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Comment by kamau | Hacker News Reader

Spare me. Statements such as those are almost always concerned with promoting and upholding white supremacy/racism. Would the statement been given any legitimacy if it was stated that '...the average white IQ is 85...'? I doubt it. The fact that a statements like these are made with no or dubious evidence is bad enough. Asserting that there is an empirical question here, when said dubious statement is refuted, is the icing on the cake.

P.S. I do understand that this is an empirical statement/question. But so is the assertion that there is a teapot on the moon.

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What exactly are you trying to say? The fact that the average black IQ in America is 85 is an empirically proven fact. [1]

You can certainly argue that IQ is a flawed measurement of intelligence, or that the IQ gap stems solely from environmental factors, but just flat out plugging your ears and denying that studies have found the mean black IQ to be 85 is an absurd display of intellectual dishonesty.

[1]http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

You cant say that it is an empirically proven fact, anc then concede that it is a possibly flawed measurement. I'm all too familiar with racists, and you sir/mam look familiar.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/jason-richwine-race-iq...

> I'm all too familiar with racists

You must be familiar with Rushton then, the author of the study he cited. I'd be hard pressed to name a more blatant racist than Rushton in academia... I really can't take that study seriously.

"The belief that there are biological differences between ethnic populations is wrong because the belief that there are biological differences between ethnic populations is wrong."

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting you, but do you not see something incredibly tautological with that line of reasoning?

The belief that there are biological differences between ethnic populations is on its face obviously true, unless one were to postulate that skin colour is not a genetic trait.

As such it becomes at best disingenuous to interpret the fact that he called Rushton a blatant racist as implying merely a belief in biological differences in general.

Further he did not say it is wrong. He said he can't take the study seriously when coming from a blatant racist. Presumably because he does not trust that Rushton is able to put aside that bias and treat the subject seriously and honestly. While one can try to let the work stand on its own, the problem with that if you don't trust the intentions of the researcher is that it is tremendously easy to fudge data, or be selective with your data, to get whatever result you want.

Sorry but, are you at all familiar with Rushton? He's been blatantly called a racist by just about everyone and his work has been academically criticized left and right for a lack of unbiased scientific rigor. In your own words, to use his work as evidence is to me, an absurd display of intellectual dishonesty.

I have no doubt that he's a racist, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the accuracy of this particular paper. What do you see as the error that invalidates its conclusions?

I haven't read the paper. I know it sounds like a cop out (have you?). But then if I'd read it, it wouldn't really have mattered as I'm not an expert in the field. I'm no more qualified to criticize his data as someone who refuses global warming or evolution. Yet in all three topics, I can still hold an opinion that I believe to be the right one, which isn't the opinion of the average citizen, journalist or politician, but that of the average scientist. And here we see scientists overwhelmingly opining the validity of evolution, global warming, and that Rushton's work is utter bs. His work has been routinely dismissed on scientific grounds by the vast majority of scientists who have bothered to look into them. On them I depend for my own opinion. You may dismiss me on grounds that if I haven't read, analyzed and researched the paper's data, theories and conclusions, that I shouldn't speak on it. That's fine. I disagree but I can see why you'd say that. But to dismiss the fact that overwhelmingly scientists have looked upon his work unfavorably on scientific, but ideological grounds I think is myopic.

Anyway, I'll return the question... Did you read and believe in the validity of his data, theory and conclusions in this paper or in a general sense? And do you believe that the majority of scientists in relevant fields agree with his conclusions? You have my answers on these two (no and no), I'm curious to hear yours.

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