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Comment by throwaway32893 | Hacker News Reader

It looks like a case of personal biases both misleading and bringing down a great scientist. It confirms that intelligence is not sufficient to protect against irrationality.

Aren't Watson's claims about IQ differences falsifiable? Either because the evidence he claims exists actually doesn't exist, or because the evidence exists but doesn't support his claims?

No one in the article directly falsified the claims ... they said things like it's “essentially guaranteed to be wrong" instead of "factually incorrect."

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There are IQ differences according to the article; the issue is whether or not those differences stem from genetics or environment. Current belief is that environment is to blame for the difference. I'm not sure if it's possible to prove that. The only way to prove its environment is to disprove the genetic component, which I highly doubt is going to happen. I feel like intelligence being genetically linked is obviously the case everywhere except when it comes to race.

Could you clarify "I feel like intelligence being genetically linked is obviously the case everywhere except when it comes to race"?

By "race" I assume you mean primarily skin color, and secondarily some facial features or hair types, yes?

There are a huge number of phenotypes besides skin color: hair color, eye color, blood types, cleft chin, cheek dimples, Hitchhiker's thumb, tongue rolling, Morton's toe, and many more.

It seems like most of them are not genetically linked to intelligence, so I don't know what you mean by "linked ... everywhere".

Could you also clarify what you mean by "race"? Most definitions are not really connected to genetics, which is why it usually doesn't make sense that there should be a genetic link. Eg, the archaic "one drop rule" race definition in the US clearly doesn't make genetic sense - see also the so-called "Pocahontas Clause" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924#T... to show how politics affects that type of racial definition.

(Some people also distinguish between, say, the Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and German races, but then use "black" for anyone with black skin, which seems really absurd since the genetic diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa is higher than in Europe; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering .)

You write "The only way to prove its environment is to disprove the genetic component". There is clearly a genetic component, because there are genetic diseases which result in low intelligence.

We don't need to show that there is no genetic component. We need only show that the the non-environmental effect is low enough that it does not make a useful predictor when correlated with race. Do you think that is impossible?

> In response to questions from The Times, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said that most experts on intelligence “consider any black-white differences in I.Q. testing to arise primarily from environmental, not genetic, differences.”

So, that seems to say that differences factually do exist in IQ results, but there's disagreement on how to explain them. And that Watson has jumped to the most offensive and biased possible explanation?

There are a number of plausible environmental explanations ... for example, questions on IQ tests having cultural biases.

Or that Francis Collins jumped to the least offensive possible explanation :)

(Replying to my own comment)

Found this on Wikipedia[1]:

"Since the beginning of IQ testing around the time of World War I there have been observed differences between average scores of different population groups, but there has been no agreement about whether this is mainly due to environmental and cultural factors, or mainly due to some genetic factor, or even if the dichotomy between environmental and genetic factors is the most effectual approach to the debate."

So that appears to confirm -- the differences in IQ test scores do exist, but there is disagreement on how to explain the differences.

Watson's claims exceed what the evidence supports, in that he claims the differences are genetic, but the evidence is incapable of telling us whether that is the case or not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intell...

I just realized another way that Watson's claims exceed the evidence.

He said, "I'm worried about Africa because our policies assume their IQ is the same as ours" (paraphrase, not an exact quote).

To base "worry" about a section of the world on differences in IQ tests relies on the assumption that IQ is a major determinant in how a section of the world fares.

In other words, even if you accept that we have evidence of IQ differences, we have no evidence measuring moral differences, community/social differences, ambition levels, etc.

So his comment doesn't reflect careful, nuanced thought. For someone who usually does think carefully, it's not unreasonable to think the lack of careful thought here is driven by a desire to confirm a pre-existing bias (such as the bias that whites are superior).

There's also a problem with grouping individuals into races. What happens when a certain race has a higher IQ in the US than in another country? What about mixed races? How do we group them?

Wikipedia has a long article that dives into all these points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence

> The racial groups studied in the United States and Europe are not necessarily representative samples for populations in other parts of the world. Cultural differences may also factor in IQ test performance and outcomes. Therefore, results in the United States and Europe do not necessarily correlate to results in other populations.

> Most people have an ancestry from different geographic regions, particularly African Americans typically have ancestors from both Africa and Europe, with, on average, 20% of their genome inherited from European ancestors. If racial IQ gaps have a partially genetic basis, one might expect blacks with a higher degree of European ancestry to score higher on IQ tests than blacks with less European ancestry, because the genes inherited from European ancestors would likely include some genes with a positive effect on IQ. Geneticist Alan Templeton has argued that an experiment based on the Mendelian "common garden" design where specimens with different hybrid compositions are subjected to the same environmental influences, would be the only way to definitively show a causal relation between genes and IQ. Summarizing the findings of admixture studies, he concludes that it has shown no significant correlation between any cognitive and the degree of African or European ancestry.

Is there data to support that? I'm not arguing who is wrong or right, but science has never been a democracy.

Most experts agreed our solar system was geocentric until Copernicus came along.

Stephen Jay Gould wrote a book about it called "The Mismeasure of Man". You can go to C-SPAN.org and see his 1994 speech on it.

The Brahmin say they are the chosen people, the Jews say they are the chosen people, Presbyterians say they are the elect - it's hard to reason people out of what is essentially a religious belief.

As behavioral modernity was not on display until 40000-50000 years ago, the idea that there is some significant genetic difference in this aspect seems silly.

You are twisting the concept of "chosen-ness" in an attempt to discredit the Jews. Disgusting.

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