Dr Watson, racist?

[Zachary]

Hi, I don't know if this goes beyond the forum rules, if it does please delete this thread, but I just saw this article where Dr Watson (of DNA fame) claims black people are genetically less intelligent than white people: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7050020.stm

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old said 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 went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

I really respected this man for the pioneering work he did on the human genome, but this is madness! How can such an intelligent scientist believe this?

[mike alexander]

I'm shockleyed! Shockleyed, I tell you!

[3dknight]

What do test prove? In what area did he test? I'm black and I know I'm not stupid and know many other smart black people. He must be racist because I don't think his evidence is enough to prove that he is smarter because he's "white". I blame the parents.

[KaiYeves]

I thought this was about Dr. Watson from Sherlock Holmes, and I was going to say "Wasn't he a bit of a woo-woo, as well?"

[publius]

but this is madness! How can such an intelligent scientist believe this?

First of all, being smart and educated, even doing some great thing in one's field, is no guarantee of being right all the time. Smart people can be wrong, just as dumb people can be right, no matter that on average, stupid people may be stupid, and smart people are generally smart.

And second, and more importantly, there is the good/evil aspect. Smart people can be very evil, very bad. Indeed I'm certain the most evil men in our history were no dummies by a long shot.

The greatest danger is believing that because someone is smart or an authority on something that means we should automatically accept what they say on things.

-Richard

[KaiYeves]

Smart people can be very evil, very bad. Indeed I'm certain the most evil men in our history were no dummies by a long shot.

I'm reminded of an episode of Ducktales where a guy tried very hard to steal the Diamond of Wisdom. His first thought when he grabbed it?
"If I keep stealing, I'm gonna go to jail."
Well, duh!
Wisdom: not as prevalent as you wish it was.

[Neverfly]

As to the OP, if Dr Watson did indeed, manage to study DNA and find Evidence that he believed suggests that african genes show less intelligence, this does not mean he is racist.

Albeit the comment sounds poitically incorrect and racist, if he were to subjectively view evidence of such, it would be statement of fact.


However, I personally find this to be a unscientific. In order to gather good hard evidence of such a claim I think we would need to gather an overwhelmingly large amount of data on a large part of populations, as well as on DNA (which is a lot of data in itself!).
I doubt we even have the technology today to isolate the "intelligence gene" in massive numbers of the population to study such.
I find it highly unlikely that race carries any weight on intelligence.
I cannot say at this time that it carries none.

But subjective, personal and observational evidence through-out my life shows no idication whatsoever that it does.

Native Americans might be assumed to carry less intelligence than Europeans simply because they lived a tribal, not technological lifestyle.
Yet many of the smartest people I ever knew were of native american descent and I often listen to native american music and read teachings of wisdom to calm my mind and gain insight on difficult issues.

I think Dr Watson made assumptions and was possibly swayed by petty urban beliefs- I cannot say that for certain.

[Noclevername]

What "tests" was he referring to in his speech? Uneducated third worlders of any race probably don't do very good on standardized SAT's.

[TheOncomingStorm]

Well a lot of the bias probably was more of product of the time Watson grow up in.

[Neverfly]

What "tests" was he referring to in his speech? Uneducated third worlders of any race probably don't do very good on standardized SAT's.

Good question. I read the article thinking I would find a reference to him having done specific genetic testing ( riiiight...)

Found none. It does indeed, look like a comment motivated by ignorance.

[publius]

The question here, which I won't even mention explicitly is a lit match and gasoline. There was a book, _The Bell Curve_ that came out in 1994 that lit off an inferno.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

The primary theme of that book was IQ, or "cognitive ability" was the biggest predictor of success and social pathology in modern society, more so than socioeconomic class or others. People with higher IQs do better than those with lower. And people with lower IQs are more likely to commit crimes.

In two chapters, they looked at how cognitive ability correlates with various subsets of the general population, and that set off the inferno.

And they didn't argue it was actually genetic, just that it was there in the data, but their critics said the implication was there even if they didn't say it outright. The Wiki article goes over that.

One big question is indeed is if what is being measured as "cognitive ability" is actually an absolute human quality, or just something that reflects what society's current way of thinking and doing things. That is not a trivial question.

Another theme of the book was modern society was becomming stratified according to this cognitive ability, and they argued that was a very bad thing.

For example, one thing I lament is how the "smart class" just doesn't want to get its hands dirty and doesn't learn little things like, how to change the oil in the car, fix a commode, etc, etc. They don't mix with the broader population and get very isolated from the "real world".

Anyway, the above subject is indeed explosive, and it's just not something anyone wants to touch. It can be misused, as well as getting innocent people destroyed for even looking at it.

-Richard

[Noclevername]

People with high IQ's commit white-collar crimes. And get caught less.

[Neverfly]

Hitler had a high IQ.
(Yeah, yeah, I know...Godwin law. But the point is valid...)

[Delvo]

What do test prove? In what area did he test?

Intelligence tests of various kinds have been conducted in many places, on many different kinds of people, under many different kinds of circumstances. Certain tendencies keep showing up in the scores between members of different races. All races have a wide distribution with more people around the average than at either extreme. But they don't have the same average, and the extremes aren't equally common. Essentially, if you make a curve graph showing any given race's distribution of test scores, the entire curve is shifted to the left or right between different races. Most of any graph still overlaps with most of any other graph (meaning there are plenty of people above and below their own races' averages who are also above or below another race's average or above/below most of some other race's graph), but the differences are still substantial.

So he's not talking about any one particular test; he's talking about a vast pattern that turns up in years of testing in large numbers. Generally, black people's averages on various tests in various places run about a standard deviation (the equivalent of 15 IQ points) lower than white people's on the same test. Sometimes it's less, and sometimes it's more, but it's always there. White people's average also often runs a few points lower than eastern Asian people's average. Sometimes that difference doesn't show up at all, and sometimes it's as high as the equivalent 6 IQ points, but 2-4 is more common. It also has the pattern of showing up more strongly in mathematical reasoning than in linguistic ability. (African races other than black and caucasian haven't been tested enough for such comparisons, and if any such data are available on Australian aborigines and their relatives, I haven't seen them.)

This is not a disputed question among psychometricians; it's a fact. The issue is how to explain it. These test score differences are not only ubiquitous but also very stubborn. The problem has been that every single offered explanation has failed. They can be checked for, and they've just not panned out.

For example, you could say it obviously must be because white Americans are rich and black Americans aren't, but the test score difference is still there even if you're only comparing white and black people of equal wealth and income. You could say it's due to educational differences, but the test score differences don't go away when you're comparing students at the same school. You could say it's due to test bias, but there are ways to confirm or refute test bias and its importance to an outcome, and that explanation doesn't work either. You could say it's due to a psychological effect from oppression or history of slavery, but the test score differences still show up in other countries with completely different histories, including countries where black people are the "ruling class". (In fact, it's bigger in some such countries, around a standard deviation and a half.) And some of the attempted explanations in terms of environmental disadvantages in present American society also would have applied to eastern Asians in the USA, so why are the results the opposite? (And why would the differences between people from eastern and western Eurasia also be about the same in all Occidental and Oriental countries, never more than a few points bigger or smaller anywhere?) Referring to African countries in particular, someone here said something about people in such a culture not being trained for written tests like we are in the USA, but the racial test score differences don't just show up between countries; they also show up among the scores of people from the same country who would be equally culturally unprepared.

So whatever the explanation is, it's either biological, or an environmental issue that nobody has yet guessed, or both, because the environmental explanations that have been tried so far just aren't it, no matter how many times they get repeated. And yes, that goes for the ones right here in this thread.

Also, in addition to the fact that it's been known for centuries that the races' skulls aren't shaped quite the same, it's now known from genetics that a few certain alleles for brain development & function have been strongly selected for, spreading throughout populations much too quickly for genetic drift to account for, which means the alleles must have real-world effects that natural selection could act on... and one such allele is found primarily in black people, while the others are found primarily or exclusively in Eurasians. So the existence of at least a few racial differences in brains is also, like the stubbornness of the test scores, not disputable; only the exact nature of those differences is unknown. (The alleles' functions are known in a general sense of "something about how the brain grows and works", but not with much specificity.)

There are also some reasons to doubt a biological explantion for the test scores, though, or at least to doubt that that's the ONLY reason, even if one can't imagine what environmental ones are still left to examine. For example, Latinos in the USA don't do as well as non-Latino whites, even after adjusting to eliminate the possibility of language being the explanation. But racially, American Latinos generally ARE either white or a mix of white and Amerind, the latter of which is just a splinter group from eastern Asia and doesn't have substantially lower scores overall than Latinos do, so a biological explanation can't fit these various facts at the same time. Also, white European Jews score higher than white European gentiles, even though other Jews elsewhere don't.

On Watson's idea that low intelligence is generally predictive of a bad future for Africa's various social problems, though... it doesn't really matter whether he's talking about just the black ones or everyone else in Africa too, or whether the low intelligence in those countries results from one cause or another. Its effect on African countries' ability to fix their problems is the same regardless of the low intelligence's cause and the distribution. The only real question for what he's talking about is how much of an effect a society's overall intelligence distribution has on its well-being and ability to overcome dire challenges.

[Neverfly]

Considering the nature of Delvo's post,
I want to quickly remind what I said in an earlier one.

Stating evidence or simple facts is not something that is biased by judgement.


So anyone who feels compelled to call Delvo a racist for his post, should remember the rational scientist part of their brain instead of the lizard part. Aside that it would be an Ad Hom, I am saying that even if you think it, without posting it- it still may be incorrect.


Delvo, I would refute these tests right off the bat simply based on environment. How a person literally percieves certain problem solving angles from one environment, might be very different from another.

In India, they developed a math that is very different from Arabic mathemtics, yet I hear it is much better.

[Neverfly]

I used to be a racist, but I wrecked the car and became a typist instead.

On a nice day I'll become a walkist but usually not a runnist. I can't afford to lose any weight.

[3dknight]

This reminds me of the question "Why is the universe expanding?" We can try to figure it out all we want but we may never know.

[Delvo]

this is madness! How can such an intelligent scientist believe this?

Here's madness for you: how can someone who wants to be thought of as following science treat the concept as "of course obviously false beyond any doubt without question", without having any scientific basis for the idea that it is false? Even in the absence of evidence for his claim, basic logic has always dictated that it was at least a possibility.

I'm black and I know I'm not stupid and know many other smart black people. He must be racist because I don't think his evidence is enough to prove that he is smarter because he's "white".

He hasn't said anything about you, your acquaintances, or himself, as individuals. The issue here is a population-wide trend. Anecdotes don't disprove statistics any more than statistics disprove anecdotes. To try to use either one to disprove the other is either dishonest or very ignorant of even the most basic idea of what statistics is/are.

In order to gather good hard evidence of such a claim I think we would need to gather an overwhelmingly large amount of data on a large part of populations, as well as on DNA (which is a lot of data in itself!).

The testing-related data pile psychometricians have accumulated is quite vast, and the patterns in what kinds of people get which scores aren't seriously contested by anyone; only how they got that way is argued over. The genetic stuff is more recent and only consists of a few brain-related examples so far (although there are hundreds of other alleles with similar race-differentiated selection patterns too, some with known functions like lactose tolerance and pigment reduction). Watson didn't do the relevant genetic studies himself but is surely aware of them. Some of the articles in which I read about "advantageous brain genes" that are very unevenly distributed between the populations are gone now, but here are a couple that remain:

http://www.hhmi.org/news/lahn4.html
(same article as http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9258970/ )

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/sc...70&oref=slogin

Uneducated third worlders of any race probably don't do very good on standardized SAT's.

And the same thing that makes them bad at SATs, regardless of what the cause is, can also bode ill for the future of their society.

There was a book, _The Bell Curve_ that came out in 1994 that lit off an inferno... And they didn't argue it was actually genetic, just that it was there in the data, but their critics said the implication was there even if they didn't say it outright.

I have that book. They did say that the evidence on intelligence and race appears, to them, to support a mixed explanation involving some biological factor(s) and some environmental factor(s) that hasn't been suggested and tested yet. (And this was before the genetic discoveries I'm talking about.)

However, the reaction to the book has been just about as interesting as the book itself. By far, most of its opponents have just taken personal potshots at the authors and used one logical fallacy and red herring after another and lied about what the book says and such, over and over again, instead of ever producing a single serious, honest, scientific counter to anything the book says. But one book I've found, a collection of articles that were written in response to TBC mostly by scientists, does have some noteworthy stuff in it. Even in this book, there's still a lot of the usual crap in there (starting with Stephen J. Gould's shamefully antiscientific PC denialist tract), and I've only read the first fifth or so of it (due to college interrupting me), but at least one of the articles does present a case against which I know of no defense for the authors of TBC. The book is "The Bell Curve Debate", collected and edited by Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman. I think the article that intrigued me instead of having me rolling my eyes like the rest was "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" by Leon J. Kamin, even though that title itself sounds like another popular antilogical falsehood often used on the losing side of debates (that all statistics are worthless and can be made to present any case you want). The author says at least four things that would take a pretty big bite out of TBC's objectivity and credibility if true, even though they only directly affect a few small parts of the book's overall themes:

1. That the studies which TBC's authors claim concluded that intelligent workers are usually better workers didn't actually conclude what they claim it did;
2. That the studies which TBC's authors claim showed racial differences in performance on a simple buttons-&-lights test didn't actually show such differences;
3. That the authors of TBC placed too much credibility on, and based too much of their book on the work of, J. Philippe Rushton, whose ideas about the races seem racist in an almost bizarrely off-the-wall way; and
4. That one of the data points which TBC's authors used, to say that black people at high IQ levels are overrepresented in high-paying prestigious jobs compared to whites of equally high IQs, came from such a small sample size that the equations would have only predicted 0.76 black people in such jobs, so the 1 person in the actual data is "overrepresented" but it doesn't mean nearly what it's made out to mean.

To know which side to take on the first two, I'd have to get my hands on the original studies in order to tell which side is presenting the originals accurately, but the first one isn't even race-related anyway. For the third, I'd have to reread TBC in order to check for Rushton's actual significance to the book, and I won't be rereading TBC any time soon, so all I can say is that I didn't notice the name coming up much or in an important way the first time through when I wasn't looking for it. On the fourth, I even noticed myself, at the time I first saw it in TBC, that it didn't seem like it could be based on very many individuals, given how few people could possibly have that high IQ level out of a low-scoring minority race within an original sample of the size they were working with on that study. I didn't have the ability to calculate the problem as precisely as the author of the other book did, though. It really does seem like they presented that truth in a deceptive manner, making the insignificant seem significant. But that was about affirmative action and reverse discrimination anyway, not a claim about one race being more or less intelligent than another. So, with #1 not involving race in any way, that means the authors of TBC might have, on racial issues, lied on one thing (#2) which doesn't affect the magnitude of the test score differences but does falsely favor a neurological explanation for them, and used a weirdly racist source (#3) for some of their data (whether that data itself was good or not).

[publius]

I used to be a racist, but I wrecked the car and became a typist instead.

On a nice day I'll become a walkist but usually not a runnist. I can't afford to lose any weight.

Your attempt to diffuse the tension is noted. Again, it's a lit match and gasoline. I see Wiki has a page on the data, and you'll note the red flag warnings at the top. Disputed indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_an...nce_(test_data)

This can indeed be used to promote racism, and do great harm. I mean think of some kid reading that and thinking he doesn't have chance.

However, it can also be used to combat racism. Apparently, Jews (and that's defined more specifically, basically Jews of European stock) have the highest mean IQ scores. 100 is normalized to be the mean for the entire population, and Jewish mean is about 113. They're almost 1 SD above the mean.

There is a lot of antisemitic stuff about a Jewish conspiracy to control the wealth and take over the world, and that was used for the persecution of Jews. The Holocaust was a result of that. And it still persists to this day in the fever swamps. Well, in most quarters. In some, it's still wide open.

Well, looking at that data, you'd expect them to do the best as a group. And indeed, Jews make up only 1/4% of the world's population, but they account for 30% of the Nobel Prize winners, for instance.

It's a very dangerous subject, but it can be used for good as well as evil.


-Richard

[Neverfly]

Your attempt to diffuse the tension is noted.

Yeah!? What are you gonna do about it?

Again, it's a lit match and gasoline. I see Wiki has a page on the data, and you'll note the red flag warnings at the top. Disputed indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_an...ce_(test_data) (corrected url for the quote)

This can indeed be used to promote racism, and do great harm. I mean think of some kid reading that and thinking he doesn't have chance.

However, it can also be used to combat racism. Apparently, Jews (and that's defined more specifically, basically Jews of European stock) have the highest mean IQ scores. 100 is normalized to be the mean for the entire population, and Jewish mean is about 113. They're almost 1 SD above the mean.

There is a lot of antisemitic stuff about a Jewish conspiracy to control the wealth and take over the world, and that was used for the persecution of Jews. The Holocaust was a result of that. And it still persists to this day in the fever swamps. Well, in most quarters. In some, it's still wide open.

Well, looking at that data, you'd expect them to do the best as a group. And indeed, Jews make up only 1/4% of the world's population, but they account for 30% of the Nobel Prize winners, for instance.

It's a very dangerous subject, but it can be used for good as well as evil.


-Richard

You are quite correct. Like many things- it can be used for good or evil.

However, it also makes me wonder a certain point.

Midas' parents supposedly hung blocks in his crib and all manner of things to enhance their sons IQ early on.
Some believe that he became too brilliant and ended up insane.

I wonder if there may be a cultural influence involved?

One that encourages higher intellect. Or another culture which accepts you as you are.

[publius]

Yeah!? What are you gonna do about it?

I think you may have taken that the wrong way, if you really are and not just joking. I wasn't criticizing, just noting that tension does build up.

-Richard

[3dknight]

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old said 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".

I agree that white kids may score better nationally than black kids but did he mention that Asian kids nationally score higher than white kids? Thats a big fat NO. If he wanted to talk about testing he should have talked about the whole story behind this.

[publius]

The editor did botch that URL, dropping the trailing ')', but the system won't let me edit -- just get a never ending hourglass. I'll post the correct one here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_an...ce_(test_data)

-Richard

[Neverfly]

I think you may have taken that the wrong way, if you really are and not just joking. I wasn't criticizing, just noting that tension does build up.

-Richard

It was a play on tension.
lol
C'mon keep up with me here...

[publius]

It was a play on tension.
lol
C'mon keep up with me here...

That's what I was hoping. But is sort of stark. Best temper that with to make sure. Online communciation is notorious for this, lacking the all important body language and facial expressions, and several times I've made people spitting mad who took something very different from what I intended. I just wanted to be sure.


-Richard

[Jens]

Actually, I think a key here is how he used it, i.e. to say that there is no point in providing assistance to Africa. Whether or not there are differences between groups, I don't think that anybody has ever demonstrated a causal relationship between IQ and development.

In Europe, Spain was once the dominant power but then was superceded by England and then Germany became powerful, etc. So would this mean that at one time, Spaniards had a higher IQ but then their IQs mysteriously dropped? Or in Asia, China was long way ahead of Japan, but then Japan surpassed it in the early 20th century but now is probably going to get beaten again. There are just too many factors involved in development, like natural endowments, geographical location, cultural traits, etc. So on that score, at least, I think that Watson was being quite unscientific.

Actually, the whole idea that you need a high IQ to develop seems pretty suspect to me.

[Neverfly]

That's what I was hoping. But is sort of stark. Best temper that with to make sure. Online communciation is notorious for this, lacking the all important body language and facial expressions, and several times I've made people spitting mad who took something very different from what I intended. I just wanted to be sure.


-Richard

This is true, it was obvious to me that there was no way I could have been mad about that but uhhh...

yeah.
Tempering it with a would really have killed the humor for me.
Well, it got killed anyway. Oh well...

Originally Posted By Jens
Actually, I think a key here is how he used it, i.e. to say that there is no point in providing assistance to Africa. Whether or not there are differences between groups, I don't think that anybody has ever demonstrated a causal relationship between IQ and development.
(snip)
... So on that score, at least, I think that Watson was being quite unscientific.

Actually, the whole idea that you need a high IQ to develop seems pretty suspect to me.

Very suspect indeed. Otherwise development wouldn't have occured to begin with.

[Neverfly]

Come to think of it, back when my IQ was lower..
I developed a lot of things.

Right now my IQ has risen because I've been on BAUT a LOT lately...

But I'm predicting a sharp decline again after I watch the news later.

[publius]

There's also something about "collective IQ". I was reading something about this from somewhere, but I can't remember. For example, you can take a bunch of smart people and put them together in some collective body and the group is dumb as ditchwater. Example is a bureaucracy.

The argument was it takes just the right combination of competition and cooperation to make the group smart. The optimum balance can make the whole greater than the parts. Get them out of balance, and the group gets dumb collectively.

-Richard

[astromark]

...yes from an expert on almost nothing at all...

Best response so far to post number seven. My thoughts also.

If I may, Testing people from very different cultural settings is fraught with preconceived prejudices. Whom is more intelligent. Well obviously only tall people with blond hear... No. Utter nonsense. As history has well prov en. We all know its the short red heads....
I am foolish enough to sagest that humanity as a whole is getting brighter regardless of cultural and ethnicity differences. Education is the winner every time. Please note that remark is mine and is based on a drop of wishful thinking as much as fact,. I have a faith in humanity that transcends race...