Take a Norwegian. Put him in a suntanning booth 5 hours a day. His skin will be dark.
Take an African. Never let him see sunlight in his life. His skin will be light.
Take an XX embryo, inject male growth hormones into the womb at the proper time, it will grow a penis.
Take the children of geniuses, have it raised by a Harlow-style "wire mother," and it'll be as dumb as a brick.
The question isn't "nature vs. nurture." It's how much of each is involved. The question about the black-white test gap is not "Are blacks born dumb?" It's "Have we already pushed everyone (black, white, visual learner, auditory learner, whatever) to the outer limits of their innate capacity?" Since the Flynn effect exists, the answer is probably, "No."
On top of that, intelligence is not a one gene, on-off thing. It's a million different things working together better or worse. That's why intelligence is distributed in a Bell curve. Anytime you have a bunch of different factors influencing things at random, a Bell curve develops, since there are more ways to randomly have a bunch of X, a medium amount of Y, but not enough Z than there are to have a bunch of all three. This means we're talking about a wide variety of genes, not just one pair of deformed genes like sickle cell anemia.
On top of all that, IQ tests are designed to measure something called "g" which is supposed to predict general ability, but the whole thing is a statistical chimera. G should be able to tell you how good you are at any other test, plus or minus a small factor of particular competency in the field, plus or minus an even smaller amount of randomness, but it doesn't actually do that. So, IQ tests basically only measure ability to take IQ tests and are vaguely correlated with other, useful abilities in the same way that height is "correlated" with the ability to drive. (Ever see a six year old who could parallel park?) See http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html for a full breakdown on why "g" isn't actually a useful thing to measure.
Anyhow, there's three different problems with linking IQ and race, and none of them have anything to do with the brain being magic.
Indeed, all of those problems exist. However they can be more or less overcome, especially over time.
- In the first case, as with the Italians immigrating to the US, and their second generation children, per the article.
- Larger sample sizes, and lessening of socioeconomic and cultural differences should help the second case.
- The last could be assisted by better definitions of 'intelligence', or finding another, more specific field to measure.
My point is, however, that despite the improvements that could be made in this field of research, nobody will fund or perform it at least in the US.
Why? Because the brain is magic, and people who discuss physiological differences between races involving brains are racists.
1) What's the benefit of doing this research outside of curiosity? Education research is useful, yes, but studying raw intelligence to try to figure out what parts of it are genetic seems like a waste of time, unless you plan to give babies the "smart gene" in a Sci-Fi scenario.
2) I'm not sure why you're bringing up the Italian example. It shows that Italians were performing really low, but when their culture changed, the problem went away. So, it wasn't genetic. To show something comparable about the IQ gap for black people would be really hard, because Africa is poor as hell, which depresses IQ scores, and Africans living in the First World aren't a part of the majority cultures. So, you'd either have to get all black people to be rich for a generation or have them all look white somehow but keep living in a white culture in order to make a fair comparison. It's not a repeatable experiment.
Suppose you don't deliberately study "raw intelligence" but are interested in autism. There are a bunch of genes related to the manifestations of autism. You have a relatively low-functioning empathy circuit, for example. You develop obsessions with numbers, for example. This could be a malfunctioning orbitofrontal circuit (which is also dysfunctional in OCD patients).
It is not a coincidence that some people with superior memories exhibit very similar symptoms as autists, but retain most of their social ability, and there you go, innate, genetic intelligence, almost as a side effect of an impartially developed disorder.
What's the benefit of researching Viagra outside of pleasure? It was an accidental discover during heart research (IIRC).
You don't even have to be curious about discovering what genes are responsible for "superior" mental functions. That's almost like trying to solve a puzzle with the expectation that you only connect the pieces that you consciously set out to connect.
I've heard this objection before and I often wonder if the people making this argument secretly think that some races really are inferior, but that we mustn't talk about it.
Or, perhaps you are implying that such research might overturn our egalitarian, meritocratic society. Personally I have no fear about that. It's obvious that some people are born superstars in pure physical ability, and yet we all still enjoy sports and not all physical work has been dominated by one race.
And I think you can see that there would be huge benefits in learning what the non-genetic factors of intelligence are.
I've heard this objection before and I often wonder if the people making this argument secretly think that some races really are inferior, but that we mustn't talk about it."
Perhaps you should wonder if they're being sarcastic.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-10/WUiS-GSRD-071...
This isn't to say that heredity plays no part, or that certain groups of people won't be more likely to have certain traits. Maybe you could say that some tribes in West Africa are such-and-such. But we can't expect our eyes to reveal genetic truths.
2) I think you're missing Gladwell's point. It is not that heredity doesn't affect the brain. It's that IQ testing is far too flawed to yield meaningful results, especially when comparing groups of people tested in different places and at different times.
In the story, they mention how properly normalized IQ tests find that Asians have a lower average IQ than whites. They speculate that Asians' success in academics is due to cultural values and individual efforts -- and if you know any super-achiever Asian students, that was in plain sight all along!
You are talking about race as if 'black' or 'white' were a race. This is confusing race with skin color. I have not done this and neither should you.
"2. Gladwell's point ..is that IQ testing is far too flawed to yield meaningful results"
I completely agree with Gladwell's point. My post above is satirising this thread and the discussion therein.
There are so many breeds of dogs, you can hardly find a common thing among them. This doesn't mean dogs don't exist.
Furthermore, dog breeds are nothing like ordinary human populations. We simply don't have human populations that are subjected to the extreme selection pressures that we apply to dogs, which produce breeds with strong natural talents and lots of natural deficiencies that would kill them if they were turned loose in the wild. Chihuahuas versus Great Danes. People vary, and natural selection matters, but it's nothing like dog breeds.
Whatever you mean by that, it is pretty clear that it makes sense to talk about Caucasian race (or terriers) and use that concept, even if the manifested features vary.
Furthermore the name was created on fallacious premises to begin with. From the creator of the "Caucasian race" Johann Friedrich Blumenbach:
Caucasian variety - I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind.
Furthermore, your understanding of race appears to be different than mine. You say that race has bearing on "whether you develop sickle cell anaemia" - this is untrue. A particular mutation in a particular gene has bearing on that, and that mutation is more prevalent (statistically) in groups of people we label with a certain race. But it is in no way casually related with race.
I routinely notice when someone is smarter than me, or has a better memory than me, or who can visualize complex logical structures better than me. It sucks (for me, in this instance), but that's just the way it is.
Race has bearing on:
- skin color
- whether you're likely to get sickle cell anaemia
- the age your children develop teeth
- the age your children walk
- the size of your penis (if you have a Y chromosome)
- the amount of fast twitch fibres in your muscles
It has no bearing whatsoever the brain. Why? Because of magic. While all of the aforementioned effects of race on physiology links are well known and freely discussed, race cannot have any bearing on anything inside the skull, because the brain is magic.
Anybody that suggests otherwise, or suggests investigating or discussing the effects of race on the brain is a racist and we need to moderate them down.
The only people who would discuss such things are racists with an agenda like James Watson, not scientists like the people that understand how the brain has magical properties.
Brain=magic. You don't even need to read the article. Now lets moderate the racists down!