Basically I open this thread to seek advice particular from scientists and biologists on how to counter this guys BS. I will also include how I have attacked this man's works. But first lets set the scene.
I have first heard of this man's work in a Michael Shermer book about why people believe weird things, although that was mentioned only in passing. However on another message board I frequent which deals with (Chinese economic news / culture / politics and military), I have seen this man's works being posted by a few different posters, one of them praising him as an "honest" academic.
Before we go on, the poster who likes Rushton has been warned by the mods about Holocaust denial, believes in vast Zionist conspiracies, is a racist cumstain who is too cowardly to admit it when I called him out on that, talks about racial purity and dismisses biological arguments about how stupid that concept even is because those academics are "liberals". If anyone is interested, he doesn't actually know what Liberalism is. He is also AFAIK a Chinese American who is very insular and I suspect has not actually left the country and thinks he knows more about life in a country more than the people who actually live there. Oh, and he doesn't seem to understand the concept that cause precedes effect, and tried to lecture me on science by defining what makes something an idea scientific is that it doesn't arrogantly purport to be definite and must have degrees of certainty (like how I supposedly do). Except when he talks about something that he is very certain of course. Like Holocaust denial.
Now that I have set the scene, lets talk about the works of Rushton himself, since he is somewhat smarter.
You can read his
wiki article here. Here is a youtube
video of a speech.
Essentially he is a Professor of psychology who argues for a racial cause as the main reason there are differing IQ scores between blacks, whites, Asians etc. From memory Whites average 100, Asians 105, blacks score around the 80s. In the video he believes differences in genetics account for 50-60% cause, the rest being environmental. Both side argues a mixture of genetics and environmental, the classic nature vs nurture conundrum. Few scholars imply such a high relation to
genetics between the races.
That is the crux, because its a leap of logic to go from 1) Intelligence is hereditary to b) some races are less intelligent. The reason being of course you would have to show these "stupid" genes are more frequent in certain races. Firstly we run into the problem of how to define race biologically, and I don't want the thread side track by this but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(clas ... _of_humans)
Since the 1970s, anthropologists with the exception of forensic anthropology argue that race is mainly a social / cultural construct than a biological one. Thats not to say genetics and biology don't play a part, merely that it plays a smaller part than social factors. Lewontin proposed this in a speech in the 70s. Richard Dawkins agrees with most of that, but he argues on a technical detail that race does have some taxonomic use (which can explain why forensics can identify the "race" of people).
It sounds counter intuitive, so let me give examples.
1. A man who is 1/4 African and 3/4 European would be considered "black" under America's old "one drop" rule. In fact sometimes even if you are 1/8 African you are considered black. Biologically speaking, they should be more white. This shows an example of culture triumphing over biology.
2. Australian Aborigines who look white still identify and are counted in the census as Aborigines. One would think they have more "white" / European genes than Aboriginal ones, but thats the way it goes. So again an example of culture triumphing over biology.
I can give more examples, but I think you get the idea. The other issue is that if you take two humans (even if they are from different races, eg a "black" man and an Asian man) their genetics would be closer to each other than the genetics or two chimps, even though the chimps look more alike than the humans do. One can also compare the genes from members of one race vs members of another race, and sometimes the genetics between the people from different races are actually closer. Or to put it another way, the intra-population variance is greater than the inter-population variance. For race to have meaning on a biological level, wouldn't two people of the same race always be more similar genetically than two people of different races?
This makes race an ambiguous term biologically speaking, which is automatically hard for people like Rushton who want to talk about the differences between say blacks and whites. If that black person has say 3/4 European heritage, but is still counted as "black", wouldn't that throw out your genetic analysis?
Lets assume for a moment, Rushton defines race the same way people identify themselves and go from there. If you watch the youtube video we see some red flags already.
1. In the opening minute (of the linked video) they talk about how Rushton has been persecuted. Thats already a red flag. Its just like Creationist talking about how close minded mainstream science are for not accepting their awesome ideas.
2. He is arguing for things outside his field of specialty (psychology). For example
a) His arguments are predicated on the concept of race on a biological level, so he is arguing against anthropologists who say that race is an ambiguous term biologically speaking.
b) He also says speculates in
this video that the wider hips in Asian and white women are to evolutionary speaking allow for bigger brains. Ok, its been a while, but I am pretty sure evolutionary speaking we accomodated our bigger brains, not so much by humans having wider hips, but our offspring at birth has less mature brain than say chimps. Thats why a chimp in a short span of time will start walking and self care, while a human baby cannot. A human offspring at the same level of maturity will not accomodate our bigger brains, so evolutionary speaking, we come out less mature. So he appears to be arguing against biologists who deal with evolution as well.
Arguing outside one's field of specialty against the establishment is fraught with peril. Remember Fred Hoyle with his anti evolution arguments. Or Michael Behe with Idiotic Design and irreducible complexity.
Thats a second red flag, and I haven't even gotten to his arguments yet. So here they are
1. Essentially some of his arguments simply do not appear to take into account environmental factors to any great extent. Its difficult, but it seems he doesn't make much effort. For example in the first video he simply says Chinese have an average IQ of 105, Indians have around the 80s, therefore China is a country we (whites) can work with.
Don't believe me, watch the video yourself. Its been mentioned numerous times that China has superior social indicators and wealth indicators than India and has for ages. How does he even try to reconcile that?
2. The other thing to note is he has to contend with the
Flynn effect. Essentially this phenomena describes how IQ has been increasing (when standardise against older IQ tests), particularly in black populations, and also in developing nations, will recently it appears its plateaued in developed nations. There are several environmental factors speculated to explain this, and studies done which suggest some of these. You can read the wiki article itself, however the point is, unless you believe in Lamarckism or saltations, the improvement in IQ in so short a time must have an environmental cause rather than genetic. This is a factor Rushton can't account for by just saying environmental just raises 4 IQ points, because it clearly does more.
3. As mentioned earlier, he purports that bigger brains in Asians and Whites make them smarter than blacks (see Second video). However he also states that bigger brains in men don't make them smarter than women. Ignoring for a moment that not all the parts of the brain are dedicated to higher cognitive functions, taking this to the logical conclusion, basketballers or tall sports stars would have bigger brains, and smarter. I am pretty sure Yao Ming, Michael Jordan etc are known for many things, but being a mega genius isn't one of them.
Now considering that Rushton is the head of the
Pioneer Fund and it all clicks into place. A white supremacist showing the inferiority of blacks, but is forced to concede East Asians are smarter using his own methodology.
I can only speculate that the work of Rushton is popular among
some members of that other board because he says nice things about Chinese people (we are smarter) and it appeals to the pride of certain people, and because some people are simply stupid. However I believe Rushton's work falls on their own merit (or lack of merit).
Any further thoughts on how to counter this bullshit?
