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James Watson has died

nytimes.com

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Re: James Watson has died

#241

Post by prmph »

arp242 wrote: post #224
morgengold wrote: post #201

Is someone able to tell me what about the genetics, race and IQ stuff is backed by evidence and what part is pure prejudice?

Maybe being ginger is connected to IQ. Or maybe a particular ear shape or toe length or something is correlated. It's possible I suppose. But no one is looking in to that because everyone understands it doesn't really matter as not everyone with a high-IQ ear shape will be smart. You still need to judge them as individuals. Even if there is a connection between skin colour and IQ (which there is not, as far as I know…

This is exactly what I've been trying to put across; you said it better than I could have.

I guess those so rabidly claiming that people are no allowed to study connection between race and "intelligence" are too dense to see their own biases and axioms.

Re: James Watson has died

#242

Post by somenameforme »

tptacek wrote: post #240
somenameforme wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study [1] is the most interesting study on this question. It was intended to be a study that would, once and forever, put to rest any question of race and intelligence. You had numerous well-to-do white families, with mean IQ a sigma above the mean, adopt children from a variety of different races. The study then tracked these families and their outcomes while working to ens…

The Minnesota study was done in the phlogiston era of behavioral genetics, long before any operational understanding of epigenetics, let alone the molecular genetics tools used today to attempt to confirm the phenotype/genotype correlations twin studies generate (see: "the missing heritability problem"). All this is on top of the small sample size and lack of controls. The authors of the study itself say that it "pro…

I'll respond by quoting the authors themselves:

> "The test performance of the Black/Black adoptees [in the study] was not different from that of ordinary Black children reared by their own families in the same area of the country. My colleagues and I reported the data accurately and as fully as possible, and then tried to make the results palatable to environmentally committed colleagues. In retrospect, this was a mistake. The results of the transracial adoption study can be used to support either a genetic difference hypothesis or an environmental difference one (because the children have visible African ancestry). We should have been agnostic on the conclusions."

---

It gets back to the main issue here. You can't expect an open and good faith discussion on this topic when any one can suffer major career and other consequences for not adopting the politically correct view. And indeed extremely compelling evidence to the contrary of such is immediately met with a mixture of logically flawed arguments (e.g. - various groups have suffered tremendous discrimination with no apparent impact on IQ or later achievement, Jews being the obvious example) and ad hominem.

The study results are obviously not what the author's expected to find, which left them in a very difficult place. I think that is also why this was the last effort to try to experimentally prove that genetics don't matter. This is also likely why they continue to insist that the almost exactly ~20% of the mixed race individuals were misclassified by accident. Had they shown an environmentally favorable argument, I suspect it would have been revealed as a rather cleverly concocted control group. As is, it's extremely difficult to explain this (the mixed race individuals believed they were black and appeared as such, yet tested in accordance with their genetics) with a typical environmental argument.

Re: James Watson has died

#243

Post by hnhg »

somenameforme wrote: post #242
tptacek wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Minnesota study was done in the phlogiston era of behavioral genetics, long before any operational understanding of epigenetics, let alone the molecular genetics tools used today to attempt to confirm the phenotype/genotype correlations twin studies generate (see: "the missing heritability problem"). All this is on top of the small sample size and lack of controls. The authors of the study itself say that it "pro…

I'll respond by quoting the authors themselves: > "The test performance of the Black/Black adoptees [in the study] was not different from that of ordinary Black children reared by their own families in the same area of the country. My colleagues and I reported the data accurately and as fully as possible, and then tried to make the results palatable to environmentally committed colleagues. In retrospect, this was a m…

I know very little about this but just an observer your reply did little to refute any of the points made. You should loosen up a bit and keep an open mind about those points raised because it feels like you’re dismissing them.

Re: James Watson has died

#244

Post by sriram_malhar »

ecoled_ame wrote: post #174
dyauspitr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people care. Love his work, hate the person, feel obligated to rightfully demonize him, not his work.

demonizing anyone shouldn’t be done. it makes the demonizer demonic.

Perhaps I should be repentant calling Pol Pot a demonic evil? /s

Re: James Watson has died

#245

Post by tptacek »

somenameforme wrote: post #242
tptacek wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Minnesota study was done in the phlogiston era of behavioral genetics, long before any operational understanding of epigenetics, let alone the molecular genetics tools used today to attempt to confirm the phenotype/genotype correlations twin studies generate (see: "the missing heritability problem"). All this is on top of the small sample size and lack of controls. The authors of the study itself say that it "pro…

I'll respond by quoting the authors themselves: > "The test performance of the Black/Black adoptees [in the study] was not different from that of ordinary Black children reared by their own families in the same area of the country. My colleagues and I reported the data accurately and as fully as possible, and then tried to make the results palatable to environmentally committed colleagues. In retrospect, this was a m…

You brought this up 7 months ago, and when I responded that this is in fact an active field of study with new science being produced constantly, you had no response. I presumed you just conceded the point. If you missed my point last time, well, I've made it for you again: your claim that this research is suppressed is trivially falsifiable.

Re: James Watson has died

#246

Post by sriram_malhar »

culi wrote: post #81
sharadov wrote: post #39

Wasn't his partner Crick high on LSD when he discovered the double-helix structure of DNA?

There wasn't ever a "moment" when they "discovered" the structure of DNA. The closest thing is Franklin's Photograph 51 which took about 100 hours to compile and then took another year to do all the calculations to confirm the position of each atom. Watson and Crick (without the consent of Franklin) saw this Photograph, did some quick analysis, and came up with a couple of models that could match Franklin's photograp…

No, they didn't do a "quick analysis". They were in a race with Linus Pauling to figure out the structure. Pauling's son happened to leak the fact that Linus Pauling's lab had a triple helix, so they asked the son casually for notes. That, along with Gosling & Franklin's XRays convinced them that their own original model (and Pauling's) were flawed.

Re: James Watson has died

#248

Post by pfannkuchen »

zimpenfish wrote: post #188
pfannkuchen wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be “snipe”ing like this if a man were plagiarized? As far as I’m aware, this isn’t completely unheard of in science, at least historically if not today. Would they not have done the same if it were a more junior man? Like sure if he walked up to them and literally gave them the idea, they may not have (in either case), but with the circumstances as I understand them to be, I think this kind of thing happens…

> Would you be “snipe”ing like this if a man were plagiarized? When men have had their scientific advances plagiarised, stolen, claimed from them in the same quantity as non-men, sure, but that's like saying "you're complaining that I stole a million pounds but they stole a can of coke!" Nonsense whataboutism.

It isn’t whataboutism, I’m not deflecting. What I’m alluding to is that there is some moral crusade these days about women’s historical achievements that seems to have veered into conspiracy theorist tier paranoia lately. Men weren’t rubbing their hands and twirling their mustaches and stealing women’s inventions to keep them down, there were just more classical gender role norms back then. We can certainly tut tut at the social pressure to stay at home with children back then and how that did prevent some women from inventing things, or how men didn’t take women seriously in industry because that wasn’t their role in the classical role setup, but this notion that men are or were somehow out to get women is silly.

If anything though I think the real problem is actually being inverted. At the time when women began pushing or being pushed into industry and academia, why did we value industry and academia over what the women were doing at the time? Caring for children seems pretty important, and outsourcing that to under-resourced strangers and in many cases foreigners as we do today is quite odd when you think about it.

Re: James Watson has died

#249

Post by mcdonje »

1000units wrote: post #236
ghtbircshotbe wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now find a state that is majority black where whites are treated as second class citizens and redo the experiment.

[flagged]

The groups have very different histories within the US, and one group can pass as the majority much easier than the other. Not comparable.

Re: James Watson has died

#250

Post by somenameforme »

hnhg wrote: post #243
somenameforme wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll respond by quoting the authors themselves: > "The test performance of the Black/Black adoptees [in the study] was not different from that of ordinary Black children reared by their own families in the same area of the country. My colleagues and I reported the data accurately and as fully as possible, and then tried to make the results palatable to environmentally committed colleagues. In retrospect, this was a m…

I know very little about this but just an observer your reply did little to refute any of the points made. You should loosen up a bit and keep an open mind about those points raised because it feels like you’re dismissing them.

This is one of those many issues that can be approached at a macro level. Don't think about this as an argument on the internet, but about the implications. Imagine there was compelling evidence for a environmental factor that might even possibly be controlled for. Do you realize how huge a deal this would be?

Every single parent wants the best for their kids and would do anything for this. We, socially, already spend an obscene amount of money on education and other factors meaning government support to try to turn this viability into a reality would be through the roof - including in endless support on promising research along these lines. And keep in mind this isn't only for black families - there's a significant IQ deficit between whites and East Asians as well, for instance.

But where are these exciting studies on the verge of revolutionizing society? They do not exist. It's kind of like cold fusion. The latest science and research on this topic doesn't really matter. People want to find it and have been searching for decades with promising leads that go nowhere. But if one day they do, you'll know, because it will be something that would have dramatic implications for all of humanity.

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