4 ms·

Racial Pseudoscience on the Faculty

11 points by PKop 4y ago

PKop 4y ago
archive link https://archive.ph/ZxVYk https://archive.ph/ZxVYk
tiahura 4y ago
"arguing that intelligence is inherited is itself controversial..." Haven't numerous twin studies confirmed that it is about 70% inherited?
- akomtu 4y ago
  I'd add that in materialism, intelligence is a product of activity in neurons, and thus it is 100% about DNA; however in spiritualism, where mind is a part of soul, intelligence is also effectively "inherited" because you carry your mind with you and the body it gets attached to is determined by the degree of development of your mind.
  - Pulcinella 4y ago
    Learning causes material changes in the brain and thus it is not 100% about DNA.
    - akomtu 4y ago
      If your parents are 5' tall, can you grow to 6' with proper nutrinion? We have all this data, and it would be trivial to find out whether height is about inheritance or environment, but I'd be stunned if it's the latter.
      - Pulcinella 4y ago
        What is your definition of materialism? Do you not consider the physical environment, nutrition consisting of literal, physical atoms to not be part of the material conditions that affect the life and development of an organism?
        cafard 4y ago
        Quite a few immigrants from the poorer parts of the world have American-born children who are noticeably taller. It may not be 6' v. 5', but the effect is noticeable.
- random314 4y ago
  No, they haven't. Note that all IQ studies are correlational, not causal. You need separated twins to measure causal effects, and there are not enough samples of separated twins. What x% inherited means is that if you plug in parents IQ in a linear regression model predicting child's IQ, the variance error is reduced by X%. This x% correlates with both nature and nurture, i.e. it is not purely genetic. The way that race based intelligence modeling works is by plugging in race as a covariate in the linear regression along with parental IQ and measuring the reduction in variance error. Anyone with any background in statistics knows that there are huge errors in this kind of modeling because of confounding variables. For eg, if we plug in poverty as a covariate then we can expect poverty covariate to reduce the variance error even more. However it will also reduce the assigned x% variance reduction to other covariate, because poverty is correlated both with parental IQ and race. Depending on your agenda, you can stuff in enormous poverty covariates to claim that IQ is primarily affected by poverty or the zip code you are born in OR going the other way, that your race determines your IQ. The fundamental problem is that these are correlational models, not causal. Edit: about twin studies. Heritability of IQ is accepted, though proper causal models haven't been built because there are never going to be enough separated twins. The wikipedia claim about 70% heritability of IQ in twin studies is not actually supported by the cited research. I have directly linked the wikipedia cited research article, which is actually sceptical of correlational studies[1]. " Re- search designs that do not involve total experimental control by the investigator (organisms being bred for specific experimental reasons—inbred strains, partic- ipants being fully randomized to treatments, etc.) are always problematic in that alternative explanations of a finding are invariably possible. This is certainly the case with human twin and adoption studies." [1] http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-environmental-influences-on-human-psychological-differences.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-e...
prottog 4y ago
"Master's student in political science starts witch hunt (for the lack of a better term) on a subject he is not an expert on and eventually gets professor fired for making university look bad" seems to be a good summary of this story. There's remarkably little on what exactly makes the professor's studies pseudoscientific.
- random314 4y ago
  Except that the business professor was using statistically unsound correlational methods to publicize false claims of race causing changes in IQ. Read this well cited paper for methodology problems on IQ studies. " Re- search designs that do not involve total experimental control by the investigator (organisms being bred for specific experimental reasons—inbred strains, partic- ipants being fully randomized to treatments, etc.) are always problematic in that alternative explanations of a finding are invariably possible. This is certainly the case with human twin and adoption studies." [1] http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-environmental-influences-on-human-psychological-differences.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-e...

11 points by PKop 4y ago

PKop 4y ago

archive link https://archive.ph/ZxVYk https://archive.ph/ZxVYk

"arguing that intelligence is inherited is itself controversial..." Haven't numerous twin studies confirmed that it is about 70% inherited?

akomtu 4y ago
I'd add that in materialism, intelligence is a product of activity in neurons, and thus it is 100% about DNA; however in spiritualism, where mind is a part of soul, intelligence is also effectively "inherited" because you carry your mind with you and the body it gets attached to is determined by the degree of development of your mind.
- Pulcinella 4y ago
  Learning causes material changes in the brain and thus it is not 100% about DNA.
  - akomtu 4y ago
    If your parents are 5' tall, can you grow to 6' with proper nutrinion? We have all this data, and it would be trivial to find out whether height is about inheritance or environment, but I'd be stunned if it's the latter.
    - Pulcinella 4y ago
      What is your definition of materialism? Do you not consider the physical environment, nutrition consisting of literal, physical atoms to not be part of the material conditions that affect the life and development of an organism?
      - cafard 4y ago
        Quite a few immigrants from the poorer parts of the world have American-born children who are noticeably taller. It may not be 6' v. 5', but the effect is noticeable.
random314 4y ago
No, they haven't. Note that all IQ studies are correlational, not causal. You need separated twins to measure causal effects, and there are not enough samples of separated twins. What x% inherited means is that if you plug in parents IQ in a linear regression model predicting child's IQ, the variance error is reduced by X%. This x% correlates with both nature and nurture, i.e. it is not purely genetic. The way that race based intelligence modeling works is by plugging in race as a covariate in the linear regression along with parental IQ and measuring the reduction in variance error. Anyone with any background in statistics knows that there are huge errors in this kind of modeling because of confounding variables. For eg, if we plug in poverty as a covariate then we can expect poverty covariate to reduce the variance error even more. However it will also reduce the assigned x% variance reduction to other covariate, because poverty is correlated both with parental IQ and race. Depending on your agenda, you can stuff in enormous poverty covariates to claim that IQ is primarily affected by poverty or the zip code you are born in OR going the other way, that your race determines your IQ. The fundamental problem is that these are correlational models, not causal. Edit: about twin studies. Heritability of IQ is accepted, though proper causal models haven't been built because there are never going to be enough separated twins. The wikipedia claim about 70% heritability of IQ in twin studies is not actually supported by the cited research. I have directly linked the wikipedia cited research article, which is actually sceptical of correlational studies[1]. " Re- search designs that do not involve total experimental control by the investigator (organisms being bred for specific experimental reasons—inbred strains, partic- ipants being fully randomized to treatments, etc.) are always problematic in that alternative explanations of a finding are invariably possible. This is certainly the case with human twin and adoption studies." [1] http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-environmental-influences-on-human-psychological-differences.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-e...

prottog 4y ago

"Master's student in political science starts witch hunt (for the lack of a better term) on a subject he is not an expert on and eventually gets professor fired for making university look bad" seems to be a good summary of this story. There's remarkably little on what exactly makes the professor's studies pseudoscientific.

random314 4y ago
Except that the business professor was using statistically unsound correlational methods to publicize false claims of race causing changes in IQ. Read this well cited paper for methodology problems on IQ studies. " Re- search designs that do not involve total experimental control by the investigator (organisms being bred for specific experimental reasons—inbred strains, partic- ipants being fully randomized to treatments, etc.) are always problematic in that alternative explanations of a finding are invariably possible. This is certainly the case with human twin and adoption studies." [1] http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-environmental-influences-on-human-psychological-differences.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Genetic-and-e...