General
intelligence (g) varies with
ethnicity, as do genetic variants associated with educational attainment
(Lasker et al. 2019, p. 445)
Bryan
Pesta was fired from a tenured university position for a study he coauthored in
a peer-reviewed journal. No one actually disputed his findings. It was simply
taken for granted that they could not be true.
Three
years ago I contributed a paper to a special issue of Psych. One of the other contributors, Bryan J. Pesta, coauthored a
paper on “Global Ancestry and Cognitive Ability.” It was one of several recent
studies that had used genetic data to understand how populations differ on
average in their capacity for intelligence.
Pesta
and his coauthors looked at data from an existing neurodevelopment study of
9,421 participants from Philadelphia. A little over half of them were European
American, and a third were African American. They had all been genotyped and
had all taken a battery of cognitive tests.
The
study produced several findings:
·
Almost
15 IQ points separated the African American participants from the European
American participants. About three quarters of the difference was due to
general intelligence (g).
·
Among
the African Americans, general intelligence correlated with the degree of
European admixture.
·
The
correlation was modestly reduced, but not eliminated, when controlled for
parental education. Controlling for skin color had no effect. Although skin
color does correlate with European admixture, it evidently has a less direct
relationship to general intelligence. This finding therefore eliminates
“colorism” (discrimination in favor of lighter-skinned African Americans) as a
possible cause.
·
As
much as 20-25% of the difference in general intelligence between the African
Americans and the European Americans was explained by genetic variants
associated with educational attainment. By comparison, the same variants
explain only 11-13% of the variance in educational attainment among individuals.
·
Although
these genetic variants predicted general intelligence in both groups, the
predictive power for the African Americans was only 20% of the predictive power
for the European Americans. This finding is consistent with a growing consensus
that the genetic architecture of intelligence is different in the two groups.
Because the genetic variants have been identified in Europeans or European
Americans, they may contribute less to the capacity for intelligence in people
of African descent. In addition, other variants may be found only in African populations
and thus remain to be identified.
For
the above findings, Bryan Pesta would be fired from his tenured position at
Cleveland State University. The whole affair is described in The Chronicle of Higher Education. At no
point did anyone actually dispute his findings. It was simply taken for granted
that they could not be true. And that’s that.
Please
don’t argue that Bryan Pesta unconsciously looked for data that would provide
the findings he wanted. The data had already been collected by another research
team for a completely different purpose. So put aside The Mismeasure of Man and tell Stephen Jay Gould to go back to
sleep.
This
story isn’t over. People are curious, and curiosity ends up finding a way—despite
the barriers we erect. Below is a screen shot of the paper’s access statistics
(Hint: The Chronicle’s article came
out on October 13).
References
Lasker,
J., B.J. Pesta, J.G.R. Fuerst, and E.O.W. Kirkegaard. (2019). Global Ancestry
and Cognitive Ability. Psych
1(1):431-459. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych1010034
Standifer,
C. (2022). Racial Pseudoscience on the Faculty. A professor’s research flew
under the radar for years. What finally got him fired? The Chronicle of Higher Education. October 13. https://www.chronicle.com/article/racial-pseudoscience-on-the-faculty?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in
10 comments:
The taboo on IQ research is entirely due to the oversized presence of African-descent people in western countries. There isn't as much protest from (or on behalf of) Australian Aboriginals, Romani, Native Americans, certain Hispanic and Asian subgroups who also do poorly on tests.
Africans enjoy a status denied to other subgroups (who have arguably suffered worse): overrepresentation in media (black Anne Boleyn, but no Armenian Anne Boleyn), affirmative action. The hyperfocus on black suffering seems a deliberate attempt to overcompensate while ignoring far worse abuses that go on today (the displacement of Indigenous people in the Amazon, the Uighers).
it is obvious to me that blacks are dumber than whites and asians but they do a good job of hiding it.
and i think blacks have a lot of stigma to being represented as intelligent because they have an inferiority complex.
I will stop commenting here, you will be able to rest soon.
But I still have to say that you lack moral understanding or likely consequential if this is exposed or taken as official fact by political authorities, especially conservative authorities.
Another problem is that you and other HBDs ALWAYS analyze cognitive differences by just an unilateral or unidimensional approach.
The relativity or complexity of these differences, for example, that just one black individual can be smarter than most white individuals, at least specifically; that the fact that the X population is smarter, according by what the IQ tests ''measure'', that the Y population, does not mean that the Y population is not smart; that there are white subpopulations that are, on average, less smart:
Irish travelers.
That's what I'm not even talking about other facets of intelligence that are not ''analyzed'' by these tests...
I have already commented on the absurd proportion of whites who suffer from ''Irrationalia''.
I don't think it's a destructive criticism...
Yeong,
It's not so much Western societies as the United States. That country plays a pivotal role in the world and, consciously or not, it exports its culture and fetishes to almost all other countries. Conversely, other countries look up to the U.S. as a leader and imitate whatever it does. Here, in Canada, African Canadians are greatly outnumbered by other "visible minorities," yet you wouldn't know when you look at advertising on TV or in shopping centers. About one in three faces are black, sometimes one in two.
Thecherry,
On average, African Americans have a better self-image than do European Americans. It's the latter who have an inferiority complex.
Santocool,
There are very few conservative authorities in the world. For that matter, there are very few liberal or socialist authorities. What we have is a fake "right" and a fake "left" that pretty much follow the same neoliberal globalist policies. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but that's how I see it.
This finding is consistent with a growing consensus that the genetic architecture of intelligence is different in the two groups.
It's also consistent with the genetic variants not being causal. To find causal variants, I suspect you need to look for variants that predict high IQ in very different environments like the United State and Nigeria.
''There are very few conservative authorities in the world. For that matter, there are very few liberal or socialist authorities. What we have is a fake "right" and a fake "left" that pretty much follow the same neoliberal globalist policies. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but that's how I see it.''
Neoliberalism is a branch of capitalism, the ideology of ''free market'', which is basically right-wing.
As for the left, what is missing is a rational left, unfortunately, we have two, the identitarian and the radical, both very silly.
"20-25% of the difference in general intelligence between the African Americans and the European Americans was explained by genetic variants associated with educational attainment".
A quarter! That is hardly a deterministic conclusion. I think the grounds for the outrage was the choice of the subject rather than the conclusion reached about it.
I don't know about a fake Left the fellow who got Pesta sacked seems to think nation states are irrational entities and cause conflict judging by his research interests. He likely thinks of the concept of race in a similar way. He trumpets his own conference presentation at the International Herbert Marcuse Society. There is a non-state social media empowered Left that genuinely believes in what it is saying, as far as I can see.
Pumpkin Person,
Those genetic variants predict IQ not only in Europeans and European Americans but also in Asians and Latin Americans. That's a very wide range of cultural environments. They also predict IQ in sub-Saharan Africans, just to a lesser extent.
Santocool,
Neoliberalism is "right-wing" only for people who exclusively watch "right-wing" media owned by wealthy neoliberals. Money buys everything, even ideology.
Sean,
If I have a pot of differently colored jellybeans, I don't have to count every last one to estimate the proportions of the different colors. A sample is sufficient.
''Santocool,
Neoliberalism is "right-wing" only for people who exclusively watch "right-wing" media owned by wealthy neoliberals. Money buys everything, even ideology.''
In Brazil, neoliberalism is synonymous with free market ideology and not with a broader concept of liberalism.
Neoliberalism is the economic model adopted after the 1929 crisis characterized by strong state intervention instead of leaving the market totally free and that contributed to this crisis, the worst crisis in the long history of crises of the capitalist system.
But here the State intervenes not for the welfare of the population, but for those who have the greatest control over the basic element of the capitalist system, capital.
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