Re:Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the huma...
by tw268 on Wednesday February 12, 2014 @02:56PM
(#7226865)
A pretty big racial cognitive gap remains after adjusting for income, at least in America. Poor whites do better on cognitive tests than wealthy African Americans: http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/19/a-sociologist-looks-at-race-di...
African Americans are closer to European IQ levels than Africans, probably for several environmental and genetic reasons (better nutrition and schooling, ~25% European ancestry, etc)
Re:Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the huma...
by ZeroGravitas on Thursday February 13, 2014 @09:03AM
(#7231385)
That's true, that a gap remains when you adjust for a some obvious confounding factors, which makes it all the stranger that people are so determined to use the non-adjusted figure, it's as if the bigger number somehow resonates more with what they want to believe, than the more scientifically valid one. Maybe they're scared a that a smaller gap could be bridged by simply examining a few more variables.
I guess what they intended was "African Americans have low IQ and so do Africans, ergo IQ is race-related". Yet African Americans have higher IQ than Africans, because they live in a more prosperous region, with less disease, more opportunities etc. so what does that tell us about IQ and race, and racial differences within countries? That maybe it's not all about race (and generally be on the lookout for stats that don't correct for factors like age/wealth/education/sex etc. I regularly see the "headline" figure being given uncorrected.)