HPRgument Blog — May 9, 2010 2:01 pm

Finally, A Post on Stephanie Grace

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What the leadership of the Harvard Law Review used to be like

Until now I’ve resisted commenting on the controversy that was created last week when Harvard 3L Stephanie Grace’s private email saying she “does not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent” came to light.

But now I see that Andrew Sullivan is having a related conversation about race and intelligence, and I want to reply to one of the reader comments that he cites:

I would also like to take issue with your readers who argue that IQ is meaningless. Precisely the opposite is true: The central message of the Bell Curve is that IQ scores have *high predictive validity* for all kinds of things, including income. Anecdotes about purportedly dumb people that have been very successful or amazingly bright individuals that have failed in some way are meaningless behind the mountain of data that point to a key role for IQ, whatever that may be, in individuals’ life outcomes.

This is really, really bad reasoning. It ignores the possibility, indeed I would say the strong probability, that IQs have high predictive ability for various social outcomes because they are part-and-parcel of a whole system of determining “merit” that has been shaped by and for white people, both with and without malicious intent. (That’s a strong claim, but one need only believe that the system of determining merit has been socially constructed by someone… unless you mock anyone who uses the phrase “socially constructed,” as many contributors to this discussion seem inclined to do.) That is, it is only because people have decided that IQ and SAT scores should matter that they do matter for “individuals’ life outcomes.”

In order to justify assessments of “merit” where blacks and whites perform differently from one another, you have to assume that they perform differently because they actually are different and immutably so: because blacks are dumber, or less cut-out to be firefighters, or what have you. In order to critique those assessments of “merit,” you have to assume that blacks and whites have basically equal capacities, and that differential outcomes on certain assessments are attributable to differences in cultural background, education, social class, etc.

I don’t believe that science has conclusively proven that one assumption or the other is true. But I know that I’m going with the latter assumption until someone proves it wrong. By all means, let’s do the experiments, as Stephanie Grace suggested. (Let’s not, though, allow her to design the experiments. Experimenter’s bias, anyone?)

But until we get some conclusive results, I’m going to go with the assumption that doesn’t write off an entire class of people as stupider (rather than differently intelligent) and lazier (rather than educationally deprived) than another.

Update: In light of Jeremy’s point in the comments below, I should say that my interpretation of what Sullivan’s reader was saying is just that — an interpretation. In my view, what he or she is saying in the above paragraph is that, contrary to the view that IQ is meaningless (because it’s only a social construct), IQ is actually quite meaningful (because it’s highly predictive of certain outcomes). My point is that IQ can (and I believe is) both highly predictive and a social construct, and in fact is highly predictive BECAUSE it’s a social construct.

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Sam Barr '11, a government concentrator, was the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Political Review in 2010.
  • Jeremy Patashnik

    Two comments on your post, Sam: First,I think your critique of Andrew Sullivan’s comment is unfair. He says that IQ scores have “high predictive validity,” but he doesn’t argue *why* that is the case. It could very well be–as you suggest–that that’s only true because society is constructed to reward people who score well on IQ tests. It could also be that these people are just innately more gifted. In reality, it’s almost certainly some combination of the two. Either way, he is correct in saying the outcomes of these tests have high predictive validity. Think of it this way: if you flip a coin and I tell you that I’ll give you $1 if it’s heads and $0 if it’s tails, your flip has very high predictive validity for your income, even though this “societal construct” has a highly stylized design.

    Second, I agree with you entirely that science has yet to deliver a verdict on this, and I think Sullivan agrees as well: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/11/race-and-iq-wha.html.
    One unfortunate thing about the politically correct society in which we live, is that I think any experimenter will have a tough time getting funding for any research in this area.

  • Sam Barr

    jeremy,

    1. It wasn’t Sullivan. It was a reader of his. He posts reader commentary sometimes.

    2. The reader was arguing against the view that IQ is a social construct by talking about its predictive ability. But since its predictive ability could be the result of social construction, it’s a phony argument. That was my point.

    3. It’s very easy to say “of course it’s a little of both” and wipe your hands and be done with it. And of course if the question is “why don’t black people do as well as white people on the SAT or on IQ tests?” the answer might well be a little bit of both. But that still doesn’t answer the complaint that the measures themselves are meaningless social constructions, only predictive because we assign so much value to them.

    4. Yes, political correctness should not get in the way of science. Fine, agreed. I just have no tolerance for people who think that THAT is the major instance of discrimination and problematic race-based thinking in this country.

  • Jeremy Patashnik

    Sam,

    In response to each of your four points.

    1. My bad, I misunderstood the sentence where you established whose comment you were disagreeing with.

    2. The commenter may very well have thought what you say he wrote in point #2 above (the link you posted is broken so I can’t go back to the original site), but there’s nothing wrong with the reasoning presented in the excerpt from the comment that you posted. Your statement “this is really, really bad reasoning” doesn’t make sense if you only provide that part of the comment.

    3. I agree with you entirely. One cannot draw any conclusions on the role of race on life outcomes and innate ability from IQ tests specifically because IQ tests are only predictive for both of the reasons we’ve established. If we observe the outcome of a given individual, we don’t know if we observed that result because of innate ability, social constructs, or just random chance. If we observe the results of a group of individuals, we still don’t know if these outcomes are caused by social constructs or innate ability (though if the group is sufficiently large, it’s unlikely the results are caused by random chance, obviously). Furthermore, just because both innate ability and social constructs drive the predictive merits of IQ test as a whole, that does NOT mean that both necessarily drive the results for a given individual or group of individuals. That is to say, it is likely that in the case of African-Americans taken as a group, these results are entirely driven by social constructs, and I agree that we should operate with that assumption until proven otherwise. Still, I think one can reasonably assert that for the society as a whole, the predictive ability of IQ tests is driven by both society and innate ability.

    4. Yes, as far as racial injustices go, political correctness getting in the way of research is low on the list. Agreed. I still don’t think it’s something to be ignored.

  • Sam Barr

    I’ve updated the post to clarify my interpretation of his or her argument. Of course he or she is right that IQ is not “meaningless” and her explanation of its “meaning” is valid, but it seemed to me that the conclusion was supposed to be that IQ tests are VALID predictors of VALID social outcomes, not just predictors of social outcomes period.

    I’m not ignoring the issue of political correctness. I think that it’s often used by racists or those with suspicious racial views to hide themselves from criticisms, but there are also valid criticisms of it, which you and I agree on. Liberals should have more confidence that science will bear out their assumptions.

  • Jeremy Patashnik

    Sam,

    Thanks for incorporating my comments into the post. I still think that–if what you posted is the entirety of the reader’s comment–your interpretation of the comment goes beyond what the reader actually said, but that’s a minor point.

    Still, I don’t think it’s fair to say that IQ is “meaningless” because of this problem that it is probably partially correlated with social constructs. I think it would be more accurate to say “IQ results should be taken with a serious grain of salt” because of this confound.

    One final comment on the role of political correctness: I think political correctness definitely plays an important role in our society. Given a choice between no political correctness and the level we currently have, the latter is clearly preferable. Still, I think the optimal amount of political correctness is lower than the status quo.

  • Sam Barr

    That’s what interpretations do, Jeremy. They go beyond what the person actually said.

    And in my very last comment, I said that IQ is NOT meaningless. So i don’t know why I supposedly have to say something “more accurate” about the issue.

    Can we drop this now?

  • Jeremy Patashnik

    You’re right, I don’t know where I got the “meaningless” thing from. I read your comment quickly and gleaned the exact opposite of what you meant to say. My bad; you can disregard the second paragraph of my last comment. Apologies.

    On the role of interpretations: interpretations derive meaning from what a person ACTUALLY said, not what you think a person may or may not have been insinuating by what he or she said. It’s possible that the commenter really does think what you imply he or she thinks, but jumping to that conclusion uses logic that is just as flawed as jumping to the conclusion that a person who scores lower on an IQ test is innately less intelligent than someone who gets a higher score.

    I’m fine dropping this when you are, but it’s a good distraction from econ studying, so I’m in no rush.

  • Sam Barr

    Haha, really? My interpretation of some bozo’s hastily composed email to Andrew Sullivan is “just as flawed” as the bozo’s racist assumptions? False equivalence, anyone?

    Okay, please, go back to what the bozo actually said. I fixed the link. You’re right, there is nothing explicitly stating that he or she thinks that IQ tests are VALID predictors of VALID social outcomes. But there are a variety of clues: the unironic citation of The Bell Curve among them. Also note the reference to supposed evidence that IQ is correlated with actual brain physiology. Could it be any clearer that this person is trying to refute the idea that IQ is a social construct, which is the only view that I imputed to him or her?

  • Jeremy Patashnik

    Sam,

    First of all, I didn’t say that “your interpretation was just as flawed as his assumptions.” I said that your interpretation “[used] logic that [was] just as flawed” as the logic the reader made in his assumptions (that he may or may not have actually made). There’s a big difference between the two statements. One can employ the same logical fallacy in different scenarios and arrive at conclusions with wildly different moral implications.

    OK, reading the ENTIRE comment, I think you correctly interpreted the reader’s intent. I had said earlier in this string of comments that I thought the paragraph you excerpted was the entire comment, so we’ve apparently had a misunderstanding here.

  • M Schwartz

    ***It ignores the possibility, indeed I would say the strong probability, that IQs have high predictive ability for various social outcomes because they are part-and-parcel of a whole system of determining “merit” that has been shaped by and for white people,***

    You mention white people, but overlook the well documented fact that those of East Asian ancestry tend to average above europeans on the same tests.

    Also, the reality is that whatever tests measure, neuroscientists are finding a clearl neurobiological basis.

    yale.edu/scan/GT_2004_NRN.pdf

    And in the modern society, those measured skills are clearly important. Just in basic terms, for instance having bridges that don’t collapse and functioning sewage systems, you need engineers, medical specialists etc..

  • M Schwartz

    ***Also note the reference to supposed evidence that IQ is correlated with actual brain physiology.***

    The Thompson & Gray paper I cited above is a good summary of the neurobiological basis for intelligence. A more recent summary is here by Deary et al Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2010

    larspenke.eu/pdfs/Deary_Penke_Johnson_2010_-_Neuroscience_of_intelligence_review.pdf

    Some of the most interesting research is by Thompson, the UCLA neuroscientist. There is a summary of a recent study by him in MIT Technology Review:

    “The UCLA researchers took the study a step further by comparing the white matter architecture of identical twins, who share almost all their DNA, and fraternal twins, who share only half. Results showed that the quality of the white matter is highly genetically determined, although the influence of genetics varies by brain area. According to the findings, about 85 percent of the variation in white matter in the parietal lobe, which is involved in mathematics, logic, and visual-spatial skills, can be attributed to genetics. But only about 45 percent of the variation in the temporal lobe, which plays a central role in learning and memory, appears to be inherited.

    Thompson and his collaborators also analyzed the twins’ DNA, and they are now looking for specific genetic variations that are linked to the quality of the brain’s white matter. The researchers have already found a candidate–the gene for a protein called BDNF, which promotes cell growth. “People with one variation have more intact fibers,” says Thompson.”

    http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22333/page2/

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Sims/100000571912142 David Sims

    There’s a (black) Christian blog called GrowTheHeckUp. One of its writers, Lavoisier Cornerstone, had this to say about Stephanie Grace.

    “See most racists don’t think that their racists. They just think that what they believe about other people is the truth.”

    However, the same thing can be said about those who believe in racial equality. They, too, just think that what they believe about other people is the truth.

    So we have two groups of people, and each group’s opinions about race are the opposite of those of the other group. How can we determine which of them has the opinion which is in closest agreement with the facts?

    We look at the evidence. Like James Watson did. Like Arthur Jensen and J. Philippe Rushton did. Like William Pierce did. All of the evidence gathered about the subject of race over the past hundred years or more weighs in favor of the racist side. The racists have empirical data that they can point to, that they can show you, that they can reason from.

    The leftist egalitarians, on the other hand, have nothing except shaming words. (And, if you point that fact out to them, they will merely direct at you even more shaming words.)

    When you read racist writing, you sooner or later see them referring to scientific studies. They might not always know the details—though sometimes they do—such as when and where the study was done, who the researcher was, where it was published and under what title, but they know that such studies have been done and they can usually find somebody who can direct you specifically to that information.

    When you read egalitarian writing, you never see them justifying themselves with reference to data arising from scientific studies, because there aren’t any scientific studies that prove that there ISN’T a racial IQ gap, or that there ISN’T a racial difference in violent crime rates, or that there ISN’T a racial variable in the percentage of deadbeat parents. Or in the per capita rates of infection for sexually transmitted disease.

    The reason the egalitarians, rather than the racists, must forever resort to shaming words is simple. The racists are right. And the egalitarians are wrong. If the egalitarians had any chance of proving themselves right empirically, they’d do it. Since they don’t, they resort to tactics of disinformation and political pressure.

    Where cultural differences are asserted, those doing the asserting usually forget that culture itself is dependent on the capabilities that the genes give the people among whom the culture arose. Cultural differences are genetic differences, set off by a few generations.

    “Because according to those that make the science, everything they see tells them that you’re inferior.”

    Another mistake. Science isn’t an invented thing. It is a discovered thing. Scientists don’t “make” the science. Nature does. The job of the scientist is to find out what it is that nature did.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Sims/100000571912142 David Sims

    Sam Barr wrote, more or less, “[The argument that scholastic and IQ test scores have predictive power] is really, really bad reasoning. It ignores the possibility, indeed I would say the strong probability, that IQs have high predictive ability for various social outcomes because they are part-and-parcel of a whole system of determining “merit” that has been shaped by and for white people, both with and without malicious intent. (That’s a strong claim, but one need only believe that the system of determining merit has been socially constructed by someone… unless you mock anyone who uses the phrase ‘socially constructed,’ as many contributors to this discussion seem inclined to do.) That is, it is only because people have decided that IQ and SAT scores should matter that they do matter for ‘individuals’ life outcomes.’”

    You’ve forgotten something obvious, Sam. If the races were really equal in intelligence, and if the IQ and SAT tests would designed to bolster an illusion of white superiority, then there would be no reason for why the Asian test-takers would score any better than the black test-takers do. But they do.

    Time after time, the line-up is the same. Either whites or Asians show the highest average score, with the other running a close second. Then various groups of browns (e.g. mestizos) appear. Finally, the blacks come dragging along in the rear, dead last every time.

    Apparently, this “socially constructed” bias, to which you referred, doesn’t affect all non-white races equally. In fact, it doesn’t appear to affect some of them at all. You’d have thought that the white racist psychologists and the white racist members of the boards of regents (who were these people, by the way?) would have done a better job of biasing the tests so that the whites could top the list more often.

    Or, alternatively, it could be that the finding of a century’s worth of IQ testing means exactly what it appears to mean. Maybe there is no racist conspiracy among scientists to cheat the scores in favor of white people. It could be, instead, that there are real genetic differences in intelligence between the races.

    And whereas it is true that there are also wide differences in intelligence within races, that doesn’t strip any importance from the fact that there are differences between the races.

    For example, if an employer is hiring for a certain kind of work, which requires a minimum IQ of 130 for adequate performance, then one white person in 20 will qualify, but only one black person in 7030 will qualify. Whites outnumber blacks in the United States by a ratio of six. So if this employer’s company is in a demographically average part of the USA, and the employer hires without the slightest racial bias, then for each black worker he hires, he will have also hired 2100 white workers. Nobody should even THINK about accusing the employer of racism until he has hired at least 1050 white workers while having yet to hire the first black one. That’s the significance of the racial gap in IQ.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Sims/100000571912142 David Sims

    IQ is a construct. What it measures is not.

    What IQ measures is cognitive ability. Neither Sam Barr, nor Andrew Sullivan, nor the person whom Barr quotes Sullivan as quoting, probably, doubts that within each race there are persons of differing intelligence.

    It is only when someone discovers that there are also differences in intelligence between races that these people have words to say, objections to make. Suddenly, all such people behave as if they’d never studied math in school and don’t know what a distributed difference is.

    Those objections aren’t based on any evidence. They’re simply the verbal result of the moralistic fallacy that such people entertain: the idea that what (he thinks) is fair is also what is true. Or that it is immoral to recognize truths that don’t meet his definition of fairness.

    The idea that the races can’t possibly differ in average intelligence isn’t a scientific idea; it is a dogmatic one. It’s an idea that defies common sense and empirical examination. It is an idea that has been disproved repeatedly, often, across more than a hundred years on every kind of test that involves the reasoning faculty: the SAT, the ACT, the Stanford 9TA, the Stanford-Binet, Raven’s Progressive Matrices, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the Air Force Officers’ Qualifying Test. All of them. Not even black psychologists have been able to devise an IQ test on which blacks generally outscore whites.

    And yet, despite all the evidence, egalitarians persist in their advocacy of one of the most thoroughly disproved theories of all time: racial equality. They do that because racial equality isn’t based on science. It is, instead, the central tenet of a secular religion. And that, incidentally, is why dissent to racial equality is seldom met with an offer to debate. It is, almost always, met with political backlash, with threats, with denials of opportunity, with attempts to ruin careers or reputations. Sometimes, with violence. That’s the sort of thing that inquisitions inflict on heretics.

    Galileo was right. And so are the racists.

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