6 ms·

Which uncomfortable findings are you referring to? Apparently, they’re also hard to plainly state on an anonymous forum as well. Weird.

ahoka 2y ago
That confusing cause and effect would not be proper science? Just guessing.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  I'm not sure? I think it's even deeper than confusing cause and effect. I mean, maybe I'm missing some information, but the comment says: a study showing that people who carry a certain gene variant and experienced childhood neglect have “increased risk of committing severe, impulsive, violent recidivist crimes” The potential fundamental error there is the whole multiple independent variable thing. The study was likely designed from the outset without regard to the fundamentals of the scientific method. Which is a bigger issue than just confusing cause and effect. It gives other scientists a suspicion that the people doing the study aren't even aware of the potential confounding nature of the design? The people doing the study will of course call the "snobbish" scientists "anti-racists" for pointing these things out. But scientists are neither "racist" nor "anti-racist". The conclusions follow from the data via the scientific method, or the conclusions don't follow. A good scientist will not presume, a priori, what the conclusions are. In this instance, scientists can be forgiven for concluding that the findings don't follow. Scientists are better described as Scientific Method Fundamentalists. If they believe in anything, it is the scientific method. Everything else? Well, yeah, you will need to convince them. The good news is you can do that, but you have to use the scientific method to do so. If you don't, they rightfully dismiss you out of hand. I think the people who push these studies are misunderstanding the dismissal of their "findings" as antagonism to their conclusions. And on the other side, there are probably scientists who are not even bothering to explain the nature of their problem to them. There's probably a sense of, "It's a waste of time to talk to them", on both sides.
  - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
    >> The study was likely designed from the outset without regard to the fundamentals of the scientific method. Oh yeah, you will definitely need to assume that!
transcriptase 2y ago
That alleles linked to cognition and behaviour are no less likely (unless fatal or impacting reproduction) to be found at observably different frequencies between populations than the ones used to create an ancestry report. Presumably because racists would ignore all the mediating environmental factors or vastly misrepresent the proportion of variance explained by a given genotype.
- dkural 2y ago
  Looking for intelligence differences between people of different skin color makes as much sense as looking for intelligence differences between tall and short people. You seem to believe in distinct "races" as a genetic concept, whereas all I see in the data is correlations with place-of-collection. The more people you sample from, the more any clustering will literally start looking like a physical map of the world.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    So, what would you say about looking for intelligence differences between people of different ancestry? We know quite well that some traits are concentrated in a single place or two: marathon winners come disproportionately from the Rift Valley in Kenya, sickle cell disease is mostly a West African trait and Tay-Sachs disease is concentrated among the Ashkenazim. Few people dispute the above. The really controversial question is whether there are any such differences from the neck up, so to say.
    - guelo 2y ago
      If any such differences exist it would be, at a population level, two highly overlapping normal distributions with slightly different means, well within a standard deviation. In other words, the differences within each population would be much greater than between the populations. Therefore you still have to treat people as individuals because the ancestry provides little signal. So then why is there so much interest among skeptical, contrarian, anti-woke, scientific racism types on this question?

ahoka 2y ago

That confusing cause and effect would not be proper science? Just guessing.

bilbo0s 2y ago
I'm not sure? I think it's even deeper than confusing cause and effect. I mean, maybe I'm missing some information, but the comment says: a study showing that people who carry a certain gene variant and experienced childhood neglect have “increased risk of committing severe, impulsive, violent recidivist crimes” The potential fundamental error there is the whole multiple independent variable thing. The study was likely designed from the outset without regard to the fundamentals of the scientific method. Which is a bigger issue than just confusing cause and effect. It gives other scientists a suspicion that the people doing the study aren't even aware of the potential confounding nature of the design? The people doing the study will of course call the "snobbish" scientists "anti-racists" for pointing these things out. But scientists are neither "racist" nor "anti-racist". The conclusions follow from the data via the scientific method, or the conclusions don't follow. A good scientist will not presume, a priori, what the conclusions are. In this instance, scientists can be forgiven for concluding that the findings don't follow. Scientists are better described as Scientific Method Fundamentalists. If they believe in anything, it is the scientific method. Everything else? Well, yeah, you will need to convince them. The good news is you can do that, but you have to use the scientific method to do so. If you don't, they rightfully dismiss you out of hand. I think the people who push these studies are misunderstanding the dismissal of their "findings" as antagonism to their conclusions. And on the other side, there are probably scientists who are not even bothering to explain the nature of their problem to them. There's probably a sense of, "It's a waste of time to talk to them", on both sides.
- Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  >> The study was likely designed from the outset without regard to the fundamentals of the scientific method. Oh yeah, you will definitely need to assume that!

transcriptase 2y ago

That alleles linked to cognition and behaviour are no less likely (unless fatal or impacting reproduction) to be found at observably different frequencies between populations than the ones used to create an ancestry report. Presumably because racists would ignore all the mediating environmental factors or vastly misrepresent the proportion of variance explained by a given genotype.

dkural 2y ago
Looking for intelligence differences between people of different skin color makes as much sense as looking for intelligence differences between tall and short people. You seem to believe in distinct "races" as a genetic concept, whereas all I see in the data is correlations with place-of-collection. The more people you sample from, the more any clustering will literally start looking like a physical map of the world.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  So, what would you say about looking for intelligence differences between people of different ancestry? We know quite well that some traits are concentrated in a single place or two: marathon winners come disproportionately from the Rift Valley in Kenya, sickle cell disease is mostly a West African trait and Tay-Sachs disease is concentrated among the Ashkenazim. Few people dispute the above. The really controversial question is whether there are any such differences from the neck up, so to say.
  - guelo 2y ago
    If any such differences exist it would be, at a population level, two highly overlapping normal distributions with slightly different means, well within a standard deviation. In other words, the differences within each population would be much greater than between the populations. Therefore you still have to treat people as individuals because the ancestry provides little signal. So then why is there so much interest among skeptical, contrarian, anti-woke, scientific racism types on this question?