Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo

zero_nine

Anyone see this programme on CH4 last night?

This is why journalists need to keep a distance from scientific data.

Doghouse

I thought the presenter did a pretty good job of showing how erroneous and inconsiderate of the wider social and environmental factors the results of 'IQ' testing can be. And in fairness, the scientists did a pretty good job of misrepresenting the data themselves. I remember being totally disgusted after reading Rushton and Jensen in college.

zero_nine

What annoyed me though is that he kept trying to imply that there was no connection between intelligence and IQ, and thats not the case.

bullpost

zero_nine wrote: »

What annoyed me though is that he kept trying to imply that there was no connection between intelligence and IQ, and thats not the case.

I didn't get that impression - more that IQ tests without factoring in environmental and cultural context will never give the full picture and can be misinterpreted.

2Scoops

zero_nine wrote: »

This is why journalists need to keep a distance from scientific data.

I think it would be better if journalists made a sincere attempt to report scientific results accurately rather than just ignore it altogether.

zero_nine

2Scoops wrote: »

I think it would be better if journalists made a sincere attempt to report scientific results accurately rather than just ignore it altogether.

Well I should ammend my statement to biased journalists then.

Valmont

zero_nine wrote: »

What annoyed me though is that he kept trying to imply that there was no connection between intelligence and IQ, and thats not the case.

This is strongest misconception people have about IQ tests. I have argued unsuccessfully against it many times during my career on boards. Some of the responses are just so misinformed that I don't even know where to begin and tangle myself into a knot. My own fault really. It annoys me as psychometrics is an area I might like to work in.

Just read the thread posted about this in the Atheism and Agnosticism forum for an example.

Rayne

To be fair the argument that there isn't a link between IQ and intellegence is one that is put forward by many academics, so a journalist putting forward that point of view is legitimate.

Can you really say that any journalist isn't biased? I don't think so. I would also argue that psychology can never be entirely objective.

Anyway, is the program worth a watch? Saw the ads and it looks interesting.

zero_nine

Ack, it was OK. His arguments were poorly organised and as such I'm having trouble pointing out exactly what I found wrong with it. If I watched it again with a notepad I would have a better shot.
I just remember thinking that the truth was being stretched quite a bit to fit his argument. It was unthinkable to him that black people could be less intelligent, on average, than white people. Anyone that said otherwise was slyly branded as a racist for simply presenting what they observe.

hotspur

It was pretty poor alright. The reality is that it doesn't make a great deal of sense from a genetic perspective to group all Caucasians together, or black people, or East Asians. An East African is different from a West African, a Dutch person is different from a Spaniard (notwithstanding the inherent sillyness of assigning political categories to genetic groupings but you get the point there - Dutch are far taller than Spaniards on average).

Within more sensible genetic groupings it seems intuitive that intelligence should be differentially manifested to some degree just as physicality is. And we don't have to rely on intuition anymore.

We now know and are learning all the time of specific gene alleles which contribute to intelligence both positively and negatively. These alleles are not distributed uniformly among genetic groups. You can use the Hapmap project to track the distribution of gene alleles geographically. The upshot is that the different alleles affecting intelligence are prevalent to varying degrees in different parts of the world among different genetic groups.

So it's clear to me that genetic groups from different parts of the world do have a difference in their genetic disposition for intelligence. How large of an effect this difference makes compared to the multitude of environmental factors is unclear. My intuition is that it probably accounts for quite a small amount of the variance, but there is no good data for it, and unlikely to be any as far as I can tell.

I think it's doing a disservice to science and societal race equality not to have this debate out in the open. At least C4 commissioned such a programme, but fronting it with a journalist who chose to take scientific viewpoints, whatever their validity, as personal attacks on him and his children wasn't very helpful.

epictetus2009

flawed design of experiment drags up these issues...as the bronx schools study showed.

[language construction and meaning in cultural context are missing factors in these types of studies]

Didnt see it but heard about it - is it online anywhere?

hotspur

It can be watched on channel 4's site, heres the link:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/race-and-intelligence-sciences-last-taboo/4od

Valmont

Hotspur, do you have any links or references pertaining to the gene alleles which contribute to intelligence? I would very much like to read up on this subject.