Surprise: popular magazine writer William Saletan’s thinking on race and IQ published in a widely read essay at Slate turns out to be… bullshit. Thanks Stephen Metcalf for picking apart Saletan’s “crappy research” and doing what needed to be done on this matter—again—by stating the obvious. Metcalf demonstrates that one of the key things members of the “blacks have genetically lower IQs” camp consistently maneuver to dismiss is this fact: “Since the late ’60s—i.e., since the heyday of civil rights and the inception of such “compensatory education” programs as Head Start—blacks have made huge gains vis-à-vis whites on a wide range of standardized tests [which highly correlate with IQ].”
If respected “journalists” are going to be given space at mainstream media outlets to hold forth on this (pretty despicable) topic, shouldn’t, at very least, all sources be culled for any racist leanings? And shouldn’t that tidbit about the closing test scores be furnished and conceded at the start of any further discussion?
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Be careful about what you say is “obvious.” It was obvious long ago that the Earth was flat. To a white supremacist it is obvious based on IQ scores that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.
From what I can tell, current scientific findings neither prove nor disprove racial intelligence differences, and I can’t imagine a scientific test that could produce a conclusive results. There are just too many other variables involved. Whether or not there is a racial component to intelligence, what is worrisome to me is why there is a push to try to find the answer when it seems impossible to do so. Can anybody come up with a practicable scientific test that could actually prove racial equality or inequality in intelligence? I doubt it. Given that, why bother with studies that are bound to give flawed results? What’s the motivation?
Hi CV. The “obvious” stated by Metcalf is merely that the science is beyond hooey, which is the only “provable” thing about it. I think we can guess with confidence at the motivation behind the research, too: the same impulses that led nineteenth-century eugenicists to start measuring heads and anthropologists to start putting people on exhibit in zoos. Those guys were “scientists of the human species” who happened to be working in the era of and swimming in the discourses of colonialism. So big surprise that their research supported their racist world-views. Crazy that that same vein of eugenicist research is at the base of the latest rash of “intelligence findings” and accepted at face value apparently by Saletan.
I’m not sure how you define obvious, but it took me quite a while to read the papers before concluding that the science is faulty. While the topic might be distasteful, it should not be dismissed without examination. I leave open the possibility that some greater mind can create a valid study to either prove or disprove a racial component in intelligence, even though I cannot fathom of one. I do agree with you about the motivations, though. (I thought those were obvious enough not for me to mention.)
I think it’s worth noting, though, that while junk science of this sort is quickly exposed in the press for what it is, there is plenty of other junk science from the left that is not only not exposed, but is trumpeted by the press to be a proven fact. The latest one that comes to mind is a less-than-rigorous (to be as kind as I can be) cognitive study about liberals and conservatives by Amodio that astonishingly found its way into Nature. http://www.nature.com/neuro/jo.....n1979.html
The press grossly misinterpreted and sensationalized the results (even according to the author of the study), implying that this proves that liberals are smarter than conservatives. Again, while not obvious that this was junk science, a thorough reading of the study should make you walk away scratching your head in disbelief – even more so that Nature would accept it, which tells a lot about the politics of most academics. Again, I wonder about the purpose of this study. What is to be gained from it? What motivates the author to conduct such a study and why is it being funded? Are those on the left really so insecure that they must have scientific proof that they are superior?
The data cited by Saletan, particularly from the gene expression site is hard to refute. Most people, certainly the media, have a fixed view that there are no differences. However, populations exposed to different environments may develop distinct genetic traits.
Gottfredson provides a detailed overview of the common fallacies used to attack IQ testing:
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottf.....lacies.pdf