'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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Canfield found that all children with IQ above 120 in a group of 5 year olds had a blood lead level below average. No comparison between racial or other groups appears valid without correction for this.
Canfield RL, Henderson CR, Cory-Slechta DA et al. Intellectual Impairment in Children with Blood Lead Concentrations below 10 µg per Deciliter. New Engl J Med 2003;348:1517-26
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“Canfield found that all children with IQ above 120 in a group of 5 year olds had a blood lead level below average. No comparison between racial or other groups appears valid without correction for this.”
Average or a threshold? And what about the distribution in different populations?
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Comment on Steven Rose
it is interesting that Rose now admits that IQ might even measure something:
“Of course, IQ measures something, and correlates broadly with school performance (and income).”This he flatly denied in his original post, where IQ had no relevance at all.
But then he comes up with a very strange denial of the possibility of complex scientific research:
" … as someone who has spent a lifetime of research investigating the neurobiological correlates of learning and memory I am only too well aware … that a multitude of brain processes involving different biochemical mechanisms and different brain regions, are brought into play for even the simplest of learning tasks. There are few one-to-one correlations between brain processes and complex behaviours known to neuroscience, and depending on developmental experiences individuals of the same species/gender/’race’ may use different neural strategies to solve any given problem. Simplistic collapsing of complex social categories, like ‘race’ or gender and attempting to map them onto brain processes or, still worse, onto genes without reference to developmental processes, is no way to do science."
Nobody denies the complexity of the brain processes or of the developmental processes. IQ measures have existed long before brain research has evolved and during the past few years the development has been extremely rapid (one can ask whether Rose has followed these developments). As to race and gender, they are also social categories, but for Rose (who is not a sociologist), it might be more interesting to see whether they are biologically relevant categories (which they obviously are, see Anonymous, 14 March).And he continues to deny the possibility of analyzing heritability:
“(questions) such as “what are the relative contributions of genes and environment to differences in IQ scores between different ‘racial’ groups,” are not scientifically answerable because they misunderstand genetics,”
If I understand people like Rose correctly, they think that if there is a feedback loop, where environment affects genes and vice versa, there is no possibility to speak of relative contributions. The Darwinian evolution is based on the idea of feedback between genes and environment and at any moment it is quite possible to analyze the relative contributions of genes and environment. To deny this in the case of humans, just because they have complex social systems and can learn, is stupid (or, to paraphrase the book title edited by Hilary and Steven Rose: Alas, poor genes, you have no role in society…) -
Should IQ and Race Study be there? No
Mutations are considered the driving force of evolution, where less favorable (or deleterious) mutations are removed from the gene pool or repaired by DNA repair gene which is a part of natural selection, while more favorable (or beneficial) ones tend to accumulate But mutations in human being always result deleterious effect. It is the cause of all genetic, Inherited, congenital diseases including cancer or neoplasia. Mutations result death of cell in humans. Human gene mutations data base(HGMD) show on 14th sept 2000 some 23,800 different mutations in 1084 human genes. Of these 1) Nucleotide substitutions are most common & frequent mutations in the genome. Most of these alterations occur during DNA replication which is an accurate, yet error prone multi step process. Most common substitution is T(thymine) is to C(Cytosine) or for C it is to T, for A it is to G and for G it is to A. CPG dinucleotide for DNA methylation mutate thus to TPG at a frequency that is about 5 times higher than mutation in all other dinucleotides and is seen in hemophilia patients 2) Deletion or Insertion of few nucleotides. Majority of micro nucleotides deletion involves<5 nucleotides. In HGMD deletion of 1 BP occurs for 40% of small deletion while an additional 30% involve 2 0r 3 nucleotides. Micro insertions are rather rarer mutation in human. In HGMD there are 3 times more micro deletion then micro insertion. Most micro insertion lead alteration of the reading frame and are located in regions containing direct or inserted repeats or runs of the same nucleotides.
Does Intelligence has any evolutionary origin? Intelligence of a human child is mostly related with memory which is an acquired and very rarely related with genetic or genes. Intelligence always correlates best with progressive integration of visual, motor function & language development of a man. Social and adaptive aspects of Intelligence cause later as the child grows up and develops self awareness and independence. The standard intelligence test centers as an average IQ 100 with Standard Deviation(SD) of 15. Global delay or delays in all areas of development of gross &fine motor function, language, Social and visual aspect Even at early age in medical terminology we call “Mental retardation” ,here significant subnormal intelligence when found it is more then 2 SD of 100, the mean IQ<70 and are usually related with mental retardation. A higher prevalence of mild mental retardation is found in lower socioeconomic class in many previous studies. Because of this it is proposed that many individuals with mild mental retardation actually suffers from social disadvantages in a society and thus their lower IQ reflects an artifacts then it is either a genetic or hereditary influence. However often use of antipsychotic drug therapy, CNS tranquilizer or anti depressive drugs whose incidence rapidly increasing in modern society also lowers mild to moderate degree IQ. The etiology of severe degree of mental retardation is mainly peri -natal events, infection and very rarely it becomes genetic –like cerebral palsy, autism(Autistic disorder, Asperger disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, pervasive disorder) Fragile X syndrome, down syndrome etc. Chromosomal analysis of severe mental retardation cases in Down syndrome most common we get trisomy of 21. In autism most common is involving long arm of Chromosome 15[ 15q11-12) in 1-4% cases and they have IQ<35. In fragile X syndrome { population effected 1:60,000] however a mutation is detected in FRAXA in males( 1:5530 cases) and FRAXE female of the gene FMRI. They are when found mutation is in CGG repeats>230 repeats. However, rather personality and many behavior disorders are found to have genetic origin. So the authors consider that searching genetic cause or evolutinary link or a mutation for IQ deficiency is a fruitless in society and not at all worthy or cost effective in Indian perspective. Most psychologists will agree with me that behaviors intelligence are both Learned and Genetic Traits arising from mutation are random..
Professor Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya and Miss Upasana Bhattacharya -
Here are the views of only a hoi polloi:
Science require intelligence to understand the Physical World. Intelligence is the ability to understand the complex puzzle of life and its environment – to a greater or lesser degree. If anyone has the ability to understand that puzzle to the level of, say a PhD degree, then he/she would be considered more intelligent than another who can understand it to only the primary, or secondary school level. Geniuses have more than intelligence, they have intuition and innovation to think out of the box (the incomplete puzzle piece), to look for more missing pieces out there in the dark, to fill the right spots in that most fascinating puzzle.
To be born more or less intelligent, is never anybody’s choice, so to be humble about it, is part of being intelligent. All of the Human Race should be encouraged to study more of the Sciences, so that more can contribute to the consolidated effort to find more missing pieces, to fill the blanks of that most illusive puzzle, so the picture can become clearer at a faster rate.
Perhaps by then it would not be too late to realize – that overpopulation, the fight for food, resources, energy, global warming, wars, nuclear conflicts and other stupid human-made problems – were never meant to be a part of that most miraculous puzzle.
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IQ Genetics by Data Mining
If we take seriously the results of more than a century of research on a possible genetic background of general intelligence (IQ), then a different distribution of allele frequencies in different populations and social strata should be expected (see Major genes of general intelligence and the final chapter of Gene frequencies underlying national IQ means).
The present state of knowledge allows a first attempt to search for a major gene locus of IQ by data mining. From the total of 76690 nonsynonymously coding SNPs in the HapMap database, I have used the database SNPlogic to filter out 204 SNPs fitting within the expected ranges of allele frequencies in samples of European (CEU), Chinese (CHB), Japanese (JPT) and Sub-Saharan Yoruba (YRI) populations. Because among Europeans the frequency of the minor allele underlying high IQ in the homozygous state should not exceed 0.30, homozygosity by pure chance (0.30 × 0.30) can be expected in less than 0.10 of cases. Assuming (without IQ testing) that Craig Venter is a proband of high IQ, I used the published “Craig Venter genome”:http://jimwatsonsequence.cshl.edu/cgi-perl/gbrowse/cvsequence/ by looking for homozygosity of the rare allele and reduced in this way the list of candidate SNPs from 204 to 22.
Theoretically, by adding a second high-IQ proband with decoded genome data of similar quality to that of Craig Venter’s, this list could be further reduced by a factor of 0.10 to about 2, including the sought-after major gene locus. However, the next step, to exclude from these 22 at least the SNPs where James Watson is homozygous for the opposite (common) allele, led to no result at all. For 10 candidate SNPs there are no data in the James Watson genome database. All other SNPs are given as heterozygous with differing probabilities. In other words: The published James Watson genome database is completely unreliable.
However, with the help of Steven Pinker I came a step further. The Personal Genome Project and 23andMe are using the 500 K Affymetrix chip for genotyping. From analysing the Pinker data it follows that a high IQ gene cannot be on this chip. By data mining (and without any funding) I am replicating in this way the completely negative results of Plomin et al., who found no replicable correlation between any SNP on the 500 K Affymetrix chip and IQ. Contrary to Plomin, who is of the opinion that there exists no single gene with any substantial contribution to IQ, I drew the conclusion from his research that he always searched with insufficient methods at the wrong places.
At present, after the exclusion of all the SNPs which are on the 500 K Affymetrix chip, there remain the following 11 or 12 SNPs as candidates for a major gene locus of IQ (listed below with the Venter genotype and HapMap population frequencies of this allele):
rs238234 CAMTA2 Venter CC CEU 0.17 CHB 0.50 JPT 0.53 YRI 0.03
rs428785 ADAMTS1 Venter CC CEU 0.22 CHB 0.57 JPT 0.59 YRI 0.03
rs1919128 C2orf16 Venter GG CEU 0.24 CHB 0.56 JPT 0.62 YRI 0.04
rs2584625 probably identical with rs2727288 FTSJ3 Venter GG and/or TT CEU 0.38 CHB 0.40 JPT 0.46 YRI 0.00
rs3095726 ZNF573 Venter TT CEU 0.18 CHB 0.58 JPT 0.72 YRI 0.00
rs6961834 tcag7956 Venter TT CEU 0.37 CHB 0.48 JPT 0.44 YRI 0.06
rs4883918 DIS3 Venter CC CEU 0.19 CHB 0.51 JPT 0.51 YRI 0.03
rs12507582 DDX60L Venter TT CEU 0.31 CHB 0.63 JPT 0.70 YRI 0.03
rs12764004 BMS1 Venter AA CEU 0.20 CHB 0.48 JPT 0.34 YRI 0.03
rs13151700 DDX60L Venter GG CEU 0.32 CHB 0.60 JPT 0.70 YRI 0.05
rs17078347 PCDH24 Venter AA CEU 0.21 CHB 0.39 JPT 0.38 YRI 0.00For some of these 10 genes very little is known. For others, for example CAMTA2 (now on the Illumina 1M chip), the present state of knowledge suggests they may be involved in information processing. The protein encoded by this gene is a member of the calmodulin-binding transcription activator (CAMTA) protein family and may function as a transcription factor that responds to calcium signalling by directly binding to calmodulin.
One should be aware that the Asian samples drawn from Beijing and Tokyo are not socially representative in any way. The Chinese HapMap (CHB) sample comes from a Beijing university resident academic population. Because little or nothing is known on the social representativeness of such population samples in general, thresholds for filtering out candidate SNPs could only be set using assumptions that could be wrong. Other sources of possible error are the incompleteness and unreliability of current databases.
After surviving two attacks of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, I had to retire and no longer have access to laboratory facilities of my own. Therefore, I am calling on colleagues all over the world to reduce this list of 10 candidate high-IQ genes to one or none. If the sought-after gene should actually be among these 10, we should all be surprised. I myself would rather expect a deletion and copy number variation (CNV) should or could underlie major IQ differences and not a single nucleotide polymorphism. However, at present, databases do still not contain population frequencies of CNV.
It should be demonstrated that by applying the powerful logic of genetics and available knowledge it is already possible to put forward reasonable hypotheses on IQ genes simply by data mining. Within a few years we will have open access to more and better databases. Therefore, we should be confident that a true breakthrough in IQ genetics is imminent, even without any funding and despite all political opposition and repression of this type of research. After their retirement, old men have nothing to fear anymore.
Without the help of Ivan Smirnov (SNPlogic), Steven Pinker and Andrew Walsh this data mining would not have been possible.
This posting will be mirrored and updated on my webpage “Molecular genetics of general intelligence”:http://www.v-weiss.de/intellig.html -
Comments in reply to Bhattacharya:
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>Mutations
>are considered the driving force of evolution, where
>less favorable (or deleterious) mutations are
>removed from the gene pool or repaired by DNA
>repair gene which is a part of natural selection, while
>more favorable (or beneficial) ones tend to
>accumulateI agree. You forgot to mention genetic drift as a driver. Do you think that genetic drift does not happen?
> But mutations in human being always
>result deleterious effect.I believe this is patently untrue. What evidence supports your comment? Humans evolved, as did all other animals. It was the few beneficial mutations that ultimately led to humans having superior intellect. I assume from your comment that you have found a different mechanism for the evolution of humans. What is it?
>Does Intelligence has any evolutionary origin?
>Intelligence of a human child is mostly related with
>memory which is an acquired and very rarely relatedI disagree. Memory is not “mostly” responsible for the intelligence found in children. As you should know, Joe Fagan has measured intelligence in children (ages 6 to 12 months) and found that his measurements correlated at r = .59 with adult IQ and correlated at r = .53 with academic achievement. I asked Fagan to explain his procedure of selective attention to novelty to me and he did so at length. I found nothing in his procedure that indicated even an indirect measurement of memory. While long term memory and working memory capacity are factors in intelligence, they are dependent on various biological factors that govern the speed of information intake and processing, and with various other biological factors (pH, glial/neuron ratio, localized brain volumes, etc.).
see this reference:
The prediction, from infancy, of adult IQ and achievement
Intelligence, Volume 35, Issue 3, May-June 2007, Pages 225-231
Joseph F. Fagan, Cynthia R. Holland, Karyn Wheeler> Intelligence always correlates
>best with progressive integration of visual, motor
>function & language development of a man.What has been found about the relationship of motor function to intelligence and who did the work? I assume you have data showing that motor function correlates with g from the lowest to the highest levels of intelligence. Is that correct? I hope you will share your data source with us.
>retardation. A higher prevalence of mild mental
>retardation is found in lower socioeconomic class in
>many previous studies. Because of this it is
>proposed that many individuals with mild mental
>retardation actually suffers from social
>disadvantages in a society and thus their lower IQ
>reflects an artifacts then it is either a genetic or
>hereditary influence.As Jensen has reported (see The g Factor, for example), SES is largely caused by intelligence and not vice versa. Siblings reared together statistically move to SES levels that reflect their differences in intelligence. Your “social” model does not explain this. It also happens that the heritability of g is in the range of .80 to .85 in adults. This means that people who live at a low SES because they are not smart produce children who are less intelligent than the mean. The opposite happens at the high end; smart people live at a high SES and have children who are above the mean in intelligence.
In examining social factors, please remember to exclude children below the age of 12. Up to that age, and possible a couple of additional years, there is a shared environmental factor that vanishes at around age 12. Adults show no correlation of intelligence to social factors. Even adopted children have no correlation with the IQs of their biologically unrelated adoptive siblings.
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To The Editor of Nature:
Steven Rose, in his argument against scientific investigation of Gender differences, addresses my The Inevitability of Patriarchy(1) . His arguments do not withstand logical or empirical analysis.
Every society on which we have any evidence—from American to Jivaro to Minangkabau to Japanese to all of the thousand of other societies—exhibit patriarchy (males dominating hierarchies), male attainment of non-maternal status (however defined by a given society) and male dominance in male-female relationships. Universality does not, of course, prove inevitability. But it does force us to ask why the universality exists and to assess the probability that there will ever be a societal exception.
Contrary to Professor Rose’s invocation of changing roles over time and place, no change has altered social reality to the extent that the impulses—or the institutions in which they are manifested—have come anywhere near to being eliminated. Indeed, of modern societies Norway and Sweden come closest to eliminating gender roles. But: Norway, “443 of 454 municipal chairpersons are men, and “the large disparity in thee distribution of women and men in political bodies continues to apply.”(2) Sweden: “men dominate nearly all of the policy.-making bodies.”(3)
There is no evidence of an “Amazonian" society and a female leader is always an exception surrounded by males. (The vast differences that do exist between gender roles of all these societies may, let us assume for argument’s sake, be explained entirely in environmental terms. But the extensiveness of those differences highlight the fact that the limits and direction of the gender roles I discuss always obtain.)
Whatever the culture of a given society—whatever its economic, religious, or social institutions—its observation of males and females leads all societies to associate the relevant impulses (e.g., male aggression and female nurturance) more strongly with one sex than the other and to conform its culture to the limits and direction set by the physiological differences. Even if we had no direct psycho-physiological evidence (and we have volumes), parsimony would require that we posit sex differences that “precede” and limit social constructions. While economic factors increase, as well as reflect, physiological differences, invoking such factors as primary is akin to explaining the human need to eat in terms of McDonald’s need to make a profit.
Rose argues that boys and girls are raised with different expectation and socialization. This is, of course, true, but casts no doubt on the possibility that such expectation and socialization is often rooted in psycho-physiological difference. We expect girls to grow into mothers, but this hardly indicates an entirely social causation of the woman’s ability to give birth or to women’s maternal tendencies.
Contrary Professor Rose ignores the reality that environmental factors are often not independent variables, but are given their limits and direction by hereditary, neuro-endocrinological factors.
Nearly all sex differences are statistical; there are always individual exceptions. (No one can argue that the fact that some women are taller than some men implies the incorrectness of the expectation that “men are taller” or that this fact is rooted in hereditary physiological difference.)
It is only on the societal level that a social law of large numbers renders the institutions of societies universal. But on a societal level it always does.
Footnote: (1).(Later edition: Why Men Rule; Open Court)
(2) Norwegian Information; June, 1984 and Royal
Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Norway
Information, Feb., 1981
(3) The Swedish Institute,Equality Between Men an Women in Sweden, Feb., 1981
Steven Goldberg
nighttrain@nyc.rr.com
212-734-6725
205 East 78th Street
New York NY 10075 -
R. Knapp said
“Research is generally undertaken to answer a question.
In order for the question to be meaningful, it should have some utility – e.g. designing specific teaching methods for special populations, determining the best medication for a condition, etc.”BUT THIS IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE. Bureaucrats, in their misunderstanding of Science think that one can foresee the directions of research. But history disproves that, both by showing important applications that resulted from Scientific-internal questions, and by the unfounded predictions of eminences that turned out to be wrong. In the first category go computers (Turing was answering a Hilbert problem) and electromagnetic waves (Maxwell saw the contradictions in the equations). In the second, the predictions like those of lord Kelvin that planes would never fly. The bottom line is that Science has an agenda, which is finding truth, irrespective of the apparently useless and unpredictable future. There are many things that came out of that, including bad ones, but the good or bad character depended mostly on what we did with that knowledge.
So, maybe IQ research is not worth pursuing, but that can only be determined within science. And if the public wants the good things that come out of science it has to respect its way of working, even iffor the “knowledgeable” minds of bureaucratsthere seems to be nothing to gain. -
Many thanks to all our contributors for this discussion, which is now closed. Some replies were published in print, as you can see here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7235/index.html#cr
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