Africans are less intelligent than Westerners
 

:eek::eek::eek: Whoa

http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_te...cle3067222.ece

That's crazy.

Seriously - what a bizarre thing for him to say:

IF (and this is a big "if") intelligence has a genetic component, it would be perfectly reasonable for a certain population to self-select for intelligence - I don't think any reasonable individual would disagree. That would mean a discernible difference in mean intelligence (or, likely, aptitude) among a certain population. It's not even unreasonable that this effect would be more likely to happen in a first-world, technology-rich environment than a third-world environment. But that's at a population level, not a race level, and really requires a LOT of advances in measuring intelligence, etc. that we just don't have.

Going to the extent Watson did goes WAY beyond any sort of reasonable genetic analysis though. It's just nuts. Black employees? Unreal.

It's interesting because in my Assessment class we're talking about IQ tests and that there are still prominent researchers in the testing field that thing genes are all there is to IQ. It baffles me that you can ignore all sorts of environmental factors in that process. Add onto this the fact that Watson should know that race has no genetic standing... oy. I think you have a man who's nearly 80 and can't get his mind out of the past.

Guess it is in the eye of the beholder no matter how ignorant he/she/it really is.

If one is talking about Africans in poor countries, of course they are as they have not had the traing or tools to use as westerners!

See - proof that even if there was a shred of truth, which I doubt there is, it doesn't always hold true.

Way to miss the point, Earp.

Do you think everyone on the planet is equally intelligent?

Why do we even go to school?

Why do school's have grades?

We are all equally intelligent, right?

Apparently not. :rolleyes:

You and Tom both seem to confuse intelligence -- the capacity to learn, reason or understand -- with actual knowledge or understanding.

Schools don't teach intelligence, and grades don't (or shouldn't) measure intelligence. Intelligence can be fostered, but it can't be taught.

What tools are being used to measure intelligence?
What population are they designed for?
Do they assume a specific socioeconomic status?
Do they assume a specific language?

There is no genetic difference between different races therefore it makes no sense for there to be a genetic intelligence gap between the races.

No, but there are specific genetic differences between populations, which can lead to genetic differences between races when the population is comprised of one race - see: sickle-cell anemia - so writing the concept off on these grounds is specious and ultimately a negative for the conversation, because there are other, more pressing issues with Watson's point(s).

The implied causation/correlation problems are really the least of my concerns.

No genetic difference? Is color a genetic difference? I guess you think every race has the same athletic ability also.


Do intelligence tests exist? How do blacks score on those tests?
If I let you design an Afrocentric ebonic million man march intelligence test and Asians would still kick the chit out of blacks on the test. That is life.

Thanks for proving my point. We are not equal. Do you and Tom have same intelligence or should I say the capacity to learn? I think Tom was probably just held down by the man.

No, but it's the first place I'd start to write off Watson's argument. He makes a comparison between "Africans" and "black employees." Those are seperate populations which leads me to believe his comments are based on bias, not science. I cannot think an experiment that could be done that would remove the cultural factors from consideration and provide some sort of "accurate" IQ test. At least, I can't think of an ethical one.
There is more difference within racial groups than there are between the groups. As an example, a random black man and a random white man are more genetically similar than two random black or two random white men. Watson is a geneticist, he should know this. I do know that specific populations have shown more fast twitch vs. slow twitch muscles, but there's a lot of cultural pressure in athletics too. When all the best "insert sport here" come from a certain area of the world or population, there's pressure for athletically talented kids in that population to succeed in THAT sport.

Intelligence tests exist... they're generally designed for literate white people. I don't have any data for you, but generally minorities do poorer on IQ tests, this includes women, poor people, and non-whites.

IQ tests shouldn't be designed around specific populations, so you're missing the point.

Edit: And also, this is a man who promotes genetic screening and modifications that IMO are of a disturbing eugenics quality.

This definitely requires citation - it violates any sort of transitive quality, which may or may not exist but certainly makes the claim beyond counterintuitive.

You don't have data because both the positive and negative forms of this type of study are grossly bad science. It should be easier to confirm racial bias than deny it, but conclusive studies of control groups get bogged down in politics - for instance, the easiest way to show "cultural" bias would be to take middle-class groups from the same neighborhood across multiple cultures and test them, normalize, test again. The definition of "cultural" makes this subjective, therefore trash. However, it is a plausible explanation why minorities underperform on standardized tests - inherently, it is nearly impossible to prove this concept. There are other plausible explanations that are just as impossible to prove. That's why it's a crappy point to put into argument.

YAAY Social Darwinism!!! Whoo hoooo!!!
 

Okey, whatever, good luck with that!!!

Essentially humans are too young evolutionarily and have mixed too much to make race meaningful as a biological construct. Skin color or eye shape are very tiny variables within a much broader diversity of genes. Would you assume that a black man from South Africa, a black man from Northern Africa, an indigenous Australian and an African-American are necessarily more similar than four people of different races from the same geographic area? Had Europe and Africa branched off many millions of years before they did, and then stayed separated due to continental shift or some other reason, we might have two different human subspecies today.

It's quite possible I may have explained it wrong but I'll try to do this anyhow. Essentially 85% of genetic variation occurs within a population, whether that is Japanese people, British, whatever. This number has been very consistent over the years. About 6-9 percent is between different groups within the same race. Japanese and Chinese, British and French. The rest is between populations.

And for the record, I'm not saying race isn't a real social construct. But it's one that can be traced to our desire to classify people like we did with animals, atoms, plants, etc. during the scientific revolution. Race isn't completely useless as a way to distinguish people, it's just not genetically accurate.

I pulled these sources out of Wiki articles on race because the articles themselves are huge and provide more than anyone here probably wants to read. However they do contain some of the actual data to back up the other articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race
See particularly the footnotes for these and other articles. The most interesting were pdfs but I can't link them because I'm on a Mac at the moment and I can't figure out how to capture the link.
http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/ Lewontin is big in this area.
http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Goodman/


I know it's bad science. But the fact is that there are IQ tests and that historically minorities do not perform as well on them as the majority does. There is data out there that backs that up even though I do not have it. I wasn't talking about data that discusses WHY this is the case.

The one way to do it would be to take X number of kids of different races and raise them in a completely neutral, closed, environment. That will never ever happen.

I hope you get speared by a Zulu.

If non-whites tend to perform poorer on IQ tests, then why do Asians have higher IQs? Didn't some guy once say that Eastern European Jews had the highest, followed by East Asians?

That is effin' funny...

IQ is what IQ tests measure. It's a meaningless number based on biased tests.

I wish that the article posted by the OP shocked me, but it really doesn't. Scientific racism is far from new. He's an old man, and hasn't changed his ways or opinions for a long time. He's probably also senile. :(

2 Words....


Bell Curve

You had a point?

Of course not all people are of equal intelligence. That's quite a different statement from suggesting that not all racial groups are of equal intelligence.

Didn't he say something similar about men vs. women a few years back?

He's an old bigot, and his achievements in science are just encouraging people to give lip service to his dried-up ass...

as an African... I'm lightweight offended by this study...

I agree with all of this, but this does not really support your counterintuitive claim that "random white/black comparisons will be more similar than random white/white comparisons" - since the variation is within populations, and it is more likely the person (regardless of race) will be outside of your population, there seems to be no reason why there would be any difference in variation. Scanning the Lewontin article yields no support for your claim, and seems instead to back up my intuition.

Do you have a specific citation that says different racial groups are more likely similar than within a racial group? Or was that misstated?

I understand completely the social construct model of race - I don't understand the specific "fact" you quoted.

Is this supposed to be any where near an inteligent post?

Alas, at the moment, I've found it quoted multiple places but haven't been able to trace it back to its source. Perhaps my example wasn't what I intended it to be, but i'll try to find more primary sources for you.

OOOPpppsss...My Bad Black People !!
 

Nobel prize winner apologizes for 'misconstrued' remarks

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...ogy/index.html

This is typical Social Darwinist stuff of years past. Herrnstein and Murray's Bell Curve argued that minorities have lower IQs than blacks and therefore social outcomes are a result of this and not inequality. Fischer and crew responded to that with their book Inequality by Design. Not a surprising or groundbreakingn debate there.

This guy is not the most intelligent man if he can't draw the correct conclusions of his research or convey his message without being offensive, i.e. "those who have had to deal with black employees." He's a geneticist and being a geneticist means that he knows that race isn't biological (there's no race gene), it is cultural and different societies can call "race" something different. So any differences in genes that he claims to have found would be the impact of nurture-vs-nature rather than something that people are supposedly born with. For the same reason that high rates of certain diseases in certain racial groups doesn't necessarily mean that the group is prone because God genetically wired them to be prone centuries ago.

Being intelligent is different than being smart because it is about cognitive ability, reasoning, communication, etc. So there are cultural (not biological) differences to the extent that there are generalizations that can be made regarding the types of environments that blacks are in as compared to whites. This is a testament to the extremely high racial segregation of this society that has blacks and whites living in different neighborhoods, going to different schools, churches, social gatherings, family gatherings, and so forth. Inequality in education and employment, for example, weren't crafted because people saw blacks' and whites' genes and noticed inherent differences in intelligence. Inequality was and still is a social control mechanism and genetic explanations are post hoc attempts at justifying it.

Exactly. People give me the :confused: look when I discuss race as societal and cultural rather that biological. People genuinely think that racial differences are by birth, which is a self fulfilling prophecy if people think they interact with smarter whites than blacks.

Indeed.

This is spot-on - it's not surprising that confirmation bias is the strongest force in most people's impressions of race.

Besides this, I think there's a strong tendency among the general population to write off things they don't understand as "genetic" which is clearly incredibly dangerous.

Also LOL at "my comments were misconstrued" - not hard to parse something like "anyone who has worked with a black person knows what I'm talking about," you senile douche.

I completely agree.

And when people start to experience things that counter their preconceived notions, they write it off as "exceptions."

LOL.

It's the typical "damn...I said that...time for damage control."

I think it's more... Damn, please buy my book still.

as i said before...I hate it when people 'apologize' for saying things they mean....sometimes, I think you have time to think about what you are going to say before you say it and once it hits the floor, it's pretty much a done deal at that point....and in this day and age of digital media, 1/2 the world will know about your verbal slip before you have time to get the I and apostrophe to "I'm sorry" out of your mouth.

THINK before you speak and don't say it if you don't mean it

He should be used to that by now the ignorant old f*ck - I mean seriously this guy has uttered stupid crap like this in the past (differences in sexes, race linked to libido, homosexuality being an abomination, obese people being stupid, etc.). Just because someone is intelligent doesn't mean they can't also be an ignorant bigot afterall - and I wish people would realize this and stop giving this guy a podium.

Any attention is good attention?

Not really true in the world of academia - and in Watson's case I suspect that the only thing keeping him from being completely 'black balled' is the Nobel... and even before this latest comment he was already on the academic fringe in terms of speaking engagements and lectures (particularly in some circles considering the controversy behind whether or not all the work was even his).