My Thoughts On the Heritability of Intelligence and Eugenics

[hitssquad]

Reliability vs validity

Originally posted by selfAdjoint

hitssquad wrote
There are also 15 countrues for which there are two or more measures and for these we have used the two extreme values. The correlation between the two measures of national IQ is .939. This high correlation establishes that the measure of national IQ has high reliability.

No, it just shows the same causes produced both values.

In a statistical sense, there can be neither a determinable thing as a cause, nor production, of an event.

You seem to be answering here something that was not stated, selfAdjoint. Relative validity was not claimed here; relative reliability was.

If those causes were systematically skewed, the same high correlation would result.

...Which would make the results reliable. This essentially what Lynn wrote. Here it is again: "This high correlation establishes that the measure of national IQ has high reliability." Whatever is causing this skew, as far as our statistical methods have statistical power, appears to be relatively consistent. In a statistical sense, that is all that reliability establishes.

Do you know, in a statistical sense, what reliability is, selfAdjoint? Here's a hint: it is not validity.

BTW, which countries were those 15?

Sorry, my quote from the Lynn book was a typo. After Lynn says there are 45 nations from which there are two or more IQ measures, he says, "There are also 15 countries for which there are more than two measures" (emphasis mine). So, if you want only these 15 nations from which we have more than two measures (as listed in the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, they are:

Australia
Belgium
Brazil (4 measures)
China
Congo (Zaire)
France
Germany (9 measures)
Hong Kong (5 measures)
India (4 measures)
Japan (10 measures)
Mexico
The Netherlands
South Africa (4 measures)
Switzerland
Taiwan (4 measures)
United States (4 measures)

(If not stated, then the number of measures for a particular nation is three.)


As you can see, I counted 16 nations. I think that perhaps Lynn was not including South Africa since the measures used tended to be racially restricted and the ultimate IQ of South Africa for Lynn's book was an average based on these results and the approximated racial distribution of the society.


-Chris

 

[Nereid]

hitssquad wrote (re conclusions from Lynn's statements re the relative reliability of multiple datasets for the one country): In a statistical sense, there can be neither a determinable thing as a cause, nor production, of an event.

So, in contradiction to what both Apollo and Nachtwolf wrote, you assert that Lynn et al's work merely demonstrates a correlation, but is silent on any causal relationships?

Further, unless and until there is solid work which goes beyond 'a statistical worldview', no hypotheses - including the null hypothesis - can be shown to be inconsistent with the data?

Nachtwolf, for avoidance of doubt, please note these are questions.

 

[selfAdjoint]

...Which would make the results reliable. This essentially what Lynn wrote. Here it is again: "This high correlation establishes that the measure of national IQ has high reliability." Whatever is causing this skew, as far as our statistical methods have statistical power, appears to be relatively consistent. In a statistical sense, that is all that reliability establishes.

Do you know, in a statistical sense, what reliability is, selfAdjoint? Here's a hint: it is not validity.

Show me a text where reliability is defined to include effects of systematic bias.

There is (we used to say in the service) precision, and there is accuracy. Precision is when you shoot a two inch circle. Accuracy is when that circle intersects the bull's eye.

 

[hitssquad]

Coexistence or otherwise of bias and reliability

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
...Which would make the results reliable. This essentially what Lynn wrote. Here it is again: "This high correlation establishes that the measure of national IQ has high reliability." Whatever is causing this skew, as far as our statistical methods have statistical power, appears to be relatively consistent. In a statistical sense, that is all that reliability establishes.

Do you know, in a statistical sense, what reliability is, selfAdjoint? Here's a hint: it is not validity.[/color]

Show me a text where reliability is defined to include effects of systematic bias.

First of all, we have as a text your very own quote, reproduced below, which defines reliability as including effects of bias:

There is (we used to say in the service) precision, and there is accuracy. Precision is when you shoot a two inch circle. Accuracy is when that circle intersects the bull's eye.

A non-bull's-eye-intersecting shot group is by statistical definition biased. Precision is reliability is measurement error -- the difference between a tight shot group and a widely-scattered shot group; e.g., how close one might be able to expect a single given shot to conform to the statiostical mean of the shot group -- and accuracy is validity -- e.g., how close that statistical mean gets to the theoretical target.

Precision/reliability, to be an internally-consistent statistical concept, necessarily would have to refer to the relative typical conformity of individual shots to a biased mean of a given shot group of which those individual shots are considered members.

Accuracy/validity, to be an internally-consistent statistical concept, necessarily would have to refer to the relative amount of bias incorporated in the shot group and quantifiable by the relative distance of that shot group's biased mean from any given "nonbiased" bull's-eye.


Arthur Jensen's The g Factor (1998) features the word "reliability" on 83 of its 652 pages. I haven't checked all of those uses of the word within that book, but I would predict that every one of those uses would be consistent with a definition of statistical reliability that assumes that the shot-group mean about which individual shots are judged for relative reliable incorporates an inherent non-zero bias.

Let's look, in The g Factor, at the first instance of use by Jensen of the word reliability:

Spearman noted that the Galtonian measures had poor reliability; that is, the same subject obtained different scores when the test was repeated. Besides measuring what they were intended to measure and appeared to measure, therefore, the Galtonian tests also contained a lot of measurement error. Spearman drew the analogy of firing a gun repeatedly while aiming at a mark on a target. The bullets scatter randomly around the mark, more of them hitting nearer the mark than farther away from it, and the more shots that are fired, the greater is the number of bullets that hit the mark. The scatter of bullets around the mark is analogous to measurement error. It is a part of every kind of measurement, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the nature of the measuring instrument, the thing being measured, and how hard the experimenter works to reduce measurement error.

Neither Galton nor anyone else working on the measurement of mental abilities had taken into account the reliability of their measurements. Measurement error necessarily diminishes (the technical term is attenuates) the correlation coefficient. The larger the error (that is, the lower the reliability) in either one or both of the correlated variables, the lower will be the possible obtained correlation between them, because the measurement errors are by definition random and therefore uncorrelated. Even two variables that theoretically are perfectly correlated, such as the diameter and the circumference of circles, will not show a perfect correlation (i.e., r = +1.00) unless both variables are measured with perfect accuracy. Yet perfect accuracy of measurement is a pure abstraction never attained by any actual measurement. Actual measurements of any kind always have some "margin of error."

Spearman's formalization of this idea with respect to test scores is the basic postulate of what is now called classic test theory. It states that any and every actual (also termed obtained) score (or measurement), call it X, is composed of two elements--a true score, t, and a random error of measurement, e. (Neither t nor e can be directly observed.) Thus X = t + e. Because e can have either a positive or a negative sign and because it is random, its value tends toward zero as we average more and more of the measurements of X. Theoretically, the average of an infinite number of Xs contains zero error; it will consist purely of t. The way, then, to reduce measurement error is to average a number of repeated measurements of the thing being measured, and to include in the average as many repeated measurements as necessary to achieve the desired degree of accuracy, or, as it is termed, reliability, of the composite measure. The t (which is systematic) is repeatedly averaged in, while the e (which is random) is increasingly averaged out.

In other words, "reliability" is simply an inverse measure of the volume of a stack of bias so complex and individually generally orthogonal to each other that the net sum of those biases is zero with respect to. And, again, the mean of that reliability would consistently, in a statistical sense, have to itself be subject to a non-zero bias. (In other words, the statistical noise of which reliability is categorically and wholly an inverse measure is bias itself, though bias that cancels itself out. Any bias which does not cancel itself out is systematic bias and therefore causes a mean of a shot group to deviate {unlike "noise" bias which merely effects individual shot but not the overall meam of the shot group}.)

So, the "pure noise" bias of which reliability is an inverse measure is simply bias that does not systematically result in deviation from a given golden standard. Out of that "pure noise" bias -- which is to say statistically self-cancelling bias -- we rate with another inverse measure known as validity the relative strength of any non-pure-noise bias.

In short, the mean of any shot group of any amount of reliability necessarily always incorporates a non-zero level of bias which causes a consistent drift from a given golden (ideal; by definition, non-biased) standard.


*edit: format fixed*


-Chris

 

[Nereid]

hitssquad wrote: Sorry, my quote from the Lynn book was a typo. After Lynn says there are 45 nations from which there are two or more IQ measures, he says, "There are also 15 countries for which there are more than two measures" (emphasis mine). So, if you want only these 15 nations from which we have more than two measures (as listed in the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, they are:
Australia
Belgium
Brazil (4 measures)
China
Congo (Zaire)
France
Germany (9 measures)
Hong Kong (5 measures)
India (4 measures)
Japan (10 measures)
Mexico
The Netherlands
South Africa (4 measures)
Switzerland
Taiwan (4 measures)
United States (4 measures)

If this is so, he does not use all the data in his analysis. Specifically, the appendix contains only the following (I simply clicked on your link):
Australia (2)
Belgium (1)
Brazil (4)
China (1); unless you count Hong Kong and Taiwan as China (which would be sensible, but Lynn doesn't seem to have done this)
Congo (Zaire) (1)
France (1)
Germany (2)
Hong Kong (3)
India (3)
Japan (1)
Mexico (3) YES!
The Netherlands (2)
South Africa (1)
Switzerland (2)
Taiwan (2)
US (1)

It would be interesting to know if he has introduced even more systematic errors than I have already identified by selective inclusion of data! I'll check when I have more time.

[Edit: I just noticed this quote; hitssquad of Lynn (my emphasis): "quantified by the correlation between two measures taken from a number of countries. In the sample of 81 nations, there are 45 for which there are two or more measures of IQ. There are also 15 countrues for which there are two or more measures and for these we have used the two extreme values. The correlation between the two measures of national IQ is .939. This high correlation establishes that the measure of national IQ has high reliability." Strong contradiction between the two sets of Lynn quotes, for six countries (Belgium, China, France, Japan, South Africa, US); slightly less strong for another four (Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Mexico).]

 

[Nereid]

Lynn's work has obvious systematic errors

hitssquad wrote: The point, from a statistical worldview, is not whether Lynn personally produced the national IQ data, but whether there was enough of that data available to develop quantifiably reliable and statistical trends, and whether major contingencies have been named and statistically quantified. Both the reliability and validity of the data were quantified and the relevance of those quantification further rest upon the contingencies of their own reliabilities and validities. The fact that statistical tools allow us to quantify both reliability and validity of data means that we can develop statistical inferences of the meaning of what Lynn and Vanhanen have brought to us, without having to go frame-by-frame over Zapruder-type films of the original data collection procedures, and without collecting things like standard deviations of the raw scores in each original IQ data collection academic article.

For reasons I posted elsewhere, I agree it's not necessary; there is plenty of evidence of failure to account for obvious bias and systematic error in Lynn's work, using nothing more than the data he himself quotes. If you, or anyone else, wants to do a more rigourous study, based on the data Lynn says he used, I would urge you to do "go frame-by-frame over Zapruder-type films of the original data collection procedures", calculate the sample distributions, measures of their scatter, etc.

 

[Nereid]

hitssquad wrote: The validity of national IQ measures was quantified by comparing IQ test results with popular assessments in those nations of bright and dull. It turns out that assessment of bright and dull is universal among all human cultures and that these assessments have strong correlations with IQ test results.

This may well be true; it establishes that within a group the IQ test instruments match - somewhat at least - folk's "assessments of bright and dull".

However, there's a corollary which you might consider interesting: you don't need to use SPM or CPM to determine IQ levels; a simple verbal questionnaire designed to elicit intuitive feelings of 'brightness' and 'dullness' will do just as well. Courtesy of Lynn et al, the reliability of this simple test has already been established.

Perhaps we could enlist PF members in different countries to do this for us? We wouldn't even need to tell them how to select their samples (just record the ages of the subjects); after all, didn't you say that details of the test protocol are irrelevant?

Further, we needn't worry that, in making a score for each subject's 'bright/dull' index, we didn't consider the distribution of the numbers about the mean, nor the SD of that distribution; didn't you already tell us that, in a statistical worldview, it's sufficient that we find a signal?

Finally, the fact that Nachtwolf normalised his test to 100 in the US, that Moni used 200, and Monique 2.3 is also irrelevant; as long as we can show that there's a strong correlation between different PF members' "National bright/dull index" numbers within a country, we're OK (it also doesn't matter that Monique is the only one who does studies in the Netherlands (and she does a dozen), and thehey just one in China).

Wait a minute, I forgot; unless the results show that the sub-Saharan Africans are, as a group, relatively dull, and the east Asians relatively bright, Apollo and Nachtwolf may not believe the answers. Should that concern you? [b(]

 

[hitssquad]

The prerogatives of the researcher and why they are his prerogatives

Originally posted by Nereid
However, there's a corollary which you might consider interesting: you don't need to use SPM or CPM to determine IQ levels; a simple verbal questionnaire designed to elicit intuitive feelings of 'brightness' and 'dullness' will do just as well.

If it would prove to be predictive, then it would prove to be predictive. He could have also chosen reaction-time tests and/or achievement tests and/or sought the aid of psychics.

However, experience with human cognitive faculty measures -- both IQ and non-IQ -- in the United States shows that they are only as generally predictive in terms of sociologically important outcomes as they are loaded on the g factor of mental ability. It is the researcher's prerogative to use whatever methods he chooses. If he chooses wrong, then he ends up with a source of variance that proves to be not very predictive (and some academic publishings documenting his failure to competently theorize). Reaction-time tests and achievement tests are not as highly g-loaded as IQ tests (and I don't know off the top of my head what the g-loadings of psychic estimates of IQ typically are). One might imagine that Lynn chose IQ tests because they are the most-g-loaded measures of human mental faculties and therefore can be expected to be the most predictive and the most helpful in successfully reaching the goal of establishing a new explanatory theory.



-Chris

 

[Njorl]

I remember a study done to determine brain volumes of whites and blacks. It was a long time ago. The researcher filled skulls with beans, then counted the beans. He determined that whites' brains were much larger than those of blacks. A few years later, another researcher obtained the same skulls and used water rather than beans. He found no statistically significant difference in skull volume between the races.

Quite a bit of research has been done by people with agendas - justifying slavery, justifying colonialism, justifying racism. Studies that rely upon extant data are likely, even though done with innocent motivation, to be contaminated by this.

I doubt that much original basic research of this nature gets done. It is most likely, that different studies are done of the same old data, of dubious origin. It is unlikely that a researcher is going to be discredited by someone repeating his experiments.

I am also very dubious of "culurally neutral" IQ tests. When an aborigine invents one, I'll be a little more inclined to believe they exist. Even more difficult than devising such a test would be administering it in a culturally neutral way. Also, have any studies been done concerning racial attitudes and the administration of IQ tests? What I'm asking is, have any studies been done on the test givers, such that they are secretly the subject of the test to see if their prejudices affect the results of the IQ test?

Njorl

 

[selfAdjoint]

Njorl, this is just systematic denial. No research is being done (after all those extracts hitsquad posted), it's all just rehashing old data (proves you haven't looked), everybody has a (bad) agenda (smear the messenger), no test can be culture-free (where is the culture value in Raven matrices)? and so on. You don't want to look at the good science and good data upon which these facts are based so you just color them ugly in your mind.

 

[Nereid]

Originally posted by hitssquad
If it would prove to be predictive, then it would prove to be predictive. He could have also chosen reaction-time tests and/or achievement tests and/or sought the aid of psychics.

However, experience with human cognitive faculty measures -- both IQ and non-IQ -- in the United States shows that they are only as generally predictive in terms of sociologically important outcomes as they are loaded on the g factor of mental ability. It is the researcher's prerogative to use whatever methods he chooses. If he chooses wrong, then he ends up with a source of variance that proves to be not very predictive (and some academic publishings documenting his failure to competently theorize). Reaction-time tests and achievement tests are not as highly g-loaded as IQ tests (and I don't know off the top of my head what the g-loadings of psychic estimates of IQ typically are). One might imagine that Lynn chose IQ tests because they are the most-g-loaded measures of human mental faculties and therefore can be expected to be the most predictive and the most helpful in successfully reaching the goal of establishing a new explanatory theory.

Seems my idea of a corollary was posted in the wrong thread; it's relevant to the one discussing Lynn's work, not here (or at least, not obviously relevant).

 

[hitssquad]

The MRI-confirmed relationship between brain size and IQ

Originally posted by Njorl
I remember a study done to determine brain volumes of whites and blacks. It was a long time ago. The researcher filled skulls with beans, then counted the beans.

"...And perhaps he packed the beans more tightly in the black skulls than in the white skulls," goes the anecdote (roughly) from Stephen J. Gould's Mismeasure of Man. 19th-century brain-volume studies are neither necessary to confirm a relationship between brain size and IQ within races nor between races. MRI studies confirm brain size differences correlate with IQ both within and between races.

If you subscribe to Questia (the online library) and search for the term <MRI> in Arthur Jensen's The g Factor (which Questia has in its collection), you will find Arthur Jensen's summaries of the data confirming brain volume correlations with IQ:
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24373874

Quite a bit of research has been done by people with agendas

The scientific process filters out agenda. Either the results of research prove to be reliably predictive, or they do not. MRI brain volume measurements have been established as reliably predictive of IQ.

---
direct measurements of in vivo brain size obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) show an average correlation with IQ of about +.40 in several studies based on white samples. Given the reasonable assumption that this correlation is the same for blacks, statistical regression would predict that an IQ difference equivalent to 1¦Ò would be reduced by 0.4¦Ò, leaving a difference of only 0.6¦Ò, for black and white groups matched on brain size. This is a sizable effect. As the best estimate of the W-B mean IQ difference in the population is equivalent to 1.1¦Ò or 16 IQ points, then 0.40 ¡Á 16 ¡Ö 6 IQ points of the blackwhite IQ difference would be accounted for by differences in brain size. (Slightly more than 0.4¦Ò would predictably be accounted for if a hypothetically pure measure of g could be used.) Only MRI studies of brain size in representative samples of each population will allow us to improve this estimate.
---
p442
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24373874

More-recent MRI studies show even higher brain volume correlations with IQ in certain areas of the the brain, such as the frontal lobes.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/e-l/files/Genetic influences on brain structure.pdf

I am also very dubious of "culurally neutral" IQ tests.

There are no "culturally neutral" IQ tests. There are culture-reduced tests, such as the Raven's Matrices. There are culture-loaded tests that cross cultures with high reliability and validity when they are rewritten to conform to local culture. Reliability and validity of cross-cultural IQ tests is established via statistical methods.

When an aborigine invents one, I'll be a little more inclined to believe they exist.

Any aborigine-invented IQ tests can have their reliability and validity quantitatively established just as any other IQ test can.

have any studies been done on the test givers, such that they are secretly the subject of the test to see if their prejudices affect the results of the IQ test?

Yes. Arthur Jensen visited this topic in his 1980 book Bias in Mental Testing.





-Chris

 

[Njorl]

[q]The scientific process filters out agenda. Either the results of research prove to be reliably predictive, or they do not. [/q]

This is certainly not always true. Vast amounts of scientific rubbish get published and unrefuted frequently. A researcher with an agenda can certainly publish studies with slightly fraudulent data without being detected. There is no monetary incentive to seriously attempt to disprove this work. While there is a lot of money in selling books saying that blacks are inferior, there is no money in proving that they are not. This type of research is expensive and time consuming. Why would someone do the work necessary to refute these ideas.

To claim that these studies stand up to scrutiny, there would need to be a significant community interested in rigorously answering these questions. I do not believe such a community exists. They can analyse methodology, and debate conclusions, but they can not recreate the experiment. I do, however, believe there is a community interested in propagandising racist attitudes. While I'm not prepared to call someone of Jensen's stature a racist, I am also not willing to accept his results until they are duplicated from the ground up by someone who will not profit by the results.

My best friend taught calculus for four years in a small town in Swaziland. His students were 15-17 years old. They were not-preselected for their ability, if anything, they were preselected for their poverty (Swaziland at the time, though, was fairly prosperous compared to their neighbors). The majority of the students had no trouble with the material. This seems inconsistant with an average national IQ of <70. Calculus is not simple. If you have an IQ <80 you will not get it. Personal anecdotes are no substitute for systematic study and statstical analysis - I'm not one of those "Lies, damn lies and statistics" people - but anecdotes are a reason for raising questions.

Njorl

 

[Njorl]

Originally posted by Apollo

I am planning to research the databank at http://www.theoccidentalquarterly.com/ which appears to contain a large volume of scientific research on the topics of intelligence, personality, human interaction, race/ethnicity, and human evolution. If I come across any interesting data, I will post them here.

You're not going to have much credibility if you do. This site is essentially the KKK with a college education.

Njorl

 

[hitssquad]

The minimum mental age required to learn calculus

Originally posted by Njorl
My best friend taught calculus for four years in a small town in Swaziland. His students were 15-17 years old. They were not-preselected for their ability, if anything, they were preselected for their poverty. The majority of the students had no trouble with the material. This seems inconsistant with an average national IQ of <70. Calculus is not simple. If you have an IQ <80 you will not get it.

Lynn assumes a Swaziland national IQ of mean 72. If we assume a standard deviation of 10.8 IQ points (72% of 100), and a normal distribution, 2.3% of the Swaziland population has an IQ above 93.6 IQ points. The age-zero-to-14 population is currently 480,000. A three-year period of that would be one-fifth, which is about 100,000. 2.3% of that 100,000 is 2,300.

At any given time, in Swaziland, there are about 2,300 15-to-17-year-olds ready for calculus, if an IQ of 93.6 relative to a British mean of 100 is sufficient for learning calculus.



-Chris

 

[selfAdjoint]

That doesn't fix the problem with the class. Of course we don't know the standard deviation of IQ in Swaziland, but just doing binomial statistics suggests the probability of finding a random sample of say 20 kids with IQ's all 23 or more points above the population mean is astronomical. Kind of falsifies the stated mean, don't you think?

Let's say the standard deviation is 15, like the white polpulation of the US. then z = 23/15 = 1.53, so p= .063. That's for one kid.

.063^20 = 9.7 X 10^-25, for 20 kids.

If you make the s.d. smaller, it just makes the sample more unlikely.

 

[hitssquad]

Quantities of IQ studies per nation in Lynn's regression analyses

Originally posted by Nereid

hitssquad wrote: Sorry, my quote from the Lynn book was a typo. After Lynn says there are 45 nations from which there are two or more IQ measures, he says, "There are also 15 countries for which there are more than two measures" (emphasis mine). So, if you want only these 15 nations from which we have more than two measures (as listed in the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, they are:
Australia
Belgium
Brazil (4 measures)
China
Congo (Zaire)
France
Germany (9 measures)
Hong Kong (5 measures)
India (4 measures)
Japan (10 measures)
Mexico
The Netherlands
South Africa (4 measures)
Switzerland
Taiwan (4 measures)
United States (4 measures)

If this is so, he does not use all the data in his analysis. Specifically, the appendix contains only the following (I simply clicked on your link):
Australia (2)
Belgium (1)
Brazil (4)
China (1); unless you count Hong Kong and Taiwan as China (which would be sensible, but Lynn doesn't seem to have done this)
Congo (Zaire) (1)
France (1)
Germany (2)
Hong Kong (3)
India (3)
Japan (1)
Mexico (3) YES!
The Netherlands (2)
South Africa (1)
Switzerland (2)
Taiwan (2)
US (1)

Your data is from the article on Lynn's website.
http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/articles.htm

The book IQ and the Wealth of Nations is different from that article. I assembled my data from that book's Appendix 1: the Calculation of National Intelligence Levels. pp197-225.

Strong contradiction between the two sets of Lynn quotes, for six countries (Belgium, China, France, Japan, South Africa, US); slightly less strong for another four (Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Mexico).

Your conclusion of contradictions doesn't seem to be supported by my quotes of Lynn's methodology from Appendix 1 of IQ and the Wealth of Nations.


*edit: added title*


-Chris

 

[Nereid]

moving target?

Hey hitssquad,

you were the one who posted links to Lynn's methodology, data, conclusions etc here (not me).

I merely used your stated data sources, methods, etc to show that Lynn's study contains serious contradictions, flaws, etc.

Now you're telling us that the sources you quoted aren't correct, and that the real study is elsewhere, used different methods, data, sources, ... and even came to quite different conclusions?

Put yourself in my position - would you get angry? would you feel that you've treated this forum (and its members) with disdain?

If you want to have a proper discussion, based on the accepted methodology of science, by all means please go ahead and start a thread.

However, don't be surprised if you are challenged as to whether you are being honest and straight.

 

[hitssquad]

Originally posted by Nereid
the real study is elsewhere, used different methods, data, sources,

The online article...
http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/articles.htm

...appears to use similar overall methods. The individual details of IQ adjustment in the case of each individual nation are not given in the online article, but they are given in the book (IQ and the Wealth of Nations). The book also goes further in the respect of including several runs through several variations of different timeframes all the way back to 1820, to show how IQ/GDP correlations compare throughout the span of the modern era.

As for the sources, more are listed for the book than for the online article. However, at least some of the online article's spurces may be related to the book's sources. As you have seen, the Lynn study for Ethiopia was actually an article he wrote correcting conversion errors in the study listed as the reference in the book. Both are academic "sources" of the same raw IQ-sampling data.

... and even came to quite different conclusions?

The online article presents the same major conclusion as that of the book, which is that -- in our modern era, at least -- national IQ predicts national income better than any other single measurable factor.


The online article puts this as:

---
The results are interpreted in terms of a causal model in which population IQs are the major determinant of the wealth and poverty of nations in the contemporary world.[/color]
---
http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/1.htm


---
our general conclusion is that national differences in the wealth and poverty of nations in the contemporary world can be explained first in terms of the intelligence levels of the populations;[/color]
---
http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/6.htm


The book repeats this conclusion in several forms and in several places. On p183 at the beginning of Chapter 10 (The Future of the Wealth of Nation), it says:

---
In general, although not without exceptions, nations with more intelligent populations have been able to achieve a higher level of per capita incomes than less intelligent nations. This is a major reason why economic inequalities among nations are so great.[/color]
---




-Chris

 

[Nereid]

... and what was the response of the non-Jensen folks to Lynn's book? Could you point us to some on-line critiques?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Here's a comment from a site that is pretty fanatical about genes and g: http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001463.html .

 

[Nereid]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint Here's a comment from a site that is pretty fanatical about genes and g: http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001463.html .

Thanks SelfAdjoint.

One of the contributors to the page made a technical critique of Lynn et al's work (http://www.suz.unizh.ch/volken/pdfs/IQWealthNation.pdf );
(Note that Volken looked at only one aspect; this footnote suggests other aspects would be worth examining: "For the authors the concept of race seems to be so clear that they see no need to make it explicit at all.")

To quote from Volken's conclusion:

"In this paper I have explored the influence of national IQ on income and growth. In contrast to Lynn and Vanhanen, I find no empirical and statistically significant support for their claim that IQ is the most relevant factor explaining cross-country variations in income and growth. In the case of income, the authors simply fail to consider the influence structure of the explanatory variables, leading them to the wrong conclusion that economic freedom and the level of democracy account for only a small amount of the variance explained.
Furthermore, Lynn and Vanhanen confuse IQ with human capital. Once one controls for the educational opportunity structure, the link between IQ and income disappears.
Also, their case for economic growth and IQ is not supported by the empirical evidence presented for the two growth periods 1976-1998 and 1983-1996. Once control variables are entered, and a more theoretically adequate growth model is specified, the effect of national IQ levels on growth cannot be substantiated. Therefore the correlation between IQ and growth which has been found by Lynn and Vanhanen must be considered as spurious. In short, the simple message is that national IQ has neither an effect on income nor on economic growth.
In the light of these findings, it is hardly worthwhile for any researcher to further consider national IQs as an engine of economic development and growth. If the IQ effect is spurious, why should we still bother? Firstly, the answer of course has to do with the questionable research methods applied by Lynn and Vanhanen. Secondly, part one of Lynn and Vanhanen s argument however weak its methodological fundament may be must be subject to strict scientific tests.
Polemics alone will not advance the knowledge of the scientific community."

 

[selfAdjoint]

Nereid, I am really glad that you've done this careful explication of Volken's critique. "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" is so often cited online, and it's such a weak argument. Somewhere there ought to be a FAQ on this stuff, giving the fair and scientific facts about g, heritability and such, but I haven't found any. Just different camps of fanatics.

 

[Nachtwolf]

And of course, we all know that fanatics are all just wrong, as are extremists and reductionists.

The author of the article you posted seems to believe that, unless we firmly establish what the heritability of IQ between nations is, it must equal zero. Because if the heritability is anything greater than zero, Lynn's and Vanhanan's arguments about causality are perfectly legitimate.

This issue echoes the black-white IQ gap, which it turns out is best explained by the Default Hypothesis (so named by Jensen). The default hypothesis explaining IQ differences between nations (that being, that they are roughly as heritable as IQ differences between individuals) is not, and ultimately need not, be stated, precisely because it is default. Since the 0% genetic hypothesis which you might prefer is very specific - and I should point out that it is a fanatical, extreme position - and since it would require the gene frequencies to be evenly interspersed throughout the vastly different populations discussed in Wealth of Nations, there is nothing even especially remarkable about relying on an unstated the default hypothesis here.

This default hypothesis for the causes of national disparities for measured IQ may be incorrect, and for all its extreme unlikeliness the 100% environmental hypothesis is probably worth considering. But in the absence of any reason to believe IQ differences between nations are totally and completely environmental, there's nothing fanatic about the assumption that national IQ is a cause of national wealth. Instead, the reverse is true.


--Mark

 

[Nereid]

Nachtwolf wrote: This default hypothesis for the causes of national disparities for measured IQ may be incorrect, and for all its extreme unlikeliness the 100% environmental hypothesis is probably worth considering. But in the absence of any reason to believe IQ differences between nations are totally and completely environmental, there's nothing fanatic about the assumption that national IQ is a cause of national wealth. Instead, the reverse is true.

In the case of Lynn and Vanhanen, we're not even at first base - no identification of possible systematic errors and biases, no attempts to estimate the size or importance of these effects and biases, just a simple-minded "we've got the SPM norm tables, and the various reported mean (or median) results from various studies done by various people in various countries at various times; we've got some simple secular trends (never mind that they've not been verified in most of the countries whose IQ we're trying to determine), turn the handle ... voilà! a bright shiny table of National IQs!"

It may be that "National IQ" is one cause of "National wealth"; it may be that it's an extremely minor cause, #2,567 in a ranked list of causes; it may be that it's a fairly important cause, say #6; but L+V's work doesn't get us far in trying to find out.

Nachtwolf wrote: Because if the heritability is anything greater than zero, Lynn's and Vanhanan's arguments about causality are perfectly legitimate.

Lynn and Vanhanen (note: Vanhanen is Finnish, I rather doubt -nan is found in any Finnish family name) waved their hands about IQ, SES, incomes etc and how this plausibly translated to nations with a high average IQ tending to become nations with high real per capita GDP. Leave aside for the moment that the data they present do not support their case, there are serious logical flaws in their argument. One example: even if IQ and SES were shown to correlate strongly in each of a large number of nations all engaged in (fairly) free trade of goods and services, and with freedom of capital movement, it does NOT follow logically that mean IQ differences would result in differences in national wealth - countries are not people. The (economic) theory of comparative advantage alone implies that that would be a most unlikely outcome.

 

[russ_watters]

Scientific flaws aside, is anyone else disturbed at some of the implications and courses of action being insinuated here?

Njorl, this is just systematic denial. No research is being done (after all those extracts hitsquad posted), it's all just rehashing old data (proves you haven't looked), everybody has a (bad) agenda (smear the messenger), no test can be culture-free (where is the culture value in Raven matrices)? and so on. You don't want to look at the good science and good data upon which these facts are based so you just color them ugly in your mind.

When there is so much here that is questionable (at best), I don't think it is unreasonable (in fact, I think its extremely important) to investigate why.

 

[hitssquad]

Originally posted by russ_watters
there is so much here that is questionable

What did you have in mind?





-Chris

 

[Nachtwolf]

It may be that "National IQ" is one cause of "National wealth"; it may be that it's an extremely minor cause, #2,567 in a ranked list of causes; it may be that it's a fairly important cause, say #6; but L+V's work doesn't get us far in trying to find out.

I agree that more research needs to be done - and frankly I think this approaches the most important topic for research, and it's a shame that Pioneer is just about the only source of funding for most IQ studies - but in order for IQ not to be a major cause, you would have to have one of two things:

1. A reverse-causal relatoinship, which as I've said very unlikely
2. A third factor which affects both national wealth and IQ.

The second possibility is unlikely in light of the huge correlation between IQ and national wealth. The unknown third factor would have to have a highly significant correlation with both wealth and IQ. Can you even imagine such a third factor to formulate a hypothesis? Maybe I'm just not very creative, but I honestly can't. Religion? Climate? Extraterrestrial involvement? I'm tapped out.

there is so much here that is questionable

What did you have in mind?

Yeah seriously, Russ, what "scientific flaws" are you talking about? The IQ test used has been well established and refined over the last century, representative samples of the population were used, and Lynn knows how to perform the statistical analyses required to come up with correlational coefficients, so what do you have in mind?


--Mark

 

[Nereid]

Nachtwolf wrote: I agree that more research needs to be done - and frankly I think this approaches the most important topic for research, and it's a shame that Pioneer is just about the only source of funding for most IQ studies - but in order for IQ not to be a major cause, you would have to have one of two things:

1. A reverse-causal relatoinship [sic], which as I've said very unlikely
2. A third factor which affects both national wealth and IQ.

The second possibility is unlikely in light of the huge correlation between IQ and national wealth. The unknown third factor would have to have a highly significant correlation with both wealth and IQ. Can you even imagine such a third factor to formulate a hypothesis? Maybe I'm just not very creative, but I honestly can't. Religion? Climate? Extraterrestrial involvement? I'm tapped out.

Er, no. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the 'significant correlation' doesn't exist[/color]; Lynn and Vanhanen's work contains serious flaws[/color] (some details here: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=147112#post147112)

I can construct half a dozen plausible reasons why "National IQ" may be a result rather than a cause; you may disagree with me. I can present a dozen 'correlations' which have nothing to do with "National IQ" but which explain the differences in 1998 real per capita GDP; you may disagree with me. When you come to present data which support your case, unless there's more than Lynn and Vanhanen's study, you're back to generalising from Jensen's work, which he states very clearly is limited in scope to
a) the US, and
b) 'black-white' differences.

[Edit: fixed formats]

 

[Nachtwolf]

Er, no. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the 'significant correlation' doesn't exist; Lynn and Vanhanen's work contains serious flaws (some details here: https://www.physicsforums.com/showth...7112#post147112 )

Haven't we already laughed at those details? Seriously, Nereid, you simply have no case here. Can you see why the details you raise which we haven't already refuted aren't even relevant to the situation?

Here's just an example of why I don't feel like addressing every single point you raise:

L+V assert that the "National IQ" of Ghana is 62.
If "IQ 70-75 [is] often [...] considered the threshold for mental retardation", I would guess that 40-50 would be the threshold for severe retardation, perhaps those with Down’s Syndrome have IQs in this range? Would people with such low IQs – of whom there must have been at least 100 in the sample which lead L+V to their determination - to be able to do CPM or SPM?

Someone with an IQ of 50 has a mental ability roughly corresponding to an eight-year-old white child. A five year old child could do the CPM or SPM. And get a very small number of correct answers.

Would the test protocol have to be changed to administer either test to such people?

None. And if you think about it briefly, you'll realize that if such people were excluded from the sample, this would only result in inflated IQ scores for these nations, thus implying that they are even dumber than Lynn finds. And since Ghana and other African nations actually make more money than the straight-up linear correlation predicts, this would only strengthen Lynn's case.

What sort of sampling technique was used to ensure that such severely retarded people (if indeed they were) could be included as test subjects?

None was necessary.



--Mark