Should scientists study the presumed relationship between race and IQ?
 

In the first of two opposing commentaries, Steven Rose argues that studies investigating possible links between race, gender and intelligence do no good. In the second, Stephen Ceci and Wendy M. Williams argue that such research is both morally defensible and important for the pursuit of truth.


Darwin 200: Should scientists study race and IQ? NO: Science and society do not benefit
Steven Rose is a neuroscientist and emeritus professor at the Open University, UK.
Email: S.P.R.Rose@open.ac.uk


Are there some areas of potential knowledge that scientists should not seek out? Or, if they do, should they keep the knowledge secret, hidden from the hoi polloi? Certainly Francis Bacon, that great theorist of the birth of modern science, thought so. For with knowledge comes power — potentially dangerous power. In his utopian novel The New Atlantis, scholars determined which of their findings were too dangerous to be shared. Modern governments, obsessed with biosecurity, make similar decisions about what can be researched, how, and in what way disseminated. Private companies bind researchers with non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements. Genetic tests for disorders that have no treatment, such as late-stage Alzheimer's, are often not offered for ethical reasons. As Steven Shapin's book The Scientific Life documents, the idea of free, untrammelled and publicly-disseminated research, if it ever corresponded to reality, looks distinctly unrealistic today.

To meet the canons of scientific enquiry a research project must meet two criteria: first, are the questions that it asks well-founded? Research based on the assumption that burning coal releases phlogiston fails this test. And second, are they answerable with the theoretical and technical tools available? As the eminent immunologist Peter Medawar pointed out, science is the art of the soluble. Further, given that our society already accepts a number of restrictions to the pursuit of knowledge, it is sensible to require that funded research also addresses questions that either contribute to basic scientific understanding, offer new beneficial technological prospects, or aid sound public policy-making. These criteria are, of course, those used by both public and private funding bodies.

So what should we make of the century-old but regularly-recycled call for research aimed at discovering whether there are group differences in intelligence?

These days the 'groups' under consideration are 'race' and 'gender'. But it has not always been so. A hundred and fifty years ago, when Darwin published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, he regarded it as so self-evident that white Anglo-Saxon upper-class males were the most intelligent as not to need evidence. Half a century ago, at least in Britain, class was the more relevant grouping, leading to eugenic concerns that the genetically inferior workers were outbreeding their superiors. The issue of race and intelligence became prominent in the United States in the late 1960s, perhaps in response to the civil-rights movement. Arthur Jensen's How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? (A. R. Jensen Harvard Educ. Rev. 39, 1–123; 1969) argued that the deficit in black IQ was too great to be explained by deprivation and must be genetic. Similarly, the sex/gender question, naturalized through most of western scientific history, was thrust into the public domain as part of a backlash against emergent feminism in the 1970s by publications such as The Inevitability of Patriarchy by Steven Goldberg, which argued that men, by grace of their physiology, were 'naturally' more successful than women at whatever society judged to represent success.

The categories judged relevant to the study of group differences are clearly unstable, dependent on social, cultural and political context. No one, to my knowledge, is arguing for research on group differences in intelligence between north and south Welsh (although there are well-established average genetic differences between people living in the two regions). This calls into question the motivation behind looking for such specific group differences in intelligence, sheds doubt on whether such research is well-founded, and begs whether answers could possibly be put to good use. As we shall see, a more thorough look at the field will prove that it fails all three of my criteria for justifiable science.

It's just ideology masquerading as science.

There is a difficulty in the first instance of measuring 'intelligence'. For around a century, this has been done with the IQ test, originally developed in France as a way of supplementing teachers' assessments of their pupils. In the hands of later psychometricians, the tests became increasingly reified, and seemingly made more scientific by the development of the term 'g' to encapsulate 'crystallized' or 'general intelligence'.

Social and cultural influences have a huge impact on our definitions and measures of race, gender and intelligence.

However, except to a small band of dedicated psychometricians, it seems obvious that to try to capture the many forms of socially expressed intelligent behaviour in a single coefficient — and to rank an entire population in a linear mode, like soldiers on parade lined up by height — excludes most richly intelligent human activities. Social intelligence, emotional intelligence, the intelligent hands of the craftsman or the intelligent intuition of the scientist all elude the 'g' straightjacket.

abundantly more at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457786a.html

I think a study likke that would be too hard to conduct fairly. How would they get a consistant sampling of people from different races that they could give the same tests to? Seems like they could set it up to reflect any result they wanted.
Besides, everyone knows Asians are the smartest! lol

Based on purely anecdotal evidence I would say that is a big problem. I have a number of Puerto Rican employees with school age children and on numerous occasions have heard them talk about not wanting their kids doing certain school activities or taking certain classes because they don't want them to be seen as nerds. :confused: And these aren't inner-city hispanics, they live in the neighborhoods neighboring the suburbs. I can only imagine the social disincentive to succeed, or even work hard, academically in the inner-city.

What is a "race"? Are Indians from southern India the same "race" as Laplanders? Are Melanesians the same "race" as Manchurians? Are Tanzanians the same "race" as Guineans? It's all a load o' crap. people have been interbreeding across racial lines so much that there is NO GENETIC distinctions between races. Instead, we classify primarily by pigmentation. It's silly.

But I think tests of human cognition are important just as epidemiological studies of heritable diseases are important.

I agree that 'race' is such a biologically imprecise notion, that any attempt to measure differences is going to be fraught with obstacles.
On the other hand, I think studies of the inheritability of intelligence independent of race is worth exploring.

Was there not already a book written on this subject? It was panned because people hated the conclusions, but I heard little to refute the data.
IIRC, it was called, The Bell Curve

+1

Any study would be flawed since race is not really definable. And I can think of no way to exclude factors beside race from any experiments, unless you snatched babies when they were born and treated them all the same.

If you sample large enough the averages speak for themselves. And as one poster stated, some folks didn't dig the conclusions. And one thing that most people get confused on is the difference between a statistical "relationship" and a "cause".

Even with race lines blurred, we can look at IQ demographically, just like height for example. Does anyone not agree with the general conclusion Asians are shorter than other races?

IQ is a touchy subject and unfortunately studies can't remove all bias/politics from the equation.

After studying the race vs. intelligence angle, they can reinstate Phrenology and Astrology as sciences and restart the search for the Philosopher's Stone. :rolleyes:

How do you say that... and also post this?

Of course there are genetic distinctions between groups of people- ie races. Groups of people share these differences that are clear. Some groups are susceptible to health issues that others are not purely because of genetics.

I have seen that two, but its not just minorities either. Although I will say that behavor seems more prevelent among certian minority groups.

OTOH I know bum white familes who my grandfather said were drunk bums back when he was growing up, and there kids are still drunk bums. I think its somewhat genetic.

I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Because I post a thing doesn't necessarily imply that I believe the thing to be true. I post lots of things because I believe they are interesting and even provocative.

In the particular case of genetic differences among humans, I am by no means thoroughly informed. The last time I read a study was maybe in this century, I am not certain. However, I clearly remember a lecture I attended by Stephen Gould back in the '90's in which he cited a number of scientific studies of human populations in which the consistent finding was no difference between the variances among all racial groups. This means there is as much variation within a race as there is within the whole population. If all are equally variable, then there is no significant difference.

If all your conclusions are made before you see the evidence, you may believe anything you choose.

When The Bell Curve came out, its authors did the talk show circuit promoting the book. I remember being struck by how obtuse Charles Murray seemed to be, at least by the standards of a supposed intellectual. He seemed genuinely confused as to why his book was controversial. Some of the things he said in defense of the book were just ridiculous. At one point, IIRC, he said that his book didn't say anything racist, they were just trying to make the point that white people were intellectually superior to black people. I remember hearing that and thinking, isn't that the very definition of racism?

Seems to me that there are plenty of other things to study. Why bother with such an uncertain and hurtful subject?

To each his own, I guess.