Well Charles Murray has another book on genes, race, class, intelligence etc.

[DrBanneker]

Its entitled Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Class, and Race. Of course he got a January 27th WSJ op-ed for it. The population geneticists are already starting to respond.




Including a group of researchers who say he completely mischaracterized their research on genetics and cognition



Before someone jumps in here with the basic canards: do you believe all traits are infinitely environmentally flexible, don't you acknowledge human genetic varation across ethnic groups, don't you acknowledge all traits including mental traits have genetic components, etc. etc.

I would reply, yes I am very aware of those things, even on a technical level I won't go into here, and the other geneticists panning this work study these things every single day. So just mentioning those facts to imply some sort of hidden truth is not a demonstration of a knowledge of genetics, its just kicking a straw man in the nuts.

I do find it ironic how many readers probably think a book on "Human Diversity" is bold and timely when hundreds of papers by dozens of researchers get published on this topic every month. The responsible ones clearly state that the arguments be they based on heritability, association studies, and especially polygenic scores which people are acting like is the big cure all--do not settle these questions at all, especially how immutable a phenotype is to change. Since if you can change a phenotype, and often you can, genetic lines in the sand aren't as damning.

There will always be variation in a population based on genetics but this is a study of the variance of a trait, not its mean value and how much this mean value can go up, down, or whatever. There can even be genetic variation between groups that effect trait means but this does not mean that environmental effects aren't mediating the supposed "genetic differences" or that those gaps can't narrow (or widen). Genetic variation does not mean "cause", "unchanging", or immune from environmental effects or interaction. People keep being sloppy though.

There are many examples of this in the literature. I have peer reviewed papers I can link for those who are interested.

I normally would brush this off but with our current leadership I am sure people are hawking this everywhere in DC backchannels since Murray still works for AEI I think.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

These people are a joke. They're constantly saying, "You're afraid of the science!" when all the scientific experts are telling them they're full of shyt.

The main things they fail to understand:

1. Genetic diversity among humans is incredibly complex and generally doesn't track with race

2. Racial divisions happened relatively recently in human history when looked at on an evolutionary scale

3. Intelligence is incredibly complex both environmentally and genetically, far more complex than any other trait they attempt to compare it to. In fact, it could easily be argued that intelligence is the most complex trait in the entire human biological system by a good margin.

4. The deep complexity of intelligence means that it cannot be reduced to a few genes or simple genetic changes. It involves far, far more of the genome than differences between ethnic groups or races, which are usually based on quite simple traits coded by a very few genes that change relatively easily.

5. They downplay the incredible degree to which environment affects intelligence, demonstrated in everything from the Flynn Effect to orphanage studies.

6. They overplay twin studies, which invariably are done within a relatively narrow subset of the human experience and thus completely fail to account for the actual spectrum of environmental effects (who cares if the twins were raised in different families if they were both raised in the exact same time period of middle-class white-dominated America and both self-identified and were seen by others as the same race?)



Those are the gripes that come to mind first but I could probably think of more if I wanted to get into reading that "human biodiversity" bullshyt again. It's been a few years since I gave the charlatans any of my energy.

 

[℃ertifed]

gotta study the enemy opps