'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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Besides the race/gender/intelligence issue, two other areas come to mind as examples of “Lysenkoism” or “Untouchable Science”: human-induced global warming and the issue of second-hand smoke.
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This is certainly an interesting debate, and both sides offer some valid reasoning. A few excerpts from Ceci and Williams include:
“Pressure from professional organizations and university administrators can result in boycotting such research, and even in ending scientific careers.”
“Censuring debaters favouring genetic explanations of intelligence differences is not the answer to solving such mysteries.”
“When dissenters’ positions are prevented exposure in high-impact journals and excluded from conferences, the dominant side goes unchallenged, and eventually its rationale is forgotten, forestalling the evolution of crucial ideas.”
These are all excellent general principles for scientists and all people to constantly bear in mind when formulating views and theories.
_“It is difficult to imagine this situation repeating today, when rival views feed the scientific process, and inquiry and debate trump orthodoxy.” _
(referring to the suppression of Mendelian genetics)Is it really that hard to imagine? Ceci and Williams go on to argue that orthodoxy is trumping inquiry and debate in this subject. They proceed to assert that researchers’ careers can be ended simply for conducting research which might raise questions about the orthodox view.
It seems, if one allows himself to pause and honestly reflect on the situation, that this is hardly an isolated incident, but rather a common ailment of our most recent generations. One current example is the politicization of the global warming issue. Many scientists have conducted research that raise some questions whether mankind is the prime culprit for recent warming. These scientists are attacked personally, while the research often remains wholly unrefuted.
The same situation can be observed in the arena of origins science. Intelligent design proponents have raised strong scientific objections to the current orthodox view that all matter must have evolved from nothing, and that only materialistic thoughts may be thought. But rather than provide a well reasoned theory of how spontaneous generation of matter and spontaneous generation of life could have occurred, in violation of the Law of Biogenesis and other laws of science, the guardians of the current orthodox view engage in personal attacks and ensure that research grants are blocked, careers are ended, and reason is suppressed. Creationists receive even baser treatment than do the ID proponents, even if their particular model might support the actual evidence better than prevailing models in a particular arena.
The title of the commentary states:
“The scientific truth must be pursued.”
Perhaps human nature simply prevents this axiom from being applied consistently.
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Dr. Rose says that “The problem is not that knowledge of such group intelligence differences is too dangerous, but rather that there is no valid knowledge to be found in this area at all. It’s just ideology masquerading as science.”
This statement is wrong. In fact, the opposite is true. Arguments to avoid IQ-related information seem to be driven by ideology.
I can think of a lot of reasons for learning if there are group-based differences in IQ. For example, and most importantly, if the answer is “Yes, there are differences,” responsible people will ask “Why is this so?” Do people in the groups with the lower scores typically live in conditions of low nutrition? Do they get adequate healthcare? Do their parents have to work two jobs each just to make ends meet, leaving little time for reading stories or little cash for buying stimulating toys? Is their environment free from toxins or hazardous materials, such as lead in the soil in their backyards? Can these problems even affect future generations who are born grow up in ideal circumstances? Recent studies have found that the answer to this last question may be “yes.”
Dr. Rose is right about what irresponsible people might do with information about racial (or gender, etc.) differences in IQ. But if shying away from everything that can be misused by irresponsible people is good policy, we should have rejected the ability to light fires or make knives out of stones.
So it’s possible that the problem isn’t the information so much as the people who use it improperly. Hiding information
-be it IQ-related or otherwise-won’t change unscrupulous people. -
Inherent in this debate is the assumption that IQ tests actually measure intelligence. I read an article some time ago that suggested that IQ tests are actually tests of modernity – that is, in order to score well on an IQ test the subject must be familiar with the categories, abstract reasoning and logic an IQ test relies on. So the IQ test doesn’t measure intelligence, it measures familiarity with a certain way of thinking.
Using this line of reasoning, widespread public education and increasing levels of educational achievement (i.e. more and more people graduate high school) would explain much of the Flyn effect. It can also explain variation in IQ scores across groups.
I’ll see if I can find a link to the article I read.
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Why are there no good white jazz musicians?
At first there were no white jazz musicians, then there were a few and for each one of them there were hundreds of Afro-Americans who were better. Now there are many extremely good white jazz musicians but no-one equals King Oliver, Louis, Bubber, Little Jazz, Dizzy, Brownie, Lee, Miles etc. An Afro-American woman trombone player made a sensation when Dizzy´s band toured the Middle East 50 years ago and although the band also had a white saxophone player, the question remains: will white jazz musicians ever catch up? Scientists have not yet addressed the question.
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A comment to Peter Kuperis:
no need to search the article! IQ tests do NOT measure modernity but intelligence in all kinds of environments. It is very irritating, when people do not take the trouble to read even the shortest introductions to IQ measurement (e.g. Deary) but think they can say almost anything about what is being measured and how. -
Nature should have picked Ben Richards as the pro-research advocate, rather than Ceci & Williams. I fully agree with his gallant defense of basic research in his post of 19 Feb. 2009 / 2:19: “…the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is the only legitimate goal in science … and the truth is the only arbiter.” Investigations into the genetic aspects of race and intelligence are part of a wider enterprise in basic science: the study of the recent and ongoing evolution of human intelligence. This whole area of basic research will have to be scrapped if we refuse to study allele frequencies of cognition-related genes in human populations.
We already have a profusion of theories that postulate Darwinian evolution as one (but never the only) element in human history. Richard Lynn (2007) uses genetics in an attempt to explain the large-scale patterns of human history: why civilizations developed when and where they did. Others postulate the Darwinian evolution of “capitalist” traits (presumably including intelligence) in pre-industrial England (Clark, 2007, pp. 112-132; Clark & Hamilton, 2006) and elsewhere (Galor & Michalopoulos, 2006), or to explain more broadly the ups and downs of civilization over the last millennia (Meisenberg, 2007). Some theories propose that differences between present-day populations are of ancient origin and rather stable (Lynn, 2006) while others consider them changeable and of recent origin (Clark, 2007; Galor & Michalopoulos, 2006; Meisenberg, 2007). Some expect them to be large because of directional selection (Lynn, 2006), and others expect them to be small because of stabilizing selection (Meisenberg, 2007, pp. 269-279).
Why do these theories exist? Because the traditional social science model, which rejected genetic explanations during the first two decades of the 20th century, has failed. Gene-free theories cannot fully explain why civilizations arose when and where they did, why some advanced and others regressed. They cannot explain why the Industrial Revolution occurred in England rather than Japan, New Guinea or Madagascar, or why Asia and Africa fell behind in the “Great Divergence” that began in the mid-19th century. During the 1950s, experts predicted a great economic boom for the resource-rich, newly independent countries of tropical Africa, and gloom and doom for China, India and other overpopulated Asian countries.
When a scientific paradigm consistently fails to explain and predict even the most fundamental phenomena, we must question its fundamental assumptions. The genetic theories make reasonably specific predictions about differences in allele frequencies between human populations and can therefore be tested by the study of allele frequencies in living and fossil populations. Science is based on the falsification of theories. If you don’t like the genetic theories, why don’t you try extra hard to falsify them by creating and analysing ever more detailed genomic data sets? It is disingenuous if people who claim to disbelieve any or all of these theories indignantly refuse to test them.
True, there is no immediate benefit to society in knowing why the world is the way it is and how it is going to change in the future, but knowledge about global warming has no immediate benefit for society either. Like research in cognitive evolution, global-warming research makes statements about the current state of affairs and predicts future developments, but is unlikely to result in effective policies because few people have an interest in such policies. As long as this is so, its only social benefit is its entertainment value.
News about genetic race differences in intelligence – and of genetic determinants of social success in general – tend to have negative entertainment value. People have a strong desire to believe in a just world, a belief that Melvin Lerner (1980) called “a fundamental delusion”. Common folks believe in divine justice and retribution after death. The increasingly atheist intellectuals of the 20th century gave up the belief in divine justice only to substitute for it the more “scientific” belief that Mother Nature is just, nobody is disadvantaged by his genes, and the undeniable inequities in the world are exclusively man-made. The belief that individual differences in intelligence are unaffected by genes was shot down by a barrage of behavior-genetic studies during the 1980s. Now we have again a big hullabaloo because science – this time genome science – is threatening the very last bastion of the just-world belief: that Mother Nature cannot be blamed for inequities between entire nations and population groups. Oddly, Steven Rose and his comrades-in-arms have not yet noticed that genes are becoming as amenable to human manipulation as environments. If inequities are caused by genes, we can eliminate them – if that’s really what we want.
Clark, Gregory: A Farewell to Alms. A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton 2007.
Clark, Gregory & G. Hamilton: Survival of the richest: the malthusian mechanism in pre-industrial England, 1585-1638. Journal of Economic History 66: 707-736 (2006).
Galor, Oded & S. Michalopoulos: Darwinian evolution of entrepreneurial spirit and the process of development. Retrieved 12 July 2008 from: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Papers/2006/2006-12_paper.pdf
Lerner, Melvin J.: The Belief in a Just World. A Fundamental Delusion. Plenum Press, New York 1980.
Lynn, Richard: Race Differences in Intelligence. An Evolutionary Analysis. Washington Summit, Augusta (GA) 2006.
Meisenberg, Gerhard: In God’s Image. The Natural History of Intelligence and Ethics. Book Guild, Brighton 2007.
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JP Roos I’ll try to find the link since, to my recollection, the article was written by a scholar well versed in IQ testing. It’s easier to flame someone than to examine the idea they are presenting isn’t it?
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JP Roos I can’t find the link. The link I found the article through was on Arts and Letters Daily. It shows that the article was originally published in The American Scholar but I can’t find it in their archives.
Malcolm Gladwell has written in the New Yorker about this theory for what that’s worth.
I did find this link to a summation of the debate about what IQ tests actually measure. Interestingly it mentions that James R. Flynn own theory on IQ tests is that “…IQ tests do not measure intelligence but rather correlate with a weak causal link to intelligence.” (Flynn, 1987). Based on the presence of the effect on nonverbal tests such as the Raven’s Matrices, Flynn believes that the increase is actually an increase in abstract problem solving rather than intelligence. Flynn (1994, 1999) favors environmental explanations for the increase in test scores."
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/flynneffect.shtml
One explanation I have read is that in the 20th century we learned to think in abstract categories which is the way an IQ test expects you to think. But this hasn’t always been so. For example, the “correct” answer to “How are dogs and rabbits alike?” is that they are mammals. A 17th century person might have answered “You use dogs to hunt rabbits”. This answer is based on a functional understanding rather than using the “correct” categories. Is the person who answers this way less intelligent or less “modern”? This is what I meant when I said that there are arguments that IQ tests measure modernity..
It seems that scholars don’t see IQ tests as cut and dried as you do.
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Anonymous
Should we study gender- or race-linked differences in intelligence?
Of course we should. Members of Homo sapiens L. are animals like any other and we’re quite happy to study any aspect of any other animals with no regard for political correctness or for whether they will do any good to science or society.
The only thing putting people off of this work is political correctness and it all being a bit close to home. If we were to study the impact of, say, coat patterning on behaviour in cattle, we wouldn’t think twice about doing it. We might think “Ok that’s a bit ‘Blue Skies’” but we’d still do it. At the end of the day, it’s the same kind of thing.
We need to take H. sapiens off of the pedestal and start treating it like any other species when we’re observing it in the scientific arena (obviously within the same cruelty etc. guidelines, of course!). If we removed the word “race” and replaced it with something else that meant more or less the same thing, would that help? Subspecies? Breed? What term means the same in other Eukarya?
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