'Untouchable' science
Nicola Jones
Tuesday, 03 February 2009 19:01 UTC
Should scientists study race and IQ?
A pair of opposing commentaries published in Nature (vol 457; 12 Feb 2009) tackle the sensitive proposition that gender- or race-linked differences in intelligence ought to be studied.
Steven Rose argues that studies investigating possible links between race, gender and intelligence do no good to science or society. Stephen Ceci and Wendy M. Williams argue that such research is both morally defensible and important for the pursuit of truth.
The commentaries can be read on Nature’s website (password required).
Neither party saw the other’s argument before publication. They have the opportunity to respond to each other and to continue the debate online here, where we also invite contributions from our readers.
Updated 11 February 2009 23:55 UTC
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It is difficult to see the essay by Ceci and Williams as anything other than a whitewash.
Decisions about what kinds of scholarly research questions and methods are considered worthy of attention and funding are fundamental to modern science. Stupid science and evil science – both of which do indeed exist – should not be permitted to coexist casually alongside the normative intellectual activities we admire. It is the role of scientists, as gatekeepers, to distinguish among them, to identify them for non-specialist audiences, and to repudiate the intellectually impoverished elements. Any science that fails to do this, that takes all work to be of equal stature, necessarily calls into question its own standing as a scholarly enterprise.
Consider the names casually brandished by Ceci and Williams as intellectual martyrs. Here is what James Watson wrote in his book, Avoid Boring People: “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of people geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically.” In fact, there are many firm reasons for anticipating it, not the least of which is the fact – familiar to any first-year student of human origins – that human adaptation over the last few tens of thousands of years has been increasingly cultural-historical, rather than biological-genetic, as it tends to be in other species. Not only does Watson try to establish a racial intellectual hierarchy, but he tries to do it in Darwin’s name, which ought to give us pause during this anniversary year.
And in case his intent is still unclear, Watson continues, “Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.” Watson not only has to state his case, but has to dismiss those bleeding heart scholars – the ones who have been studying human diversity rigorously for many decades – as well.
Rushton’s ideas are also well known in scholarly circles, although Ceci and Williams are a bit too coy to share them with readers. His perversion of Darwinism involves seeing Asians as having evolved to be over-intellectualized and under-sexualized, Africans as having evolved to be under-intellectualized and over-sexualized, and Europeans to be a happy medium. Mainstream scholars of human diversity and evolutionary theory thoroughly repudiate Rushton’s ideas, which are only taken seriously by a small nest of ideologues. Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve, casually mentioned by Ceci and Williams, itself included a pre-emptive appendix defending Rushton’s work as “not that of a crackpot”. Readers can judge the truth of that assessment for themselves.
The study of an organic basis of intelligence is not itself threatening. But anyone who thinks that it will explain economic stratification, poverty, and illiteracy rates better than the history of slavery and colonialism will, is obliged to confront and acknowledge the political nature of the science they are engaged in, and must be prepared to defend it on that basis. Every generation has had to face this, because the political stakes are high: Given the fact of inequality, one side of the political spectrum sees it as an expression of a history of injustice and seeks to ameliorate it; the other sees no injustice, merely a low position on a social hierarchy dictated by a low position on an invisible underlying natural or genetic hierarchy.
Racism is political act, and scientific racism is simply the recruitment of the trappings of science in pursuit of its ignoble goals. If scientific racism has a place in science, it debases the entire enterprise. And if the psychometricians stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the scientific racists, then they are clearly not thirsty for some kind of truth, but for some kind of rationalization for their reactionary and antiquated politics.
In sum, Ceci and Williams have made Steven Rose’s case for him.
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Colquhoun, in the same vein as Rose, says that this topic should not be pursued because it is bad science. I find a loophole in the argument. You can say that a particular paper or project is bad science, but it is not the same type of diagnostic procedure that will make you conclude that a whole area of research is bad science. The comparison with “phlogiston theorists” is also logically wrong. You can say that flogiston theory is wrong, but you have to explain their data (Kuhn’s incommensurability notwithstanding). I agree that many of the results on IQ, and particularly in IQ and “race” are bad science, but I have no grounds to think that every paper on that topic will be bad science. IQ is just the shadow of a complex process in a plane given by a particular cultural space, yet it is something. If you find correlations between IQ and some outcomes of the life of people then there might not be a causal link between IQ and cognition or behavior, but it might be better to have something to reflect upon than nothing. The “race” issue I find it harder to justify, but I (who could be called Hispanic, whatever that means) want to remain open to the possibility of a good paper on the subject. I think that evaluation of what is good or bad science can only be done on an individual per individual basis. It is ironic that those who are worried about racism want to use one of its premises
judge people by their groupsto silence science. Chomsky once said when discussing Herrnstein’s theories “A correlation between race and IQ (where this shown to exist) entails no social consequences except in a racist society in which each individual is assigned to a racial category and dealt with not as an individual in his own right, but as a representative of this category.”With respect to the political dangers, I think that they must have political answers. The quotation form Chomsky places the problem in the correct context. For me (remember, I am a lazy Hispanic) it does not matter what genes I have or my “race” has. I am a human being that suffers the same as others, and I deserve well being and the possibility to express my full potential. All human beings should have access to well being and the possibility to develop the abilities the most they can. This is a political principle no amount of science
good or badcan change. If we defend this principles in the political arena, and denounce the attempts of racists to hide behind
science, then there is no need to proclaim beforehand (before seeing the actual data) what issue is good science and what is bad. -
There are only two intellectually defensible reasons why the study of the race-intelligence relationship should be avoided or prohibited. One is the belief that there are large genetic differences between races, but that it is better if people believe that these differences don’t exist. The other is the belief that there are no important genetic race differences in intelligence, but that it is better if people believe in such differences. Steven Rose does not make his basic assumptions explicit. We can only read between the lines that he argues from the first of these two positions. For someone who believes that important genetic race differences don’t exist, and that people are better off knowing this truth, opposition to race-intelligence research makes absolutely no sense.
The relevance of race-intelligence research is obvious: The most troubling feature of the world economy today is not the financial crisis, but the enormous difference in wealth, technological and cultural creativity, technical know-how and social organization between countries. The per-capita GDP is 30 times higher in the USA than in most African countries. We do not know the reasons for the “great divergence” that created these inequalities, and without this knowledge we will never be able to reverse them. Genetics is one hypothesis. It is also the one that is tested most easily, with genome-wide association studies and whole-genome sequencing. Rose’s contention in his reply to Ceci & Williams that “the research questions were ill-posed and not susceptible of scientific answer” betrays a profound ignorance of existing gene technology. By not investigating the race-intelligence link we not only perpetuate ignorance and the prejudice that thrives on ignorance, but also deprive ourselves of the possibility to tackle the existing inequalities, first by a judicious development policy and, should genetic differences indeed be important, by eventually changing the allele frequencies of the offending genes. Steven Rose seems to be thoroughly stuck in the 20th-century assumption that environments are changeable but genes are not. This will no longer be the case in the 21st century!
Rose’s claim that “the categories of intelligence, race and gender are not definable within the framework of natural scientific research” is plain wrong. Tested IQ is so closely related to school performance (correlation 0.6 at the individual level and 0.9 at the country level) and many other important outcomes that any claim that intelligence is unimportant or “doesn’t exist” is ludicrous. As far as gender and race are concerned, I can distinguish a man from a woman and a Nigerian from a Japanese on first sight. Perhaps Steven Rose cannot, but that’s his problem.
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What is the goal or benefit of race-genes-IQ-based research?
Did the Human Genome Project find a genetic basis for race?
If not, why would one expect to find a genetic-racial basis for IQ differences amongst individuals?Think about how sometimes crappy science becomes the prevailing model, and how much more that would matter when you’re talking about the perception of whole groups of people, and it will become evident why these kinds of questions are dangerous!
Does anyone think they’re a good enough scientist to take this question on (to really ask all of the right, unbiased questions and consider all models) when the stakes are so high? Maybe you have that kind of confidence (arrogance) when the stakes aren’t as high to you!
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Thanks to Nature for giving us such a stimulating discussion of studying group differences in intelligence! My comment will deal with three aspects of the discussion: 1. The term “IQ” and the concept of intelligence. 2. The term “race” and the concept of subspecies. 3. Freedom and guidelines for scientific research in this area.
1. Steven Rose wrote that intelligence is not definable, difficult to measure, is a flexible construct, is biased by culture, is not well-founded and that the psychometric approach excludes most richly human activities like social and emotional intelligence. If we take his criticism seriously we should abandon more or less all research in social sciences and the humanities, e. g. research on democracy, war, self-concept, health, human rights, Middle Ages and modernisation. What is democracy? There are so many definitions of war. How we can measure self-concept? Health is a very flexible construct. Human rights are biased by culture. There are different opinions of begin and end of Middle Ages. Research on modernisation excludes rich experiences of people in Ancient Greece and of contemporary peoples in developing countries. Of course, Rose is right, but does this really matter? For all the described problems we have some solutions and they seem to be better or at least not worse compared to those in many other research fields!
Intelligence can be defined: It is the mental ability to solve new cognitive problems by thinking, without relying on pure recall of knowledge or violence etc., to infer (to draw inductive and deductive-logical conclusions, reasoning), to think abstractly (to categorise, to sort out information, to process abstract information in the form of verbal and numerical symbols, in the form of abstract figures and in the form of general rules), and to understand and realise (to recognise and construct structures, relationships, contexts and meaning). Thinking ability includes the ability to change cognitive perspectives, and to planning and use of foresight (Rindermann, 2007a, 2007b).
Intelligence could be measured by psychometric tests, by student assessment tests (PISA, PIRLS, TIMSS), by Piagetian tasks, by observation of behaviour in every-day situations (including the use of language and explanations) and by analysing artefacts or sediments of human work and life (e.g. Luria, 1976/1974). These different approaches correlate highly and the resulting common ground among them is a cognitive competence that includes intelligence (thinking ability), but also the possession of important knowledge, and its intelligent use. Every single indicator of any construct is flawed, but the aggregation of different indicators results in a highly reliable outcome. It is not possible to measure intelligence as a complex cognitive ability without any cultural influence because culture itself – understood as education, writing, mathematics etc. – stimulates cognitive development. (Similarly, it is not possible to measure height excluding the influence of nutrition.) And it is really difficult to eliminate all knowledge aspects. The term IQ should not be used synonymously with the term intelligence or cognitive competence because IQ is only a norm scale and is associated solely to the psychometric approach.
Intelligence at the individual level is important for success in school (and nurtured by school attendance), for success in jobs, in health management, generally in the rule of one’s life (e.g. Gottfredson, 2002). It is also important for civic attitudes and behaviour like tolerance or voting decisions (Deary, Batty & Gale, 2008), for the success of politicians like US presidents (Simonton, 2006) etc. etc. At the macro-social level cognitive competence is more important than economic liberty for the economic growth of nations (Rindermann, 2008a) and it is more important than wealth for the democratic development of countries (Rindermann, 2008b). And intelligence seems to be a sensible measure of development up to indicating failing societies. Do we need more? No, it’s enough to illustrate that despite whatever flexibility the concept conveys, it can be reliably measured and it is predictive of a wide range of important societal outcomes.
2. The term “race” is politically disputed and historically contaminated (slavery, National Socialism, Apartheid). And additionally there is the scientific problem: The term “race” is normally used for breeding domestic animals. For within species groups (systematic phenotypic patterns which are genetically determined and not identical with sex or age differences) being created by natural evolution the term “subspecies” is used. Human subgroups are the result of natural evolution. So I agree with others that the use of another term akin to subspecies would be better (see other papers on this topic in this issue of Nature).
There are subspecies for animals and plants. Of course, the category “subspecies” (or “race”) is not easy to define: What is a relevant phenotypic distinction to distinguish subspecies? This problem is the same for all organisms including humans. And the problem is not restricted to the subspecies concept, but expands to the species concept: Speciation is an ongoing evolutionary process and it is always difficult to put distinct categories on a more or less continuous phenomenon. For humans seem to exist – as for animals – more or less distinct subgroups (Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 2003; Leroi, 2005) and there is no reason why humans in this aspect should be different from animals. Similar to animals, the categories are only more or less objectively distinguishable using differences in phenotype and genotype. A really absolute objective and quantitative measure of “race” or “subspecies” is impossible. One personal remark: The author has kept as a student and young man turtles. Turtles live many years. When I bought them as a young boy, they were called scientifically “Chrysemys scripta elegans”, later when I was student there name was “Pseudemys scripta elegans” and today it is “Trachemys scripta elegans”. Or: One generation ago there “had been” only three species of apes, today four and within additional subspecies. And ten years ago only two elephant species “existed”, today three. Not only does the evolution of species (including humans) continue, but also the evolution of science.
And agreeing with Rose the conventional categories of human “races” are too broad. Especially for the analyses of culture-gene-interplays finer distinctions of subpopulations are needed. The analysis of outcomes of self and external exclusion processes by religion like in the case of the Amish and Hutterites, the Parsees, and the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews can provide important insights into the speed of human evolution (e. g. Cochran, Hardy & Harpending, 2006). Everywhere where natural or sociological borders lead to marriages within groups and where different people – for intelligence: people with varying education and intelligence – have different numbers of children evolution will go on faster.
3. The ethical rules of research are the rules of thinking, of rationality, of reflection and of argumentation. Logic, empiricism and argumentation create the foundations for the development of knowledge. Especially in cases of hot topics they are important (Hunt & Carlson, 2007). Research and the development of knowledge benefit from freedom guided by rational thinking (e.g. Mill, 1859). In the past banning ideas, books and scientists had been sometimes the first step to burn and even extinguish them not only in the figurative sense. And when we discuss this, a friendly tone and even some politeness (Watts, Ide, & Ehlich, 1992) towards other persons and their positions and paradigms are a matter of respect and an indicator of the competence and objectivity of researchers, to deal with questions in an appropriate and reasonable way.
References
Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. & Feldman, M. W. (2003). The application of molecular genetic approaches to the study of human evolution. Nature Genetics Supplement, 33, 266-275.
Cochran, G., Hardy, J. & Harpending, H. (2006). Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence. Journal of Biosocial Science, 38(5), 659-693.
Deary, I. J., Batty, G. D. & Gale, C. R. (2008). Childhood intelligence predicts voter turnout, voting preferences, and political involvement in adulthood: The 1970 British Cohort Study. Intelligence, 36, 548-555.
Gottfredson, L. S. (2002). g: Highly general and highly practical. In R. J. Sternberg & E. L. Grigorenko (Hrsg.), The general intelligence factor: How general is it? (S. 331-380). Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Hunt, E. & Carlson, J. (2007). Considerations relating to the study of group differences in intelligence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(2), 194-213.
Leroi, A. M. (2005). A family tree in every gene. Journal of Genetics, 84, 3-6.
Luria, A. R. (1976/1974). Cognitive development. Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mill, J. St. (1982/1859). On liberty. London: Penguin.
Rindermann, H. (2007a). The g-factor of international cognitive ability comparisons: The homogeneity of results in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ-tests across nations. European Journal of Personality, 21, 667-706.
Rindermann, H. (2007b). The big G-factor of national cognitive ability (author‘s response on open peer commentary). European Journal of Personality, 21, 767-787.
Rindermann, H. (2008a). Relevance of education and intelligence at the national level for the economic welfare of people. Intelligence, 36, 127-142.
Rindermann, H. (2008b). Relevance of education and intelligence for the political development of nations: Democracy, rule of law and political liberty. Intelligence, 36, 306-322.
Simonton, D. K. (2006). Presidential IQ, openness, intellectual brilliance, and leadership: Estimates and correlations for 42 US chief executives. Political Psychology, 27, 511-526.
Watts, R., Ide, S. & Ehlich, K. (Eds.). (1992). Politeness in language. Studies in its history, theory and practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -
Anonymous
Ceci & Williams downplay the horrors of Lysenkoism. They say that Lysenko’s “efforts to extinguish ‘harmful’ scientific ideas ruined opponents’ careers and delayed scientific progress”. This is like saying that the Red Army ruined the career of many a Polish officer in the Katyn forest. In reality, many Soviet geneticists were executed, while the lucky ones were just imprisoned (Nikolai Vavilov, however, died of starvation and torture in prison) or fired, in what was probably the largest and most brutal ideological campaign against science in history.
I wonder why the Eyferth study on IQs of children of black and white GIs with German women is always referenced by anti-hereditarians in debates like this. In contrast, Jensen, Rushton, Murray, Lynn et al. refer to literally thousands of different data sets demonstrating IQ differences between races. You’d think that if the non-heritability of racial IQ differences was such an open and shut case as Ceci & Williams and others claim, they’d able to point to lots of studies that demonstrate this, not just one 48-year-old, widely criticized(*) study. In my understanding, this is because there really aren’t many studies that support their hypothesis.
- For example, the study does not control for the fact that black GIs had to pass an IQ test to serve.)
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I can’t see the objection of the egalitarians. Genetics research and intelligence testing may actually prove their contention. As it is, most people doubt that there is anything like absolute equality in the distribution of intelligence between racial groups; it certainly is not intuitively obvious. And if this equality does exist it should be easily proven. HOWEVER, I have yet to see a single study that provides a basis for the conclusion that there exists this posited intellectual equality. The races have been on divergent evolutionary paths these past 50,000 years. Why it should be a great surprise that differences in intellectual function have arisen is a mystery to me. The existence of such mystery is an argument for further research, not shutting up scientists who wish to pursue this study. If anything, we should hope to find genetic differences conferring IQ advantages, because there is a possibility that gene therapy may help those people born with natural deficiencies in this area, just as other genetic deficiencies may someday be ameliorated with therapy. These people who wish to shut off research in this area remind me of the catholic church of four or five centuries ago – banned books, banned subjects, banned anything that might provide evidence not fitting in with the church’s teachings. The church feared social upheaval also if it was discovered that we live in a heliocentric universe. So what? Should science be set aside because some fear the truths it may discover could be unpleasant? Is that what it has come to?
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The issue here is not whether good quality scientific research on the genetics of intelligence should be funded, conducted and published, vs. silenced forevermore. It is whether the question makes logical sense and can be addressed objectively and scientifically. It seems to me the research cited by Ceci & Williams falls well short of this as they are using dubious subjective measures as proxies for ‘race’ and ‘intelligence’.
As Rose alluded to, the commonly used ‘race’ terms like ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘asian’ have very little to do with genetics. There are hundreds of different genetic groups in Africa, encompassing much of the global genetic diversity of the human population, yet all of these groups would be counted as ‘black’ in oversimplified studies where people taking IQ tests are asked to indicate their ‘race’. Likewise, the concept of ‘asian’ as a race group is grossly oversimplified to the point where you are unlikely to discover any relevant genetic differences that are common to all ‘asian’ groups. If you want to test the hypothesis that genetic differences are correlated with intelligence, you really need to measure genetic differences properly rather than assuming the Western social construct of ‘black’ vs. ‘white’ will be an adequate proxy.
In the same way you need to measure intelligence in as unbiased a way as possible, and the single measure of IQ score falls short of this.
Some in this forum raised the point that we should not expect that different subgroups of the human population, evolving independently, should arrive at exactly the same place in terms of cognitive abilities. This makes no more sense than expecting different populations to end up identical in skin colour, stature, metabolism and other aspects that are easily understood as adaptations to different environments. But given that we have logical reason to hypothesise differences in cognitive abilities, why would we expect to measure these with a single number such as IQ, which suggests there must be a hierarchy of cognitive function? The prediction surely is that one population would adapt to be better at the particular cognitive tasks that are most important for survival in their environment, while populations will adapt by improving in other areas more important for their own survival. If this is the case, then identifying these differences in cognitive ability, and searching for associations with genetic differences, could provide fascinating insights into how our brains work.
But this is worlds away from measuring IQ of different ‘race’ groups and making claims about genetics and intelligence. There may be some value in these simplistic and naive studies, but they do nothing to answer the scientific question of the genetic bases for intelligence and can be easily hijacked by individuals to advance their own prejudices.
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This debate only considers whether or not racial differences in intelligence ought to be studied. But bearing in mind that sub-species variation in behavioural characteristics is relatively common across the animal kingdom, what about asking instead whether we ought to investigate evidence for identical IQs across the races (however race is defined)? Has this research ever even been attempted? If not, then those who disbelieve in the evidence for race differences in intelligence can only qualify as mere agnostics on this question, rather than as scientifically convinced atheists.
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Kathryn Holt (posted 14 Feb 2009, 12:06) wonders why different populations would differ in general intelligence rather than special abilities. Richard Lynn found that on traditional IQ tests, Westerners are better at analytical verbal reasoning while East Asians have greater visuo-spatial ability (Personality & Individual Differences 8: 813-844; Mankind Quarterly 32: 99-121, 1991). Richard Nisbett found pretty much the same, but with tests that were specifically designed to distinguish between cognitive styles (Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9: 467-473, 2005). Lynn explains his observations with genetics, and Nisbett with culture. Following Steven Rose, this pesumably means that Lynn’s science is pseudoscience but Nisbett’s is not.
Jon Marks (posted 12 Feb 2009, 20:24) says: “…human adaptation over the last tens of thousands of years has been increasingly cultural-historical, rather than biological-genetic…” The claim that human adaptation is mainly cultural is precisely the argument that Rushton, Lynn and others use in support of their genetic theories. Cultural adaptation depends on the learning of culturally transmitted knowledge and skills, and the ability to innovate beyond what has been learned from one’s elders. How do we call the ability to learn and innovate? We call it intelligence. Cultural adaptation creates the selective pressures for the evolution of human intelligence. If one environment requires more sophisticated cultural adaptations than another environment then, everything else being equal, people in the more “difficult” environment will evolve higher intelligence faster. Marks’ “cultural adaptation” argument logically entails the evolution of race differences in human intelligence.
Anonymous (posted 14 Feb 2009, 2:19) wonders why aficionados of genetic equality keep citing only one possibly flawed study while their opponents can cite thousands. When I looked at the primary literature, I found it consistent: report after report describing phenotypic differences, often of substantial magnitude, but next to nothing that could be used to support a claim of genetic equality. Many of these data are summarized in R. Lynn: The Global Bell Curve. Washington Summit, 2008. There is indeed reason to worry about genetic race-intelligence research because there is no certainty that no differences will be found. This is precisely why so many knowledgeable people believe that this research needs to be prevented, either by general (perhaps even international) law or by review boards on a case-by-case basis.
The consistency of the race-intelligence literature is encouraging because it shows that so far, the scientific enterprise is basically intact. Results showing no (phenotypic) race differences in intelligence will bring acclaim, while the publication of results that show such differences can be hazardous to the scientist’s career. The consistency of the literature shows that by-and-large the protagonists of political correctness have used merely invective and intimidation, but not the wholesale falsification of primary data. The public can still trust those scientists who actually present data, never mind that Steven Rose and other political activists attack them as “pseudoscientists” and “scientific racists”.
The claim of both Rose and Ceci & Williams that everyone can rest assured that no genetic race differences exist is obviously false because methods for a direct test of this hypothesis have not been available up to now. Most of the literature that is commonly cited as evidence against a race-intelligence link has nothing to do with genes and races, but merely shows that environmental effects are important. For example, the Flynn effect (rise in IQ during the 20th century) merely shows that environments have grown more favorable for the development of intelligence, but not that genes are unimportant or that race differences are environmental. Only with the development of low-cost genotyping and DNA sequencing are we becoming able to investigate the role of genes in the race-intelligence relationship. I am not a psychic, but I am sure that the reason why the editors of Nature reserved four pages of their journal for this debate is precisely that this question could not be investigated in the past, that we are finally becoming able to investigate it productively, and that we have to make up our minds about whether we prefer knowledge or ignorance.
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