .

Groves, C.P. 1990. Genes, genitals and genius: the evolutionary ecology of race. Proceedings of the Australasian Society for Human Biology 4 :419-43''.
I mean, really. Some psychologist who should be analyzing himself and his own sexual hangups comes up with a statistical model that reinforces every taudry and discredited racial stereotype of the Victorian age. Should it be dignified with an extensive discussion here?
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Old 04-10-2003, 09:45 PM   #10
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I'm don't know much about the details of Rushton's work beyond the general idea that some races have evolved to have smaller families and higher average intelligence due to climate differences. But the idea that there could be a genetic component to statistical differences in mental traits between races is still open to debate--the evidence is probably not strong enough to justify any definite conclusions on this subject. Acknowledging the possibility of some genetic basis for statistical differences between races need not make one a racist; after all, everyone accepts nowadays that one can acknowledge genetically-based mental differences between the sexes without being a misogynist (although I think the average IQ of men and women is very similar, despite all their other differences, which might suggest that average IQ is fairly robust and that IQ differences among the races are likely to be cultural).

On Toto's claim that "'Race' is not a scientific subject", ps418 posted a number of links refuting this claim on p.2 of the eugenics thread:

Quote:
Do you mean to say that a person's geographic ancestry cannot be identified from genetic markers? If so, that is quite incorrect. In fact, several recent research articles show that "race" is indeed quite meaningful at the genetic level, and therefore is a biologically/ genetically meaningful concept (although it is subject to the same ambiguities that all sub-species-level taxonomies are subject to). See the following articles, especially the Genome Biology article by Risch et al:

Rosenburg et al., 2002. Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298:2381-2385. PDF File

Commentary on Rosenburg et al. in Nature Science Update

Bamshad et al., 2003. Human Population Genetic Structure and Inference of Group Membership. American Journal of Human Genetics 72, 578-590.

Lehrman, 2003. The Reality of Race. Scientific American. February.

Risch et al., 2002. Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease. Genome Biology 3(7):comment2007.1-2007.12 . PDF File

The Debate Over Race Relations. Bio-It World.

Race Is Seen as Real Guide to Track Roots of Disease
I would also add this recent story:

Study: Humanity can be sorted into five geographical groups

Also, Mismeasure of Man is hardly the last word on these issues--for example, Gould also claims to refute the idea of general intelligence g, but there is plenty of disagreement among scientists on this subject (see this review and critique of his book that appeared in the journal Intelligence). A number of Gould's other claims, like no correlation between cranial capacity and IQ or no difference in cranial capacity between races, seem to be false according to our current best evidence, even if the conclusions Rushton draws from this are also unwarranted--see Does Brain size matter? A Reply to Rushton and Ankney for a summary (Rushton also wrote his own response to Gould's book which can be found here).

Rushton's theories on the reasons for the statistical patterns he points to may not be very sound (see this page for some real evolutionary psychologists commenting on his theories), and it's also quite possible that his presentation of the evidence for these patterns may be one-sided or biased, justifying the accusation of bad science, but such accusations must be based on specific critiques of Rushton's work rather than general claims that race does not exist or that science has already ruled out all possibility of genetically-based mental differences between races.

Some examples of specific critiques of Rushton:

Could r Selection Account for the African Personality and Life Cycle?

Psychometrics and Misinterpretation: A Look at Rushton's Work on Intelligence and Race

On the similarities of American blacks and whites: A reply to J.P. Rushton

What is it to be high-K? (more of a mixed review than a critique)

The Science of Racism and its Consequences (this article deals mostly with creationist claims about race but there is a section on Rushton at the end, and the author references a more detailed author that he wrote titled 'Genes, genitals and genius: the evolutionary ecology of race'.)
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