Is IQ Really a Genetic Thing?

Evo

Bouchard's study is not considered to have valid scientific merit due to the lack of peer review, among other things.

Bouchard's twin study was primarily funded by the Pioneer Fund, a racist/eugenics organization. Bouchard to date has received 1.8 million dollars from the Pioneer fund.

"The failure of Bouchard and his colleagues in the Minnesota
Twin Study to participate in the peer review process is an
extreme example of circumventing the scientific process and using
the media for public relations. "

"Finally, Bouchard and McGue simply pooled the samples from
very different tests and from tests which gave extraordinarily
divergent results. For instance, one test of siblings gave an
I.Q. correlation of 10 percent, while another test gave a
correlation of 90 percent. Bouchard and McGue simply averaged the
two to give a correlation of 50 percent. "

"The first New York Times report about the Minnesota Twin
study quoted Bouchard as saying, "I'm going to beg, borrow, and
steal" to pursue the twin study. In fact, Bouchard has solicited
money from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation with racist and radical
right-wing connections. the University of Minnesota has received
grants from the fund for Bouchard's twin study. But the Pioneer
Fund is best known for its support of research purporting the
inferiority of blacks."

"Once headed by directors such as the Chairman of the House
Committee on UnAmerican Activities, Representative Francis E.
Walter, and Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland, the fund has
long subsidized research and publication of the works of
scientific racists, including William Shockley and Arthur Jensen,
Jensen served on the scientific advisory board of the German Neo-
Nazi journal Newe Anthropologie. (SeeBarry Mehler's article "The
New Eugenics" in the May/June 1983 issue of _Science for the
People_.)"

"Bouchard, in his grant application to the Pioneer Fund,
noted that the National Science Foundation has repeatedly refused
funding for his study and has made numerous criticisms of his
method. Bouchard has claimed that the NSF and the National
Institutes of Health are packed with left liberals who deny him
funds on ideological grounds."

http://www.textfiles.com/conspiracy/twins.txt

Your source is a racist/eugenics website. Super. As a matter of fact, all of your links contain publications by known racists/eugenicists and many have connections to the Pioneer Fund. Phillipe Rushton is currently president of the Pioneer Fund.

BlackVision

You know deciding to attack the funding of a research, rather than the merits of the research, makes your case extraordinarily weak.

But you wanna know the truth about the Pioneer Fund? Here you go:

"A related example is the charge that The Bell Curve is based on "tainted sources." Charles Lane introduced this theme with an article in the New Republic and then a much longer one in the New York Review of Books. In the latter piece, he proclaimed that "No fewer than seventeen researchers cited in the bibliography of The Bell Curve have contributed to Mankind Quarterly, a notorious journal of `racial history' founded, and funded, by men who believe in the genetic superiority of the white race." Lane also discovered that we cited thirteen scholars who had received grants from the Pioneer Fund, established and run (he alleged) by men who were Nazi sympathizers, eugenicists, and advocates of white racial superiority. Leon Kamin, a vociferous critic of IQ in all its manifestations, took up the same argument at length in his review of The Bell Curve in Scientific American.

Never mind that The Bell Curve draws its evidence from more than 1,000 sources. Never mind that among the scholars in Lane's short list are some of the most respected psychologists of our time, and that the "tainted sources" consist overwhelmingly of articles that were published in respected and refereed journals. Never mind that the relationship between the founder of the Pioneer Fund and today's Pioneer Fund is roughly analogous to the relationship between Henry Ford and today's Ford Foundation."


And Washington Post is an extremely liberal newspaper. You honestly think they'll post an article supporting neo-nazis? Trying to start invalid conspiracies is the best way to avoid the truth.

By the way, I think you need to learn what it means to be racist or have a racial superiority complex. IQ researches, REGARDLESS of who does the study, whether a white guy, black guy, whatever, anyways comes up with the same researches. To call the Bell Curve, "racist" cause Murray and Herrnstein reaches a conclusion that Jews and Asians had higher IQs makes absolutely no sense. J Rushton that reaches the exact same conclusion. To call him a racist, again makes no sense. Since when does a racist, like to promote 2 groups above their own?

Nereid

I wonder whether BlackVision has any relationship to Nachtwolf?

In any case, surely a more significant scientific test of genetic component of IQ would be identical twins raised apart, from 'birth', in very different environments?

For example, one twin raised in white middle America, the other in rural Africa (or by a Saudi prince, or a worker's family in Lanzhou, ...). How else can we 'control' for variations in 'mother tongue', 'child raising practices' (esp from very early ages), diet, birth order (IIRC, this makes a big difference in SAT scores in the US; who knows how it affects the IQs of kids growing up with Mongolian cattle nomads?), peer groups, ...

Oh, and it would be nice if the results of such 'twin studies' were published in peer-review journals (and not funded by the Pioneer Fund).

Evo

If you had read my post, you would have realized that I was criticizing the lack of scientific peer review. Perhaps you should read a post before making inaccurate assumptions.

Here's the truth about the Pioneer Fund.

The Pioneer Fund persevered, however, and became increasingly active through the 1950s. It was the fund's opposition to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision to integrate public schools which attracted its previous president, New York lawyer Harry F. Weyher, who assumed the job in 1958.

Since then, the Pioneer Fund has doled out money to people such as Roger Pearson, a British ex-patriate living in Georgia who, in 1958, founded the Northern League to promote "the interests, friendship and solidarity of all Teutonic nations."

"Early recruits," reports the London-based Independent, "included Hans Gunther, who was awarded a Goethe medal in 1941 for his work on Nordic racial philosophy, Ernest Sevier Cox, an American leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Dr. Wilhelm Kusserow, a former SS Untersturmfuhrer."

Between 1981 and 1991 alone (payments continued at least through 1994), Pearson received $568,000 from the Pioneer Fund to publish Mankind Quarterly, a publication dedicated to "race science."

In the 1970s, reports the Independent, Mankind Quarterly's editorial advisers included Otmar, Baron Von Verscheur, who had served as director of the genetics and eugenics program at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute during World War II. While at the institute, the baron recommended one of his students, Joseph Mengele, for a post as doctor at Auschwitz.

The Pioneer Fund has also paid for research by various scientists looking for proof of a connection between heredity and IQ scores, and IQ score difference between races.

Some of the Pioneer Fund's largest grants have gone to a well-known--and well-respected--study of twins at the University of Minnesota.

But the fund has also given more than $500,000 to Phillipe Rushton, a Canadian professor who asserts that brain size and intelligence are greater in Asians than whites, who in turn have larger brains and more intelligence than blacks. He also argues that penis size shows a similar, but reverse, correlation, and claims that the larger penises of blacks is an indication of greater promiscuity--a conclusion he based on interviewing 50 black students at the university where he teaches--and proof that blacks are less evolved. In 1989, police investigated Rushton under Canadian hate-propaganda laws but did not charge him.

I didn't quote anything from the Washington Post.

I haven't mentioned the Bell Curve. But it is a well known fact that the authors are racist, now that you mention it.

When it suits their purpose of slandering a particular race.

BlackVision

80 years of scientific consistent scientific research is quite hard to refute. Which is why it's yet to succesfully be done.

Read what I posted about the Pioneer Fund again. And once again, where one get his research money is a weak argument. You wanna refute a research, you refute it's facts, it's data, it's statistics, it's conclusions. If this is your primarily focus, there is no debate.

My article on IQ heritability WAS from the Washington Post. YOU were stating that my sources were tainted.

Right cause simply using fundamental mainstream science on a taboo subject makes it racist. All scientists I'm sure will agree that Siamese cats are the smartest cat. Perhaps these scientists are cat racists against other cats too aye.

It couldn't simply have to do with using science or finding the truth huh. The fact remains, concluding 2 groups above your own DOES NOT make one a racist.

So the only way that someone isn't racist is if they perfectly agree with you on racial matters? Oh that's just great. Forget science. Forget research. Let's just create happy answers to live in our oh so delusional politically correct world where feelings have become more important than the pursuit of truth, the pursuit of science.

Evo

I was thinking the same thing!

Concept

I like how BV just totally ignored my post.

Evo

Hmmm, here is my opening statement "Bouchard's study is not considered to have valid scientific merit due to the lack of peer review, among other things." Bouchard's statistics, data and conclusions have all been questioned and Bouchard has failed to provide documentation (which he promised) which could validate his study.

WRONG. You really cannot read, can you? Here it is again, so you may read it. Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackVision
Source: http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstrea...hard-twins.html

Your source is a racist/eugenics website. Super. As a matter of fact, all of your links contain publications by known racists/eugenicists and many have connections to the Pioneer Fund. Phillipe Rushton is currently president of the Pioneer Fund. If you had reading comprehension skills, you would note first that I was refering to the source of the mugu.com website and the rest of the LINKS you posted. I never referred to your post.

Getting silly now?

I never said it did. It's all the other facts that make them racists.

It is about the science, and VALID research, not the skewed and biased "studies" that you post.

Would you like the facts about the study that concluded that whites and Asians had larger brain sizes? Oh please ask me to post it.

BlackVision

Again 80 years of research by psychologists. This isn't one study. These are hundreds of studies done for the past 80 years. Ever since IQ tests have been invented. Quit singling out one single person.

Wow YOU can't read can you? Let me repost my first source.

"These statistics have shown that on average, identical twins tend to be around 80 percent the same in everything from stature to health to IQ to political views. The similarities are partly the product of similar upbringing. But evidence from the comparison of twins raised apart points rather convincingly to genes as the source of a lot of that likeness."

"identical twins are roughly 85 percent similar for IQ, fraternal twins about 60 percent."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-sr...wins/twins2.htm

And these sites make it racist? How? Cause it doesn't agree with your illogical state of mind? But want me to post the article from "Wall Street Journal" Here. I'd like to you try and attempt and say Wall Street Journal is racist.

Mainstream Science on Intelligence
The Wall Street Journal
December 13, 1994

Since the publication of "The Bell Curve," many commentators have offered
opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence.
Some conclusions dismissed in the media as discredited are actually firmly
supported.

This statement outlines conclusions regarded as mainstream among researchers
on intelligence, in particular, on the nature, origins, and practical
consequences of individual and group differences in intelligence. Its aim is
to promote more reasoned discussion of the vexing phenomenon that the
research has revealed in recent decades. The following conclusions are fully
described in the major textbooks, professional journals and encyclopedias in
intelligence.

The Meaning and Measurement of Intelligence

1. Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other
things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think
abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from
experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or
test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability
for comprehending our surroundings--"catching on," "making sense" of
things, or "figuring out" what to do.

2. Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests
measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms,
reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments. They do
not measure creativity, character personality, or other important
differences among individuals, nor are they intended to.

3. While there are different types of intelligence tests, they all measure
the same intelligence. Some use words or numbers and require specific
cultural knowledge (like vocabulary). Others do not, and instead use
shapes or designs and require knowledge of only simple, universal
concepts (many/few, open/closed, up/down).

4. The spread of people along the IQ continuum, from low to high, can be
represented well by the bell curve (in statistical jargon, the "normal
curve"). Most people cluster around the average (IQ 100). Few are
either very bright or very dull: About 3% of Americans score above IQ
130 (often considered the threshold for "giftedness"), with about the
same percentage below IQ 70 (IQ 70-75 often being considered the
threshold for mental retardation).

5. Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or
other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ
scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of
race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English well
can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native language.

6. The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little
understood. Current research looks, for example, at speed of neural
transmission, glucose (energy) uptake, and electrical activity of the
brain, uptake, and electrical activity of the brain.

Group Differences

7. Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level. The
bell curves of different groups overlap considerably, but groups often
differ in where their members tend to cluster along the IQ line. The
bell curves for some groups (Jews and East Asians) are centered
somewhat higher than for whites in general. Other groups (blacks and
Hispanics) ale centered somewhat lower than non-Hispanic whites.

8. The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell
curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different
subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and
blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100
the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered.

No I would say you are.

Point out these "facts" No more Pioneer Fund either.

Alright if you're honestly about the science, let's try this with a open mind. Would you be willing to accept that thousands of years of evolution in various locations in the world, has allowed slight differences in various abilities of both mental and physical characteristics of the human races. I'm not exactly referring to IQ or the Bell Curve, but would you be willing to conclude that some variation exists in between races in both physical and mental characteristics.

Post if you wish.

BlackVision

Would you like to me to copy and paste my previous responses?

The world purpose of an IQ test is be culturally unbias. It's by definition suppose to measure natural intelligence. If it was bias toward higher education, toward a culture, that would defeat the whole purpose of IQ test now wouldn't it? And would be considered invalid by all psychologists. Since psychologists and geneticists alike seem overwhelmingly in support of such tests, the validity of such tests are strongly upheld.

Especially matrices IQ test. Let me show you what a matrix IQ test looks like.

http://nicologic.free.fr/MatrixA.htm

You honestly think education would have any major impact on your ability to take this test?

BlackVision

Ok would you like to point out where in this article it even mentions IQ?

Power law governs gene expression
Proportional dynamics illustrates commonality of gene expression levels in all organisms | By Cathy Holding



With an ever-increasing number of genomes available for analysis, there has been a shift in emphasis away from the study of single genes and a greater attempt to understand gene expression at the network or systems level. A report in the March 1 PNAS shows that power laws—a universal mathematical dynamic—govern the process.

Hiroki Ueda and colleagues at the Center for Developmental Biology describe the mathematical principle underlying observed levels of gene expression. They used information from public databases of whole genome sequences and from their own microarray analyses. Proportional dynamics, also known as “rich-travel-more,” showed that power law levels of gene expression were observed not only in different organisms, but also within discrete organs or at specific developmental times in the same organism (PNAS, DOI:10.1073/pnas.0306244101, March 1, 2004).

The team examined how genes change their expression in different conditions and observed that highly expressed genes change more, while genes expressed infrequently change less. “It's proportional; the magnitude of change[s] are proportional to their expression levels,” said Ueda. “I also found [that] proportional dynamics can reproduce the complex pattern of distribution in gene expression levels—called power law distribution.”

Ueda said he was surprised to find Escherichia coli and humans are governed by the same simple mechanism. “I am glad to have found a simple and universal mechanism that exists in all systems of life,” he told The Scientist.

Plotting the distribution of different gene expression levels against the expression hierarchy of those genes results in a straight line. “I unexpectedly found that distribution[s] of gene expression were heterogeneous and governed by the power law of minus 2 exponent,” he told The Scientist in an E-mail.

Yutaka Suzuki, research scientist at the Institute of Medical Science Human Genome Center explained, “In every case, you can see the straight line in the scattering plot. The basic concept is that such a kind of law is conserved between cell types and organisms in many kinds of context.”

Suzuki, who was not involved in the study, explained that it is the ratio of minus 2 that is conserved. “That's the universal observation, that's the point of this manuscript,” he said.

Lada Adamic, a power law expert in the Information Dynamics Laboratory at Hewlett-Packard, told The Scientist that although she was not a biologist, she would almost expect this observation because these distributions are extremely common. “As long as you have like a multiplicative process—which is what this is, this proportional process—you're going to end up with a distribution like that,” she said.

Adamic, who was not involved in the study, said that the same distribution was actually observed by Yule in 1913 when he was looking at the abundance of species in different genera. “So that's kind of like a biological thing,” she said. “The problem with power laws is that people keep kind of rediscovering them.”

“I myself have heard that this behavior of a system is very universal, [but] this is the first groundwork for this kind of analysis as I believe it. For biological systems, this is a first, so in that sense at least I think this is significant,” Suzuki said.

Ueda said that in the future, statistical analysis utilizing this “proportional” dynamics would be useful for the analysis of microarray data in any organism. “Statistical analysis based on “proportional” dynamics can be applied to the search for the significantly changed genes in two conditions,” he said in an E-mail. “We are preparing the manuscript on this type of application.”

Evo

You were the one that posted Bouchard as an impeccable source, not me. I was responding to your piece on him. Why do you keep bringing up other things you have posted that I did not respond to?

[QUOTE=BlackVision]Wow YOU can't read can you? Let me repost my first source.

"These statistics have shown that on average, identical twins tend to be around 80 percent the same in everything from stature to health to IQ to political views. The similarities are partly the product of similar upbringing. But evidence from the comparison of twins raised apart points rather convincingly to genes as the source of a lot of that likeness."

"identical twins are roughly 85 percent similar for IQ, fraternal twins about 60 percent."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-sr...wins/twins2.htm[/QUOTE'You are a DIM bulb. I did not post anything concerning this. If you say that it rains daily in the Sahara, and I reply saying "no, that's not correct", why would you then keep saying "but it snows in Iceland". I'm not discussing Iceland, I'm discussing the Sahara. Understand?

What are you rambling about? You think something is true just because of where something is repeated? Are you really that naive?

I will gladly point them out. I will do so later tonight when I have a bit more time. Sorry, the Pioneer Fund is closely tied to and in many cases responsible for the studies you hold as the truth. There is no way to exclude them.

I agree that there are physical differences caused by climate, nutrition, etc... I do not agree that there are mental differences.

The study are you referring to that shows that Asians have larger size brains than Africans is the unscientific, biased & debunked study by Rushton, that won't fly.

Funny that the reason the African brain size was significantly smaller was due to the grossly disproportionate sampling of PYGMIES.

"This paper
contains the geographical means widely cited by Rushton, namely
that the mean cranial volume for 26 Asian societies was 1380 cc,
the mean volume for 10 European societies was 1362, and the mean
for 10 African societies was 1276. Notably, the African sample
contained 5 groups that are characterized by exceptionally small
body size (2 pygmy groups and 2 bushman groups). Indeed the Akka
pygmies (representing 1/10 of the whole African sample) had the
smallest cranial volume ever found in extant humans (1085 cc)."

http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/dann...-1994/0088.html

All of you eugenicists have this tiny database of skewed information that you draw from. Do you have any idea how many times everything you have posted has previously been posted here and debunked?

Concept

then how exactly do you explain studies that consistently show that improving education and improving conditions increases IQ? Second of all, no one says IQ tests measure nothing. They were invented to indentify children who needed extra help, the person who created them specifically warned against an inherentist interpetation of the results. Third of all, implying the majority of psychologists agree that IQ is inherent is simply false. The existance of g is highly debatable, because it is merely one mathematical interpetation of IQ test results.

also, I posted the article because it talks about how enviornment influences gene expression. Thinking it doesn't influence IQ is a huge assumption.

BlackVision

Cause YOU are the one fixating on him. Trying to remove credibility of 80 years of psychology research from one person. Do you think there aren't hundreds of others that did their own researches that didn't draw the same conclusion as he did? Again, what is your fixation with him?

Washington Post and Wall Street Journal are by no measures a racist propaganda news source. Nor would they ever attempt to advocate any racism. For them to run the stories, does show credibility.

Perhaps focusing on refuting statistics and datas rather than where the money trail goes. Even if Hitler himself donated $10 million to fund the project, that itself certainly doesn't discredit any findings now does it.

See this is where PC mentality fails you and clouds your ability to use proper science. What makes you think nature is bias toward physical differences but doesn't lay a figure on mental attributes. Are you also gonna state there are no mental differences between one group of cats and other? One group of birds and another? One group of dogs and another? One group of fish and another?

Since when does mother nature ignore mental attributes. Since when does mental attributes become completely distanced from evolution. How does thousands of years of evolution not create even a single shred of mental differences? You may have to learn the basics of evolution first before we attempt to discuss this further.

Can you fix this link? It doesn't seem to work.

Debunked? Really? Hmm. So nobody here shares the same viewpoint I have? Why do I find that hard to believe.

BlackVision

IQ tests are approximately 70-80% genetic. I'm quite sure no one will say that it's completely genetic. That being said, better environments will have slight improvements in IQ. But by no means can someone jump from an IQ of 100 to an IQ of 130 regardless of environment. No environment in the world will give someone Einstein like IQ level. Genetics is the predominating factor.

Well perhaps you need to find an article that directly relates to IQ. That would have far more weight.

Evo

I'm not fixated, *you* are the one that keeps bringing him up and refuses to move on.

Sorry, here it is. http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny...1994/0088.html

Yes, really. There is you, Nachtwolf & hitssquad.

I will respond to your other items when I return. Or maybe it would be better to just give you the other threads that already go over all of this in boring repetitive detail.

Evo

Really? Please post the studies done that have proven this, I've somehow missed them in all my research on the subject.