God Fearing Atheist

Not unsurprisingly, you've taken half a dozen links of questionable relevence (like the one on Rushton's publishing habits) and turned it into a definitive refutation. Perhaps you should look at some of the sources I cited first?

Would you like more?

Nor would I want supporters like these race-deniers:

The Stalinist "Progressive Labor Party"

What, exactly, do kooks like either of these groups have to do with the *scientific, biological* validity of race?

Dr.GH

I could not see anything relevent in the stalinist web page you cited. The far-right is the major bastion of racism, and in pointing to this the communists emulate the "stopped watch" by being correct at least twice a day.

The link regarding Rushton's publication record is in responce the the false claim made by his followers that his opinions are suppressed by liberal enemies. This is another similarity between modern racists and creationists: they pose as outsider defenders of truth.

Where is a bucket, I am going to be sick.

So, what do you have to offer in support of Rushton? Can you competently answer any of his many critics?

How do you disaggregate socioeconomic effects from IQ? Have you accounted for infant birth weight varience? Parinatal nutrition? Educational enrichment? How do you define race? How do you define intelligence? How do you meassure intelligence? How do you control for "crossbreeds" or "miscegenation" or "race traitors" if you prefer?

charlie d

Ah, it's good to have strict, quantitative, scientific definitions!

So, if one's sub-saharan African ancestry goes back to only, say, 19 generations (or 4,001, assuming it were possible), (s)he can't be called "Negroid", right?

Peez

Hi Dr.GH (and others),

I just wanted to mention that I am also a natural scientist who deals with evolution, populations, races, etc., and I have read papers by Rushton and discussed them with colleagues. I am in full agreement with Dr.GH's position here, and I know of none of my colleagues who would disagree. I would like to second the request for an answer to Rushton's critics.

Peez

Answerer

Thanks for your help, guys. I'm very grateful. Actually, I and GFA were having a debate in the poltical discussion forum on racism. We touched on the genetic diversity, thats why I bring the discussion now.

Anyway GFA, my skepticism still runs high. Even if the peoples of some races do inherit some differences, it could mean they evolved differently over the past few thousand years. But according to the current theory, they still shared a common descent in Africa, so, all races are still essentially belonging to the same and only race of man.

Dr.GH

There is a growing body of data that indicates that the H. neandrothalis populations were a sister branch to H. sapiens from H. habilus (via H. heildelberensis, H. rudolfensis, or others). And that the "out of Africa" hypothesis is correct, as opposed to the multiple regional origins hypothesis.

God Fearing Atheist

The point was, as I made quite clear, whackos can use science, sound or not, to justify anything.

This includes white racism (for biological race differences) and totalitarian Marxism (for the lack thereof).

Of course, I never said anything of the sort, and its irrelevant besides.

How could I, after all, since I linked to three of his recent publications?

Im not here to defend Rushton; hes quite capable of that himself.

The journal articals I cited are not meant as an endorsement of the entire body of his research.

Its widely known that standard SES variables can account for *at least* a quarter of the observed BW IQ differences, and its probably closer to 30 or 40%. Other studies (like Stoolmiller, 1999, Devlin, Daniels, and Roeder, 1997) argue that flaws (like range restrictions in adoptive homes in studies like Loehlin, Horn and Willerman (1989), Scarr and Weinberg (1978) ) may be biasing the effect of genes upward. At a max, then, maybe 60% of the observed gap is related to SES.

For an older (but still relevant) summary, see Jencks (1979).

There are other issues too, like the Flynn effect (or more properly, the Jensen-Flynn effect). There has been a pretty consistant worldwide secular increase in average IQ over the past couple decades, and this is almost certainly environmental in nature (Flynn, 1984). Despite Flynn's insistance, however, I dont think its going to eventually reveal itself to be the underlying cause of the BW difference, or releated to what is causing the BW difference. Like Jensen says in Educability and Group Differences (1973), this environmental "Factor X" would have to be very odd: only affecting African-Americans, affecting them across the entire IQ distribution, is expressed through a non-shared environment, etc.

Birth weight is interesting and does depress IQ, but in general, is not statistically significant enough to cover the BW difference (or matter at all). Significant IQ depression only occurs in markedly low weight births, and while Africans tend to have lower weight babies, they are not *that* much lower (they'd have to be about 1500 grams). See Lubchenko (1976), Broman et al (1975), and Rosetti (1986).

I wasnt even aware of any studies on parinatal nutrition, but the APA says there was only one major one (Stein et al., 1975) that found no correlation between kids born during famine and depressed adult IQ. I havent read it, so it may or may not be true.

Im too tried to be scholarly right now. I'll finish with the rest later.

Refs

Stoolmiller, M. (1999). Implications of the restricted range of family environments for estimates of heritability and nonshared environment in behavior-genetic adoption studies. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 392-409.

Devlin, B., Daniels, M., & Roeder, K. (1997). The heritability of IQ. Nature, 388, 468-471.

Loehlin, J. C., Horn, J. M., & Willerman, L. (1989). Modeling IQ change: Evidence from the Texas Adoption Project. Child Development, 60 (4), 993-1004.

Scarr, S., & Weinberg, R. A. (1978). The influence of "family background" on intellectual attainment. American Sociological Review, 43 (October), 674-692.

Jencks, C. (1979). Who gets ahead: The determinants of economic success in America . New York:
Basic Books.

Flynn, J. R. (1984). The mean IQ of Americans: Massive gains 1932 to 1978. Psychological Bulletin, 95, 29-51

Lubchenko, L.O. (1976). High Risk Infants. Philadelphia. Saunders.

Rosetti, L. (1986). High Risk Infants: Indentification, assessment and intervention. Boston. Little Brown

Broman, et al. (1975). Preschool IQ: Prenatal and early developmental correlates. Hillsdale, NJ. Erlbaum.

Stein, Z. et al. (1975). Famine and human development: The Dutch hunger-winter of 1944-45. New York. Oxford University Press.

-GFA

God Fearing Atheist

That *is* the case.

As GH noted, "Out of Africa" is the order of the day: we walked out of Africa 200,000 years ago, branched off into Europe about 110,000 years ago, and into Asia after another 70,000 or so. We *do* share a common descent, and we *are* all one *species*.

-GFA

Quetzal

Hi GFA,

I'm not entirely clear what you're trying to communicate here. The biggest problem I have with Rushton's published works, especially his most recent book, is the fact that extreme variation among “black” sub-Saharan African populations renders his “average traits” utterly useless from a scientific standpoint. Contrast the vast phenotypical variance between a Khoisan from the Namib, an Efe pygmy from the Ituri Forest, a Nuer from southern Sudan, Tuareg nomads from the Grand Erg, a Batutsi from Burundi, or a Zulu from Natal. You have every conceivable size, shade, facial structure, and yes brain/body volume you can imagine. There’s more phenotypical variation between so-called “negroid” populations than there is between some hypothetical “white” European average and Inuit. And ALL variation is quite readily explainable by natural selection operating on isolated populations over the generations. Anything more than a general observation of Allen’s and Bergmann's Rules and a note that certain genetic differences based on adaptation (i.e. sickle cell trait) is pure bunk. Nothing in Rushton's book, anyway, can even remotely be considered diagnostic of any “race” in a biological sense – and especially provides no basis for a determination of “primitive” or “advanced”, or as Dr GH noted:Rushton's work, from what I've read of it, suffers from extremely unrepresentative samples, fallacy of composition, and other errors, whatever his political or social "purpose" might be.

God Fearing Atheist

Again, im not here to defend his entire body of work. Rushton has made serious errors in a number of his claims.

His reasoning, by the way, is based on the principle of aggregation; that aggregates are more representative as they eliminate possible data collection biases and errors.

-GFA