My Thoughts On the Heritability of Intelligence and Eugenics

[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.
---
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;
---
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.
---




-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; Lynn and Vanhanen's work contains serious flaws (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

 

[Nereid]

And the rest?

Originally posted by Nachtwolf
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:

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.

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.

None was necessary.

That's some (partial) answers to a few questions, thanks for that.

May we expect answers to the others? After all, seeing as how important Lynn and Vanhanen's conclusions are to your program, I'd've thought you'd be only too pleased to explain in excruciating detail why and how their work is sound.

IMHO, arrogant dismissal of serious questions tends to heighten a reader's suspicion that the aggression is a debating tactic to divert attention from topics the speaker would rather not have exposed.

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by hitssquad
What did you have in mind?

Yeah seriously, Russ, what "scientific flaws" are you talking about?

Nereid has it covered pretty well - and you guys are pretty much dodging all of her questions/objections. Like she said - all that does is make people more skeptical of your claims.

 

[hitssquad]

Voyage of the Questrist

Originally posted by russ_watters

Originally posted by hitssquad

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

What did you have in mind?

Nereid has it covered pretty well

Russ Watters' opinion of Nereid's coverage has not been questioned.

The question in question spoke to what Russ Watters had in mind when he said there is so much here that is questionable .

What was it that you found questionable, Russ?





-Chris

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by hitssquad
What did you have in mind?

Nereid has it covered pretty well

Russ Watters' opinion of Nereid's coverage has not been questioned.

The question in question spoke to what Russ Watters had in mind when he said there is so much here that is questionable .

What was it that you found questionable, Russ?

-Chris

Sorry, I'm not going to play your games. You can't use me as an excuse to dodge Nereid's questions. She's put an enormous amount of energy into debunking your claims, something I'm not willing to do. You have my opinion, and its based on what you have already read from Nereid. Your next comeback of course is "don't you think for yourself?" I do: I read two sides of an argument and made a choice. One side is far stronger than the other.

edit: removed foot and lower leg from throat.

 

[Nereid]

(this exchange has been edited; I believe the key points are retained, but the original is earlier in this thread if the reader wishes to see the whole exchange).

[Nereid] Would people with such low IQs [~40-50] – of whom there must have been at least 100 in the [Ghana] sample which lead L+V to their determination - to be able to do CPM or SPM?

[Nachtwolf, sans the gratuitous arrogance] 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.

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

[Nachtwolf] None.

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

[Nachtwolf] None was necessary.

[Lynn and Vanhanen] It has been suggested by a referee that the mean IQs of sub-Saharan African countries are so low that they cannot be valid and that they spuriously inflate the correlations between the national IQs and the measures of per capita income and economic growth.

[a hitssquad quote, Nereid’s emphasis] ”The greater B-W differences on the RT and RTSD components of the ECTs in the South African study is best explained by the fact that this group of South African blacks scored, on average, about 2ó below British (or South African) whites, while there is only about 1ó difference between American blacks and whites. 59 In the Lynn and Holmshaw study, the W-B difference on Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) was about 2.5ó. But we cannot be very confident of this value, because the SPM appeared to be too difficult for the African blacks. Their mean raw score on the SPM was only about three points above the chance guessing score, which casts doubt on the reliability and validity of the SPM as a measure of individual differences in g for this sample."

So, the Ghana study (according to Nachtwolf) produced OK results; the South African study produced questionable results (at least for the blacks in the sample). The mean IQs for the two?

Ghana: 62
South African blacks: 66

It would seem that the study’s flaws include systematic ones.