Article reveals racial IQ gap is not genetic

In a follow-up to his groundbreaking work on the pseudoscience of racial psychometry Joseph Graves, the author of The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium and The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America has written a new article addressing genome-wide association studies that cover the relationship between race, intelligence and genetics. Graves shows that the research of racialist psychometricians such as J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen is based on socially-defined racial categories that do not match biologically-defined racial classifications. He goes on to show in the article that research on candidate genes reputedly related to general intelligence are not distributed unevenly across geographic populations which would support a hereditarian explanation for the racial IQ gap. He concludes that genomic studies do not support the hereditarian position of genetic differences between races being the cause of racial variation in IQ score.

 

African admixture inversely proportional to educational attainment and career success

Perhaps you missed the more recent study over at the thread?

Tell me, does Graves address the SNP's known as rs4851266 T or the rs11584700 A?

You may want to check out the following, which is a reader's digest of the study I posted on the other thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HBD/comments/1no4bc/genome_wide_association_study_points_at_a_genetic/

 

My problem with the racial IQ gap hypothesis is that a gene for increased melanin would have no effect on IQ. It would have to be a separate gene. This means that even if was true that Africans carry a gene that makes them less intelligent than Europeans, it is meaningless since someone with brown skin may or may not carry said gene. The best you can say is that someone with brown skin has an x% chance of carrying the gene while a person with white skin has y% chance of carrying the gene, but without and IQ test, you have no way to know if an individual has a lower IQ or not. Thus the whole idea of judging a person's IQ based on their skin color is flawed.

 

Because races are classified on skin color...

 

Which is ridiculous when one understands that the skin color among all races vary dramatically.

 

Not sure if that is sarcasm or not, my sarcasm detector has been a little off lately. Anyway, here's the thing, what you call race is merely a collection of similar genes in a population. These genes are not unique to a particular race, just that particular collection of them. What's worse is that races are defined by physical attributes that be contributed to multiple genes have no connection to each other.

 

Yes. Race is a social construct. Genetic variation is greater within races than it is between races.

 

So why are Whites more likely to have the same IQ with one another than with a Black?

 

I don't believe that Graves names any SNP's. He looks at genes and their distribution within populations including their SNP's.

I think we could improve discussion on this thread by emailing different geneticists and having them look at these studies.

 

My problem with judging peoples I.Q. based on race is the fact that it is used to put one group over another group. These are arguments used by racial supremacists to place themselves in control over "lesser" groups.

It was once thought that blacks could not be quarterbacks...let alone doctors and Lawyers.

I usually do not even contribute to these kind of arguments.

 

Nonsense.

It means that blacks have no right to knee-jerk scapegoat whites for their lack of comparable socioeconomic success as they're doing without considering other causes and contributors first, such as high black dropout rates and the IQ gap.

That is ALL it means.

You're insinuating that we should censor science based on a false dichotomy.

- - - Updated - - -

This reeks of Lewontin Fallacy.

 

After doing more research on the subject recently I've decided to present my own DNA and intelligence testing results for discussion on this topic. I recently submitted a DNA sample to Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com has done comprehensive research on genealogy and ancestral DNA estimates. They can tell you from government records who your ancestors are if you give them the appropriate information. They also give you estimates of your ethnic background showing which populations you descend from and they provide matches to other Ancestry.com members allowing you to compare ethnicity results and family trees.

For example they determined that Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, is the 11th Great-Grandson of John Punch, the first Black man sentenced to be enslaved for life in the American colonies. They made this discovery through records on his mother's genealogy and a DNA comparison to known living descendants of John Punch.



My DNA results matched two known 1st cousins living in different states, 2nd and 3rd cousins I wasn't aware of but found matches to ancestors in their family trees that establish our relatedness as well as uncovered some secrets in my genealogy that I was looking for. Based on these results I consider Ancestry.com to be a reliable website for genealogy research and ancestral DNA testing. It was worth the money and I have confidence in their testing.



At Ancestry.com I was also able to download my raw DNA data which I submitted to another website known as DNA.Land. At DNA.Land you can not only get your ancestral DNA results and compare them to members in their database they are doing research on trait prediction such as physical traits (eye color, height, nearsightedness), wellness traits (predisposition to health conditions such as sickle cell anemia, diabetes and breast cancer) and mental health and ability (ex. educational attainment, intelligence and tendency toward neuroticism).

Here is a breakdown and comparison of my Ancestral DNA test results from both websites.







According to Ancestry.com I am 80% African and 20% European genetically. DNA.Land says I am 74% African, 25% West Eurasian and 1.1% Northeast Asian. The African and European ethnicity estimates are comparable. AncestryDNA estimates a bit more African ancestry. DNA.Land estimates a bit less. Both say I am predominately of West African descent like most African-Americans. DNA.Land estimates a bit more East African ancestry than AncestryDNA. I am surprised to see more Scandinavian/Northern European ancestry than English ancestry.

My genealogy records have some ancestors labeled as mulatto in census records. I mentioned in another thread that my 2nd Great-Grandfather, an African-American blacksmith married a White woman during the Reconstruction Era. My Grandmother's father was also believed to be a White man (family trees and DNA matches to certain White American members of Ancestry.com have revealed a reasonable suspect).

Unfortunately Grandma died not knowing the identity of her father and her light-skinned Black children endured racism not only from racist Whites but brown and dark-skinned Blacks). I'm sure that a lot of that European ancestry comes from American slavery, with White male slave masters taking advantage of Black female slaves. The Northeast Asian ancestry might be some rumored distant Native American ancestry. I've read that FamilyTreeDNA is much better than Ancestry.com for finding DNA matches to Native American ethnic groups.

All things considered according to these DNA companies my ancestry is typical for African-Americans as the average African-American is believed to be 20-25% European genetically and about 1-5% Native American with these percentages varying by region across the country (Bryc et al., 2015). Based on these results I believe I fit the criteria outlined by Great Axe for assessing a link between IQ, ancestry and racial admixture. I am one person but many more people can take these tests and see if their ancestry results are predictive of any of their individual traits.

The geneticists and research scientists at DNA.Land are affiliated with Columbia University and the NY Genome Center. Their project is non-profit and you get free results. All you need to do is register, upload your raw DNA data and fill out a short questionnaire related to the traits you want a prediction for.

DNA.Land accurately predicted that I have brown eyes. They inaccurately predicted that I was slightly nearsighted (I have 20/20 vision). They inaccurately predicted my height to be 5'4" (I am 5'10"). They predicted an average tendency toward neuroticism. A lower likelihood of increased intelligence and a high likelihood of going to college.

Overall I was unimpressed with their results. If their height prediction is off by 6 inches, for a trait reputed to be highly heritable than their analysis of most other traits is highly suspect. They admit that their intelligence testing results are preliminary as one of their own scientists had a lower likelihood of increased intelligence. To say that I have a lower likelihood of increased intelligence and high likelihood of going to college is obviously contradictory. The result summary page looks impressive as they can show you the actual SNPs they use to identify the traits.





Now how do these results compare to actual testing? I looked through my old grade school records including my high school transcript and report cards. My standardized test scores in elementary school placed me in the 98th percentile (top 2%) among students my age. In 5th grade a year after The Bell Curve was published I participated in a study in my class to test my IQ. The researchers conducting the study needed parental approval for students to participate. We were all given a psychological evaluation prior to testing.

Here is an excerpt from that evaluation:



For the record my family household income at the time was about $200k, I had no significant family stressors, normal environmental stimuli and I was never locked in a dark closet. That school year I had the highest grade in the class and a perfect score in my science class (A score of 105 giving me an A+ with extra credit).

In terms of family history both of my parents are college graduates with significant academic achievements and career success. My immediate family is fairly large (mother born in to family of 5 children, father born in to family of 8 children with all siblings on both sides having children) so I have many family members to reference to assess whether or not my intelligence was inherited (blood relatives include doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists).

My head circumference measured with a tape measure is 24 inches (60 centimeters). The average adult male head circumference is 22 1/2 inches (57 Centimeters). That would make my head size slightly above average (Ching, 2007).

 

Now how is all of that information relevant to the topic of this thread? This research shows the limits of DNA companies using modern state-of-the-art technology to predict complex, multi-factorial behavioral traits such as intelligence. The DNA company I selected admits that their research is preliminary and can not be used to determine a person's intelligence despite the ability to sequence their genome and identify specific genetic markers. This research renders claims such as those cited in Rayznack's post meaningless.

Contrary to what Great Axe claimed Dr. Graves is actually qualified to speak on this subject. He is an expert on biology, genetics, evolution and genomics with a special interest in biological theories of race in terms of classification, intelligence, health conditions and the relationship between genetic and environmental effects on phenotypic traits. He has written articles refuting the claims of some of the most well-known proponents of Scientific Racism.

On this subject specifically Graves shared with me his qualifications to speak on the subject:

"My research is in the area of evolutionary genetics, now more accurately called evolutionary genomics. My PhD was granted in the area of Evolutionary, Environmental, and Systematic Biology. Professional scientists are always undergoing development during their careers, for example I added Next Generation Sequencing data analysis and various bioinformatics protocols to my tool set in the last 5 years." - Joseph Graves

His research is consistent with and expands on the research of scientists working in the fields of psychology and genetics who say that genes related to intelligence do not show a racial association.

Source: Genome-wide quantitative trait locus association scan of general cognitive ability using pooled DNA and 500K single nucleotide polymorphism microarrays Genes, Brains and Behavior, 7, 435–446 (2008 )

The science is clear on this subject. The pseudoscientific arguments of racial hereditarians have been refuted. My parents grew up poor in the rural South where racism was more extreme than other parts of the United States. I grew up with stories about my Grandfather, a deacon at his church at the time (later President) experiencing death threats from White neighbors for helping get Blacks the right to vote in his area. One of my Uncles was the subject of a riot in high school involving White boys threatening to lynch him for passing notes to a White girl in class. One of my mother's older cousins was sentenced to be executed via electric chair for raping a White girl after her father and his friends caught them having sex in a car (it was known in the community that they were dating).

I've told my own experiences growing up with racism. Racism is real. In addition to having an effect on the standard of living on a community due to decades of institutional racist discrimination it can have detrimental psychological effects on people who experience racism. Most incidents in my life where I reacted with violence to the provocations of someone else were rooted in racism. I got in several fights over racism. Was threatened to be beaten to death with a baseball bat by a White boy who got expelled from school. Reported a threat to shoot up the school involving multiple White boys in high school (all upper class men) and got suspended from school when a brawl broke out between boys at my table and the boys threatening to kill people because school staff didn't act fast enough.

On top of all of that I was threatened with a restraining order and emergency protective order because a 13 year old White girl who was bullying my sister (slammed her head in to a telephone pole when she was 5 and told me that she was hitting her, pushing her, yelling in her face and making racist taunts) had her mother report me to the police after I took my belt off, threw her to the ground and whooped her ass because I witnessed her hitting small children at a house where she and my sister went for daycare. They reported me to the superintendent and tried to get me kicked off the football team but I outsmarted them by getting the badge number of the police officers and my Uncle called the owner of the house informing her that she would be investigated for child negligence by the press if he heard anything else about his niece and nephew being abused or mistreated at her house.

Racism is an important political topic. In the United States we have free speech and no laws against hate speech, in the form of racist propaganda, being promoted on the internet. Rather than censor such research or react with violence I believe it should be subjected to rigorous critique in open debate. Recently however there have been no serious rebuttals from opponents.

 

1. The new information is that I took an ancestral DNA test and submitted the raw data to a DNA company that provides predictions for traits based on DNA including for intelligence.

2. My post includes a reference to a science article written in 2018 so your fuss about all info being old is false.

Theatlantic.com - Genetic Intelligence Tests Are Next to Worthless

3. My post is on-topic, informative and doesn't violate any rules.

4. Your post contributes NOTHING to discussion. Do not derail the thread with ridiculous complaints and childish insults.

5. If you are incapable of actually responding to this information that is your fault not mine.

6. Perhaps there aren't enough posters here with the ability to debate this discussion on a high level. If that is the case then a science message board would be a better venue. I will make a thread on Sciforum with this information and link it here. All posters are invited to join the thread. Of course if you are banned you will not be able to participate.

7. Contrary to what you'd like people to believe there are readers of this message board who have an interest in these discussions and my direct participation in several threads has lead to an increase in the viewing of those threads which you can observe by the number of views the threads get.

 

Apparently the link above didn't work so here it is again with an excerpt from the article:

Genetic Intelligence Tests Are Next to Worthless
And not just because one said I was below average.




In 2016, I got my genome sequenced while I was working on a book about heredity. Some scientists kindly pointed out some of the interesting features of my genetic landscape. And then they showed me how to navigate the data on my own. Ever since, I’ve been a genomic wayfarer. Whenever I come across some new insight into the links between our genes and our lives, I check my own DNA. One day I’m inspecting a mutation that raises my risk of skin cancer. The next I’m discovering I have a variant for smooth teeth.

I often consult a website called DNA.Land, run by a team of scientists affiliated with the New York Genome Center who use it to collect genetic data from volunteers for scientific research. Over 100,000 people have signed up so far (the service is free, and the researchers don’t sell the information to third parties). As a token of appreciation, the researchers write programs to analyze their volunteers’ DNA, generating new reports based on the latest studies.

On a recent visit to DNA.Land, I scanned down the list of traits they offered to tell me about. I stopped at intelligence.

I took a breath before I clicked.

Intelligence, after all, is different from the smoothness of your teeth or your risk of skin cancer. People have fought over the very meaning of the word for over a century. In the early 1900s, some psychologists claimed that intelligence was the mental power underlying many different tasks we carry out, from solving problems to remembering facts. And they developed ways to measure it with a number, just as a doctor might give a number for your blood pressure or body temperature.

Full article: Theatlantic.com - Genetic Intelligence Tests Are Next to Worthless

As any objective observer who actually bothers to read the article can see the scientist who created the test at DNA.Land himself says that their test can not actually predict your intelligence. It can only identify the genes they analyzed which are commonly associated with high intelligence. There are many others they have not identified. Intelligence is not genetically determined nor is variation in intelligence unevenly differentiated across geographic populations. Intelligence is heritable and does run in families however variation in IQ score only reflect your ability to perform on a test which could be due to multiple environmental factors that have nothing to do with your genetic potential. Environmental inequality between groups can have profound effects on the nurturing of intelligence and 100% be the cause of differences in average IQ score.




Any questions, comments or rebuttals that are on topic are welcome.

 

Because whites developed IQ tests that conform to their own inherent biases and environments.

Whites would do poorly on an IQ test designed to determine survival skills in the Amazon jungle.

 

Intelligence is inheritable but one of the most significant factors in realizing the full potential of intelligence is childhood nutrition. Another is stimulation and the third leg is education.

Studies have proven that hungry children can't learn which is why we introduced school lunch programs. Free public libraries provide access to mentally stimulating activities like reading. Public schools ensure that all children have the opportunity to obtain an education.

The IQ test results of those who had all of those needs catered compared to those who were raised in poverty without adequate food, stimulation and education is going to show differences between those born with identical inheritable intelligence potential. Those differences have nothing to do with race but rather with the failure to adequately provide for the essential needs of growing children.

Unfortunately there are those with a racist agenda who refuse to acknowledge these factual realities. That actually says more about them than it does about those they attempt to denigrate.

 

Funny.

Actually the studies that show marked impact on IQ regarding nutrition are those from severely deprived environments, especially longer in duration. We do not have starved people here. Hungry kids can't learn does not equal kids without subsidized lunches have low IQs. We've had subsidized lunches for decades and large population gaps remain.

Secondly, the "stimulation and education" are also bunk, as there are no studies that show whatever impact there may be on approximately five year olds last into older childhood, let alone that is replicated in older populations. Whatever impact such things may have in that age population are washed out after a couple years and as a child ages, environment has a markedly decreasing impact on intelligence to where the effect in adulthood is about .10 which is quite minimal.

Your understanding of the subject is sorely lacking. This has already been covered on other threads. I would suggest you review this for further detail.

What you should do, rather than the usual attempt to undermine the numbers by invoking various attacks and theories and coupling them with crying "racist" at anyone who disagrees, is to simply prove equality.

Of course with these numbers you can't, especially with the high heritability of adult IQ, equality simply does not exist.

 

I agree. There are actually many environmental variables that can have an effect on IQ score for children growing up in poverty. Not only food availability but nutrition quality can affect how a person thinks. Your brain is going to function differently if you eat lean meat, vegetables and drink water vs. eating junk food and drinking soda.





"But the fundamental point is that there is no scientific basis to the claim that there is a genetic component to group differences in IQ. The reported gaps can 100% be explained environmentally, environmental inequality exists of which there are many, many variables (ex. social discrimination (stereotype threat), environmental toxicity (pollution), malnutrition, education, diet, stress, parenting, national culture, trouble sleeping, mental illness, diseases (ex. Multiple Sclerosis and Malaria) etc.).


"The degree to which each variable impacts intelligence is unknown and impossible to determine since there are too many factors to consider. What matters is that genetics can be ruled out based on sound genetic reasoning and recent research on genome-wide association studies also support this position. Asking why Group X has higher IQ than Group Y when both have been discriminated against historically is also completely meaningless as not all groups have been discriminated against in the same way and to the same extent and cultures can change over time allowing a formally oppressed group to rise in Socioeconomic Status which can also be reflected in IQ score. - EgalitarianJay02

"The fact that African-Americans or any other group may score differently from another doesn't tell you about the nature. The environmental difference, you simply can't compare the genetic basis, it's pure and simple quantitative genetics. You don't even have to know the nature of the environment. It's simply the fact the two groups are not comparably the same in environmental conditions that make any apportions in the genetic variance of a trait impossible. So you can find that in Falconer's Introduction to Quantitative Genetics. - Joseph Graves

Proponents of Scientific Racism believe that if you can control all important environmental variables and show that there is still an IQ difference between groups then you can show that the cause of group differences is genetic. But you can't control the environmental conditions for groups raised in racially stratified societies. Even psychological factors such such as stereotype threat can have an impact on IQ. If you are raised with negative images of your racial/ethnic groups as being stupid or your intelligence is insulted from an early age this can have an effect on how you perform on a standardized test.

There are also problems with test construction including cultural bias and a lot of the testing done in non-Western countries such as those in Africa are highly questionable making the reported global IQ averages by country invalid. So the comparison between countries representing racial groups (socially-defined) is not valid. The environmental conditions between these countries and demographic groups are not equal. The environment can not be controlled to make the hereditarian theory testable (it can only be improved which does indicate that IQ gaps can be significantly reduced) and tests themselves are not a legitimate or universal measure of intelligence (Sternberg, 2012).

The position of racial hereditarians is not only pseudoscientific but has also been used to justify racist ideologies which makes them socially harmful. With all of those points considered the genetic arguments supporting racial hierarchies in intelligence has been thoroughly refuted. I don't expect any serious challenges to this research in this thread however it is presented here for educational purposes.

 

Yes we do have starving people in America and Western countries.....



Now starving on average in comparison to developing nations? No, of course not. There are many poor countries where food availability and nutrition quality are much worse. However the number of children starving between demographic groups in America (e.g. Black vs. White Americans) is not the same. Starvation is also not the only important environmental variable. You can not truthfully say that only nutrition has an important environmental impact on adult IQ. That is nonsense. For example brain damage is an external environmental factor. If someone hits you in the head with a baseball bat and causes serious brain damage that can definitely have an effect your ability to think. Taking that obvious fact in to consideration the other environmental variables I listed can most certainly impact intelligence and have lasting effects in to adulthood. Your heritability estimates are only relevant to variation within populations with comparable environmental conditions which I explained in a previous post in the other thread.

You asked us to prove equality. I did in fact prove that there is no scientific basis to the claim that geographic populations within the human species do not have the same genetic potential for intelligence.

That is the topic the thread, the genetic research supporting this position.

 

Kneejerk denialism without any substantiation duly noted and ignored.

The onus is entirely on those fallaciously alleging that RACE is a significant IQ factor to PROVE their odious allegation.

 

You don't know what starving is.

Where have I ever stated that?

So you can't prove equality or that white people cause black IQ to be lower.

Welcome back, btw.

 

The substantiation is on the other thread which you're consciously avoiding looking at. You have falsely invoked environmental impacts of IQ without accurately stating them and without noting their short-term duration of impact and that they're mostly confined to early childhood.

You have not proven equality. Invoking the usual environmental argument without accurately relaying the science isn't a legitimate point, and outbursts of outrage at people who disagree aren't relevant.

 

Starvation

noun

1. suffering or death caused by hunger.
"thousands died of starvation"
synonyms: extreme hunger, lack of food, famine, undernourishment, malnourishment, fasting;
deprivation of food;
death from lack of food
"half of the people here face starvation"

https://www.worldhunger.org/hunger-in-america-2016-united-states-hunger-poverty-facts/

Hunger in the United States
The estimated percentage of U.S. households that were food insecure declined significantly in 2015 to 12.7 percent of U.S. households (15.8 million households, approximately one in eight). This is down significantly from 2014, when 14.0 percent of households (17.5 million households, approximately one in seven), were food insecure. It continues a downward trend from 14.9 percent food insecure in 2011, the highest percentage ever recorded. However the 2015 prevalence of food insecurity was still above the 2007 pre-recessionary level of 11.1 percent. (Food-insecure households (those with low and very low food security) had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources.)

• For households with incomes near or below the Federal poverty line, households with children headed by single women or single men, women and men living alone, and Black- and Hispanic-headed households,the rates of food insecurity were substantially higher than the national average. (Coleman-Jensen 2016b).

Can you explain why the environmental variables I listed can not have a significant and long lasting impact on IQ?

I did in fact prove that genetic differences between human populations does not cause those populations to have differences in genetic potential. I proved that whether you accept that argument or not. Racism in the United States (e.g. chattel slavery, Jim Crow Laws, terrorism, police brutality, racial bias in the criminal justice system, racist propaganda promoted in the media etc.) by the majority group, White Americans, has had a direct impact on the standard of living and Socioeconomic Status of Black Americans. This is an indisputable fact. If you deny this the burden of proof is on you to explain why these factors are not important and why they can not have an effect on IQ.

Thank you. Would you like to post on topic and respond to the genetic research I presented in the thread?

 

Income and schooling Gaps have closed, but IQ/SAT Gaps have NOT.
The Race Gaps remain and are NOT socio-economic or test Bias.

The Idiotic "Flower Beds" graphic you've been SPAMMED with 100x is NOT analogous.

Broke-ass Asians/Whites score Higher than Black even in the SAME (or Worse!) "Soil"/income.
SAT and other tests (88% correlated with IQ) confirm this EVERY Year.





The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test
The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test
(2009)

The Racial scoring Gap on the SAT test has now become Wider than has been the case for the past Two Decades. Many believe that in the years to come the gap may grow smaller, not because blacks are catching up to whites in educational achievement, but rather because the test makers are adding a writing component to the test that may be manipulated to Lessen Racial Differences and therefore reduce public criticisms of the test.

For many decades The College Board has used a 200 to 800 scoring scale of performance for both the verbal and mathematical sections of the Scholastic Assessment Test. Now a writing component has been added to the SAT. From now on, students will receive three scores each ranging between 200 and 800. In the past a 1600 has been the best possible score on the composite SAT. Hereafter, the best composite score will be 2400. This means that this year's test results will be the last time JBHE will be able to compare black-white SAT scores based on the scoring system that has been used since racial differences in test results were first made public in 1976.
[..........]
Explaining the Black-White SAT Gap
[...]
But there is a major Flaw in the thesis that income differences explain the racial gap. Consider these three observable facts from The College Board's 2005 data on the SAT:

• Whites from families with incomes of Less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993.
This is 129 points Higher than the national mean for ALL blacks.

• Whites from families with incomes Below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points Higher than Blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.

• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points Below the mean score for Whites from ALL income levels,
139 points Below the mean score of Whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points Below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000.

​

So STUFF the Non-analogous "Flower beds" Ejay has Spammed here 100x.
They're BS.
Asian/White Flowers grow higher than Black even in the Same or Worse 'soil.'

[..........]

`​