Foreign Dispatches: Richard Lynn, Fearless Champion of Truth

I'm posting this here for the edification of the anonymous dimwits who serve as cheerleaders for "Godlesscapitalist." It's almost certain that I'm wasting my time, however, as their innate intellectual limitations are such that it's likely that only when exciting new genetic techniques have been invented can these ignoramuses be transformed into productive citizens ... Anyways, here's some interesting information about that other pillar of rectitude in the poor persecuted field of "human biodiversity": let the quibbling commence!

The main source for the Bell Curve’s claims regarding African IQ was a Lynn article from Mankind Quarterly in 1991, in which he said mean African IQ was 70. Lynn claims that he arrived at this figure by looking at the “best studies” on the subject since 1929. The study he claimed was the “best” was conducted in 1989 and involved 1,093 16-year old blacks, who scored a mean of 69 on the South African Junior Aptitude Test. From this, Lynn then extrapolated mean IQ to the whole of Black Africa. Even worse, Lynn completely misconstrued the findings of the study in question. According to the study’s author, Dr Ken Owen, his test was “not at all” evidence of genetic intelligence. In fact, Owen has noted that the results were found directly related to the existence of apartheid era oppression, and the fact that the test was in English.
Another of the “definitive” studies cited by Lynn in his own article was a 1929 study, in which 293 blacks in South Africa were given the Army Beta Test and scored a mean of 65. But this test was administered by M.L. Finch, an open protagonist of the view that blacks were inherently inferior, even before he had done any studies to “prove” such a thing: he was, in other words, hardly a pure, unbiased scientist. Furthermore, the Beta Test was one of the most culturally biased tests in the world at that time: one question on the 1929 version in dispute showed people playing tennis without a net. To get full credit for the question, one would have to draw the net in the picture—something few black Africans could have possibly known to do in 1929, having never been exposed to the game. A leading proponent of the Beta Test, C.C. Brigham, actually admitted that the test had no validity whatsoever for non-Americans: a fact totally ignored by Lynn, and by the Bell Curve.

As for the East Asian IQ superiority, this “evidence” was as weak and uncompelling as that regarding African IQ’s. The data on this issue in the Bell Curve relies heavily on a Lynn article from 1982 in Nature magazine, in which he claimed the Japanese have a 10-point IQ advantage over European whites. In 1983, Lynn’s piece was dissected completely in the pages of Nature by two American psychologists who noted that Lynn’s study sample was made up of Japanese kids from well-off urban parents, likely to have higher IQ’s than the more mixed group of Europeans against which they were compared. Murray and Herrnstein only make mention of the Nature rebuttal to Lynn in a footnote, and even there, refuse to discuss its contents.

Two other studies cited by Lynn to “prove” higher Asian IQ’s are equally bogus. The first used samples of American, British and Japanese students on a test of abstract reasoning. On this test the Brits and Americans did far worse; and the second study found that 9-year-olds in the UK did worse on the Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices than 9-year-olds from Japan and Hong Kong. But if you check the footnotes for this “evidence,” you find that the author Lynn was citing for both of these studies was himself. And if you look up the studies, it doesn’t take long to notice the flawed methodology involved in both: The first of these studies consisted of a test given to 178 Japanese children that did not reflect the demographic makeup of the nation as a whole, economically, culturally, or in terms of gender. The testers showed up at two schools, one urban and one rural, and gave the tests to whomever was present that day. Lynn then took the results of this test and compared it to a test that was thirteen years old, had been given to 64,000 American children, and had been pre-screened for representativeness; he then compared the Japanese results to a similarly pre-screened sample of 10,000 British children who had been given a similar test in the previous decade.

In the second study, Lynn claims to have found a substantial difference between Japanese and Hong Kong student IQ’s on the one hand, and those of British children on the other. Yet this study looked only at 118 9-year olds from Hong Kong, 444 children from Japan and 239 British children, and involved no known controls for environmental and demographic representativeness.

The third set of studies cited in the Bell Curve dealing with Asian IQ, comes from Harold Stevenson in Minnesota, who found that once socioeconomic status and various demographic variables were controlled for there was NO difference at all between the IQ’s of Japanese, Taiwanese and American kids. Despite the fact that these studies were the most comprehensive and methodologically sound of all the studies cited on the subject in the Bell Curve, (even according to the authors themselves who noted that Stevenson “carefully matched the children on socioeconomic and demographic variables”), Murray and Herrnstein essentially dismiss them as quickly as they mention them, noting only that they are evidence of the “ongoing debate” about race and IQ, as if they are on a scientific par with the work of folks like Lynn.

Finally, in the section on “immigrant IQ,” meaning, to the authors, the IQ of mostly Latino immigrants to the U.S., Murray and Herrnstein claim that the mean Latino IQ is 91—about 9 points below whites, 14 points below Asians and 7 points above blacks—but provide absolutely no source for this claim whatsoever. And of course, there is no meaningful racial category known as “Latino” anyway, as the term refers to an ethnic/national/regional heritage group within which skin color and racial phenotype varies dramatically. The evidence from Lynn that they provide on “immigrant” IQ’s, which they claim indicates an IQ in the 90-95 range, takes no account of the fact that 11% of all immigrants in the period they studied were South Asian and Middle Eastern, not Latino, and many more were East Asian—the very group they have claimed to be intellectually superior.

From a ZNET article by Tim Wise.

I expect that the usual suspects will soon be along to either put up the red herring of "Lewontin's fallacy" or attack the source of the quotes above (which is both illogical and ironic, in light of the shady associations of the sources they themselves are willing to rely on); but what is at issue here isn't whether or not Lewontin said something or other, or even whether race is a meaningful concept or not, but whether the allegations detailed above by Wise are true, and the brutal fact is that they seem to check out. I myself was aware of the sleight of hand with the South Africa data from a different source, and I've also provided in the past references to studies showing how worthless Lynn's sampling methodology in East Asia was. Those inclined to do the foot-work are welcome to confirm for themselves whether or not the criticisms detailed above are valid: it shouldn't be hard for anyone with access to a university library.

Come on, "Godlesscapitalist", your cheerleaders may be morons, but are you intent on proving yourself one too? Why not show that you have a finer appreciation of the subtleties of statistical sampling than these bozos? Don't you care at all for your reputation in the eyes of those who actually know a thing or two? Address the criticisms laid out here against both Lynn and Rushton: don't resort to red herrings or nit-picking, but face the arguments head on - if you can ...

POSTSCRIPT: As I expected, nothing but illogical cavilling from clueless idiots. I'm tired of having to listen to morons too scared to sign their own names to their posts, so I'm shutting comments on this post down. Anyone with something worthwhile to say is welcome to do so via trackback.