I feel I must add a rider to my last post.

I hope with all my heart that Watson's speculation turns out to be wrong. Because I'm at a loss to know what we do if he's right. In some ways it's the ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE.

There is only one scenario I can imagine that is worse than Watson being right. That is that he turns out to be right and we all pretend otherwise.

Like I said, STEVENLMEYER should write SCIENCE FICTION.

Now that I think of it, he already does :)

I have the feeling that when it comes to differences in intelligence between population groups, mounting evidence is about to break the dam wall of taboos. Previously I posted a link to a NY Times article that conceded there may be racial differences in intelligence.

The NY Times is hardly a hotbed of racist reactionaries.

Now comes an article in Slate, another liberal organ.

See:

http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/

Quote:

>>Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn't "the same as ours." "Racist, vicious and unsupported by science," said the Federation of American Scientists. "Utterly unsupported by scientific evidence," declared the U.S. government's supervisor of genetic research. The New York Times told readers that when Watson implied "that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn't a scientific leg to stand on.">>

>>I wish these assurances were true.* They aren't. Tests do show an IQ deficit, not just for Africans relative to Europeans, but for Europeans relative to Asians. Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern, and there's strong preliminary evidence that part of it is genetic. It's time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true.>>

* Believe me, so do I!

>>One objection is that IQ tests are racially biased. This is true in the broadest sense: ….But in the narrower sense of TESTING ABILITIES THAT PAY OFF IN THE MODERN WORLD, IQ tests do their job. They accurately predict the outcomes of black and white kids at finishing high school, staying employed, and avoiding poverty, welfare, or jail. >>

(Emphasis added)

I think we may have to learn to live and cope with inequality between population groups.

I generally don't mind what you have to say Steven, because it's about science. But this has got to be one the nastiest statements I have heard from you:
"I think we may have to learn to live and cope with inequality between population groups."

I cannot accept this, as a scientist or a human being.

And while we are on the subject, you mentioned a "magic force" or some such earlier (I presume as a way of belittling real scientists who don't see things your way). It's not magic Steven, it's called "stabilising selection" and has a lot to do with stabilising traits in large populations. Allopatry can change some cosmetic differences in humans, but "intelligence" is one that generally well stabilised. "IQ" tests as a rough tool may discriminate between highly divergent groups, but the average difference is so low between racial groups that any extrapolation cannot be applied to any individual (the signal to noise is very high). Human beings are and should be treated as individuals.

Bugsy,

In the end the world is what the world is. It has no reason to conform to our wishes.

For about 3,000 generations different human population groups existed more or less in isolation from each other. Gene flows even between East and West Africans let alone between, say, Northern Europeans and South Asians, was minimal.

The difference branches of humanity faced vastly different selective pressures. As a result, for example, Tibetans living high up in the Himalayas have a different blood chemistry to sea level dwellers.

Sometimes the differences in selective pressures follow a feedback loop. Europeans started domesticating cattle. This gave rise to a new source of food, cows' milk. People who were able to exploit this new source had an advantage over people who are lactose intolerant. They were more likely to survive to adulthood and have children than their lactose intolerant peers. Today Northern Europeans have the lowest rate of lactose intolerance of all population groups.

Absent gene flow between populations there is no reason for parallel evolution to occur. Given no gene flow and different selective pressures there is no stabilising selection. There is no reason to suppose our brains evolved in parallel anymore than our blood chemistry.

In fact there are indications that, on average, the brains of different population groups are a bit different.

Did I make a nasty statement?

Yes I did.

But don’t shoot the messenger.

On one thing I agree strongly Bugsy.

HUMAN BEINGS ARE AND SHOULD BE TREATED AS INDIVIDUALS

Steven, I think you are mixing up your concepts a bit here. "Parallel evolution" occurs in separate species. Human beings are not even close to being separate species.

Lactose intolerance is an ancestral trait, meaning that most mammals, including humans, develop lactose intolerance after their juvenile stages around the same time that they generally wean onto adult food. It is actually a loss of
People in Northern European populations have much greater occurence of the mutation that confers it, however you will find that the same mutation is pretty well identical in all populations, albeit at different frequency and most likely originated in non-Northern Europeans (or has arisen independently many times).

"Intelligence" is a trait that is under stabilising selection, there is no selection for "dumbness" or against "smartness" in any population. In fact, if you dug a little deeper into the literature that you cited and back to the original IQ testers, you will find that while genetics is not discounted, nutrition is the best supported and major factor in any group scores, not genetics. In fact, the genetic component is only hypothesised, but nutrition has some very hard data behind it.