Skin Color & Earning Studies=Woo?

[Dave1001]

I'm a bit skeptical about the scientific rigour of these studies. I think it's fair to say the study authors generally are expecting the answer that they find: that skin color correlates with earning power. I know of two studies thus far: this one on immigrants, and another one mentioned briefly in this article on african americans.

I don't know how the african american study measured skin tone, but this one claims that the original government research used an 11 point scale where researchers ranked the study participants' skin tone.

I'd like to know in more detail how this worked, because I see potential problems such as researchers being influenced by clothes study participants wore, their posture, or even more subtle things like time spent outdoors affecting the evaluations. I'd like to know how they controlled for all this.

Anyone know the link to the actual government study/survey explaining how they controlled for these factors?

[andyandy]

I'm a bit skeptical about the scientific rigour of these studies. I think it's fair to say the study authors generally are expecting the answer that they find: that skin color correlates with earning power. I know of two studies thus far: this one on immigrants, and another one mentioned briefly in this article on african americans.

I don't know how the african american study measured skin tone, but this one claims that the original government research used an 11 point scale where researchers ranked the study participants' skin tone.

I'd like to know in more detail how this worked, because I see potential problems such as researchers being influenced by clothes study participants wore, their posture, or even more subtle things like time spent outdoors affecting the evaluations. I'd like to know how they controlled for all this.

Anyone know the link to the actual government study/survey explaining how they controlled for these factors?

what studies?

[Katana]

what studies?

I found this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16831909/

Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.

{snip}

Hersch took into consideration other factors that could affect wages, such as English-language proficiency, education, occupation, race or country of origin, and found that skin tone still seemed to make a difference in earnings.

That means that if two similar immigrants from Bangladesh, for example, came to the United States at the same time, with the same occupation and ability to speak English, the lighter-skinned immigrant would make more money on average.

{snip}

"We estimate that dark- or medium-skinned blacks suffered a discriminatory penalty of anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent relative to whites," he said. "This suggests people cue into appearance and draw inferences about capabilities and skills based on how they look."

Darity said it is not clear whether the bias is conscious or subconscious.

Hersch drew her data from a 2003 federal survey of nearly 8,600 new immigrants. The survey used an 11-point scale for measuring skin tone, in which 0 represents an absence of color and 10 the darkest possible skin tone.

From those nearly 8,600 participants, she focused on the more than 2,000 who were working and whose skin tone had been recorded during face-to-face interviews.

{snip}

Hersch said her findings, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science next month in San Francisco, could support discrimination lawsuits based not on race, but on color.

"There are very few color discrimination suits, but they are on the rise," she said. "But these suits can be hard to prove."

These seem like pretty big conclusions based on a sampling of only 2000 immigrants. Of the 2000, we don't know how many were in each color group. I doubt they were evenly distributed.

As always, it's very hard to tell from a press release.

[666]

This one reported by Yahoo! perhaps?

http://p221.news.mud.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070127/ap_on_bi_ge/skin_tone_income

Or what Katana says

[bpesta22]

They didn't control for IQ, which correlates .33 with SES, and shows substantial "skin color" differences.

Seems like they're reifying "discrimination" as the causal mechanism for something clearly attributable to g.

I'm just waiting for them to report the same correlation to 6 decimal points two years from now...

:boxedin:

[Katana]

They didn't control for IQ, which correlates .33 with SES, and shows substantial "skin color" differences.
Even within the same race?

Any thoughts on why (if your answer was "yes" ;) )?

[bpesta22]

Indeed.

Arthur Jensen, 2005, Intelligence:

A large number of national and geographic population samples were used to test the hypothesis that the variation in mean values of skin color in the diverse populations are consistently correlated with the mean measured or estimated IQs of the various groups, as are some other physical variables, known as an ecological correlation. Straightforward statistical analyses clearly bear out the hypothesis, showing a significant positive ecological correlation between lightness of mean skin color and mean IQ across different populations.


*** Rushton (2000). Personality and Individual Differences:

We correlated mean IQ of 129 countries with per capita income, skin color, and winter and summer temperatures, conceptualizing skin color as a multigenerational reflection of climate. The highest correlations were - 0.92 (rho = - 0.91) for skin color, - 0.71 (rho = - 0.75) for mean high winter temperature, - 0.61 (rho = - 0.68) for mean low winter temperature, and 0.63 (rho = 0.74) for real gross domestic product per capita.

[bpesta22]

http://ourworld.cs.com/Bpesta22/templer_22.gif

[bpesta22]

The above table uses aggregate data but it spans the whole range of skin color for the scale they used to measure it.

The correlation between skin color and IQ here (just looking at countries where IQ was actually calculated, versus estimated) is -.90!

At the aggregate level, IQ can be predicted very accurately just by knowing skin color using the following *linear* regression formula (I just calculated it):

Predicted IQ = 105.3 + -5.03(skin color).

IQ decreases linearly about 5 points for every change in skin color from pasty white to dark black.

[Dave1001]

I found this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16831909/



These seem like pretty big conclusions based on a sampling of only 2000 immigrants. Of the 2000, we don't know how many were in each color group. I doubt they were evenly distributed.

As always, it's very hard to tell from a press release.

Thanks, I forgot to include the link. That was the article.

[Dave1001]

They didn't control for IQ, which correlates .33 with SES, and shows substantial "skin color" differences.

Seems like they're reifying "discrimination" as the causal mechanism for something clearly attributable to g.

I'm just waiting for them to report the same correlation to 6 decimal points two years from now...

:boxedin:

I'm not sure that automatically applies for immigrant populations (for example Igbos in Taiwan) for obvious reasons. Also Hersh is claiming that people of the same immigrant ethnic groups, equally educated, have different earning outcomes based on skin color. Affirmative action wouldn't explain that, because it's based on ethnic group rather than skin color (a dark-skinned bangladeshi wouldn't have an affirmative action advantage over a light-skinned bangladeshi). I'm open to IQ explanations for social phenomena, but you seem to be jumping the gun here applying it so quickly to this case of skin color, immigration, and earnings.

[Katana]

Thanks for the info, bpesta22.

I'm sure I'll have more questions for you once I mull it over. ;)

[Sleepy]

Hmmm... I imagine any population's desk jockeys would spend considerably less time in the sun than their blue-collar countrymen. This alone could account for some or all of the pattern.

Or are they pulling their colour reading from where the sun don't shine?

[andyandy]

The above table uses aggregate data but it spans the whole range of skin color for the scale they used to measure it.

The correlation between skin color and IQ here (just looking at countries where IQ was actually calculated, versus estimated) is -.90!

At the aggregate level, IQ can be predicted very accurately just by knowing skin color using the following *linear* regression formula (I just calculated it):

Predicted IQ = 105.3 + -5.03(skin color).

IQ decreases linearly about 5 points for every change in skin color from pasty white to dark black.

right, but there is a strong link between the education a child receives and IQ score attained - and so all the table shows is that the quality of universal education in countries in Africa is lower than the quality of universal education in Europe and the US. Which is hardly shocking.

[bpesta22]

right, but there is a strong link between the education a child receives and IQ score attained - and so all the table shows is that the quality of universal education in countries in Africa is lower than the quality of universal education in Europe and the US. Which is hardly shocking.

Why should the quality of education vary so nearly perfectly with skin color?

Plus, I guess it depends on your world view:

Education causes intelligence (Harvard makes people smart), or

Intelligence causes education (smart people go to harvard).

Just as two possibilities.

I could be jumping the gun, but given the strong link between skin color and IQ in the peer reviewed literature, not controlling for it (nor apparently even mentioning it as a possibility) is unforgivable, especially given how strongly they seem to argue it's discrimination causing the earnings difference.

[Dave1001]

Why should the quality of education vary so nearly perfectly with skin color?

Plus, I guess it depends on your world view:

Education causes intelligence (Harvard makes people smart), or

Intelligence causes education (smart people go to harvard).

Just as two possibilities.

I could be jumping the gun, but given the strong link between skin color and IQ in the peer reviewed literature, not controlling for it (nor apparently even mentioning it as a possibility) is unforgivable, especially given how strongly they seem to argue it's discrimination causing the earnings difference.

Please do this in a different thread, because you haven't answered how it plays into Hersh's specific claim about immigrants and intraethnic, intraeducation level earning spreads and skin color.

[bpesta22]

Dave

My intent wasn't to derail the thread-- sorry if you took it that way.

You asked if it was junk science. Not controlling for a variable that correlates .90 with skin color and has important implications for life success would seem to directly address the OP.

I'm not sure I understand the claim you want me to address re intraeducation. If it's important to you that I address it, could you rephrase. If not, feel free to ignore this.

B

[andyandy]

....




how's your testing going?

Still at the data collection stage?

[Dave1001]

Dave

My intent wasn't to derail the thread-- sorry if you took it that way.

You asked if it was junk science. Not controlling for a variable that correlates .90 with skin color and has important implications for life success would seem to directly address the OP.

I'm not sure I understand the claim you want me to address re intraeducation. If it's important to you that I address it, could you rephrase. If not, feel free to ignore this.

B

Hersh claimed that Bangladeshi immigrants with equal education levels had different earning levels: lighter skinned Bangladeshi immigrants earned more in America than darker skinned Bangladeshis. I though I have my doubts about the quality of this research and her conclusions from it, I don't see how what you posted about skin color and IQ is relevant to these specific claimed results.

[Dave1001]

how's your testing going?

Still at the data collection stage?

Please don't participate in a thread derail. We already have a thread or two for the general topics of IQ, heredity, subpopulations, etc. I see now that I had the misfortune of not naming this thread precisely enough, so as to enable BPesta to go on this tangent. :(

[Katana]

I have to echo the question to bpesta22. I thought I was missing something in the info that you provided, which was interesting by the way, but it seems like others have the same question that I do.

What I saw was a country-by-country breakdown with what I assume was some average skin darkness(?), IQ, GDP, etc. It seems like the question that the study mentioned in the OP asked was whether there is an association between skin tone (or degree of pigmentation) and income when people of the same race are compared.

[Dave1001]

It seems like the question that the study mentioned in the OP asked was whether there is an association between skin tone (or degree of pigmentation) and income when people of the same race are compared.

And not just that, for immigrants to the United States who have achieved the same education level.

[Katana]

And not just that, for immigrants to the United States who have achieved the same education level.

That's true.

[marting]

Did they account for skin color due to working outdoors?

[luchog]

I have to echo the question to bpesta22. I thought I was missing something in the info that you provided, which was interesting by the way, but it seems like others have the same question that I do.

Bpesta22's racist IQ theories have been hashed out exhaustively in several previous threads. All the material that he relies on for his claims of dark skin==lower intelligence is based on a couple of highly flawed studies that included manufactured data and failed on peer review; as well as a lot of out of context and unverified stuff. Look up the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, and the response by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man.

As for the OP, I've not seen a single color vs. earning potential study that included a sufficient sample size and controlled for all important variables. If nothing else, this study is far too small a sample size to be adequately representative. Hersch's data selection is highly flawed and smacks of cherry-picking.

[kellyb]

Did they account for skin color due to working outdoors?

That's a good question.

It really wouldn't surprise me, though, if there was a subtle racism in society that resulted in an economic disadvantage to darker skinned immigrants.

[Jeff Corey]

Bpesta22's racist IQ theories have been hashed out exhaustively in several previous threads. All the material that he relies on for his claims of dark skin==lower intelligence is based on a couple of highly flawed studies that included manufactured data and failed on peer review; as well as a lot of out of context and unverified stuff. Look up the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, and the response by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man,...
Just a correction here. Bell Curve was 1994, Mismeasure, 1981, Gould was good, but not that good.
And I would not be too quick to call Pesta a racist. He's clearly not in Rushton's camp.

[bpesta22]

I have to echo the question to bpesta22. I thought I was missing something in the info that you provided, which was interesting by the way, but it seems like others have the same question that I do.

What I saw was a country-by-country breakdown with what I assume was some average skin darkness(?), IQ, GDP, etc. It seems like the question that the study mentioned in the OP asked was whether there is an association between skin tone (or degree of pigmentation) and income when people of the same race are compared.

I didn't reply yesterday out of respect to the OP who thought my posts were derailing. Then, it occurred to me-- with due respect to dave-- that since this is an educational forum, if I think my inputs relevant, I can post it.

so:

I see it as a levels of analysis issue. Look at the african countries. The represent basically one "race"-- africans. And, within that race alone, skin color clearly associates with IQ (I deleted the data from my stats package, but it would be interesting to go back and do the correlations just on "black" countries).

At the aggregate level, it seems clear that looking just at people of one race-- african in this case-- IQ and skin color are still related.

I think the two earlier studies I cited look more directly at skin color variations within race and IQ.

Nonetheless, I think IQ is a compelling possible third variable explaining the results of the income study reported in the OP. So, not controlling for it (nor apparently even mentioning it) seems to make the study's validity suspect, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it Woo.

[skeptifem]

ive heard of problems between black people over how dark they are, like the really dark black kids will make fun of the lighter ones, and vice versa, and the ones who are more passable get **** if they act white.

Ive also heard that people from india are really mean to darker skinned people there, regardless of race.

I dont really have an opinion at this point.

[kellyb]

I noticed that the countries with the really low average IQs also happen to be the ones with high rates of extreme, braindamaging malnutrition.
I seriously doubt that's a coincidence.

[bpesta22]

I noticed that the countries with the really low average IQs also happen to be the ones with high rates of extreme, braindamaging malnutrition.
I seriously doubt that's a coincidence.


That would definately be a rival explanation. If anyone has data on rates of malnutrition across these countries I could easily do mediated regressions to see which is the better predictor of IQ-- skin color after controlling for malnutrition, or malnutrition after controlling for skin color.

[kellyb]

Here's an article about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/world/africa/28malnutrition.html?ex=1170565200&en=b31652541b6bfcdc&ei=5070

Yet almost half of Ethiopia’s children are malnourished, and most do not die. Some suffer a different fate. Robbed of vital nutrients as children, they grow up stunted and sickly, weaklings in a land that still runs on manual labor. Some become intellectually stunted adults, shorn of as many as 15 I.Q. points, unable to learn or even to concentrate, inclined to drop out of school early.
There are many children like this in the villages around Shimider. Nearly 6 in 10 are stunted; 10-year-olds can fail to top an adult’s belt buckle. They are frequently sick: diarrhea, chronic coughs and worse are standard for toddlers here. Most disquieting, teachers say, many of the 775 children at Shimider Primary are below-average pupils — often well below.

“They fall asleep,” said Eteafraw Baro, a third-grade teacher at the school. “Their minds are slow, and they don’t grasp what you teach them, and they’re always behind in class.”





ETA:
And that's about Ethiopia, which it appears came in dead last on IQs, at an average of 63 points.
I'll look to see what I can find on the other low scoring countries.

And here's the stats for the Congo, with it's average IQ of 65:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/05/05/MN235156.DTL
According to U.N. statistics, at least one-third of Congo's population, or 16 million people, are suffering from malnutrition. More than 2 million Congolese have been displaced from their homes, and 75 percent of the population lacks access to basic health care.

[bpesta22]

Cool; thanks for the link.

I would stipulate that extreme malnutrition would have significant negative effects on IQ, so it seems like malnutrition could be the variable explaining the skin color / IQ correlation.

Obviously, though, the darker skinned African countries would also have to be more malnutriated (er, that's not a word) for the explanation to work. In other words, there has to be a correlation between skin color by country and nutrition level.

Interesting stuff though, and it's an easily testable empirical question. If I get time later today, I will see if I can map up some index of nutrition levels to the table above and do an analysis.

In the meantime, if you have info on data sources re nutrition levels by country, please post it here!

[kellyb]

50% of the population starving in Sierre Leone, which comes in second to last on IQ's, at 65 points.

http://www.wfp.org/english/?ModuleID=137&Key=1850

Obviously, though, the darker skinned African countries would also have to be more malnutriated (er, that's not a word) for the explanation to work. In other words, there has to be a correlation between skin color by country and nutrition level.

I betcha a million dollars the starvation/IQ correlation will totally eclipse the skin tone one every time. After malnutrition is accounted for, the remarkable skintone/IQ thing all but disappears.

Notice who a lot of the IQ "winners" are -
China, Italy, Japan, Tiwan...
They're not all exactly the lightest skinned folks to be found, you know?

[skoob]

How is skin colour measured (I'm mainly referring to the table that bpesta22 posted)? It seems a bit odd that for example France and Finland both have a skin-colour value of 1.00. And why is Slovenia 1.00 while Croatia is 2.00? I've never noticed that Croatians are substantially darker than Slovenians. I really hope those skin-colour numbers weren't just fabricated to correlate with the GDP values...

[bpesta22]

50% of the population starving in Sierre Leone, which comes in second to last on IQ's, at 65 points.

http://www.wfp.org/english/?ModuleID=137&Key=1850



I betcha a million dollars the starvation/IQ correlation will totally eclipse the skin tone one every time. After malnutrition is accounted for, the remarkable skintone/IQ thing all but disappears.

Notice who a lot of the IQ "winners" are -
China, Italy, Japan, Tiwan...
They're not all exactly the lightest skinned folks to be found, you know?

I wish I would have posted the scatter plot here showing the relationship. I can redo it perhaps later.

Anyway, there is going to be a ceiling effect here that will be hard to overcome. The IQ/skin color correlation I calculated (using only those countries where IQ was calculated versus estimated-- n=55 iirc) was .90. Not much room for eclipsing and also leaves open a *possible* conclusion that low IQ causes malnutrition.

Also, jmo so take it with a grain of salt, but I would think if malnutrition indeed explains the table data, that would merit publication in the journal (which is premeire).

I don't know how they measured skin color. Whether the measure is reliable and valid is clearly open to debate but-- again JMO-- there's no way in hell the journal would publish dry-labbed data.

[kellyb]

Ok, well maybe "eclipsing" wasn't the right word. "Rendering it meaningless" might be a better way to put it.

I'm really having a hard time taking anything seriously about this study at this point seeing as how confounding factors like "extreme starvation" weren't accounted for initially.

Not much room for eclipsing and also leaves open a *possible* conclusion that low IQ causes malnutrition.
Might work for individuals, but not races. There's a reason why African Americans don't have average IQ's of 63 like their genetic counterparts in Ethiopia.
There are so many anthropological and sociological factors going on here. This just isn't good science at all.

[Ben Tilly]

I see it as a levels of analysis issue. Look at the african countries. The represent basically one "race"-- africans. And, within that race alone, skin color clearly associates with IQ (I deleted the data from my stats package, but it would be interesting to go back and do the correlations just on "black" countries).

And with that comment you've just demonstrated an abysmal ignorance of human genetics.

The fact is that within Africa there is more genetic variation than in all of the races found in the rest of the world combined! Take a genetic characteristic like, say, height. The tallest people in the world are from Africa. There are groups that average 7' in height. The shortest people in the world are the Pygmies, who also from Africa. Hmm...

Let's go look at sports. If you look at any Western country's Olympic track and field team you'll see that skin colour varies according to the length of race. Blacks are better at short sprints, and whites are better at marathons. (Even countries like Canada and Germany manage to find blacks to run the shortest sprints.) But there is a reason for that, and the reason is that the blacks in Western countries mostly come from Western Africa, where there is a racial type that is very good at sprinting. But where do the best marathon runners in the world come from? Oh right, Kenya. Which is in Eastern Africa. (Not so well-sampled by the slave trade.) Hmm...

I'm just giving you a couple of anecdotal examples here. But genetics bears this out. There is more variation within Africa than in the rest of the world in the vast majority of genetic traits.

Yet to you blacks are all blacks, completely indistinguishable. Just one race. And, being blacks, are genetically inferior. And, of course, anyone who looks back. For instance Caucasians from India have to be stupider than Caucasians from Germany because they are blacker.

That theory, on the face of it, is absurd. You're asserting genetic similarities across groups that you'd expect to be genetically very different. Let's try an alternate hypothesis on. And that is that IQ measurements are dependent on cultural factors, such as the ways that others treat you. And we have a cultural bias towards treating lighter-skinned people better. Now it doesn't matter how much genetic variation there is among black people, there will be a pervasive bias that is exactly dependent on skin colour.

Hmmm...that fits the data. And it explains the genetics as well.

Cheers,
Ben

[bpesta22]

And with that comment you've just demonstrated an abysmal ignorance of human genetics.

The fact is that within Africa there is more genetic variation than in all of the races found in the rest of the world combined! Take a genetic characteristic like, say, height. The tallest people in the world are from Africa. There are groups that average 7' in height. The shortest people in the world are the Pygmies, who also from Africa. Hmm...

Let's go look at sports. If you look at any Western country's Olympic track and field team you'll see that skin colour varies according to the length of race. Blacks are better at short sprints, and whites are better at marathons. (Even countries like Canada and Germany manage to find blacks to run the shortest sprints.) But there is a reason for that, and the reason is that the blacks in Western countries mostly come from Western Africa, where there is a racial type that is very good at sprinting. But where do the best marathon runners in the world come from? Oh right, Kenya. Which is in Eastern Africa. (Not so well-sampled by the slave trade.) Hmm...

I'm just giving you a couple of anecdotal examples here. But genetics bears this out. There is more variation within Africa than in the rest of the world in the vast majority of genetic traits.

Yet to you blacks are all blacks, completely indistinguishable. Just one race. And, being blacks, are genetically inferior. And, of course, anyone who looks back. For instance Caucasians from India have to be stupider than Caucasians from Germany because they are blacker.

That theory, on the face of it, is absurd. You're asserting genetic similarities across groups that you'd expect to be genetically very different. Let's try an alternate hypothesis on. And that is that IQ measurements are dependent on cultural factors, such as the ways that others treat you. And we have a cultural bias towards treating lighter-skinned people better. Now it doesn't matter how much genetic variation there is among black people, there will be a pervasive bias that is exactly dependent on skin colour.

Hmmm...that fits the data. And it explains the genetics as well.

Cheers,
Ben


Ben:

I haven't claimed "genetics anything." I don't think I've used the word "genes" or "genetics" anywhere in this thread (feel free to correct me if I am wrong).

Plus, I am well aware that people within the same race show individual differences. Inidividual differences within a race don't preclude mean differences across two race groups.

For African Americans, the standard deviation of IQ is 15 points-- that's a nice spread where 68% of blacks score between 70 and 100. Same is true of white americans, though the mean is 100, and 68% score between 85 and 115.

The distributions overlap, yet the mean difference exists. It'd be trivially simple to find a single black person smarter than a single white person. That does nothing though to discredit the mean group difference that's been documented since WWI.

The point of the data in the table I posted was to test a hypothesis for why skin color might correlate with IQ. The aticle asserts that distance from the equator is directly correlated with intelligence-- life's easier in warmer climates; requiring less g to survive. Life's harder where it snows, which selected for smarter people. All this being confounded with skin color.

I don't disagree with what you've said (except your claim that culture influences score on an IQ test), I just think it's irrelevant to anything I've claimed above.


ETA I wouldn't need any type of genetic marker test to reliably rank people based on how dark their skin appears to my eyeballs.

[dann]

For African Americans, the standard deviation of IQ is 15 points-- that's a nice spread where 68% of blacks score between 70 and 100. So you are an IQ fan. Do you also happen to know how IQ is measured in people who haven't learned to read and write, i.e. in (many places in) Africa?

[blutoski]

So you are an IQ fan. Do you also happen to know how IQ is measured in people who haven't learned to read and write, i.e. in (many places in) Africa?

I'm not an "IQ fan", but there are tests available for the illiterate. They use pictures and ask the participant to pattern-match, or arrange panels in the correct sequence or upright orientation.

[bpesta22]

So you are an IQ fan. Do you also happen to know how IQ is measured in people who haven't learned to read and write, i.e. in (many places in) Africa?

http://harcourtassessment.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Productdetail.htm?Pid=015-8686-195

[dann]

Just a correction here. Bell Curve was 1994, Mismeasure, 1981, Gould was good, but not that good.
You should get hold of a more recent edition of the book, post bell curve:
The 20th-century obsession with numbers led to the institutionalization of IQ testing and subsequent assignment to work (and rewards) commensurate with the score, shown by Gould to be not simply misguided--for surely intelligence is multifactorial--but also regressive, creating a feedback loop rewarding the rich and powerful. The revised edition includes a scathing critique of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, taking them to task for rehashing old arguments to exploit a new political wave of uncaring and belt tightening. It might not make you any smarter, but The Mismeasure of Man will certainly make you think. http://www.amazon.com/Mismeasure-Man-Stephen-Jay-Gould/dp/0393314251/sr=1-1/qid=1170530352/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9360498-6692929?ie=UTF8&s=books

[blutoski]

Just a correction here. Bell Curve was 1994, Mismeasure, 1981, Gould was good, but not that good.

The "Revised and expanded edition" is from 1996, and specifically has chapters dedicated to refuting The Bell Curve.

In fact, the current (and probably final) edition is subtitled: "The definitive refutation to the argument of The Bell Curve"

[hammegk]

And back and forth we go .... :)

http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/jpr_gould_paid.html


and more, more, more ...

http://www.cse.emory.edu/sciencenet/mismeasure/http

[Dave1001]

That's a good question.

It really wouldn't surprise me, though, if there was a subtle racism in society that resulted in an economic disadvantage to darker skinned immigrants.

I'm sure it wouldn't surprise many of us. But that doesn't excuse cherry-picking, etc. to get a study to match up with popular expectations. And situational discrimination in a variety of settings is different then the sort of sweeping, universal discrimination model that Hersh claims the data unfalteringly supports. I'd like to see more details on this study and some good critical analysis by skeptics in her field.

Inappropriate remark removed.

[andyandy]

edited to delete comment calling people who have derailed the thread effing winkers*

goodness, someone's cranky :)

threads evolve into questions that people are interested in discussing - it happens. It's hardly a big derail - if bpesta believes that skin colour and earning studies should have taken into account IQ data, then it's entirely relevant in his answer to your initial question. If people are interested in discussing an OP they will, if it's not especially interesting they won't.....
don't throw the toys out the pram just because your OP hasn't sparked the interest you'd hoped, in the direction you'd hoped....:rolleyes:

*like Christiano Ronaldo :)

[bpesta22]

goodness, someone's cranky :)

threads evolve into questions that people are interested in discussing - it happens. It's hardly a big derail - if bpesta believes that skin colour and earning studies should have taken into account IQ data, then it's entirely relevant in his answer to your initial question. If people are interested in discussing an OP they will, if it's not especially interesting they won't.....
don't throw the toys out the pram just because your OP hasn't sparked the interest you'd hoped, in the direction you'd hoped....:rolleyes:

*like Christiano Ronaldo :)


This is clearly off-topic you f'n f'er :p

[luchog]

Just a correction here. Bell Curve was 1994, Mismeasure, 1981, Gould was good, but not that good.
And I would not be too quick to call Pesta a racist. He's clearly not in Rushton's camp.

Nope, 1981 was the first version. Gould published a revised second edition in 1996, with new material included specifically to refute the claims made in The Bell Curve.

[luchog]

I see it as a levels of analysis issue. Look at the african countries. The represent basically one "race"-- africans. And, within that race alone, skin color clearly associates with IQ (I deleted the data from my stats package, but it would be interesting to go back and do the correlations just on "black" countries).

Nope, just more of your pseudoscientific BS. "African" incorporates a number of different distinctive ethnicities; including the caucasian Egyptians and Imazighen (berbers), both of which are among the oldest indigenous populations in Africa. Even the "black" ethnicities are not seperate races, since they are all members of the same Homo Sapiend Sapiens subspecies.

[Tanja]

I have to admit I did not read the whole thread, I just skimmed through it. However, I would like to comment on the table that was given on page 1, which lists various countries, their supposed average IQs, skin colour measurements etc. I find the average skin colour measurement quite bizzare.

For example, for European countries, they give a "1" to most west European countries, but they give a "1.3" for the Czech Republic, "1" for Slovenia, "2" for Croatia.

Now, even if you disregard the fact that most West-European countries had more non-white migration than Eastern-European countries (for example, if you disregard that the UK, with skin colour of "1", has nearly 10% of Asian and Afro-Carribean population, and you take into account only white Britons) it is in my view stupid to suggest that Britons are whiter than the Czech (if anything, I would think it is the opposite), or that Slovenians are whiter than Croats. Those figures look completely made up to me.

[bpesta22]

From the article:

A physical anthropology source was used to obtain data on skin color ( Biasutti, 1967). It should be noted, however, that physical anthropologists have traditionally assessed skin color inside the upper arm, which is affected only minimally by sun exposure. The source contains a map of the world with eight categories of skin color ranging from 1 (very light) to 8 (very dark). Because the map does not delineate the various countries of the world, three graduate students who were unaware of the purpose of our study independently determined the predominant skin color for each of the 129 countries. The word predominant was used because some countries had more than one skin color. The product–moment correlation coefficients between raters were 0.95, 0.95, and 0.93, suggesting very little subjectivity. For each country, the mean of the three skin color ratings was used.

Biasutti, 1967 Biasutti R., Le Razze e i Popoli Della Terra, (1967), Unione pipografiza-Editrice Torinese, Torino, Italy.


Tidbit from the main articles discussion section:

A possible reason why skin color correlated more highly than temperature with IQ is that it is a multigenerational reflection of climatic history. It takes thousands of years for skin color to change through evolution. For example, desert Amerindians are lighter than Negroid persons south of the Sahara Desert because they have not lived in a hot climate for as long. Mongoloid persons moved from Siberia to the Americas relatively recently. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that the present findings provide more support for the contention of Rushton and Lynn that higher IQs are found in colder climates than their postulated evolutionary processes. The formulation of any postulated evolutional process involves hundreds if not thousands of facts and relationships. The correlations of the present study are consistent with the evoluational postulates of Rushton and Lynn but do not provide definitive evidence.

[bpesta22]

They did also do correlations separate for the 41 black countries in the study; FWIW, the correlation just using black countries is much smaller, though significant.

The authors attribute the smaller correlation for black only countries to restriction of range.

[Tanja]

Bpesta, if the skin colour data was taken from a 1967 study, how come they have separate data on Slovenia and Croatia, which were not independent countries then? Is that a later addition?

Again, I am asking this out of curiosity rather than anything else as I don't have enough knowledge about the subject to debate it one way or another.

[Schneibster]

Derail accomplished, looks like to me. Another name for the ignore list, though, so it's not a total loss.

[Schneibster]

Interesting, luchog, didn't know that Gould had refuted that. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the information.

[bpesta22]

Tough crowd on the derail issue-- I'm betting this thread would long be dead without the derails.

I still perceive the IQ stuff to be marginally relevant to the OP, and considering this is an internet discussion thing, I'm gonna post again at the risk of making other people's ignore lists.

Tanja:

From the article, it seems like the 1967 source was from a physical anthropologist's study. That study included a map of the world's geography, without identifying any countries.

The map had 8 different shades of color showing the average skin colors of people who lived in that area.

I guess it makes sense to me to do it this way, as just crossing a neighboring country's border likely does not result in a radical change in skin color.

Given that countries weren't identified in the '67 source, the IQ authors enlisted the help of grad students. They coded skin color by country using their eyeballs, with apparently reliabilities in the .90s

***

Just my take on the above mess. It wouldn't surprise me if skin color-- even within "races"-- correlated with IQ.

It also wouldn't surprise me if it did not, nor do I think Spearman's hypothesis predicts one way or another whether skin color should relate to IQ within races.

This study alone seems informative, but definately not definitive in addressing whether skin color is "additive" re its effects on IQ.

The thing that struck me was the linear / additive relationship between skin color and IQ in the scatter plot of countries by skin color.

The plot would look a lot different if only skin color confounded with race predicted IQ (i.e., the graph would show discrete groupings of white and black countries, etc, with little variance within race-- whereas the actual graph showed data points all across the skin color variable).

So, I'm not sure what to make of it all, and perhaps I should apologize now for dragging this in, though, I still think it relevant and my intent was not to troll or stir *****.

[hammegk]

Interesting, luchog, didn't know that Gould had refuted that. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the information.
Gould didn't. What's closer to being refuted is Gould's Mismeasure. (But of course you won't see this.)

[Roboramma]

Plus, I am well aware that people within the same race show individual differences. Inidividual differences within a race don't preclude mean differences across two race groups. Wait, where did he make this argument? Did you read his post, or are you just arguing with what you expected him to say?

The point of the data in the table I posted was to test a hypothesis for why skin color might correlate with IQ. The aticle asserts that distance from the equator is directly correlated with intelligence-- life's easier in warmer climates; requiring less g to survive. Life's harder where it snows, which selected for smarter people. All this being confounded with skin color. It's an interesting idea, but at this stage little more than that. Certainly the evidence given doesn't show causation.

I don't disagree with what you've said (except your claim that culture influences score on an IQ test), I just think it's irrelevant to anything I've claimed above. Well, considering that his whole post seems to be about the fact that you've just assumed that culture doesn't influence scores on an IQ test, it seems like you are disgreeing.

[bpesta22]

Wait, where did he make this argument? Did you read his post, or are you just arguing with what you expected him to say?

It's an interesting idea, but at this stage little more than that. Certainly the evidence given doesn't show causation.

Well, considering that his whole post seems to be about the fact that you've just assumed that culture doesn't influence scores on an IQ test, it seems like you are disgreeing.

Not sure I'm following your arguments.

I thought my claim that: "individual differences with a race don't preclude mean differences across races" summarized my take on the points he was making.

I don't quarrel with the idea that within the african race, there's huge variability on probably any variable you want to measure. Again, though, this brings me back to the point above.

In the gif here, substitute perceptual effect for IQ. The left distribution might be Africans; the right distribution whites.

The graph shows millions of africans scoring higher on IQ tests than 10s of millions of whites (the point where the black distrbution crosses over into the white distribution and beyond).

That said, there's still a mean difference favoring whites.

This is my claim; the mean difference favoring whites. I'm not claiming that all blacks are the same, or that all blacks score lower than all whites, or even that the mean difference is caused by genes. I think the best conclusion for what causes the black/white difference is still: We don't know.

...

I don't know what culture causes re any other variable, I do believe culture has little to no affect on Spearman's g.

[Tanja]

Tanja:

From the article, it seems like the 1967 source was from a physical anthropologist's study. That study included a map of the world's geography, without identifying any countries.

The map had 8 different shades of color showing the average skin colors of people who lived in that area.

I guess it makes sense to me to do it this way, as just crossing a neighboring country's border likely does not result in a radical change in skin color.

Given that countries weren't identified in the '67 source, the IQ authors enlisted the help of grad students. They coded skin color by country using their eyeballs, with apparently reliabilities in the .90s

Thank you for your reply - it makes the study easier to understand.

[drkitten]

In the gif here, substitute perceptual effect for IQ. The left distribution might be Africans; the right distribution whites.

No, it couldn't. That's the whole point. Your graph is misleading, since it shows "African" having approximately the same variance as other races.

There is no " African race." On any genetic trait you care to name, the variance within Africans is so great that it dwarfs the variance in any other national or continental group.

A proper graph would show a bell curve labelled."Africans" and a few Dirac deltas labelled "Europeans" "Asians" "left-handed Slovenien sewer flute players' and so forth.


I do believe culture has little to no affect on Spearman's g.

I believe that this is true. This may in fact, be the only scientifically accurate statement on IQ that you've ever made.

Culture has no effect whatsoever on Spearman's g. Nor on Santa Claus, nor on the Swedish unicorn fisheries, nor on Glinda the Good Witch.

Because none of the four are real.

[bpesta22]

I could get the curves just by doing an eyeball test-- looking at people and based on their skin color, classify them as african or white.

I'd bet my reliability would be well above .90 but not perfect.

Thereafter, if we gave each group iq tests, we'd get the curves I described.

Strange that if neither race nor g exists, the mean difference (as reflected by the curves) has been replicated for about 90 years now. So much so-- a point I've made ad nauseum-- that the american courts have no trouble accepting that the difference exists and is not due to test bias.

[Dave1001]

This is such an obnoxious thread derail (and I give primary blame to bpesta) that I'm going to start a new thread on this topic -bpesta, a gentleman's request to you not to participate in it.

[andyandy]

This is such an obnoxious thread derail (and I give primary blame to bpesta) that I'm going to start a new thread on this topic -bpesta, a gentleman's request to you not to participate in it.

get over yourself. :rolleyes:

[pipelineaudio]

nothing to see here, no science to do, you might hit a sacred cow