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Haven't we really put the nature/nurture debate to rest with twin studies, separated twin studies, adoption studies, etc? Bickering over the exact mechanism an

• skybrian 9y ago
  Yes, it's a politically charged subject, but if you want to know what some actual scientists think about such things, it's not a bad place to start. Consider that the issues involved (and the flaws they see in Murray's arguments) are fairly subtle, so this "bickering" as you call it is actually pretty important to understanding what's going on.
  • crusso 9y ago
    The article stated pretty clearly that its concerns were social/political, not scientific. It called Murray's conclusions "dangerous". What place does an accusation like that have in the assessment of his scientific findings? You can't have a credible scientific discussion about a subject like the racial correlations of intelligence without a high degree of detachment and willingness to go wherever the data leads. On top of that, the article was disingenuous. I listened to the podcast a couple of weeks ago and I recall a very interesting statement by Murray to the effect that "the IQ differences between members of each specific race are greater than the IQ differences between the different different races." And yet the Vox article implied that Murray was making sweeping and damning generalizations about the races.
    • skybrian 9y ago
      As you say, it's not a purely scientific article and doesn't limit itself to scientific claims. But talking about the disturbing ways misleading scientific claims get used is on-topic. They do talk about the science since that's essential to making their argument.
    • ralfd 9y ago
      > statement by Murray to the effect that "the IQ differences between members of each specific race are greater than the IQ differences between the different different races." And yet the Vox article implied that Murray was making sweeping and damning generalizations about the races. Because the statement that there are any differences between population groups still leads to sobering/disconcerting conclusions for the top (Phds, C-level executives) and the bottom (poverty/crime) in a meritocratic society. (And if people are marrying only inside their class (or education level) this is self-sorting over time) That you can't conclude that your neighbor in the subway is a genius or dumb as a brick just from her ethnicity (and vice versa) doesn't change these extreme edge cases.
    • tptacek 9y ago
      No, it doesn't. You're mischaracterizing the article. Again, I gingerly suggest that you probably skimmed it, thinking it was standard Vox fare and not what it actually was: an open letter through Vox by subject matter experts. If I'm wrong and you read it carefully, I apologize. I only have your comments to go by. The first 2/3 of the piece is entirely about the science itself. Obviously, even a glance at the piece reveals that it begins with a hierarchy of assertions about the science of genetic bases for intelligence, ordered by their acceptance in the field. Its conclusion includes this graf: > Asserting that the relatively poorer intellectual performance of racial groups is based on their genes is mistaken theoretically and unfounded empirically; and given the consequences of promulgating the policies that follow from such assertions, it is egregiously wrong morally. (emph. mine) And: > Moreover, a reflexive defense of free academic inquiry has prompted some to think it a mark of scientific objectivity to look at cognitive differences in the eye without blinking. To deny the possibility of a biological basis of group differences, they suggest, is to allow “moral panic,” as Harris puts it, to block objective scientific judgment. But passively allowing oneself to be led into unfounded genetic conclusions about race and IQ is hardly a mark of rational tough-mindedness. The fact is, there is no evidence for any such genetic hypothesis — about complex human behavior of any kind. Anyone who speaks as if there were is spouting junk science. (emph. mine) This is hardly a stipulation that the science behind this debate is settled and the issues are political and social, and it's the graf that opens the conclusion of the piece.
      • rakkhi 9y ago
        It is actually quite disappointing that they make these broad conclusions after being quite careful to qualify earlier. Earlier they state: "That is not to say that socially defined race is meaningless or useless. (Modern genomics can do a good job of determining where in Central Europe or Western Africa your ancestors resided.)" "In reality, the racial groups used in the US — white, black, Hispanic, Asian — are such a poor proxy for underlying genetic ancestry" What they don't do is link these statements. That a persons genetic ancestry to the three major groups: African, Caucasian or East Asian is strongly established as they admit. And that difference in IQ test scores linked to this ancestry is based in fact. They use the words "socially defined races" to avoid this but later make a much more broader conclusions of Murrey doing "junk science" There are good counter arguments to each of their bullet points. Specifically this one: "Murray’s assertion that it is hard to raise the IQs of disadvantaged children leaves out the most important data point. Adoption from a poor family into a better-off one is associated with IQ gains of 12 to 18 points." They don't mention that the studies of high SES black vs low as a counterpoint to how this increase is gained. None of the arguments they made falsify Murray's hypothesis. Murrey does not state that environment doesn't matter. He uses evidence from Twin studies and Adoption studies to show that genes matter more. We also know how to reduce intelligence via environment far better than we know how to increase it.
• tptacek 9y ago
  It's not a political article, it's effectively an open letter from three professors in the field, at least two of whom are renowned for studying it. And it addresses your "twin studies, separated twin studies, adoption studies" dismissal, rather directly. I think you should read it again more carefully. I can understand the inclination to dismiss Vox articles. This isn't a typical Vox article, and it clearly isn't an appeal to emotion. Its authors have almost certainly studied these issues far more carefully than any of us.
  • lacker 9y ago
    I read the Vox article pretty carefully and I thought it seemed very misleading. On the key question of, how much does genetics influence intelligence, the Vox article states: Modern DNA science has found hundreds of genetic variants that each have a very, very tiny association with intelligence, but even if you add them all together they predict only a small fraction of someone’s IQ score. That is true, but, it's evading the overall question of "how much does genetics affect intelligence". It's focused only on the question of "how many specific genes have we identified". As far as I can tell, it shouldn't be controversial to say that genetics has a huge effect on intelligence. For example, the NIH states on their website: These studies suggest that genetic factors underlie about 50 percent of the difference in intelligence among individuals. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/intelligence https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/intelligence Sounds like our best scientific knowledge is pretty simple - intelligence seems like it's half genetic. The Vox article is quite misleading because it dances around this simple statistic.
  • redthrowaway 9y ago
    Did you listen to the podcast? My main beef with the Vox piece is how it mischaracterized what Murray and Harris were saying. I'm not competent to judge the science, but I can tell when somebody's lying to me and that's how the Vox piece came across.
  • crusso 9y ago
    It's not a political article You were correct in your other comment that I skimmed the article the first time. It set off my BS detector and I didn't bother to painstakingly scrutinizing it to see if it had some other value. Taking your challenge, I re-read it and now I'm going to go one further. This was a hit-piece article that was designed to go after Murray and satisfy the typical Vox liberal red meat audience. The science that was in the article was incidental and the best they could do given their overall motive of striking at Murray while generating hits from their typical readership. The title of the article is "Charles Murray is once again peddling junk science about race and IQ" I think that someone came up with the title of the article first to capitalize on the Middlebury College controversy and then sought to justify that title with as much science as they could muster. Vox knows that they'll get tons of hits just from the title and that the information in the article won't be judged too harshly by their typical readers. My guess is that after coming up with the title, Vox editors got some scientists in the field who are critics of Murray to write up a justification. Despite the article's title, the scientists admit: "Some well-informed scientists hold views closer to Murray’s than to ours. And there are others who challenge views that we accept about the utility of the general concepts of intelligence and heritability." So which is it? Is it junk science or do some well-informed scientists agree with Murray more than they agree with the authors of this piece while some other well-informed scientists consider the authors of this piece to have flaws in their basic understanding of concepts that they touch on? My guess is that the scientists wanted this disclaimer in there but that the Vox editor would have preferred to not even make that admission. Those two short sentences in the article completely destroy the title and show that this article was politically (or financially, depending upon how you look at it) motivated. And it addresses your "twin studies, separated twin studies, adoption studies" dismissal, rather directly. Well, it agrees with them and even admits: "These “DNA-based” heritability studies don’t tell you much more than the classical twin studies did, but they put to bed many of the lingering suspicions that twin studies were fundamentally flawed in some way." I wrote more but while trimming it up realized that this nonsense political hit piece has already wasted too much of my time. My BS detector was functioning perfectly the first time and I should have trusted it and avoided going back to that link and contributing to Vox's ad revenue. edit: typo