11 ms·

>Note that none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences. Apparently, NIH is clamping down on a broad range of attempts t

>Note that none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences. Apparently, NIH is clamping down on a broad range of attempts to explore the relationship between genetics and intelligence. For those who don't click the link. This is getting to really dangerous territory. Political correctness wants to remove genetics altogether from the study of the human condition. Blank-slate cultists are scared of what research will find.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
Sorry I can understand why they want to stop this. It would likely be used by MAGA and similar organizations to justify a lot of what I see as coming down the road from that particular political faction to justify policies aimed towards minorities and women.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  At that point they are no longer get to call themselves scientists. A scientist use the scientific method to get at truth. They don't get to hold back research because it might help a political course they don't like.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    It's willfully naive to believe that a bad actor will feel any impact from being called "not a scientist". Plenty of people will call a eugenicist a scientist because it suits their narrative.
- tdeck 4y ago
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    I’m not sure what point you’re making. Studying human genetics is naziism?
    - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
      I think they're saying that there exists a subset of people who study genetics that are racist.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        There’s a subset of people who study math, engineering, medicine, and even racism who are racist.
- onos 4y ago
  Plausible, just as is the hypothesis that leftists in support of the “anti-racist” doctrine are blocking this research because they want to continue to explain away all differences in outcome to “structural racism.”
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  Did you even read my comment? Why does discussing intelligence drop reading comprehension on HN by 50%? >Note that none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences. Apparently, NIH is clamping down on a broad range of attempts to explore the relationship between genetics and intelligence.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >It would likely be used by MAGA and similar organizations to justify a lot of what I see as coming down the road from that particular political faction to justify policies aimed towards minorities and women. Given that SO many women and minorities actively support and vote for these groups and candidates, and this is a democratic system, is this really such a bad thing in this case? In short, if groups of people actively and happily vote against their own best interests, and to keep themselves oppressed, is it wrong for them to be oppressed? Or, in this case, is democracy even a system we should be upholding? And if not, what is the alternative? A system where a group of unelected, unaccountable elites run society because they know what's best? I honestly don't have the answer here.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
    >Given that SO many women and minorities actively support and vote for these groups and candidates What do you mean by this?
    - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
      I don't believe the meaning is unclear. The OP asserts that a large number of minority voters and women voted republican in the last two trump elections. Do you take issue with the premise? Do you consider the finding not to be meaningful? FWIW as far as I can tell, the OP is correct in that 55% of white women, 36% of hispanic men, and 30% of hispanic women voted for trump. It was also telling that in the 2020 election support for the republican party from all minority groups increased by a few percentage points. I think that counts as "SO many". It's not a majority, but I don't think the OP claimed that. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54972389 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54972389
      - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
        Only counting white women is misleading but I can see the point there. But 36% is definitely not "SO many": it doesn't win an election of two parties, and that was the whole premise of GP. >Do you take issue with the premise? Do you consider the finding not to be meaningful? Just wanted some elaboration. It's a bold claim given with no data.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  Aside that the article said that "none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences", so what? It's not as if the research caused these people to have the views they have; they use it as a post-hoc justification. And more importantly it's not as if they can't do their own research, even if it's bad quality (or even fake). By remaining intentionally ignorant yourself you won't have a strong answer, and let the "MAGA and similar organisations" take the initiative and control the debate. Besides, it's not as if reality is going to change just because we don't research it, and if we understand reality better we can maybe do better by everyone.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  If it is used by such people, what of it? Should we stifle research if it proves that claims of disreputable individuals were true all along? Any scientist worth his salt should only be interested in the pursuit of truth. The Noble Lie is never an answer.
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mjburgess 4y ago
You should take seriously that a vast amount of research of this kind is pseudoscience, and that there isn't much science that can be done from it. All "heritability" research is just an analysis of correlations between genes and expressed behaviour. On these grounds a scottish accent is highly heritable, since the accent correlates extremely highly with some genes. We do not have the means to create new human beings with different genetic profiles and observe them accross many environments, as they develop, to determine if "somehow" a gene causes anything so macroscopic like "intelligence". So, quite literally: we cannot do science. We cannot create experiments to test hypotheses. Genes have no plausible mechanism to "cause" intelligence. If they play a significant role, it is a very large number of genes building tissues which are completely opaque (brains, etc.) whose interactions with the environment are completely opaque. Heritability research, and "psych-genetic research" of this kind is, necessarily, pseudoscience. It's adhearents are the poorest statistians and have the least understanding of the scientific method you could hope for. We have no scientific theory of intelligence which provides causal variables that we can experiment with; we have no theory of biological mechanism, likewise; we have no theory of genetic mechanism --- all we have are some aging loons with stats software content to put iq-test-scores (ie., people competing patterns of shapes...) and Genes into it. Whatever can be found by these loons isn't worth a scientist finding. "Data" isnt innocent, it is collected and used for a reason; and pseudoscience isnt innocent. Correlating genes with ESP ability is likewise nonesense, and that has as much scientific merit.
- concordDance 4y ago
  I think this post reveals a lot of ignorance in how scientists study heritability. To give a simple example, one of the best tools is comparing identical twins to non-identical ones. If the correlation between the fraternal twins is substantially less than the correlation between the identical twins then we can know a genetic factor us in play. Your argument is also too general in that it labels all observational science as pseudoscience. Is astronomy pseudoscience? You don't need to be able to manipulate the environment to do science, just have a hypothesis and a way I'd getting new observations that would probe/disprove the hypothesis.
  - 4y ago
viridian 4y ago
> Blank-slate cultists are scared of what research will find. The folks who have objections to this sort of research aren't actually existentialists when you push them even a tiny bit on their beliefs. The tabula rasa is just used as a rhetorical tool to deflect from criticism with regards to certain uncomfortable genetic questions. It's a philosophy of convenience, easily discarded when one needs to argue in favor of, for instance, certain forms of equity.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Sorry I can understand why they want to stop this. It would likely be used by MAGA and similar organizations to justify a lot of what I see as coming down the road from that particular political faction to justify policies aimed towards minorities and women.

tomjen3 4y ago
At that point they are no longer get to call themselves scientists. A scientist use the scientific method to get at truth. They don't get to hold back research because it might help a political course they don't like.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  It's willfully naive to believe that a bad actor will feel any impact from being called "not a scientist". Plenty of people will call a eugenicist a scientist because it suits their narrative.
tdeck 4y ago
- remarkEon 4y ago
  I’m not sure what point you’re making. Studying human genetics is naziism?
  - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
    I think they're saying that there exists a subset of people who study genetics that are racist.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      There’s a subset of people who study math, engineering, medicine, and even racism who are racist.
onos 4y ago
Plausible, just as is the hypothesis that leftists in support of the “anti-racist” doctrine are blocking this research because they want to continue to explain away all differences in outcome to “structural racism.”
Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
Did you even read my comment? Why does discussing intelligence drop reading comprehension on HN by 50%? >Note that none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences. Apparently, NIH is clamping down on a broad range of attempts to explore the relationship between genetics and intelligence.
midoridensha 4y ago
>It would likely be used by MAGA and similar organizations to justify a lot of what I see as coming down the road from that particular political faction to justify policies aimed towards minorities and women. Given that SO many women and minorities actively support and vote for these groups and candidates, and this is a democratic system, is this really such a bad thing in this case? In short, if groups of people actively and happily vote against their own best interests, and to keep themselves oppressed, is it wrong for them to be oppressed? Or, in this case, is democracy even a system we should be upholding? And if not, what is the alternative? A system where a group of unelected, unaccountable elites run society because they know what's best? I honestly don't have the answer here.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  >Given that SO many women and minorities actively support and vote for these groups and candidates What do you mean by this?
  - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
    I don't believe the meaning is unclear. The OP asserts that a large number of minority voters and women voted republican in the last two trump elections. Do you take issue with the premise? Do you consider the finding not to be meaningful? FWIW as far as I can tell, the OP is correct in that 55% of white women, 36% of hispanic men, and 30% of hispanic women voted for trump. It was also telling that in the 2020 election support for the republican party from all minority groups increased by a few percentage points. I think that counts as "SO many". It's not a majority, but I don't think the OP claimed that. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54972389 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54972389
    - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
      Only counting white women is misleading but I can see the point there. But 36% is definitely not "SO many": it doesn't win an election of two parties, and that was the whole premise of GP. >Do you take issue with the premise? Do you consider the finding not to be meaningful? Just wanted some elaboration. It's a bold claim given with no data.
Beltalowda 4y ago
Aside that the article said that "none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences", so what? It's not as if the research caused these people to have the views they have; they use it as a post-hoc justification. And more importantly it's not as if they can't do their own research, even if it's bad quality (or even fake). By remaining intentionally ignorant yourself you won't have a strong answer, and let the "MAGA and similar organisations" take the initiative and control the debate. Besides, it's not as if reality is going to change just because we don't research it, and if we understand reality better we can maybe do better by everyone.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
If it is used by such people, what of it? Should we stifle research if it proves that claims of disreputable individuals were true all along? Any scientist worth his salt should only be interested in the pursuit of truth. The Noble Lie is never an answer.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mjburgess 4y ago

You should take seriously that a vast amount of research of this kind is pseudoscience, and that there isn't much science that can be done from it. All "heritability" research is just an analysis of correlations between genes and expressed behaviour. On these grounds a scottish accent is highly heritable, since the accent correlates extremely highly with some genes. We do not have the means to create new human beings with different genetic profiles and observe them accross many environments, as they develop, to determine if "somehow" a gene causes anything so macroscopic like "intelligence". So, quite literally: we cannot do science. We cannot create experiments to test hypotheses. Genes have no plausible mechanism to "cause" intelligence. If they play a significant role, it is a very large number of genes building tissues which are completely opaque (brains, etc.) whose interactions with the environment are completely opaque. Heritability research, and "psych-genetic research" of this kind is, necessarily, pseudoscience. It's adhearents are the poorest statistians and have the least understanding of the scientific method you could hope for. We have no scientific theory of intelligence which provides causal variables that we can experiment with; we have no theory of biological mechanism, likewise; we have no theory of genetic mechanism --- all we have are some aging loons with stats software content to put iq-test-scores (ie., people competing patterns of shapes...) and Genes into it. Whatever can be found by these loons isn't worth a scientist finding. "Data" isnt innocent, it is collected and used for a reason; and pseudoscience isnt innocent. Correlating genes with ESP ability is likewise nonesense, and that has as much scientific merit.

concordDance 4y ago
I think this post reveals a lot of ignorance in how scientists study heritability. To give a simple example, one of the best tools is comparing identical twins to non-identical ones. If the correlation between the fraternal twins is substantially less than the correlation between the identical twins then we can know a genetic factor us in play. Your argument is also too general in that it labels all observational science as pseudoscience. Is astronomy pseudoscience? You don't need to be able to manipulate the environment to do science, just have a hypothesis and a way I'd getting new observations that would probe/disprove the hypothesis.
- 4y ago

viridian 4y ago

> Blank-slate cultists are scared of what research will find. The folks who have objections to this sort of research aren't actually existentialists when you push them even a tiny bit on their beliefs. The tabula rasa is just used as a rhetorical tool to deflect from criticism with regards to certain uncomfortable genetic questions. It's a philosophy of convenience, easily discarded when one needs to argue in favor of, for instance, certain forms of equity.