Edit: sorry, I misread a headline about him losing the prize, it read stripped of "honors". Point still stands.
Dr. Collins said he was unaware of any credible research on which Dr. Watson’s “profoundly unfortunate" statement would be based.' [0]
I think this video [1], does a good job of attacking a lot of race science and intelligence, though at 2.5 hours long it may be a bit too thorough.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/science/watson-dna-geneti...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo
edited for formatting
"In the current study, EQCA experts wereasked what percentage of the US Black-White differences in IQ is, in their view, due to environment or genes. In general, EQCA experts gave a 50–50 (50% genes, 50% environment) response with a slight tilt to the environmental position (51% vs. 49%; Table 3). When EQCA experts were classified into discrete categories (genetic, environmental, or 50–50), 40% favored an environmental position, 43% a genetic position, and 17% assumed 50–50." - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2019.101406
> I think this video [1], does a good job of attacking a lot of race science and intelligence
'Attacking' is a good description, as the author of that video went to great lengths to mislead. For example, he says the author of The Bell Curve doesn't understand what 'hereditary' means. But the definition the video author gives for 'hereditary', and the definition given in the book he's reviewing, match almost perfectly. So how did he come to that conclusion? He went out of his way to find a live interview where the book author fumbled his answer, instead of giving the definition from the book he's reviewing, or as you more accurately put it, attacking.
"There was little to no support for separate subgroup norms for different racial, ethnic, or social groups or for people with different nationalities (natives vs. immigrants), with the percentage of experts favoring separate norms below 25%.
There was no clear position among experts regarding environmental and genetic factors in the US Black-White difference in intelligence."
Maybe Dr. Collins rubs shoulders with experts other than those surveyed here, who knows.
Looking at the SD in the survey responses suggests that the position of the researchers polled in this survey wasn't accurately represented by the quote you posted.
The example you use to critique the video I posted is also not very generous, and is a pretty lame rebuttal to what was a very extensive attack on the ideas presented in "The Bell Curve". Do you have any critiques on the more relevant points that the video actually makes? E.g. what is intelligence anyway and how can it be measured, if at all? Or, presuming that IQ is an accurate measure of intelligence, then how to square the supposition the Bell Curve makes about an idiocracy-style drop in IQ points with the Flynn effect?
Another relevant question is what exactly is the scientific support for "race" as anything other than a meaningless label[0]? For example, in the interview of Charles Murray conducted by Sam Harris for his podcast, Murray used Barack Obama as an example of a typical black man, saying that, and I'm paraphrasing, even supposing that there is a difference in IQ between the races, it wouldn't justify denying a job to someone like Barack Obama if he came in applying for one. But, like, why is Obama black and not white? Have you seen a picture of Obama's mom? She's the whitest white lady from Kansas. I was recently working on some cancer project and I had a spreadsheet of the subjects' self-reported race, as well as genetic ancestry results showing the percentage of African ancestry and European ancestry. Some of the respondents who self-reported as African American had 97% European ancestry.
[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-gen...
There's one or two charts in the article, showing how many experts believe the IQ gap is 0% genetic, how many believe it's 10%, and so on, up to 100%. There's a large spike at 0%, then a noisy, mostly equal distribution up to 100%, where it drops back down to near zero - i.e. almost no hereditarian believes environment plays no role. So yes, there's no consensus, but the view that IQ is hereditary is well represented among experts - moreso than the opposite.
The Flynn effect disproves nothing, much like the increasing average height doesn't imply height isn't heritable. As I don't believe IQ is 100% determined by genes, there's any number of explanations that are consistent with heritable intelligence - changes in culture, environment, upbringing, nutrition, air quality, levels of athleticism, etc. For example:
"Similarly, researchers have shown that differences in the ways boys and girls spend their time (e.g., playing with Legos) (Bornstein et al., 1999), toy selection (Goldstein, 1994), and computer videogame experience (Quaiser-Pohl et al., 2006) are responsible for differences in their spatial abilities, also loaded on g."
> The example you use to critique the video I posted is also not very generous
The example was to show the video author was being deliberately misleading, going out of his way to hide data that opposes his conclusion. Meaning everything else in the video is probably similarly cherry-picked.
> what is intelligence anyway and how can it be measured, if at all?
I don't see how minor fuzzyness in the definition of intelligence casts any doubt on clearly defined IQ scores, especially when IQ has been shown to be such a useful and important measure - IQ is very predictive for success at other tasks also considered to require intelligence, such as academic achievement - this is referred to as being g-loaded. Moreover, the more g-loaded a test is, the more heritable performance on it is [2].
> Another relevant question is what exactly is the scientific support for "race" as anything other than a meaningless label[0]?
Race is simply how closely related people are, at a very coarse level, where clusters correspond to races. See this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22052174
[1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/13/stephen-j-ceci/signi...
Watson wasn't crucified, or anything remotely analogous to it, his comments weren't particularly reasonable, and even his own near immediate apology explicitly noted that there was no scientific basis for them. (Though he has since returned to repeating them; the whole thing is weird since at the time he first made them, there was a very recent piece of work which could have been cited as support for the geography/IQ link he suggested, but in between then and the time he went back to issuing them that work had been torn apart for gross methodological errors, including deliberately excluding data to fit the intended conclusion.)
> Stripped of a Nobel prize for suggesting that two and two may equal four.
He wasn't stripped of a Nobel prize, and he absolutely wasn't suggesting two plus two may equal four; he made an at best thinly supported claim about geography and IQ combined with a completely unsubstantiated claim about the premises of development policy toward Africa, and drew a dire conclusion from that combination.
[0] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Wats...
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/09/russian-bill...
This isn’t true. Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians have higher IQ scores than whites. Male and female scores on IQ tests are identical by construction. They have different scores on the component sub tests.
http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstrea...
Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography
Since the publication of “The Bell Curve,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate cur- rent scientific evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as discredited are ac- tually firmly supported. This statement outlines conclusions re- garded as mainstream among researchers on intelligence, in particular, on the nature, ori- gins, and practical consequences of individu- al and group differences in intelligence. Its aim is to promote more reasoned discussion of the vexing phenomenon that the research has revealed in recent decades. The follow- ing conclusions are fully described in the major textbooks, professional journals and encyclopedias in intelligence.
1. https://www-scientificamerican-com/article/race-is-a-social-...
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Principal_compon...
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Individual-level_hum...
[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_PCA_plot_of_Xavan...
[4] http://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01076.x
[5] https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/on-...
Also, The original claim was:
> Every result ever has pointed that all races and genders are..
If you muddy the water wrt race, it invalidates the above claim also.
But it's become an unfortunate pattern that when people bring up the difference in scores, other people (like you) presume that mentioning the correlation data itself is akin to arguing that they are caused by genetic factors, and then attack them for not mentioning the environmental factors.
Really? The strongest rebuttals I ever saw boiled down to "it has not yet been conclusively proven impossible that all races are equally intelligent". Large meta-analyses certainly always find correlation, this one goes a long way towards showing there is causation as well: https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2006.01803.x
No legitimate study has actually shown that such correlations are caused by genetic factors. However, numerous studies have shown that social factors (i.e. not having access to good schools, not having access to decent healthcare, etc, which statistically and historically correspond with racial divisions) play a major role.
No matter what the data is, you can always construct some convoluted theory by which ancestry doesn't play a role, just like you can keep adding spheres to make a geocentric solar system work.
[1] http://www.jbhe.com/latest/news/1-22-09/satracialgapfigure.g...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...
For example, if you are, say, a Christian and some other guy is a Muslim and your offended by that belief, well, that's on you. It shouldn't discredit a scientific theory. Evidence is supposed to do that.
And worse, they're thinking they're not racist because they think they have scientific backing for their beliefs..
If you disagree, show your reasoning, or your credentials.
You know what, who cares if Watson was a flaming racist? He has done more than almost any other person to save the lives of millions of Africans but he makes one opinion about intelligence and hes slagged off and completely discredited?
Cancel culture has been in science a lot longer than people know.
Everyone is aware of Watson's contributions (though there is of course ample evidence that he stole a lot of the work from Rosalind Franklin and gave her no credit for it, then said things like "of course Franklin couldn't envision the structure of DNA because jewish women can't see in 3D - he said this in front of a preeminent female jewish structural biologist too). The discredit isn't against his scientific achievements, it's against his racist-ass opinions. That's why people don't invite him to talks much anymore, because he just goes and says made up racist shit.
How?
On the contrary, when some facts put a positive light on certain groups (for instance the better maximal physical performance) there is magically no taboo about it at all, and no pressure groups asking for "affirmation action".
