October 20, 2007
Ig-Nobelist? Watson Loses Cold Spring Harbor Post
From Science:
James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, has made many controversial remarks over the years. But telling a British newspaper that, in effect, blacks are intellectually inferior to whites seems to have landed him in unprecedented trouble. Last evening, as public criticism of those remarks swelled to a crescendo, the Board of Trustees of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in Long Island, New York, stripped Watson of his title as chancellor of the 117-year-old institution.
Watson has been at CSHL for nearly 4 decades, having become its director in 1968. He became president of the lab in 1994 and chancellor in 2004. Although not involved in the lab's day-to-day administration, Watson undoubtedly remains its most celebrated public face--so much so that its fledgling graduate school bears his name. But now the institution is trying hard to distance itself from the 79-year-old Nobelist. In an article that ran in The Sunday Times magazine on 14 October, Watson explained that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours--whereas all the testing says not really."
Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, said yesterday in a statement. "He has failed us in the worst possible way. It is a sad and revolting way to end a remarkable career."
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 04:45 AM | Permalink
Comments
Isn't it funny how politically incorrect statements like these are what the media focuses on but they ignore the dismal failure of the genetics dogma to deal with the cancer problem for roughly a half century now. When do we admit this is the wrong way to go? How many millions must suffer and die before we admit genetics will not and has not solved the problem? Watson, Varmus and all their cronies are wrong, just like all those who once believed the earth was flat are wrong. But all that gets any substantial media attention are politically insensitive remarks which which would be condemned even if demonstrated to be true. This is a perfect example of how "higher education" in the U.S. is a dismal failure just like orthodox cancer treatment, all of which is life threatening, is and has been a dismal failure for decades. In 1975 Watson himself was quoted as describing the entire cancer situation as "a bunch of shit." Isn't this an apt description today and this is the real reason Dr. Watson and his cronies at Cold Harbor should be fired, not because of politically incorrect statements which are or should be protected by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Posted by: Winfield J. Abbe | Oct 20, 2007 6:46:51 AM
Are less intelligent people inferior? Not equal? The media, and institutions that have criticised Watson reveal a certain intelectual discrimination, when they equate Watson's race-intelligence theory to racism. What if it turns out to be true?
I read that Kenyans run faster b/c their oxigen delivery system is more effecient. That is a genetic talent. It's not racist to say non-Kenyans can't run as far. Or is it? Why is it racist to say a certain people have a lesser physical/mental ability? Is it sexist to say a woman is better at multitasking, social networking, social memory?
IQ tests are good at measuring how good someone is at taking an IQ test. I've taken several, and got between 123 and 165. That tells me the IQ test, as an instrument to measure intelligence, has a tolerance of 42 points. The average European supposedly has an IQ of 100, the average Asian 104, and Africans 80. This difference falls within the tolerance, so I have to conclude that the three Hominid subgroups have the same intelligence.
Posted by: PeterJohn | Oct 20, 2007 8:04:33 AM
Let the fate of Dr Watson be a lesson to all "credit stealing" academics who have built their reputations on the works of faceless minions toiling in their labs or by stealing the works of their colleagues and collaborators.
Rosalyn Franklyn, you won't be forgotten!!
Posted by: krusty | Oct 20, 2007 9:42:43 AM
Payback's a bitch.
But I know that Professor Dawkins is a reader of 3quarksdaily. Perhaps he would care to weigh in on Watson's side. After all, in a world where finch beaks respond to a few miles separation, isn't it absurd to imagine that brain functionality wouldn't change over vaster timeframes and distances?
Posted by: Carlos | Oct 20, 2007 10:17:18 AM
Importing the word "inferior" into the discussion was an unjustified mis-characterization of what Watson said. The Mainstream Media did that.
As parents we don't call our less intelligent off-spring "inferior." We call them different -- and treat them differently, too, where appropriate, in the interests of their own future welfare. Only our intellectual elites seem to regard the less intelligent among us as "inferior." No wonder they are unable to deal with the moral consequences when it is discovered by science that different ethnic groups around the world have different genetic profiles, including in the genes that control the speed and accuracy by which they can process abstract information. To them, by which I mean our elites in academia and the media, that one ability is the be all and the end all -- which just shows how out of touch they are with the needs and concerns of the great bulk of humanity.
Anyway, we have added a couple of new verbs to our modern vocabulary: if you are a moral realist, honestly trying to grapple with these difficult issues, you can be Watsoned and Summarized. But realism being the first criterion for moral responsibility in this world, I regard both of these men as heroes.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 20, 2007 10:39:02 AM
Luke Lea wrote:
No wonder they are unable to deal with the moral consequences when it is discovered by science that different ethnic groups around the world have different genetic profiles, including in the genes that control the speed and accuracy by which they can process abstract information.
What genes are you talking about here? I don't think most mainstream scientists would deny the possibility that genetic differences are a factor in group IQ differences, but they would deny that there is any compelling evidence that this is true at the moment, so that talking as if it's a foregone conclusion is offensive and likely to be motivated more by personal prejudice than science. And maybe Watson didn't use the exact word "inferior", but he suggested that the genetics of Africans were responsible for their political problems, saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." He was also quoted saying that while he wished everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true." You think only "our intellectual elites" would see these comments as pejorative or offensive?
Posted by: Jesse M. | Oct 20, 2007 12:29:02 PM
Dear Jesse M: Look, I am not an expert on intelligence and genetics, just an interested layman like you. Watson, on the other hand, lest we forget, is one of the world's leading geneticists. That is his field for God's sake. He's not an amateur like you and me, and he certainly has more standing than those lesser scientific authorities the media is dredging up to denounce him.
For those interested readers who don't wish to close their eyes to the current state of knowledge in this field, I would recommend the Wikipedia article on intelligence for a starter (especially the references at the bottom of the page) and then look at the work of Professors Plomin in England and Lahn at U. of Chicago. They have both made headlines in the last several years. Or just Google the phrase "intelligence and genes" and follow the links.
Wilful ignorance is not a good long-term strategy for dealing with an important moral issue like this.
As for Watson's remark about his own experience in the hiring of blacks, yes, even if true, that was insensitive. But is it grounds for smearing him in the media and hounding out of his job? Better to ignore him.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 20, 2007 11:46:44 PM
Let's assume that Watson's claim is both accurate as to the data and that the data were methodologically sound in their collection. (I doubt both points but let's assume my doubts are misplaced.)
Watson's off-the-cuff advice about black employees - essentially, that one can hire them apparently but one better not promote them - is bizarre. Presumably, an employee remains an employee as long as both employee and employer want it to occur, and an employer contemplates promoting an employee because the employee is both effective and reliable. Yet Watson is concerned that some black employee might get promoted - presumably, by an idiot manager - even though the black employee deserves no promotion, and that he needs to step in as a business management expert to warn that the alleged IQs of the 30 million black people in say the U.S. who DON'T work there, or the hundreds of millions of people of African descent elsewhere who DON'T work there, need to be taken into consideration to make sure that a good employee doesn't become a bad employee through a bad promotion.
Implicit in this is that managers of black employees are incompetent as assessing performance of those employees, and need a seemingly senile retired DNA laboratory hack to teach them how.
Even if Watson knows IQ, he does not know economics, business management, human performance motivation or apparently even statistics. Why he would single out African(-American, since he's from Chicago) employees for the rule of "don't promote them unless you think they deserve it" is beyond me, unless Watson is just an irrational, racist old fool who rode along on some lab research in another century. His comments do not show scientific or analytical rigor, and merit no respect on that basis, not because they hurt some feelings.
Posted by: Bruce | Oct 21, 2007 12:01:08 AM
Not that this excuses Watson, but it is simply amazing that this particular type of comment generates such fury.
When pan-Asians dominate North America, as they surely will in the next century, this type of black/white issue will vanish like arctic ice.
Posted by: Thomas | Oct 21, 2007 3:59:19 AM
Not that this excuses Watson, but it is simply amazing that this particular type of comment generates such fury.
When pan-Asians dominate North America, as they surely will in the next century, this type of black/white issue will vanish like arctic ice.
Posted by: Thomas | Oct 21, 2007 4:00:09 AM
Not that this excuses Watson, but it is simply amazing that this particular type of comment generates such fury.
When pan-Asians dominate North America, as they surely will in the next century, this type of black/white issue will vanish like arctic ice.
Posted by: Thomas | Oct 21, 2007 4:00:20 AM
Luke Lea:
No wonder they are unable to deal with the moral consequences when it is discovered by science that different ethnic groups around the world have different genetic profiles, including in the genes that control the speed and accuracy by which they can process abstract information.
Jesse M.:
What genes are you talking about here? I don't think most mainstream scientists would deny the possibility that genetic differences are a factor in group IQ differences, but they would deny that there is any compelling evidence that this is true at the moment, so that talking as if it's a foregone conclusion is offensive and likely to be motivated more by personal prejudice than science.
Luke Lea:
Dear Jesse M: Look, I am not an expert on intelligence and genetics, just an interested layman like you.
OK, but had you read anything in popular articles or any other source to suggest that there was any truth to the notion that different ethnic groups differ "in the genes that control the speed and accuracy by which they can process abstract information"? If not, why did you say that this was something which had been "discovered by science" and which people are "unable to deal with the moral consequences" of? It's hard to deal with the moral consequences of something if there's no evidence that it is actually true!
Watson, on the other hand, lest we forget, is one of the world's leading geneticists. That is his field for God's sake. He's not an amateur like you and me, and he certainly has more standing than those lesser scientific authorities the media is dredging up to denounce him.
I think Watson is more of a molecular biologist, which wouldn't necessarily give him much expertise in evaluating the evidence for the genetic basis of phenotypic traits. In any case, if he was speaking based on expert knowledge as opposed to just indulging in speculation, why didn't he cite any technical papers in the ensuing fracas over his remarks?
Posted by: Jesse M. | Oct 22, 2007 2:30:55 AM
Jesse M:
Concerning evidence of recent differential selection for genes effecting intelligence, here is a link to some research at U. of Chicago: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/07/selection-controversy.php Or you might look at the work of Cochran and Harpending as covered by Pinker in the New York Times recently.
As for your notion that Watson is not really an expert in this field and doesn't know what he is talking about -- well, my friend, I think you are burying your head in the sand. He has run the genetic laboratories at Cold Springs Harbor for the last 30 years.
And as Watson points out in the article that got him into so much trouble, it would be highly surprising, on purely theoretic grounds, if genetic differences affecting mental and physical abilities did not exist between different population groups, since they have faced such different enivironmental challenges over the past serveral tens of thousands of years. We see them obviously in the case of East Asians and Ashkenazie Jews in Harvard admissions rates, and with African Americans in the NBA and the NFL.
Rather than deny these differences and their likely genetic basis, I think it would be morally more responsible to anticipate them, and figure out how to deal with them while preserving the most precious part of our liberal heritage, by which I mean the ideal of human equality.
You may not know it, but my main cause in life has been protecting the interests of the less intelligent among us, irrespective of race. Ordinary people are the ones I care about most, especially because their needs have been ignored too long by the most intelligent among us. See my web site at BornAgainDemocrats.com for example, or my personal Google page at http://luke.lea.googlepages.com/home
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 22, 2007 5:17:21 PM
Concerning evidence of recent differential selection for genes effecting intelligence, here is a link to some research at U. of Chicago: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/07/selection-controversy.php Or you might look at the work of Cochran and Harpending as covered by Pinker in the New York Times recently.
The first one doesn't appear to be relevant to your contention that different ethnic groups differ in frequencies of genes relating to cognitive abilities. And I have read stuff about the theory of Cochran and Harpending, and this was related to ethnicity so I suppose this does count as an example, although it's only a hypothesis concerned with Ashkenazi Jews and so it isn't support for Watson's comments about blacks.
As for your notion that Watson is not really an expert in this field and doesn't know what he is talking about -- well, my friend, I think you are burying your head in the sand. He has run the genetic laboratories at Cold Springs Harbor for the last 30 years.
My point is that there's a big difference between 1) studying the molecular workings of DNA and associated molecules like RNA and proteins work, and 2) investigating population genetics, whether particular genes have been under selection or not, developmental biology and other issues related to what effects different genes have on the phenotype, and so forth. Watson's expertise in 1) would presumably be sufficient to get him the position at Cold Spring Harbor, but I don't know if he has any particular expertise in anything related to 2).
And as Watson points out in the article that got him into so much trouble, it would be highly surprising, on purely theoretic grounds, if genetic differences affecting mental and physical abilities did not exist between different population groups, since they have faced such different enivironmental challenges over the past serveral tens of thousands of years.
But brain evolution seems to be one of the slowest processes in the history of evolution, it seems from the Cambrian to today the encephalization of the brainiest animals at any given time has only creeped up very gradually over many millions of years, see the graphs here or the more detailed paper on trends in encephalization here (contrast that to most other physical changes like change in overall body size--in whale evolution, for example, we see the wolf-size Pakicetus 50 million years ago and then the 50-foot long Basilosaurus only about 10 million years later.) Given this slow pace, I see no reason to be confident that the 60,000 years ago since humans left Africa has been enough for any significant cognitive differences. Look at different dog breeds, which also probably have been separate for tens of thousands of years, yet none of them seem to be any more intelligent than the wolves they evolved from.
Rather than deny these differences and their likely genetic basis, I think it would be morally more responsible to anticipate them, and figure out how to deal with them while preserving the most precious part of our liberal heritage, by which I mean the ideal of human equality.
You may not know it, but my main cause in life has been protecting the interests of the less intelligent among us, irrespective of race. Ordinary people are the ones I care about most, especially because their needs have been ignored too long by the most intelligent among us. See my web site at BornAgainDemocrats.com for example, or my personal Google page at http://luke.lea.googlepages.com/home
I think your ideals are admirable and I didn't mean to attack you morally, but I think intellectually you're really jumping the gun in the conclusions that these differences have a "likely genetic basis". Would you conclude the same thing about the Burakamin in Japan, whose history and present difficulties parallel those of blacks in America in certain ways, but who are ethnically indistinguishable from other Japanese? Also, did you read the Cosma Shalizi article on the difficulties with the notion of "general intelligence" (as opposed to a bunch of fairly separate mental aptitudes) here? He makes some interesting points about racial differences in IQ towards the end, right before the "summary" section, I definitely recommend checking it out, along with his previous post on the difficulty determining the heritibility of IQ.
Posted by: Jesse M. | Oct 23, 2007 12:51:34 AM
Luke,
Trying to burnish the legitimacy of Watson's remarks by connecting them to his work at Cold Springs is not going to wash. For one thing, the basis for his remarks was ridiculously anecdotal. He said that while he'd prefer to believe in the equality of the races, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." That scale of generalizing from experience (assuming that Watson is viewing his employees through a clear lens, which is doubtful) should make your head spin.
Furthermore, his former employer disavows his statements completely:
"Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory does not engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr. Watson."
Actual genetic research over the last few decades has shown that our concept of human "races" owes far more to cultural factors than genetic ones. And the use of IQ testing as a measure of mental acumen is suspect both on grounds of cultural biases and of overly narrow definitions of what might meaningfully be called intelligence.
Your deeply patronizing suggestion that you are just trying to help by setting more reasonable standards for blacks to acheive can serve only to further entrench cultural preconceptions of race. Even if there were genetic predispositions of various mental and physical abilities that could be reliably correlated to skin pigment or other phenotypes, the idea of "race" is a constantly moving target. We are all of us, with every act of procreation, jumbling and recombining the human genome. People of Asian, African, or Ashkenazi descent cannot be considered isolated vessels of genetic purity, especially in the "melting pot" nations of Europe and North America. To tag one visually identifiable group as sharing the same intellectual properties is to create preconceptions exactly where they are not wanted or warranted.
I'd like to be able to say that the racism of Watson's statements on this subject are so beyond the pale that they don't merit a response. He essentially said that he despaired that the populations of the continent of Africa aren't smart enough to make it in modern civilization. It really doesn't get any more ridiculous than that. But then to see you try to defend these sentiments from a liberal vantage point, all reasonableness and concern, is really too much.
If you really think people of African descent are on average dumber than other human populations, it's time to take a hard look at how your prejudices are affecting your thinking.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 23, 2007 12:32:49 PM
Thanks again, Chris. Watson has made similarly disparaging remarks about gays and the "unintelligent" among us. A prodigious ego, fed by decades of adulation probably convinced him that he can safely go beyond his own area of expertise to speculate and ponificate on what constitutes desirable traits of the human race. It seems that he is not comfortable sharing the planet with some unworthies. Hence his previous remark about women being allowed to abort a fetus with a marker for homosexuality if and when that gene is identified. The stupendous arrogance of such thinking makes one wonder if too much "intelligence" minus wisdom and compassion may be an undesirable trait too. After all this guy had his own genome sequenced and presented to him in a public ceremony. For what? To be enshrined and worshipped?
Posted by: Ruchira | Oct 23, 2007 1:22:42 PM
From the NYT article Ruchira linked to:
"Dr. Watson has said he will make his entire genome available for researchers to study, with the single exception of his apolipoprotein E gene, the status of which he does not wish to know because it predisposes a person toward Alzheimer’s disease."
Interesting.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 23, 2007 2:52:40 PM
Chris, Ruchira, Vicki and others,
When I first read of Watson's comments on the intelligence of Africans -- in situ, one supposes -- and on what kind of employees African-Americans make, I could not take them seriously other than as the sickening ravings of an elderly man who is disinhibited before his time, saying what he thinks and has likely always thought about Africans and African Americans while failing to see why he ought not to say it. I mean, it hardly sounds like new thinking, does it? His thinking about doing away with gay fetuses (Mom's choice here, of course) is not new either, although he did not yet have the excuse of florid senility when he aired it.
Now that Watson is good and crazy, though, it's time he heard about my own eugenics project: the pre-emptive euthanizing, at about the age of 30, of all scientists destined to make but one great youthful discovery. We as a society -- and I as a person -- have after all had half a century to see that sometimes genius gives over to hubris, with a great discoverer filling out his days as an administrator, honorarium collector and gale-force wind bag. I say, find the gene for that sad pattern. I'll bet it's rather easy to find too, because if there is one gene for it, it's highly prevalent among male techies, mathematicians especially. They say there is intense hormonal pressure to perform feats of genius at mating age, that it eases up later on -- Watson himself wrote a book about this, so he'll know what I mean. We could soon be in a unique and exhilarating position to manage compassionately our geniuses with that early productivity marker -- simply by sparing them the ignominy of the next 50 years. No, it wouldn't be bloodless -- but neither is aborting a gay fetus or thoroughly subduing a black man you think is your inferior.
When you think of the money saved in encouraging prizes going to men who will never again do squat, it all begins to make sense, jah? And don't imagine I dreamed this up all on my own, either. I've been sitting here channeling Rosalind Franklin...
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 23, 2007 3:50:45 PM
I would like to clarify that I don't have any objection to Watson having his genome sequenced - quietly, for personal and scientific curiosity. The ceremonial brouhaha surrounding the event and that he went along with it is what I found distasteful. Gale-force windbag, as Elatia said.
As for Rosalind Franklin, Watson was in Houston recently to speak at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. He apparently went to great lengths to explain the "lamentable" exclusion of Franklin's role in the unlocking of the Secret of Life. I wonder why he took the trouble. Could it be because Franklin was Jewish and he was speaking to a largely Jewish audience?
The NYT article I linked to ends on with the following:
At a news conference in Houston today, Dr. Watson urged that more human genomes should be sequenced, including those of successful people as well as those of medical interest. “I just want the information assessed as soon as possible,” he said.
I am surprised that he didn't say that "failures" among us should also be analyzed. We could then cull them out of the population to ensure a brighter and braver new world. I know I sound unnecessarily harsh. But old age and senility do not explain Watson's latest gaffe. As Elatia points out, he's been doing it for some time while hundreds of adoring students have passed through his hands.
Posted by: Ruchira | Oct 23, 2007 4:35:27 PM
Dear C. Schoen: You don't know what you are talking about.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 23, 2007 8:05:09 PM
Elatia/Rosalind, I think you're being a bit harsh. How about a job retraining program? Or why not start an incentive program? For every "I don't know, I have not researched that" uttererd to a reporter, the eminent washed-up scientist would receive some sort of payment. For each disclaimer "It's not my area of expertise but..." a smaller payment would be issued.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 23, 2007 8:42:55 PM
Right Vicki. The non-violent incentive / disincentive path.
Posted by: Ruchira | Oct 23, 2007 8:52:51 PM
Jesse M:
Here is the lead to a WSJ article on Bruce Lahn's recent work at Chicago:
Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition).
New York, N.Y.
Jun 16, 2006. pg. A.1
"CHICAGO -- Last September, Bruce Lahn, a professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, stood before a packed lecture hall and reported the results of a new DNA analysis: He had found signs of recent evolution in the brains of some people, but not of others."
The link is here: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/06/bruce-lahn-moving-on-to-non-iq.php
It comes from the Gene Expression web site (gnxp.com)which I have read religiously for the last several years, along with Steve Sailer's, which I highly recommend. Sailer is one of the best -- and most fearless -- journalists writing in America right now. They are the two places where I have gotten a lot of my information about the current state of genetics the last several years.
Gene Expression, btw, is geeky, but smart, run by an immigrant from Bengladesh who's not remotely a racist, and will not tolerate racist remarks in the comments, which are sometimes lively.
I've also read several text books on the general principles of population genetics (Hartl and Clark for one) for general backgroud, and the work of Arthur Jensen at Berkeley on the concept of g and intelligence testing in general. (There is absolutely no evidence of cultural bias in the tests, btw, absolutely none: read Jensen, whose the leading authority on these sorts of issues, if you want to get the facts as opposed to the myths to which Schoen above refers.)
And I read Charles Murray's book The Bell Curve of course, when it first came out, which I guess is where I first got interested in these issues. That book is a classic in my mind and will stand the test of time -- especially since it doesn't even insist that the causes are genetic, necessarily, but only to this point intractable.
None of these guys is remoteful racist in any meaningful sense of the word (of hating or fearing certain groups or wishing them ill as opposed to well, not caring about their welfare as much as that of others, or wanting to deny them equal political and civil rights, etc. -- that's what racism is in my book, roughly speaking) though they have often been accused of being racists by PC bigots, of which there are some out there.
In case you don't know, there is nothing worse than being called a racist when you aren't one: it is an extraordinarily hurtful thing, sort of like being falsely accused of rape.
Finally, let me say that there is nothing I would like better (I would celebrate with champaign)than to find out that there are after all no important genetic reasons that many Africans in Africa are scoring are scoring in the 60's and 70's on IQ tests, as is the case (see the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations for documentation).
It would certainly make the search for fairness and justice in this world a whole lot easier, and that's the main thing I care about. But one has to be prepared to look at the empirical evidence honestly as it comes in, no matter which way it is tending, and still not surrender your committment to the ideals of justic and human equality. It's not for the feint of heart, which is to say, for those who are afraid of peer pressure, or being called a despicable racist, and loosing your friends.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 23, 2007 10:06:16 PM
BTW, let me add that political correctness, in my opinion, is a form of dogmatic intolerance, and those who engage in it are guilty of lynchmob behavior.
It is an absolutely malignant social phenomenon, and extraordinarily powerful in the upper reaches of academia and the media today -- as witness the Larry Summers and James Watson episodes, or last year's Duke lacrosse case.
Political correctness is crippling our elite liberal institutions in their capacities for an unbiased search for, and reportage of, truth on certain sensitive but indeniably important issues, and I predict that it will continue to do so at least until the generation that is mainly responsible for it (the 60s generation, my generation) dies out or is finally called to account, the way Senator McCarthy finally was called to account, by a younger cohort with enough innate decency and courage to do so.
Future generations will look back on it the way we look back on the Salem witch trials or the Spanish Inquition.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 23, 2007 10:37:34 PM
Luke,
It's not about what the IQ scores of Africans in Africa are, and what that portends for Africa according to us -- that's kind of a Kiplingesque view of the world, anyway. Sure, some people score awfully low on our tests while coping better than we would with the challenges they actually face -- their own intelligence tests, as it were, designed by and for themselves. When they score low on our tests, however, we find that what we have just tested is their testability, so we need to rank their testability rather than their IQ's as "low."
A culturally freighted IQ test is not the same as a test for a certain threshold blood count, and we can't base our thinking on the assumption that people who do not participate in a culture like ours -- and who show on our tests that they do not -- are somehow stupid. This thinking is the current and very heavy "white man's burden" that we need to lay down for good. For good.
Not that we wish those Africans or any people ill. What comes into play here is not obviously or intentionally malevolent, but condescending -- which we don't mean either. Condescension is such a tough nut to crack because we can't feel it emanating from ourselves, only when it is directed at us from the outside. So we can soul search and not find it, this condescension which is like an odorless poison gas in our own closed room.
Luke, you sound like a Southerner like me. Meaning, you write like one. If that's a correct guess, then I am very aware you're not a bad guy at all, and I know that to have been told your attitudes sound racist is hurtful when you deeply mean no harm. I am pretty sure that black people whom you may know do not consider you one of the bad guys, either, but think you've come pretty far -- if not all the way. The final leg of the journey is to drop the condescension, and to do that it's necessary to do the hard work of becoming conscious of it. Well, not hard -- excruciating. But it's one of the best things you can do in your life.
Why? The world is not a funhouse mirror, yet we persist in seeing our own distorted image wherever we look. For we are looking for our image, and, secretly, we are looking for it to be distorted. We are thinking: self-defense, an increase in our wealth and territory, the subjugation of others to effect both aims. In our time, we have seen that the trouble it's landed us in to think like that might just be worse than the trouble it's spared us. Part of this trouble is how, wearing a pith helmet, we meet the "Other" with an anthropometer in one hand and a butterfly net in the other. Meaning that in some places, we are the figures of fun, the life form that kills to study, that measures irrelevancies while missing the big picture. Condescension is our armor, but it doesn't protect us as much as it belittles others. It's upon all of us to find our way out of it.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 24, 2007 12:05:40 AM
Luke, I think you should try to take on board what Elatia is saying, but also, you might want to consider how you could start engaging with the subject with a bit more rigor than you will find in wikipedia or the writings of Steve Sailer. Brushing up on college-level statistics is not as fun as blogging, but it might give you a better foundation for understanding real research on the subject of population genetics.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 24, 2007 1:20:17 PM
Dear Elatia Harris:
Thank you for your comments. They are well-taken for the most part, especially the early paragraphs. I especially appreciate the point that Africans are not "stupid", anymore than any other people are, in relation to their local environment. Indeed, I am often impressed by how smart ordinary people are everywhere when it comes to the challenges of of their everyday life -- and by how dumb, and naive, smart people can be about ordinary people when their emotions and prejudices get in the way.
But let us consider a concrete problem: whether, from whatever causes, many large countries in Africa, to take the most extreme example, have the human resources needed to administer the institutions of a modern state, and what the consequences would be in case they do not? Let me take the consequences first, assuming that the first question is unanswerable in any definitive way, at least for the present.
The consequences would be anarchy, violence descending into thugery and despotism, and a great deal of corruption if there is much wealth to be had in the country, whether from valuable natural resources (oil, diamonds, etc) or large amounts of foreign aid for development projects, and so on. And, oh yes, let us not forget the biggest consequence of all: an enormous amount of human misery.
Now how should we approach such a country, in terms of helping them, given that they have the obvious symptoms of a lack of human capital, even if we don't know the reason why.
Should we offer them tons of advice and foreign aid, or should we offer them real administrative assistance, in terms of trained personell?
We've offered them the former for the last half century with no discernable improvements in their welfare, and no trends towards democratic institutions or modern industrial development in any of its forms.
On the other hand, we know from the British experience during the period of her Empire, that administrative assistance, even under the guise of colonialism and colonial exploitation (which I do not condone btw) did have positive results: administrative institutions were put into place, transportation networks built, and the basic infrastructure of a modern society created, with a lot of residual benefits to those societies long after the British left.
So my question is: shouldn't we be looking for new ways to supply administrative assistance in these countries, by which I mean actually supplying trained clerks in large enough numbers, to maintain a system of courts, power and communication networks, roads, and other basic government services? I mean in ways that would not be exploitative of the local population, that would not be independent of their political preferences, but would deliver them from the hell hole in which they currently live?
In other words, which is more important: actually helping these people by supplying them with the critical resources that they presently lack, or maintaining our own politically correct opinions in the face of half a century of failure and frustration?
It's not enough to say that education and nutritional assistance will completely solve the problem -- though eventually they might -- when what these countries need is help right now and for the foreseeable future. If they were your children, what would you want? Yes, let's put it that way: if they were your children, what would you want? We have to deal with the human material as it actually exists, not as we might wish it to be.
As for my personal background, that is quite irrelevant. I wish to be judged as an individual, just as I wish everyone else to be judged. You should apologize for those remarks, Elatia Harris. For your own prejudice is showing. (Though, for the record, I was educated at Reed College and Johns Hopkins Univesity, and have lived and travelled all over the world, including New York City and Washington D.C. and come from a family of secular humanists of liberal persuasion, staunch civil rights supporters all, half born north of the Mason-Dixon line -- not that any of this should matter!)
In closing let met recommend a cautious but balanced discussion of the Watson episode in a podcast produced by the Guardian in England. I don't think anyone on this blog will take offense, though they need to listen carefully.
Here is the link: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/10/science_weekly_for_october_22.html
The consequences are
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 24, 2007 2:58:31 PM
Luke, you have left me wordless -- not an easy thing to do. I hope someone helps you to another perspective than the one you have on race as it applies to international development, but it's a bigger job than I'm cut out for.
You have suggested I apologize for guessing that you're a Southerner -- as if that were a put-down or a pigeon-hole. Actually, I -- very much a Southerner -- can't offer you an apology for that guess. If I had speculated that you couldn't run your own country, however, or that your genetics unfitted you for clerical labor even as they inclined you to squirrel foreign aid in a Swiss bank, then -- oh, brother! -- I'd come to you on bended knee hoping somehow to be forgiven.
Well, that's a lot of words from someone who feels wordless. All that remains is for me to wish you the best of luck on your journey to enlightenment.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 24, 2007 4:17:43 PM
Stop being so damn patronizing, Elatia. As if one's own enlightenment were something any of us can be sure of. That kind of moral certitude can come to no good.
Meanwhile, here is something you might chew on if you are brave enough to look: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm
I would be more than happy to hear a reasoned criticism of this particular line of analysis. No handwaving please.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Oct 24, 2007 5:34:53 PM
For those who may be concerned:
Here is another perhaps easier to swallow presentation of the smart fraction hypothesis:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm
To me the argument seems to cogent to ignore. It demands to be either refuted or incorporated. Somebody please show me I am wrong.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 24, 2007 5:46:55 PM
Here are a couple of more links for readers who are seriously interested in grappling with this issue, both by Steve Sailer, a journalist's journalist who lives in L.A.:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/060423_lynn.htm
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/10/ig-nobelist-wat.html?cid=87538384#comment-87538384
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 24, 2007 6:18:37 PM
Luke,
You're saying you derive your compassion and concern for people of color from the man who said this?
Way to face up to the hard truths, Luke!
Posted by: Chris Schoen | Oct 24, 2007 6:38:54 PM
Luke, I think you urgently need to read this article by cosma shalizi:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html
Anyone who wanders into the bleak and monotonous desert of IQ and the nature-vs-nurture dispute eventually gets trapped in the especially arid question of what, if anything, g, the supposed general factor of intelligence, tells us about these matters.
...the case for g rests on a statistical technique, factor analysis, which works solely on correlations between tests. Factor analysis is handy for summarizing data, but can't tell us where the correlations came from; it always says that there is a general factor whenever there only positive correlations. The appearance of g is a trivial reflection of that correlation structure. A clear example, known since 1916, shows that factor analysis can give the appearance of a general factor when there are actually many thousands of completely independent and equally strong causes at work. Heritability doesn't distinguish these alternatives either. Exploratory factor analysis being no good at discovering causal structure, it provides no support for the reality of g.
These purely methodological points don't, themselves, give reason to doubt the reality and importance of g, but do show that a certain line of argument is invalid and some supposed evidence is irrelevant. Since that's about the only case which anyone does advance for g, however, which accords very poorly with other evidence, from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, about the structure of the mind, it is very hard for me to find any reason to believe in the importance of g, and many to reject it. These are all pretty elementary points, and the persistence of the debates, and in particular the fossilized invocation of ancient statistical methods, is really pretty damn depressing.
And also:
I will push extra hard, once again, Clark Glymour's paper on The Bell Curve, which patiently explains why these tools are just not up to the job of causal inference... They do not, of course, become reliable when used by the righteous, and Glymour was issuing such warnings long before Herrnstein and Murray's book appeared to trouble our counsels. The conclusions people reach with such methods may be right and may be wrong, but you basically can't tell which from their reports, because their methods are unreliable."
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 24, 2007 6:53:28 PM
I'm sorry, everything below the URL above should have been in quotes, it is lifted directly from the article.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 24, 2007 7:02:55 PM
To add one thing, I think the point at which people roll their eyes is when you conflate "intelligence" and IQ, Luke. It may not be racist, but it's very insulting.
Posted by: anon | Oct 24, 2007 7:34:36 PM
Andon's point is well-taken. Intelligence tests as we know them are actually a batter of tests that test a variety of different mental abilities: verbal and math aptitudes on the SAT, being the most obvious example. The ability to manipulate objects in space in our minds is another. These things correlate with each other, however, not real strongly (we all know people who scored high on the verbal SAT but not the math and vice versa) but not trivially either. Just look at the profile of the average Ivy League admittee. That correlation coefficient is called g.
Another point, differences in g tell us very little for a single individual, but they tell us a great deal when it comes to large groups: roughly what proportion of them will excell at a certain level, even though it is impossible to predict precisely which individuals will excell at that level. Which is why it is so important to judge each individual as an individual, and not as a member of a group.
As for Cosma Shalizi's objection to the very idea of correlation and correlation co-efficients and their predictive value, I suggest she take it up with the community of professional statisticians. Good luck. We use these methods in our modern societies constantly, and depend on them in all sorts of ways, in testing new drugs and medical treatments for example. In fact, a good elementary knowledge of statistics and probability is probably the single biggest area in which there is a lack in our schools. Human beings aren't designed to reason these ways by nature, it turns out, yet it is very difficult to interpret polls or the latest scientific research findings in any field whatsoever without these tools.
By the way, correlation is not causation, to be sure, but correlation is correlation, and that is all we are talking about when we refer to the predictive value of IQ tests.
The results on the tests correlate with each other and with later outcomes in life to an amazing degree, not for single individuals, but for large numbers of individuals who share the same scores. That is really the crux of the matter here.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 24, 2007 9:02:56 PM
Eric Schoen:
Sailer's point, in context, was simply that the average Japanese IQ is around 105 (an empirical fact) whereas the average African American's is around 85. The difference is more than one standard deviation (which is around 15 points, with slight variations among different groups, men and women most notably, which is what got Larry Summers in trouble).
When two groups of people, irrespective of race, differ by a standard deviation, this has certain highly predictive consequences. For example, males in the lower group have roughly 7 times the chance of being poor or ending up in jail. This is true even if the lower group is all white, or 85 percent white and 15 percent black, or all black, or none black and none white -- in fact it has nothing to do with race.
That was the main point in Murray's book The Bell Curve, which he used to explain why African Americans were over-represented on the welfare rolls and in the prison populations of that time. It wasn't racial discrimination, after all, any more than Larry Summer's point about part of the reason why women are under-represented in the sciences (explained by a variance in their standard deviation on the math section of the SAT's for example, another empirical fact) wasn't an instance of gender discrimination. It was just another empirical fact, which we better learn to live with if we expect to maintain the highest standards of science and engineering in our elite universities, on which a lot of the progress of society depends, or at least the technological part. (When you move to the verbal side of the equation, it is a whole different story: there women rule. Go Hillary!)
I've read a least a dozen critiques of Murray's book, but at the end of the day, when the smoke finally clears, Murray is still standing. His arguments and the facts he uses to support them are just to cogent to dismiss. His opponents, on the other hand, are obviously motivated by a fiercly passionate concern that he must be wrong -- the same PC phenomenon that I have been railing against this whole thread.
I am sorry, but I think the PC'ers are the ones who are wrong here -- real wrong, and with tragic consequences, not for themselves necessarily (they get to keep their jobs in academia and the media and remain in good standing with their friends and colleagues) but for society as a whole, including the very groups they think they are defending -- to say nothing of the brave individuals, like Summers and Watson, and Murray and Sailer, they are damning with vituperative malice.
Let me end by just pointing out that Charles Murray's whole concern in the Bell Curve, if you read the last chapter in his book, as is Steve Sailer's, if you read his essays on the left-hand side of the bell curve, is how to make a society that meets the needs of those who do not belong to the cognitive elite, don't have college educations, and in any other number of ways are not above average in their abilities to reason and process abstract information: half the population, the ones who don't live in Lake Wobegon. They are warning us against the dangers of a heartless meritocracy.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 24, 2007 9:49:44 PM
"As for Cosma Shalizi's objection to the very idea of correlation and correlation co-efficients and their predictive value, I suggest she take it up with the community of professional statisticians. Good luck."
Luke, Cosma is a he and a professor of statistics affiliated with the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at U. Mich. Your mentors Sailer and Murray on the other hand, are about on a par with creation scientists when it comes to scientific credibility.
You also make the point:
" a good elementary knowledge of statistics and probability is probably the single biggest area in which there is a lack in our schools."
Agreed. And the biggest disservice our schools do is to give students the impression that they understand a subject because they have passed a course.
Posted by: Vicki Baker | Oct 24, 2007 10:36:24 PM
Murray and Sailer are on a par with Creationist scientists? If you seriously believe that, what's the point of this whole conversation? You are being willfully dense.
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 25, 2007 7:53:42 AM
Vicki Baker:
Now that I think of it, Creation Science seems a pretty good analogy -- for people like Cosma and a lot of other PC people who want to overturn or fly in the face of a body of scientific evidence (in this case the science and math of statistics) as it has been developed by generations of some of the best scientists in the West. Maybe you would like to pick a bone with Darwanism as well? What are you going to call your new religion?
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 25, 2007 8:23:26 AM
Luke,
For someone who bristles so at being called a racist for espousing textbook racist doctrine, you seem alarmingly content to brand anyone who disagrees with you as a servant to the whims of political correctness, in the absence of any corroboration for this. I think that if you read through a handful of the comments written by Elatia, Vicki, Anon, or myself there you'll find little or no indication that certain opinions or facts must never be spoken.
Nobody has censored (or censured) you for your remarks, let alone hauled you off for "enhanced interrogation," so let's keep the Spanish Inquisition talk to a minimum, shall we? You may be a liberal democrat, as you say, but you seem quite adept at the right wing practice of crying "persecution" when the conversation gets too hot and heavy.
You're free, of course, to believe and promote whatever ideas you wish, but you should expect a fair amount of rigor to attend to statements which imply that blacks or other races are congenitally predisposed to violence and disorder.
Would you want it any other way? Would you want inflammatory remarks to be taken casually? Wouldn't you agree that whether or not there is a racially differential basis for intelligence is a matter of extreme importance? Sometimes we should be thankful to our adversaries for giving us the opportunity to articulate our ideas with the vigor they deserve.
That's not what you have done here. You've taken the uncontested fact that Blacks and Asians score differently on IQ tests, and taken this as support for the Steve Sailer quote that blacks are more prone to loot and pillage their way through a crisis than the Japanese.
To get from point A to point Z-to-the-zillion, you've casually bypassed innumerable logical objections, including:
(This, by the way, is the same problem we encounter with studies of animals in captivity. Why should they care about whatever the researchers are interested in? Why in fact should they cooperate at all with people who have kidnapped and imprisoned them?)
I could go on, but I'll skip ahead to the most egregious presumption in Sailer's comment:
Statistics are predictive only under the understanding that conditions will remain the same. There are so many more parameters besides standarized testing standing between you and your premature conclusion. When you (rightly) distinguish between correlation and causality at the end of your earlier post, you essentially concede that the genetic or otherwise irremediable basis underlying the predictive power of intelligence tests has never been established. Not even a little. What purpose does it serve to perenially remark that some races are inherently less intelligent than others when such a link has never even been demonstrated, despite decades of intense efforts? What is at stake here for you? Why not rest with what the science has established, rather than following Murray and Sailer down the rabbit hole?
Posted by: C. | Oct 25, 2007 12:21:30 PM
That last comment was from me.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 25, 2007 12:22:43 PM
Hooray for C. Schoen and Elatia Harris! Beautifully said.
Posted by: Barkeley | Oct 25, 2007 1:49:16 PM
Thanks, Schoen. Some of your comments are well-taken, others not. In no particular order:
Nobody is persecuting me, and I am not saying (or feeling) that they are. James Watson is the person being persecuted, and I object strenulously for the way he is being treated -- especially sense when he said he was gloomy about the prospects of Africa, and why he was gloomy, it was not to express indifference, let alone glee, but concern, because of the unwarranted assumptions well-meaning Westerners were making in their (so far) profitless attempts to make things better on that continent. Racists are in the business of hating, not being concerned about the welfare, of other races.
As for me, I absolutely hate political correctness with a passion, the same way I would hate nazism, and do hate genuine racism when I encounter it. But hating an idea is not the same as hating a person, let alone a group: what arouses my ire is a certaion set of ideas and attitudes that are widely held in (so-called) liberal circles, and that have, in this case, unjustly defamed one of the greatest, if not the greatest, scientists this country has ever produced.
If I have unfairly imputed motives of politically correctitude to some of the people I have taken issue with above, let me apologize. But please keep in mind that the whole subject of the thread is whether or not James Watson got what he deserved, and whether the substance of what he was saying was worthy of discussion.
If I have falsely attributed pc motivation to Vicki, or Elatia, or you, I sincerely apologize. And if you not only do not have these attitudes, but can see the harm in them in others, then I more than apologize. I would, and will, feel real remorse. So please let me know, any of you, if I have erred in that way.
As for the technical issues involved, I will say no more. There are plenty of other people out there who know more about them than I do, and can explain them more clearly. For a good discussion pro and con here is a link I just came upon, in which the commenters maintain a much more civilized tone than I was able to muster:
http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/10/an-essay-on-rac/comments/page/2/#comments
Posted by: Luke Lea | Oct 25, 2007 10:26:32 PM
Elatia Harris, Vicki Baker, and Chris Schoen:
Thank you for the clarity, cogency, and beauty of your words. What can anyone add? I hope there are millions like you, though reading the blogs, I'm not always sure.
Posted by: David Drake | Oct 26, 2007 3:44:09 AM
Luke,
I'm not a person of color, but I can say for myself that I'd far, far rather be hated than patronized. Hatred at least bestows a certain power and respect on its object. To be patronized--to be treated with reduced expectations--is to be marginalized, removed from the equation. Dehumanized. For social species such as we, there are few worse fates.
Earlier you compared people of African descent to children, which I think may have prompted Elatia's remarks about condescension. The thing about children is, they usually grow up to be adults, and our hopes for them are that they will one day exceed our own accomplishments. A better analogy for the point of view you are espousing would be the comparison to household pets, who we all agree to treat well out of general compassion for our fellow mammals, and because they are often excellent companions, but whom we do not expect to ever be our cognitive equals. (Though it should be said, even here, that in many mammals the ability to engage symbolic forms is greater than we had supposed).
Put this way, perhaps it is easier to see how demoting people of a given race to a restricted cognitive status is just as racist as raw hatred, no matter how much our hearts may bleed as a result. Racism is not restricted to overt hatred; if it were it would be much simpler for our culture to surmount it. (In fact, condescension and pity are often hatred in disguise, even to oneself, when overt hatred is not an acceptable response). The heart of racism is not hate, it is the belief that other people are not as fully human as oneself. Remember that many slaveholders had very strong, positive feelings for their slaves. But these feelings did not (usually) lead them to set their slaves free.
You will object again, perhaps, that you have science on your side, and that I refuse to look at it squarely because I'm uncomfortable with the implications. But, as you have noted, correlation should not be confused with causation. No connection between test results and inherent, congenital cognitive limitation based on race has been established by anyone. Indeed, no one has even devised an experiment that would reliably separate innate from cultural influences on test scores. There is simply no science which says what you characterize it as saying. And if there were, it would be a racist science. That is to say, it would be a scientific demonstration of the genetic inequality of the races.
Now, this doesn't mean that I think you are the devil. We are all just a little bit racist. It's human nature to have ingroups and outgroups, and to project unacceptable aspects of our own psyches onto other people. Everyone does this, even saints and yogis. On top of this, our culture recently spent 400 years pretending that African Americans weren't 100 percent human, topping off at about 67% by law. You don't get over than overnight.
I know from posts you have made elsewhere that you are a man of mature years, and are surely well aware that part of being a grown-up is recognizing that we are not angels, and that our passions and ideals will not always match up nicely. You are obviously well meaning, or you would not take such pains to establish your decency. But well-meaning is not enough. We must all be somewhat ruthless in examining our preconceptions and our deeper concerns and motivations. If we cannot be honest with ourselves, we cannot have meaningful relationships with other people, whatever our ideals.
Posted by: C. Schoen | Oct 26, 2007 11:45:30 AM
Chris,Elatia & Vicki:
Ditto to what David Drake said and three cheers to you three for keeping the conversation on track, civil and wholly relevant.
Posted by: Ruchira | Oct 26, 2007 11:59:42 AM
Post a comment