(Controversial) What is the significance of these GWA Findings?

[SciFactSeeker]

For the past few months, I've been thoroughly studying the Race-IQ debate; being black myself, I wanted to be armed and ready to confront any racialist I might happen to debate with, using cold, hard facts. But along the way, I found myself on a rather contradictory roller-coaster. At several points, I was forced to question the things I'd learned about race and equality for my entire life; of course this was uncomfortable, even devastating for me; psychology, a topic once so engaging and fascinating to me, became tinged with the darkness of what I'd read. The search for objective sources was endless, and mostly unsuccessful. At times, I believed the hereditarians; then it seemed I would come across one more piece of evidence which would invalidate or weaken their position. Having been raised myself in a middle class environment, home schooled and surrounded by education, environmental explanations seemed even more likely to me from personal experience. I score on average, 105-106 on IQ tests, which I've learned is apparently the east asian average. It made sense to me because the traditionally asian "tiger-mom" stereotype has always strongly resonated with me, as I relate to the obsessive prioritizing of education. My mother was highly engaged in japanese culture to be specific, and studied it extensively in college. It wouldn't surprise me if her parenting was influenced by that. Alas, I realize that my case is an extremely specific anecdote. It is to my understanding that controlling for SES eliminates 5 points of the gap between 'Blacks' and 'Whites' (using the US definition of these groups). I have also read that some early educational interventions have successfully raised the black IQ by 4-5 points; gains which lasted into adulthood. I think this is another way of correcting for culture, so accounting for SES and culture would wipe out 10 points; that's roughly 2/3's of the gap that exists. Having calculated this, it didn't make sense to me how anyone could possibly think it was genetic. The last 5 points could be anything; the african-american diet, racial stress, lack of motivation, negative external influences (anti-educational peer culture, low expectations, and stereotypes). It's quite possible that no amount of correcting will ever completely eliminate environmental differences between blacks and whites. However, despite this evidence, I did find some studies which made me yet again, doubtful. Twin studies have found IQ to be highly heritable, even when raised apart. Adoption studies have shown adoptive siblings to be no more similar in IQ than strangers. I've even seen a blog attempting to show that IQ is equally heritable in both blacks and whites, though the data they pulled had small samples and was highly selective. Even so, it recently came to my attention that the term "heritable" has been severely misused, seeing as it measures what percentage of variance in a specific population is due to genetics, and not how much of the trait itself is genetic. This was a big blow to most hereditarian arguments for me, and because adoptive families tend to be primarily upper middle class, twin studies didn't convince me as much as they used to. It also stands to reason that the IQ differences between adoptive siblings would be more jarring due to their regulated, high SES environment, which leaves little room for environmental differences; therefore heritability naturally increases; or a higher percent of differences is due to their genetic makeup. Raising both the adopted child and the biological child in a low SES environment could quite possible make their IQ's more similar, as the environmental factor grows. All this taken into account, it seemed to me that IQ differences between blacks and whites were entirely environmental; or at the very least, genetics played a very small role. Even the gap between whites and east asians could be explained easily by cultural differences in the approach to academics, and ashkenazi jews score no differently than high SES whites; ashkenazi jews are already a largely high SES group. I've seen those who argue that IQ linearly predicts SES; but to say this is to argue that the only reason one might become poor is due to stupidity (for lack of a better word), and the only reason one might become rich is due to academia. In reality, there are a multitude of complex factors which lead to one's social economic standing; not all of which are based purely on the career you were cognitively prepared for. This pretty much settled it for me; until I decided to investigate a claim written on a blog which stated that there were differences in intelligence-related allele frequencies between races. Seeing as how the Flynn Effect proved that environmental sophistication by the decade could raise the mean IQ (both fluid and crystallized), this finding was immediately suspect to me. I am unsure of their methodology, the legitimacy of the researchers involved, and the implications of the results. What I am wanting to know is on average, how much of an effect does each allele, individually have on IQ? How much would 14 of them collectively have? Are there any problems with this study as far as you can see? See for yourself: https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/factor-analysis-of-population-allele-frequencies-as-a-simple-novel-method-of-detecting-signals-of-recent-polygenic-selection-copy.pdf

If you run the google search 'race differences intelligence allele frequencies', it yields a few meager results, though many seem to be from questionable sources. I would appreciate it so much if someone would evaluate the paper itself as well as the source claims and let me know what this means for the debate. Oh, and; for the sake of this discussion, we are operating under the notion that IQ is the best means of measuring intelligence that we currently have, and the idea that racial constructs are in some cases, biologically useful.
Thanks!

[StringJunky]

ScienceFactSeeker wrote:

 

"For the past few months, I've been thoroughly studying the Race-IQ debate; being black myself, I wanted to be armed and ready to confront any racialist I might happen to debate with, using cold, hard facts. But along the way, I found myself on a rather contradictory roller-coaster. At several points, I was forced to question the things I'd learned about race and equality for my entire life; of course this was uncomfortable, even devastating for me; psychology, a topic once so engaging and fascinating to me, became tinged with the darkness of what I'd read.

The search for objective sources was endless, and mostly unsuccessful. At times, I believed the hereditarians; then it seemed I would come across one more piece of evidence which would invalidate or weaken their position. Having been raised myself in a middle class environment, home schooled and surrounded by education, environmental explanations seemed even more likely to me from personal experience. I score on average, 105-106 on IQ tests, which I've learned is apparently the east asian average. It made sense to me because the traditionally asian "tiger-mom" stereotype has always strongly resonated with me, as I relate to the obsessive prioritizing of education. My mother was highly engaged in japanese culture to be specific, and studied it extensively in college. It wouldn't surprise me if her parenting was influenced by that.

Alas, I realize that my case is an extremely specific anecdote. It is to my understanding that controlling for SES eliminates 5 points of the gap between 'Blacks' and 'Whites' (using the US definition of these groups). I have also read that some early educational interventions have successfully raised the black IQ by 4-5 points; gains which lasted into adulthood. I think this is another way of correcting for culture, so accounting for SES and culture would wipe out 10 points; that's roughly 2/3's of the gap that exists. Having calculated this, it didn't make sense to me how anyone could possibly think it was genetic. The last 5 points could be anything; the african-american diet, racial stress, lack of motivation, negative external influences (anti-educational peer culture, low expectations, and stereotypes). It's quite possible that no amount of correcting will ever completely eliminate environmental differences between blacks and whites.

However, despite this evidence, I did find some studies which made me yet again, doubtful. Twin studies have found IQ to be highly heritable, even when raised apart. Adoption studies have shown adoptive siblings to be no more similar in IQ than strangers. I've even seen a blog attempting to show that IQ is equally heritable in both blacks and whites, though the data they pulled had small samples and was highly selective. Even so, it recently came to my attention that the term "heritable" has been severely misused, seeing as it measures what percentage of variance in a specific population is due to genetics, and not how much of the trait itself is genetic.

This was a big blow to most hereditarian arguments for me, and because adoptive families tend to be primarily upper middle class, twin studies didn't convince me as much as they used to. It also stands to reason that the IQ differences between adoptive siblings would be more jarring due to their regulated, high SES environment, which leaves little room for environmental differences; therefore heritability naturally increases; or a higher percent of differences is due to their genetic makeup. Raising both the adopted child and the biological child in a low SES environment could quite possible make their IQ's more similar, as the environmental factor grows.

All this taken into account, it seemed to me that IQ differences between blacks and whites were entirely environmental; or at the very least, genetics played a very small role. Even the gap between whites and east asians could be explained easily by cultural differences in the approach to academics, and ashkenazi jews score no differently than high SES whites; ashkenazi jews are already a largely high SES group. I've seen those who argue that IQ linearly predicts SES; but to say this is to argue that the only reason one might become poor is due to stupidity (for lack of a better word), and the only reason one might become rich is due to academia. In reality, there are a multitude of complex factors which lead to one's social economic standing; not all of which are based purely on the career you were cognitively prepared for.

This pretty much settled it for me; until I decided to investigate a claim written on a blog which stated that there were differences in intelligence-related allele frequencies between races. Seeing as how the Flynn Effect proved that environmental sophistication by the decade could raise the mean IQ (both fluid and crystallized), this finding was immediately suspect to me. I am unsure of their methodology, the legitimacy of the researchers involved, and the implications of the results. What I am wanting to know is on average, how much of an effect does each allele, individually have on IQ? How much would 14 of them collectively have? Are there any problems with this study as far as you can see? See for yourself:

https://lesacredupri...ection-copy.pdf

If you run the google search 'race differences intelligence allele frequencies', it yields a few meager results, though many seem to be from questionable sources. I would appreciate it so much if someone would evaluate the paper itself as well as the source claims and let me know what this means for the debate. Oh, and; for the sake of this discussion, we are operating under the notion that IQ is the best means of measuring intelligence that we currently have, and the idea that racial constructs are in some cases, biologically useful.

Thanks!"

 

Hi. I hope you don't mind but I've split your post up into more paragraphs to make it easier to read... Big blocks are hard to read.

Edited December 16, 2016 by StringJunky

[imatfaal]

Sorry SciFactSeeker but another non-answer to follow: I don't understand the topic well enough to post here (I will guess about physics and use 25 year old memories to post about anatomy - but this topic is too fraught with pitfalls to post lightly). However, I will post a cautionary note in my capacity as a netizen who spends far too much time on fora.

 

I consider myself fairly well versed in the ways of the net, my critical thinking skills are honed, I read a few scientific journals regularly, and I have published in my own area; but, I find it very hard to discern the good science from the bad propaganda in this area of inquiry. There are too many (and damn - I mean only one would be too many) who post and write deliberately to deceive. There is a small group of erudite and persuasive racists who spend all their free time posting half-truths, deliberate obfuscation, cleverly ambiguous vile rubbish on the net. It is very hard for even an educated layperson to spot the errors, to see where they are misusing data, to understand the lie.

 

Tread very carefully, and do not be disheartened. I would stick almost entirely to purely academic sources - I would be very surprised if you cannot join up to an open learning course that would equip fully. Please continue to ask questions here - but whilst we have experts who teach this subject at a university level they might not always be on hand. I know the above will read as patronising - but hey-ho - I think it is important to say; in physics we have crackpots who are convinced they are right - in this area of genetics, in climate science, and in evolutionary science we have devious little shits who lie, cherry-pick, and confuse in order to plant false ideas, and sow the seeds of hatred and fear.

[StringJunky]

... we have devious little shits who lie, cherry-pick, and confuse in order to plant false ideas, and sow the seeds of hatred and fear.

Aye, we had at least three people recently pursuing a relationship between race and IQ by people that turned out, in the end, to be clearly racist.

 

I'm not going to comment because I think it needs Arete, CharonY and anyone else with a strong grasp of genetics to define the terms and how proper biological scientists actually view the subject in dispassionate terms based on the evidence; it deserves no less.

Edited December 16, 2016 by StringJunky

[The Bobster]

What I am wanting to know is on average, how much of an effect does each allele, individually have on IQ? How much would 14 of them collectively have? Are there any problems with this study as far as you can see? See for yourself: https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/factor-analysis-of-population-allele-frequencies-as-a-simple-novel-method-of-detecting-signals-of-recent-polygenic-selection-copy.pdf

 

 

IQ is highly polygenic and alleles affecting it have tiny effects, always under 1% outside serious disorders.

 

This is a good review paper on modern IQ GWAS.

 

http://humancond.org/_media/papers/turkheimer11_still_missing.pdfpdf

 

There are no problems with that paper. Finding IQ genes which account for variation within races, and then finding they vary between races, is pretty good evidence. Of course IQ genes are difficult to detect due to small effects, so it needs to be expanded. And there may be largely race unique IQ alleles (in fact there are).

 

Aye, we had at least three people recently pursuing a relationship between race and IQ by people that turned out, in the end, to be clearly racist.

 

Isn't that kind of begging the question?

in this area of genetics, in climate science, and in evolutionary science we have devious little shits who lie, cherry-pick, and confuse in order to plant false ideas, and sow the seeds of hatred and fear.

 

QFT

Edited December 19, 2016 by The Bobster

[StringJunky]

 

I

Isn't that kind of begging the question?

I was supporting imatfaal's assertion from experience that we both have.

[Strange]

Isn't that kind of begging the question?

No. If it were a fallacy, it would probably be "argumentum ad hominem" but as he didn't say they were wrong because they were racists, it isn't.

[StringJunky]

No. If it were a fallacy, it would probably be "argumentum ad hominem" but as he didn't say they were wrong because they were racists, it isn't.

That's right, I didn't prejudge them; there was no prejudice. That would be rather 'pot, kettle...'.

[The Bobster]

That's right, I didn't prejudge them; there was no prejudice. That would be rather 'pot, kettle...'.

 

Discussions of this kind often involve ignoramuses wasting everybody's time saying "racist" or "Marxist". I prefer to stay on topic with the science.