INFORMATION

This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are essential to make our site work and others help us to improve by giving us some insight into how the site is being used.

For further information, see our Privacy Policy.

Continuing to use this website is acceptance of these cookies.

We are not accepting any new registrations.

Race and IQ

Any topic related to science can be discussed here.
Post Reply
Message
Author
Bud
Posts: 46
Joined: July 7th, 2007, 4:22 am

Race and IQ

#1 Post by Bud » August 17th, 2007, 6:52 am

The debate over racial differences in IQ represents perhaps the greatest scientific controversy of the past half-century. The facts are not in serious dispute: blacks score, on average, significantly lower than whites in IQ tests in the United States, Britain and beyond.
Not sure where this belongs, so it can go under pseudo-science for now.

In the Mediascan section, Alan H linked an article by Matthew Syed entitled Let’s not cower from the hard truth about race and IQ. I found this article puzzling for a few reasons.

Firstly, this, the very first line of the article:
The debate over racial differences in IQ represents perhaps the greatest scientific controversy of the past half-century.
Way to overstate the importance of your piece. There is no serious scientific standpoint which holds that IQ is naturally related to skin colour.

He then brings up the tired falsehood about liberals/the Left (and note the capitalisation of 'Left' - it makes us seem more threatening if we look like one amorphous entity) being afraid to face up to a given issue. This is a pretty standard debating trick on all sides (everyone loves to be in a minority that 'tells it like it is', right?) and it's usually, if not flat wrong, a gross strawman. I'm confused, though, as to what exactly liberals are accused of 'avoiding'. It certainly isn't the genetic link between IQ and skin colour - because there isn't one.

Is it the results of these IQ tests, then? Syed's strawman about 'cultural relativism' strikes me as pretty odd. Apparently, "It hardly helps the cause of racial equality to argue that, although blacks do worse at IQ tests, they have the kind of intelligence that is useful in preindustrial societies" (now who's ducking the issue, eh?). So, are all black communities over the world have the same average IQs then? Because that is what that statement implies. But this is not the case, no one claims it is the case (white-supremacists maybe aside), so why oversimplify to make a dumb point?

Any fool knows the primary factor in developing IQ is the environment in which a person lives. A child from a 'pre-industrial society' who never gets a real education because of more immediate survival commitments is not likely to have a highly developed IQ. A child from a ghetto community in the West is likely to have a higher-developed IQ, but still not as high as a child from a middle-class community. Oddly enough, Syed makes this point well:
Flynn’s discovery provides a real example of the thought experiment involving the seeds: IQ variation within each generation is largely heritable; IQ variation between generations is exclusively environmental. For the environmental hypothesis to work, we need only show that today’s black Britons face comparable conditions to whites in the mid1950s, something that chimes with common sense and social data. Allied with evidence of how IQ differences disappear when black children are brought up in residential nurseries with white children, the environmental hypothesis becomes convincing.

This will not come as a surprise to geneticists who have long understood that racial categories are social constructs lacking genetically rigorous boundaries. Most genetic variation exists within groups rather than between them and skin colour can be a highly misleading measure of the genetic distance between populations. It would have been astonishing if the diverse peoples who happen to share darker skin all had a genetic IQ inferiority.
But who's disagreeing there? The only problem is that he over-simplifies - in reality, no two children have the same environments - but given we are talking about averages that's ok.

Incidentally, Syed brings up another point about average intelligence, fairly self-evident:
Even if the average black had a naturally lower IQ than the average white this would not mean that all blacks had lower IQs than all whites. There would still be a significant overlap such that if a white person and a black person were chosen at random there would be a fair chance that the black would have a higher IQ. This demonstrates that even in a hypothetical society with genetically based racial differences in IQ it is sensible to treat people as individuals rather than as group members.
Does that argument sound familiar? It wouldn't surprise me if it does, as that's what 'liberals' (and most other people for that matter) have been saying all along. As an ethical dilemma, it hardly compares to capital punishment. See, it's not that people are avoiding the issue. Rather, there is actually very little issue to be had. Improving school performance amongst black kids and kids from poor communities has been on the political agenda for some time now. That's where the crux of the debate lies.

The article is actually a pretty good summary of why skin colour and intelligence happen to be linked when looking at average IQ scores (as are class and IQ). But it's dressed up in so much trite political point-scoring that it's hard to like.

Thomas
Posts: 459
Joined: July 21st, 2007, 3:54 pm

#2 Post by Thomas » August 17th, 2007, 7:19 am

Good post, Bud.

I never understand why people read so much into IQ tests in the first place. It's always seemed to me, as one comment says, that the main they demonstrate is one's ability to do IQ tests and this is, to an extent, trainable.

User avatar
Lifelinking
Posts: 3248
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 11:56 am

#3 Post by Lifelinking » August 17th, 2007, 9:20 pm

"Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice."
William McIlvanney

User avatar
jaywhat
Posts: 15807
Joined: July 5th, 2007, 5:53 pm

#4 Post by jaywhat » August 19th, 2007, 6:04 am

IQ tests are not objective or 'culture free'

Here are a few bits from Wikipedia (yes, I know!)

Alfred Binet did not believe that IQ test scales qualified to measure intelligence. He did not believe that intelligence was a measurable fixed entity. Some scientists dispute psychometrics entirely. In The Mismeasure of Man professor Stephen Jay Gould argued that intelligence tests were based on faulty assumptions and showed their history of being used as the basis for scientific racism.
IQ tests may well be biased when used in different situations. A 2005 study finds some evidence that the WAIS-R is not culture-fair for Mexican Americans. Other recent studies have questioned the culture-fairness of IQ tests when used in South Africa. Standard intelligence tests, such as the Stanford-Binet, are often inappropriate for children with autism; the alternative of using developmental or adaptive skills measures are relatively poor measures of intelligence in autistic children, and have resulted in incorrect claims that a majority of children with autism are mentally retarded.
Current IQ tests do not test the falsifiability of the conclusion of IQ tests against hard science, perpetuating folk psychology myths and superstitions.

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

#5 Post by Maria Mac » August 20th, 2007, 1:17 pm

Thank you for that reassuring post, jaywhat.

I'm not that stupid but I can't do IQ tests. In the past I've gained the impression that a lot of people who score very highly in them and gain membership of Mensa are as thick as bricks.

:shrug:

User avatar
jaywhat
Posts: 15807
Joined: July 5th, 2007, 5:53 pm

#6 Post by jaywhat » August 27th, 2007, 7:00 am

You can get quite thin bricks, Maria.

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

#7 Post by Maria Mac » August 27th, 2007, 10:10 pm

I did the BBC IQ test this evening and scored an impressive 79.

No, that wasn't a typo. It seems I really do have an IQ of 79.

User avatar
Alan C.
Posts: 10356
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 3:35 pm

#8 Post by Alan C. » August 27th, 2007, 10:59 pm

Maria
No, that wasn't a typo. It seems I really do have an IQ of 79.
I can't believe that! You must have made a typo, when you entered your age :nod:
I did the MENSA test sometime in the early 80s and scored (I think) 128.
They said "this puts you in the top 2% of the population" I've still got the letter and certificate, though I didn't join, because I think (if I remember correctly) they wanted something like £80, which would have been a weeks wages back then.
I was useless at school, (mainly because the teachers were useless, and it was a crap school, Moose?) but I am quite good at sequences of numbers, letters, shapes, then there are questions like
4. Which of the following proverbs is closest in meaning to the saying, "Birds of a feather, flock together."?

"One swallow doesn"t make a summer."
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
"A man is known by the company he keeps."
"Fine feathers make fine birds."
"Don"t judge a book by its cover."
etc, which is really all MENSA tests are about. I think they are more about observation than intelligence.
It's too late to start looking now, but I've read in the past, there are severely autistic children, that can do well in intelligence tests.

It's late, and I'm on my third glass of vino, if Ive said anything that offends anybody, I apologize, that wasn't my intention. If non of that makes any sense, please ignore it.
G'night, ZZZZZZ
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.

Zoe
Posts: 564
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 4:08 pm

#9 Post by Zoe » August 28th, 2007, 5:51 pm

Maria wrote:I did the BBC IQ test this evening and scored an impressive 79.

No, that wasn't a typo. It seems I really do have an IQ of 79.
:supershock:

There is no way on this earth that you have an IQ of 79.

What in heaven's name happened?

User avatar
gcb01
Posts: 564
Joined: July 8th, 2007, 1:50 pm

#10 Post by gcb01 » August 28th, 2007, 6:52 pm

more like 179.
Regards

Campbell

Maria Mac
Site Admin
Posts: 9306
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:34 pm

#11 Post by Maria Mac » August 28th, 2007, 7:05 pm

Thank you all for your kind comments. I was telling the truth when I said I can't do IQ tests and the reason lies in the time limit. Give me an indefinite time in which to complete an IQ question and I could probably do it. Give me a few seconds, which is what IQ tests tend to do and quite right too, and the chances are I won't even have grasped the question.

Put the test on TV and everything gets much worse. My mind already feels like a TV set with somebody else operating the remote control and flicking through the channels at the speed of light.

While we were doing the test last night, my husband kept telling me to pay attention but the problem is that I can't pay attention. I missed so many of the questions and many of the ones I didn't miss, I missed the answers when they were given so don't know if I got them right.

That's what having ADHD is like.



:shrug:

Post Reply