Asymmetrical Information

Look at Thomas Sowell's review in the _American Spectator_.

I The Bell Curve in 1997 or so and found it exceedingly well done. Throughout the book, they acknowledged the likely criticisms, explained their methodology step-by-step, used the most conservative (i.e., least likely to prove their thesis) estimates possible, and cited their sources.

The problem with the book was that, deep into it, a chapter delved into the fact that race and IQ test outcomes correlate in a small way. Because of that, everything else in the book was rejected.

I The Bell Curve in 1997 or so and found it exceedingly well done. Throughout the book, they acknowledged the likely criticisms, explained their methodology step-by-step, used the most conservative (i.e., least likely to prove their thesis) estimates possible, and cited their sources.

The problem with the book was that, deep into it, a chapter delved into the fact that race and IQ test outcomes correlate in a small way. Because of that, everything else in the book was rejected.

I read the Bell Curve several years ago. I also read Gould's Mismeasure of Man after that, in which he slams the entire IQ concept, claiming it is a case of reification. In an updated version, Gould adds a critique of The Bell Curve, which is in large part ad hominem. But, I think his own views can be called into question as well. Gould's main concern is that people not use IQ or intelligence to judge someone's worth. It is possible, though, that human nature, intelligence, and IQ are not as egalitarian as we wish them to be. If this is true, people may misuse that information, but I don't think the potential for misuse is a good reason to deny the facts (not that they are facts, it is still open for debate). Steven Pinker also has a good book along similar lines called The Blank Slate.

On a separate note, I don't place a whole lot of value on intelligence. Recent studies show that emotional intelligence is more important as a factor of success in life. I am a MENSA member and I can tell you I still make plenty of mistakes and feel pretty stupid sometimes.

"Heritability" doesn't mean what you appear to be using it to mean.

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Heritability.html

I'm all for requiring an IQ test before you can breed...though this would make the Darwin Awards obsolete...which would be very ironic.

IQ tests and licenses to reproduce would solve many societal problems.

There would be no question as to who was inferior, so we could end affirmative action and the KKK all at once.

It would end abortion. If you were too stupid to breed, you'd be sterilized, if you were smart enough to breed, you presumable wouldn't be stupid enough to get pregant.

Politics would end, since everyone would be smart enough to see how idiotic liberals are.

If they could extend the rules a little to include sterilizing mean people, none of you would ever have to see a post from me again!! Now that's a benefit I'm sure you'd all enjoy.

When I was in law school, I was part of a group of students that co-authored a law review article on race-IQ research under Professor Richard Delgado - who has subsequently gone on to write books arguing that it is constitutionally permissible to ban "racist speech." [See 1984 UCLA Law Review, "Can Science be Inopportune?"] The article's thesis was that it would be permissible to ban scientific research that would "prove" genetic differences in the intelligence of various population groups. I wrote the section on 'least restrictive alternatives' and being a libertarian and knowledgable about the philosophy of science, I made an argument based on Thomas Kuhn's view of scientific revolutions in favor of more research. The point of all that being that one's willingness to believe a given scientific proposition is a cultural phenomena; one cannot be compelled to become a racist by "scientific" evidence. The Gould response is a good example of Kuhn's insight. Gould's opposition to the Bell Curve was not based on "science."

All that said, it seems clear that the scientific evidence does show a correlation between heredity and what is tested for on intelligence tests. Although there was the famous case of fraud in one twins study - Jensen's, I believe - other studies purport to show something like 25% to 50% correlation with heredity. Extrapolating this claim to differences in populations is dicey. The average IQs of various populations do change over time. I personally buy into Larry Niven's observation that humans stopped evolving when they could manipulate the environment, at which point they stopped being manipulated, or selected, by the environment. If that assertion is true, and it seems to make sense, then one would expect all populations to have the same average intelligence with respect to the ability to manipulate the environment. Answering socially conditioned test questions might involve a different testable skill.

Disclaimer: I have not read the Bell Curve, nor am I likely to. I personally feel that it was a stalking horse, designed to get people to publicly debate whether or not Blacks in America are stupider than Whites. It worked brilliantly. The author(s) may or may not have had that agenda, but I'm fairly sure that those who paid for it did.

I do have a couple of questions.
What actual claims do they make regarding race and intelligence.
Do they use the term 'race'
If so, did they define 'race'? If so, I would be interested in knowing their definition.
If not, did they explain why they were comparing undefined categories and how they determined category membership?
Did they define intelligence? If so, how? If not, did they explain why they were measuring an undefined property?

"On a separate note, I don't place a whole lot of value on intelligence. Recent studies show that emotional intelligence is more important as a factor of success in life."

(A caveman is sitting and watching a tree recently struck by lightning burn. Another caveman walks up.)

Crag: What be that?

Thragg: Me not know. But me feel very good about myself and world.

Crag: Me too. We should go sit in our own filth with our mates and spend happy time before go out on hunt to kill wooly mammoths with our bare hands.

Thragg: Me like plan.

(They depart)

*

You're right--that's *much* better.

I have a question about the twins. I know that, thanks to recent quick and easy DNA tests, we now know that fraternal twins are no more or less likely to look identical than true identical twins - which means that decades of twin studies include some work based on an incorrect assumption of those twins being identical. Several scienceticians in my social circles have laughed and rolled their eyes and otherwise indicated "what are you gonna do" when asked how this new information affects their view of data from earlier twin studies. If we have to assume the few twins cited in the Bell Curve may have been fraternal, would that point more toward environment?

In any case, eugenics is only part of the solution. Both of my parents are far more intelligent than any of their dumb kids.

Rob, I don't think "emotional intelligence" is, at this point, any more measurable than sense of humor or the ability to empathize.

No, they were identical -- I suppose it's possible that a couple were confused, but most of them are identical separated twins.

I have not read the Bell Curve, nor am I likely to. I personally feel that it was a stalking horse, designed to get people to publicly debate whether or not Blacks in America are stupider than Whites.

Er, given that you haven't read it, on what basis do you justify your "personal feel[ing]"? Especially since you by your own admission don't know "[w]hat actual claims do they make regarding race and intelligence."

Uh-huh.

hi evil one,

i think i understand why you call yourself that.

"It would end abortion. If you were too stupid to breed, you'd be sterilized, if you were smart enough to breed, you presumable wouldn't be stupid enough to get pregant."

out of curiosity, what do you think of the buck v bell decision? especially given the background and what was subsequently found out about the circumstances?

James: I read The Bell Curve. It was received as a book about race because that's how the authors presented it. It's hardly unfair that most of the attention the book got was on that point.

H&M's basic IQ thesis was fairly orthodox. Not everyone agrees with it, but it was mostly pretty mainstream stuff.

Their section on race, however, was noticably weaker. Their standards of evidence dropped dramatically, and their conclusions are likely worthless.

My own opinion is that Gould's response to them was also poor. The Mismeasure of Man was a lousy book, and Gould's narrow view of historical problems with IQ tests doesn't justify the conclusions he came up with.

Jane: if IQ differences are largely environmental, that *does* make a big difference because it means there's something we can do about it. It might be hard and it might be expensive, but at least it's possible. And there's a fair amount of research these days indicating that, in fact, the home is not as important a part of a child's environment as most people think.

I suspect that a serious and persistent Head Start program (i.e., one that doesn't end at age 5) would make a big difference. But nobody feels like paying for something like this these days. Too bad.

Scott,
Emotional intelligence doesn't have much to do with feeling good about yourself. Sure, self-awareness and empathy are part of it, but the primary characteristics that I was thinking of are 1) the ability to postpone short-term gain for a greater long-term reward, 2)optimism 3)ability to deal with stress and 4)initiative. Obviously you must have some decent level of intelligence to function in the world, but I think a 120 vs. a 160 IQ doesn't matter as much as the traits listed above.

I think the most relevant point about racial group intelligence estimates is that variation within the groups is significantly greater then variations between the groups. This makes completely irrelevant the idea that the data may be misrepresented or not extrapolable for whatever reason.

This means two things (again, even granting the above assumptions). First, while the odds of the smartest person in the world being asian are slightly greater (allowing for population) than other racial groups, it is likely that at any given time the smartest person in the world will not be asian.

Secondly, any randomly selected asian may have a slightly elevated chance of higher intelligence than a randomly selected white, but the odds are so small as to not materially differ from 50-50.

The point is that if you try to base your decisions on the data in the book, your conclusion is that the results of any interview process so vastly outweigh the racial disparity that the racial component is meaningless.

Kevin -- where are these new studies? Everything I've seen shows that what I'd call broadly inalterable heritible factors: parental IQ, SES, and neighborhood IQ/SES -- are overwhelmingly predictive, compared to other variables. Realistically, we aren't going to force people to move, we aren't going to remove status markets in a primate society (if the Soviets couldn't, we can't), and we aren't going to remove the children from homes with parents who insufficiently stimulate them. Thank God.

What sort of Head Start program do you mean? Head Start seems to produce very small results that don't last much past the end of the program -- are we going to stick kids in a 3-hour a day program until they're eighteen? Forget money, forget results -- how will you get the kids to stay there? Or prevent middle class parents from demanding the same enrichment for their kids if it works?

Warmongering Lunatic: "Er, given that you haven't read it, on what basis do you justify your "personal feel[ing]"?"

I do remember the media hullaballo, there was a very long, pretty public debate on whether blacks were intellectually inferior to whites, there was a cover story in Time or Newsweek on that basic subject, IIRC.

"Especially since you by your own admission don't know "[w]hat actual claims do they make regarding race and intelligence.""

Uh, that's why I asked. Maybe someone better informed than me can enlighten me.

Kevin,
There is already a program in place that continues where Head Start leaves off. don't laugh now, but it's called kindergarten and the public schools.

Despite what many people believe, the elementary grades provide a very good education, and even in the inner cities, the elementary grades provide the continuation of what was begun in Head Start. The problem is that by 3rd or 4th grade, you can't tell the difference between the Head Start-eligible kids who participated in Head Start from the Head Start-eligible kids who didn't. Maybe Head Start needs to start much earlier to have an impact. The single biggest predictor of a kid's success in school is the home the kid is from. If the parents value education and are involved, involved meaning reading to them when they are little and encouraging their thirst for learning, then the kids will do much better in school than otherwise.

Waiting until the kids are in school to do any of this is too late, and waiting until the kids start the Head Start programs is too late.

If you want a racial correlation, I can give you an explanation that really depends on culture rather than race per se: a large minority culture is brought up believing that learning and doing well in school means you are giving in to the man, and you are being an uncle tom. That minority culture (NOT race) is doomed from the start.

To follow up on Jane''s last point; "Forget money, forget results -- how will you get the kids to stay there? Or prevent middle class parents from demanding the same enrichment for their kids if it works?" Let's tie this in to Kevin's other point that supposedly the home environment is not that important. If that is true, then what justification is there at all for having Head Start for some and not for others? Indeed, what is Head Start supposedly making up for if not unequal home environments?

Jane, I think it's unfortunate that alleged scientists let their political and social views interfere with their science. I think Steven J. Gould is a wonderful writer, but he is wrong about this. For another viewpoint, see Edward O. Wilson's autobiography, "Naturalist" (highly recomended). Wilson taught at Harvard with Gould, wrote "Sociobiology", coined the word in fact, was one of the earliest to study the genetics of behaviour. Gould turned against him and his work, IMHO with no foundation in the science, based only on the social implications.

For another instance of the same thing see Scientific American's articles about "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Much ado, vigorous condemnation, little science.

I'm a psychologist who works extensively in the measurement of human abilities, and I'd like to offer my assessment.

The argument against reifying intelligence is simply ignorant. Contrary to fashionable social scientific dogma, it is in fact perfectly legitimate in science to study unobservable entities, using concepts like "intelligence" as bookmarks or placeholders for physical realities that have as yet not been directly observed. The fact that "open concepts" are loosely defined by fallible measures in no way delegitimizes them.

Gregor Mendel, the founder of modern genetics, used the concept of "factor" as a hypothetical construct, a bookmark for that physical thing - whatever it would turn out to be - that determined statistical regularities he observed in inheritance. Over one hundred years later, scientists today have mapped the human genome thanks to Mendel's bold theorizing and sound methodology. This is a beautiful case of a loose, fuzzy reification, a "factor," leading ultimately to a monumental scientific achievement and a deep understanding of a very complex thing.

The only truly fair scientific question is how long one can hold out for an open concept to be mapped to physical processes. Is 100 years long enough? But that is not the question that radical environmentalists ask. They simply condemn the study of intelligence as reification. This, as I have stated, is a disappointingly shallow argument.

Having said that, I have to admit Gould's book earned my respect. I had to learn to look past his unfortunate ad hominem style of argument, but when I did, I was moved by the many documented examples of outright fraud in the history of human ability measurement. He cited verifiable instances of out-and-out malicious misrepresentation of scientific facts perpetrated by scientists for the sole purpose of preserving an obviously pre-conceived ranking among the races.

In short, Gould failed in his big argument, but succeeded in shining light on some dark moments in the history of psychology. I do think every graduate student should be required to read both the Bell Curve and the Mismeasure of Man.

Jane, I read the Bell Curve and all the footnotes and a lot of the criticism. Most of the uproar of course was about Chapter 13, the unlucky one about race. However I found the preceeding Chapters to be the foundation of the book and fascinating.

What really amused me at the time was a briefing that Greenspan was giving Congress. He was talking about the new economy and was almost reciting vebatim the issues about cognitive elite in the 1st Chapter of The Bell Curve. It was quite obvious he had read the book. I was expecting headlines the next day: "Greenspan Cites Bell Curve, Dems demand Resignation". But I suspect the journalists who looked at the book flipped to Chapter 13 and did not read the rest.

As for whether IQ was determined by genes or environment I believe they stated it did not matter. There were no good solutions and the book got kind of gloomy about the future.

Shortly after reading the book I saw the movie Gattica which touched on how these issues could be handled in the future. If you have not seen that movie you should.

Rick

I read "The Bell Curve" when it came out. I found it impressive, but wasn't surprised by the reaction it generated. The comment that differences within groups are greater than differences between groups is the best place to start this discussion. As "The Journey of Man", recently on PBS pointed out, we're all descended from Africans and the Bushmen of the Khalahari seem to be the descendents of all humankind's progenitors. Because the Africans have the "broadest" genetic base [i.e. they have more potential ancestors than, say ,Native Americans, who per "Journey" are descended from a handful who crossed the Bering Strait], the IQ standard deviations among Africans [and their descendents] is greater than among other groups. So it is likely that in testing IQ among say 1,000 Africans and 1,000 Native Americans, you'd find both higher and lower scores among the Africans than among the Native Americans, who would tend to cluster more in the middle of the Bell Curve. There are no value judgments attached to this speculation, but it would also, perhaps, explain African excellence in athletic endeavor, since there would likely be more exceptionally gifted persons physically, as well as mentally, of African descent, given their "broader" genetic base. Of course the bottom end of the Bell Curve's tail would likewise be thicker, perhaps explaining "The Bell Curve's" chapter on African descent being correlated postively with this position on the curve. All of this assumes that genetics plays an important role in IQ test results, but as the grandfather of two "above average" grandchildren, and a reading tutor for disadvantaged kids, I'd have to say that,at least anecdotally, this is hard to argue.

Hi---Great blog--

Doesn't seem like anyone's raised the Flynn effect here. The Flynn effect is the steady rise in IQ scores over the past years many years. (20 years? Longer? I've forgotten the details, and don't want to spend time to look it up.) Suffice it to say that if IQ is heavily determined by "genes" or "biology" or "nature," then IQ shouldn't be leaping upwards year after year because genes don't change that fast.

It turns out environment is far more important than a lot of us have been thinking in this post-Minnesota-twin-studies era. What's more, the effects of early environment have been radically oversold and in fact misstated. Current environment is what matters, not early environment (although when you're talking about emotional trauma, as opposed to normal development, that's a different matter). Take a look at Joseph Bruer's THE MYTH OF THE FIRST THREE YEARS if you want to stun yourself at the sight of a universally-held-and-believed "scientific principle" that has essentially no science to support it. On a somewhat related front, there's also a battle going on within academia where, for many, many years, one particular "800 pound gorilla" has seen to it that younger scientists who were doing research showing that the adult brain continues to grow new cells throughout life had their research funds withdrawn, and in some cases their careers cut short. (A major figure in research can do this simply by sitting on NIH review committees. It's a small world.) Michael Specter's NEW YORKER article on this, "Rethinking the Brain" The New Yorker, July 23, 2001, pp. 42-53 is at http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/

Back to rising IQs, if you do a Google search you'll find two very nice articles on the Flynn Effect in Scientific American, as well as articles by John Derbyshire & NEWSWEEK which I haven't read. The best thing to tackle is the PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW article that apparently resolves the paradox (http://www.apa.org/journals/rev/rev1082346.html). It's terrific, and fairly readable.

I've cut out one passage:

"The picture that emerges suggests a powerful role for environment in shaping individual IQ. However, we wish to stress that the way environment plays its role is very different from the traditional characterization. . . . the effects of environment decay, leaving only a narrow window in which transient environmental effects may influence IQ. If correct, our model suggests that improving IQs in childhood is not the way to raise the IQs of adults. Adult IQ is influenced mainly by adult environment. "

If I'm remembering correctly, the explanation was that environment absolutely can raise your IQ and by quite a bit--BUT your basic, inborn nature may or may not lead you to choose environments that support and "grow" IQ . The biological child of average-IQ parents who is adopted by high-IQ parents will tend to show a high IQ during childhood because the adoptive parents put him in an IQ-growing environment. But when he's grown, and in charge of his own environment, he may choose a less stimulating environment, so his IQ drops. As we age (assuming I'm remembering the argument correctgly) we become more and more who our biology would like us to be, because we're free to act on that biology in choosing our environment.

Another ***wonderful*** book: Mind Sculpture by Ian Robertson. He cites amazing studies done here in the U.S., in the deep south. The schools for poor black children were so bad in the 50s and 60s that children's IQs dropped each year they were in them. You'd see big families where the little ones had much higher IQs than the big ones--which apparently never happens in a town where the schools are good. Then, when the families moved up north and the kids entered better schools, IQs would go back up.

It's wonderful stuff.

Jane: As I understand the genetics of such things, if we assume that intelligence (however defined and measured) is primarily genetic (or if we're simply talking about the genetic component, if it isn't), there's not too much need to worry about the children of low-IQ parents being "doomed", because of regression to the mean.

Tall parents tend to have tall children... who are slightly shorter than them. Short parents, short children, who are slightly taller. The same sort of thing works for all traits, as I understand it, including intelligence (as far as it's genetic).

Extremes tend to breed out toward the middle, as I understand the issue (ask the folks at GNXP for more detail, I'm just a poor layman), and this seems reasonable from experience.

So, I wouldn't worry too much about a genetic low-IQ "trap".

"Over one hundred years later, scientists today have mapped the human genome thanks to Mendel's bold theorizing and sound methodology."

Just for the record, Mendel's methodology wasn't that sound; he almost certainly rigged his results based on what he expected (IIRC, a 20th century statistician did an F-test on his results; his results were just to good to have actually occurred as he presented). Still, he was right on the concept, even if he fiddled the data.

On the Bell Curve: Yeah, I read it, up to, oh, Chapter 4 or so, where Murray makes a snide political point about egalitarianism and heritability, which inadvertently made it obvious he didn't actually understand the concept of what heritability (as a measured variable) meant. But then, neither Murray nor Herrnstein are geneticists.

A study a few years later (I think in 1997), published in Nature, showing stronger correlation between fraternal twin IQ also undermined a large part of M & H's argument. The Flynn effect doesn't help their argument either (note: try finding a mention of the "Flynn effect" in Pinker's "Blank Slate").

A good review of the subsequent debate is given in the "Bell Curve Debate", a book of pro/con essays.

Brad DeLong cited Thomas Sowell’s review of the Bell Curve. Here is a link to that piece:

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/sowell.html

My own thoughts concerning the Bell Curve echo Karl Popper’s premise that much of our knowledge is inherently fallible. It is impossible to ever determine where to draw the line between nature and nurture. Thus, any studies pertaining to human I.Q. will never be definitively conclusive. The theories of today are likely to be contradicted sometime in the future. Our decedents in the year 10000000 A.D. will still be debating this issue.

Reading the Bell Curve years back, I was struck by the tempest that it had caused, mostly because that tempest seemed to be originating from groups which had a proprietary interest in funding solutions to the educational disparities in the US which the book looked at. Arguing about whether the Bell Curve is statistically or genetically sufficient on an intellectual basis is of merit, but the essential point which it politically raises is to call into question funding elaborate remedial programs when these programs might be not worth the money they spend. See Catherine's post about southern segregated schools and their matriculants above for a good example of this. In that situation a remedial program was called for: integration and raising teacher quality standards (and pay also), along with better facilities to a large extent (but not everywhere). But to apply this type of solution nationally would have been lunatic, for one shoe does not fit all. What the Bell Curve noted is that race and standardized intelligence test scores did corrolate. This correlation means nothing about causation, and the open doubts expressed about heritability in this thread are indicative of this lack of linkage. Jane's doubts about national social engineering programs in the future are parallel with my historical doubts about applying southern solutions to northern educational issues in the 1960's. Which application led to the busing disasters of the latter half of the 20th century across the nation.

"Emotional intelligence doesn't have much to do with feeling good about yourself. Sure, self-awareness and empathy are part of it, but the primary characteristics that I was thinking of are 1) the ability to postpone short-term gain for a greater long-term reward, 2)optimism 3)ability to deal with stress and 4)initiative. Obviously you must have some decent level of intelligence to function in the world, but I think a 120 vs. a 160 IQ doesn't matter as much as the traits listed above."

120 isn't exactly average intelligence. If you're saying that a person with superior (but not genius level) intelligence who is also well above average in most or all of the traits you mentioned will do better in most aspects of life than a genius who is inept in all of those categories (ignoring that some of them are traditionally associated with intelligence in general--particularly long term thinking), then I agree with you (for an illustration of this principle, try playing 3rd Edition D&D). However, I would suggest that the genius is indispensible to human progress and survival, even if the geniuses aren't necessarily happier for it.

Catherine --
"Suffice it to say that if IQ is heavily determined by "genes" or "biology" or "nature," then IQ shouldn't be leaping upwards year after year because genes don't change that fast."

Actually, no, the Flynn Effect doesn't prove that at all. It proves that environment is at lest a limiting factor, but not what the role of genetics is.

The quick analogy here is to human height. Human height has been increasing generation after generation in the modern West. The reason is simple; human nutrition has been improving generation to generation in the developed world, eliminating a limiting factor on height for more and more people.

This, however, does not mean that genetics are not a major determinant of how tall your child will grow. All poor nutrition does is move the median downward; given equal nutrition at any level, the children of tall parents will still (statistically, over a large group, tend to) be taller than the children of short parents. Better nutrition will raise the group's average, while still leaving those with short genes shorter than those with tall genes.

This result can easily be pushed across to IQ. Brain development is dependent on nutrition to an enormous extent, and nutrition in the populations Flynn studied vastly improved between the two measured years of 1952 and 1982. The populations of both the Netherlands and Israel in 1952 were mostly of people under forty, who had suffered the nutritional effects of WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. Similarly, the populations of those countries in 1982 were mostly under-forties who, except for the first handful, never went through a similarly deprived period.

So, the population that never went through periods of nutritional deprevation did better than the ones that did. Knock me over with a feather.

hi dean,
"Because the Africans have the "broadest" genetic base [i.e. they have more potential ancestors than, say ,Native Americans, who per "Journey" are descended from a handful who crossed the Bering Strait], the IQ standard deviations among Africans [and their descendents] is greater than among other groups."

is this known through sampling or through inference?

thanks for the interesting post. questions: if inference was used, could another possibility exist, do you think? i have in mind the possibility that those folks who actually left africa so long ago happened to be the best and/or brightest? is that possible under the argument set you presented? if so, how does this change/reflect on the argument you presented above?

In case you didn't know, Stephan Jay Gould was Marxist. You have to calibrate all his discussions of social issues against that. I never read his critique of the Bell Curve but I'm not surprised by your description. He and Richard Lewontin played a truly shameful part in trying to discredit E.O. Wilson's original work on sociobiology. Their arguments were entirely political rather than to try to find scientific evidence to refute the contention that all behavior, even human, has a significant biological component.

Paul wrote:

Well, Lewontin *did* do the original work (based on blood group) comparing within-group to between-group genetic variance (15%/85%, IIRC).

Funnily enough, Pinker in the "Blank Slate" mentions the 15% between-group variance but doesn't credit Lewontin for it.

cas,

Buck vs Bell was right in spirit, but wrong in application. Rather than have an actual battery of tests, they just used opinions and "morality" judgements. Mostly, the 30 states that sterilized 60,000 plus men and women used it for people that lacked education and social skills. Now that there are true tests for debilitating diseases, eugenics isn't such a bad idea. In fact, it is already being voluntarily practiced by many couples to prevent passing on thier "bad genes" to offspring. We are far more advanced, knowledgeable and capable of having a humane and reasonable eugenics program than the quacks from 1927.

I you are serious about wanted to raise IQ scores, one way to start is to remove all lead based paint from 32,000,000 American homes. Lead poisoning from that paint (and a few other factors) is lowering the IQ of 6 million American children by an average of 7.4 points. That figure comes from a recent NEJM article and newsreports of the article. Links available at PLA.

Removal of the lead based paint would have a one time cost of about $30 billion with associated savings of $60 billion or so in special ed spending.

Actually doing something to raise IQ is a lot better than arguing about differences in the construct we call "race".

Bravo, Dwight. That's an excellent way to find all the dummies we want to sterilize. We could offer free lead paint removal, test the IQ of everyone in the house, add back that 7.4 point average you speak of - just to be fair - then sterilize the lot of them.

I went to a Nobel Conference called Nature versus Nurture last year. Which has a greater affect on personality and intelligence? Environment or genes?

It was interesting to see that the scientists who got their degree before 1970 said that it is 80% environment.

Those scientists who got their degree after 1970 said it was 60-70% genes.

I believe the latest research reconfirmed in numerous twin studies done around the world. 60-70% of your personality and intelligence is inherited.

Here's some links for those more interested in educating themselves than yapping. All of these are handily archived at mugu.com. I don't know what it is, or why. Anyway.

First, the Gould piece from the The New Yorker that Jane mentioned.

Nothing in "The Bell Curve" angered me more than the authors' failure to supply any justification for their central claim, the sine qua non of their entire argument: that the number known as g, the celebrated "general factor" of intelligence, first identified by the British psychologist Charles Spearman, in 1904, captures a real property in the head.

Next: criticism by one Jeff Braden in School Psychology Review; you'd expect this to be hostile, and it is somewhat, but a lot less than you might think:

Abstract: Because school psychologists are considered experts on intelligence and assessment, they have an ethical obligation to read -- and understand -- The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). However, many psychologists will avoid this task, because The Bell Curve forces one to confront issues that educators would prefer to dismiss or avoid. This article addresses four questions that psychologists should consider before dismissing The Bell Curve: (a) Is IQ really helpful? Co) Could the black-white IQ gap be genetic?, (c) Could it help to know that the gap is genetic?, and (d) What should educators do about all this? I answer "Yes" to the first three questions. It is possible to reconcile a genetic account of the black-white IQ gap with a vigorous commitment to social justice. Society has already accepted a genetic account of ability differences between groups; namely, differences in physical ability between males and females. Feminist principles show how society can embrace differences in ability (and outcomes) while eradicating differences in opportunity. The fourth question is addressed by noting that individualism (rather than egalitarianism) provides a socially, morally, and scientifically defensible basis for educational policy. Although some of Herrnstein and Murray's educational policy proposals merit criticism, their recommendations are worthy of discussion.

And finally a response to his critics by Charles Murray.

We never quite say it in so many words, but the book's subtext is that America's discussion of social policy since the 1960's has been carried on in a never-never land where human beings are easily changed and society can eventually become a Lake Wobegon where everyone is above average. The Bell Curve does indeed imply that it is time to get serious about how best to accommodate the huge and often intractable individual differences that shape human society.

"Wishing won't make IQ go away."

That is indeed true. Nonetheless, the debate over IQ will forevermore remain an existential conundrum that will never be ultimately solved. Please give it your best shot, but just remember that your great-great grandchildren will also be frustrated by this awkward and uneasy issue.

IQ is a fascinating topic, but, judging by many of these comments, not one necessarily well understood by the people who express the strongest opinions on the subject.

If you are interested in learning more, I've collected a couple of dozen of my articles touching on IQ at:

http://www.isteve.com/Articles_IQ.htm

It's been several years since I read the book, but H&M never argued that IQ wasn't strongly influenced by environment; just that there was also a heritable portion. I forget the numbers, but they expressed this in a range, not as a concrete number, and then presumed the lowest end of the range as heritable for the sake of their argument.

They also drew an analogy, which I have cited numerous times since, although just in paraphrase: An acorn won't become an oak tree if left in the Sahara desert and deprived of water and nutrition. But no matter how well one cares for a pine cone, it will never grow up to be an oak tree.

Jeff makes the right point. It's only a matter of time before IQ is related to physiological criteria like neuron refractory periods or brain structure - allowing us to perhaps measure intelligence in inverse seconds, like we measure computer clock speeds. (Intelligence may not be a scalar, but we can discuss the variation along the largest variance direction as a scalar.)In other words, we'll be able to measure brain properties that will predict life performance/test performance/etc.

Combining this with the data from the hapmap will give us information on both what alleles contribute to intelligence variation and what haplotype frequencies in different populations are like . The results will provoke a furor from the likes of Atrios, Mac Diva, etc., but they'll be based on molecular genetics. In other words, they'll facilitate genetic engineering to boost intelligence, which will put all the lies about how intelligence is something "unmeasurable" to rest.

At that point I envision a switch by the social engineers back to eugenics. After all, the only reason genetic explanations occasion such hostility today is because they imply that the cause is immutable. Take away that immutability, and social engineers (of all political persuasions, but particularly those on the left) will recant...

Oh yeah - one other thing. Alongside the fabrications from the racist right, at least one of the studies *Gould* cites was actually a total fabrication from the marxist left. This is the famous head-size data of Boas. See the article in the New York Times. Of course, just as the racist right had its deceivers, the Marxist left had fellows like Lysenko (and Gould, Lewontin, Steve Rose, etc.), so this wasn't that surprising.

"I believe the latest research reconfirmed in numerous twin studies done around the world. 60-70% of your personality and intelligence is inherited."

You're three years out of date - a fraternal twins v. identical twins study revised the inheritance number downward.

Count me among those who have read The Bell Curve, and among those who think it excellent.

It is really too bad the book mentions race at all, and that the authors are associated with racism, because all the best ideas in the book are independent of race.

I completely agree that opposition to the book has been uniformly uninformed. There are far too many people who react negatively to any discussion of race and intelligence without objectivity.

IMHO, the two key points in the book, in order of importance:
-- Differential birth rates between the ends of the bell curve are shifting the mean downward.
-- The right end of the curve is separating from the middle, causing a growing disconnect between society's leaders (drawn disproportionately from the right end) and the average member.

The differential birth rate phenomenon is real - people really are becoming less intelligent with each generation. This is a huge problem which has not received nearly the attention it deserves. I am so concerned about this, I am writing a book about it.

Ole

I assume you've read Heckman's article on it:

http://reason.com/9503/dept.bk.HECKMAN.text.shtml

Cas: Thanks. The wider distribution of IQ on the bell curve among Africans is something I read and is presumably based on sampling. I can't remember the source, but at the time I thought "what an interesting result". Perhaps one of the other many learned readers may enlighten us. Dean

Ole: How does your book on how the world is getting less intelligent deal with the inconvenient fact that measured IQ scores are rising with every generation?

I'm assuming that it deals with it in the same way Hernstein & Murray did; by sweeping it under the carpet.

Ole's argument suggests the median IQ is decreasing; median IQ could decrease while mean IQ increases, particularly if the distribution is becoming increasingly bimodal.

for ole,
check out a pohl and kornbluth story called "the marching morons." 1951 it makes a similar point, though it is not arguing for a bimodal distribution but a swamping effect of the bottom quintiles.

for evil one:
"Bravo, Dwight. That's an excellent way to find all the dummies we want to sterilize. We could offer free lead paint removal, test the IQ of everyone in the house, add back that 7.4 point average you speak of - just to be fair - then sterilize the lot of them."

why do i get the feeling that you are being deliberately provocative and "playfully naughty"?
after all, that 7.4 points could be coming from a 170 i.q. person. after all, a lot of those old, very expensive houses, that smart upwardly mobile folks love to live in, have lead paint...

Each year, we have a sanctioned ten-mile road race in our area. The Kenyan National Team always attends and wipes everybody else's eye.
As it happens, we don't see the Nigerian national team, or the Congo's, or....
Reason is that Kenya is in East Africa. For generations, many of the East Africans lived a life of herding, with few dogs and no horses. Which meant they trotted all day, keeping things in order, and did so at several thousand feet of altitude. I think Nairobi is a mile high, but it's too late to bother looking it up. Pretty far up there, anyway. Many Olympians train in Colorado Springs to increase the stress on the cardio/pulmano system and thus its rebound or improvement.
People lived on the edge in the old days and selection for being able to run forever must have existed.
In the Congo basin, and in West Africa, most people lived by bush farming. No running, and not at much altitude. Peak strength of the torso, however, was useful, and apparently selected for.
Okay, here's the unspeakable:
Bush farming and herding present different sets of problems which have to be solved in order to survive.
Is it possible that different environments select for different problem-solving abilities as they do for different physical characteristics?
Further, it would be reasonable to assume that not all of the different suites of problem-solving abilities are equally favorable in Western society?
If we could, hypothetically, quantify all of the multiple intelligences educators talk about and discover that Fred, from one place, has a total of 1000, while Bill, from the other side of the world also has a total of 1000, there would still be a question. That is how the different individual intelligences compare with one another in reaching the total of 1000.
The following question would be which profile is more favorable in Western society.
My guess is that the profile that was selected for, day by day, 24/7, for several thousand years, would be most favorable in the society which it developed. And which, it could be said, developed it.
There are many unknowns in this hypothesis, of course.
But the differences in phenotype related to differences in environment make one wonder if the same kind of differential selection could be at work in differentiating intelligences.
The next question is what to do with the information if we have it.

Well, if EvilOne is onto something, we ought at least start with traits that are less controversially genetic.

Anybody who can't play groove-tongue U-block harmonica style should be forbidden from playing blues.

Anybody who can't taste cilantro properly should be forbidden to write restaurant reviews or complain about the food at VietNamese or Mexican restaurants.

Lefthanders should be forbidden to wear long sleeved shirts while writing.

These simple measures could improve society immensely.

dsquared -

I'd be really interested in any evidence that shows measured IQ scores are rising with each generation. I certainly don't want to sweep any such evidence under any rug. One of the challenges of this type of inquiry is gathering and correctly interpreting emperical data.

Actually over the time period that this effect is taking place, IQ has not really been measured. Human intelligence lost selective pressure about 10,000 years ago, and sort of held even, but didn't actually begin decreasing until about 300 years ago with the advent of social systems for child care. IQ measurement didn't begin until about 80 years ago, and the technology for accurate measurements is only about 50 years old.

There are several masking effects on the fact that the mean is drifting downward, most notably the huge improvement in education in the past century and the fact that human population has exploded, so that even as the mean has decreased there are more people in real numbers at both ends of the curve.

Ole

Jumping back in--again, I apologize if I'm missing an important post (I'm supposed to be writing my actual book, not a blog post)--SCIENCE NEWS has an article out on a new study on the Flynn effect in Africa. I don't think non-subscribers can access the URL, but here it is: http://www.sciencenews.org/20030510/fob6.asp

The new case may be explained by factors like improved nutrition, but the article states clearly that in industrialized nations nutrition isn't the cause of the ongoing rise in IQ. The money quote, as blog-land would have it: '"There's a real Flynn effect in industrialized nations, but its cause is a great mystery," Gottfredson remarks. '

There’s one book available on the subject: The Rising Curved: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures (APA Series) edited by Ulric Neisser.

If you don’t mind I’d like to add that any real live, honest-to-god geneticist would probably faint if he/she were to read this thread. I’m a science writer, so trust me on this: I know. Geneticists reject absolutely the idea that there is a separation between nature and nurture. I believe them, but I still can’t grasp how to think about questions like IQ without resorting to a nature/nurture distinction.

I **can**, now, think easily in terms of a feedback loop, which I believe is how Flynn himself explains the Flynn effect in his PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW article: genes affect the environment, and the environment affects the genes, and then the now-modified genes re-affect the environment, and so on. All of the twin study people use this idea (I edited a book about twins a few years back): your biology pushes you to choose certain environments and the environments you choose then push your biology to be **more** like the biology that chose that environment. People who study aging say the same thing: they say the older we get, the more “like ourselves” we become, because the older we get the freer we are to choose our environments. When you’re a child you can’t choose not to learn math; you don’t get to make that decision. But when you’re 50 you can say to hell with it. I’m not doing math. When I did an article on the aging brain a few years ago for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN PRESENTS one of the neuroscientists told me that the older people get the more different they are from one another. Real diversity doesn’t begin until you’re 70, he said.

Anyway, I’m now able easily to think about IQ and the like in terms of a feedback loop, but a feedback loop still depends on an opposition between biology and environment, and I’m pretty sure the various geneticists I’ve interviewed over the years would roll their eyes at this, too. So I’m still trying to get it.

One last thing: GENE EXPRESSION. For years and years we’ve lived in the shadow of the Human Genomes Project, which was heavily promoted and heavily covered to say the least, and as a result we all sort of soaked up the idea that genes are these solid, rock-like, determinate and determining **things.** Genes are the building blocks, or the blueprint, or the “Bible of the human race”—we heard this kind of talk for years.

I spent a lot of time funding genetic research during those years (I have kids with disabilities), and I had the strongest interest and faith in genes-genes-genes!

So imagine my distress when, practically the **instant** the Human Genome Project wrapped up, all of a sudden I’m hearing “gene expression.”

That’s something you just didn’t see in the popular press while the Genome Project was going on. So it turns out genes are slippery little eels. The same gene can do different things in different cells, different parts of the body, different people; the same gene can even do different things depending on exactly what sort of gene is right next door. I wouldn’t be remotely surprised to learn that the same gene does different things depending on the time of the day or what the weather is like outside. (In fact, I’d put money on it that they do.)

So what influences gene expression?

Environment and . . . genes.

Anyway, when I think politically about these issues I radically steer away from biological determinism (IQ is “determined” by genes, X-IQ point gap between blacks and whites, etc.) not because I need Steven Pinker to set me straight, but because I’ve learned enough to know that biology isn’t a rock. (Is a rock even a rock if you look at it under a microscope?) Neural plasticity is especially astonishing, and I don’t think anyone has any idea what the limits on plasticity are or might be. There’s a fellow at the University of Alabama who’s developed a physical therapy for stroke victims that is restoring movement to people who’ve been paralyzed for **years**--this is a strictly environmental intervention, and he’s treating out-and-out brain damage in adults. No one thought that was possible. Not remotely. And there are two psychologists at UCSB, Lynn & Bob Koegel, who took 4 severely autistic young children, treated them with a child-friendly form of behavioral therapy consistent with what we know about neural plasticity, and ended up with four children who no longer qualify for the diagnosis. (JASH has the study; 1998, I believe.)

And then there is Irene Pepperberg, whose African grey parrot Alex is now functioning at the cognitive level of a normal 5-year old human child. Until Dr. Pepperberg figured out a whole new way of teaching birds no one had been able to teach birds **anything.** (Should I mention the guy down in Arizona who thinks he’s discovered prairie dogs can talk??)

You get my drift. My strong feeling is that since we simply don’t know, at this point, what are the limits on change, we should generally behave as if change is possible. We should take the position that our job, when we’re dealing with learning problems and IQ deficits in children (and perhaps in adults) is to assume that we just haven’t figured out the right way to teach them yet. Our job is to keep trying.

That said, obviously we’re going to continue to have people who are more capable and people who are less capable, certainly for the foreseeable future, and I don’t conclude that if your IQ is 90 you have a duty to find the environment that will bump you up to 130, assuming that’s possible, and it just might be. Politically (and ethically) I think the strong should look out for the weak, and the government should, too. . . bearing in mind, of course, the fact that a nanny state is probably everything its critics have always said, and bad for your brain to boot.

OK, I’m going to go clean up my office.

Wonderful blog—so glad I found JG.

regarding racial variation: I don't remember where I read it, but I read somewhere that while variation in IQ between black and white exists when controlled for family income, it diminishes significantly when controlled for family wealth. Apparently, people who earn lots of money don't buy the same rich home environment that people who have lots of money do. As middle- and high-income black families tend to be arrivistes compared to similar-income white families, this may explain most of the black-white IQ disparity.

Does money make intelligence? Or is it the chicken or the egg came first? I grew up with almost no amenities, no money to speak of, no summer vacations, only books from bookmobile library and working class neighborhood parochial school. But I had an IQ in the upper 1%, my older brother was probably higher and my 3 younger siblings were all around 125, upper 5%, I believe. In other words we were working class income, even less wealth (won't go into that) and upper 1% of IQ. I don't get it. How does "wealth" buy IQ? So many great brains and geniuses (not including myself in that statement) came from quite modest backgrounds. Probably most.

"Very low IQ parents are unable to provide the rich stimulation that children of high-IQ parents get."

That's nonsense.

It assumes that the adults of today received 'rich stimulation' from their parents, which is certainly not the case with adults who were born in the Depression era or earlier.

Somehow, the intelligent adults of earlier generations managed to get by without having been raised in nurturing intellectual environments.

Were there no high-IQ people back in the days when the only book most people ever saw was a Bible? When formal schooling often ended before 6th grade? Clearly this is not the case.

Somehow, smart people managed to exist without being exposed to Baby Einstein DVDs in infancy.

Furthermore, I think you're getting into class or cultural distinctions, not just IQ. It's entirely possible for someone to have smart parents who aren't intellectuals, who don't read, who veg in front of the TV, and don't contribute much to the intellectual development of the children beyond genes.

In case I wasn't clear, basically what I'm saying is that the whole business of parents providing "rich stimulation" for the children is a very recent development - but the existence of smart people long predates it.

It might help a little, but then again it might be as useless as that whole 'play Mozart to your baby' thing. It certainly isn't *required* for the development of intelligent people.

Were there no high-IQ people back in the days when the only book most people ever saw was a Bible? When formal schooling often ended before 6th grade? Clearly this is not the case.

The Bible, at least the Authorized Version, is in a nearly separate language, Early Modern English. Reading and understading it is mentally challenging. The formal schooling of 6th grade 100 years ago was much tougher than the formal schooling of 6th grade now.

Besides, "rich stimulation" isn't necessarily all the trendy things that yuppie parents get suckered into paying lots of money for. Having to care for animals or younger siblings at an early age can provide some of that, as can having a parent who's around most of the time.

A rich and stimulating intellectual environment for children is NOT spending weekends at the Museum of Modern Art trying to tell the exhibits from the kids' dirty diapers.
It is talking to kids. It is explaining to kids. It is reading to kids, even if it's a second-hand Golden Book. It's challenging kids.
And it doesn't cost a dime.

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