Brain Evolution, Population Genetics and Armchair Kookery - I

I said a while ago that the announcement of the research papers by Bruce Lahn et. al. would be sure to set all the same old intellectually third-rate kooks howling with (entirely unjustified) delight, and events have since proven* this assertion to be correct, but having now read the two papers in question myself in their entirety, I think it's about time I laid out in some detail precisely why any invidious inferences about the differing capabilities of different "races" are not only unjustified, but are actually a mark of the near-total ignorance and utter stupidity of those who make them.

*Note the blanket statement that it is an "incongenial fact that black intelligence is lower" by a certain loudmouth who takes umbrage at being called on his promotion of racist nonsense as "fact" ...

Some Background

Before getting down to business, I'd like to start off with a brief discussion on some rudiments of population genetics and how it relates to the work done by actual biologists who spend their time sussing out the often extremely convoluted details of how genes are translated into all those proteins which govern how organisms function. A common misconception many people have of how things work is that there are one or a few genes "for" this trait or that one, the presence of absence of which determines whether an organism will or will not manifest a particular trait; a related misconception is that a gene which influences one particular trait will have an effect on that trait only or even primarily, and that therefore any allelic differences we notice must pertain to whatever phenotypical differences we think we already know they're responsible for. If both of these things were true, population genetics would be a much more tractable subject, but unfortunately, neither is even close to accurately describing reality.

The truth about the way genes work is that other than in the case of simple mendelian traits of the kind which geneticists have had most success studying during the last century, it is almost unheard of in genetics research to discover single genes which are able to account for more than a minute fraction of variation in any given trait; furthermore, the very reason why so many traits in any given population happen to abide by a normal distribution is because to the extent said traits aren't determined by environmental differences, they must be under the influence of very many genes, and the smoother the curve, the greater the number of underlying genes must be - this is nothing more than a generalization of the binomial theorem with which we are all familiar. In the case of the human brain, we know that about half of all genes - or some 15,000 of the total - are expressed in the brain during the course of development, and there is no a priori reason to believe that variations in any of them, or even in whatever regulatory regions might govern their behavior, will have no impact on how said organ functions. In light of all the foregoing, anybody who thinks we will find 20 or even 50 genes which rigorously account for, say, 90% of all "genetic" variation in "IQ" or whatever nebulous measure of intellect we decide upon is a fool at best.

Having discussed the "one trait -> one or a few genes" fallacy, let me turn now to its counterpart, namely the belief that a gene's only or main function must be to determine any single particular trait (hence all the idiotic talk of genes "for" IQ, homosexuality, jazz improvisation, etc.). Genes code for proteins, not explicit traits, and it is part of the blind genius of evolution that individual proteins are co-opted to serve multiple roles all the time, so much so that there is even a technical name for the phenomenon, to whit, pleiotropy. Underlying all the ignorant chatter about how the ASPM and microcephalin variants written about by Dr. Lahn must be genes "for" cognition is the assumption that because faults in both genes have been implicated in brain disorders, and because differences exist between humans and chimps in both genes, then "the" purpose of the existence of these new variants has to be to code for "IQ" or some such thing: but the reality is that with an organ as complex as the human brain, there are very many ways for a gene malfunction to lead to devastating consequences, often through causal chains nobody would have guessed beforehand.

To illustrate how things aren't always what they seem, and why it is important to understand the underlying biochemistry before jumping to conclusions, let us consider phenylketonuria: this is a genetic disorder which is characterised by mental retardation, and an uninformed observer might easily jump to the conclusion that this means defects in the gene implicated in it must result in some crucial feature of the brain being wired wrongly, leading to lower IQ scores. And yet, as we now know, the depressed IQ which accompanies phenylketonuria has nothing to do with brain wiring, but is the result of an inability of the sufferers' metabolic systems to produce sufficient levels of phenylalanine hydroxylase: in the presence of a diet which makes up for this deficiency, the IQ scores of the genes carriers turn out to be normal, and what might have been ascribed to an "IQ gene" is in fact just one particularly visible manifestation of an enzyme deficiency which has several other side-effects.

The misconceptions about how genes work extend beyond these two errors, however, and there's a third issue I'd like to discuss which goes by the technical name epistasis. The basic idea behind this term is that if genes at more than one locus govern the expression of a trait, they need not do so in a straightforward, additive fashion like so many dollars which can be netted against each other - even if a gene happens to code for a particular phenotype, it could well be that the trait will not be expressed in the slightest if the allele at some other gene locus isn't the right one. To give an example, suppose there are two genes which govern hair color in mice, with gene A coding for an enzyme which produces the melanin which makes hair black, and gene B coding for another enzyme which modifies the product of gene A so that the resulting hairs are grey (agouti): if a mouse happens to be carrying two broken copies of A, then that mouse is destined to an albino, regardless of how well its copies of B might function, as the enzymes which the products of B alter simply won't be produced. The point here is that an error or variation at some step in a multistep biochemical pathway can suffice to alter the rest of the successive steps in such a way that simplistic totalling of the presence or absence of alleles "for" this or that leads to completely wrong results: genetic background matters, and even if a gene can be shown to affect the expression of a trait in a particular population, there's no reason to believe it will also do so in a different population, even if we are able to adequately control environmental variation (this isn't merely theoretical - see, for instance, this paper, which finds that APoE, although repeatedly implicated as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease amongst white Americans, is not associated with elevated risk in either African-Americans or Hispanics).

I've discussed three common errors common amongst idiots giving to misusing the abstracts of papers they haven't fully understood to grind their nasty little axes, but I don't want to leave the impression that this is in any way comprehensive. The fact is that I could write a small textbook covering such ground, but I'd much rather turn now to applying some of the above to a rudimentary model which I've selected to weight the argument heavily in favor of those who want to argue that they now have the genetic smoking gun pointing at the "incongenial fact" [sic] of "lower black intelligence"; let's see how their reasoning fares even under the best of circumstances.

A Toy Model of IQ Variation

For the purpose of argument, I'm going to go along with the entirely unfounded assumption that the new ASPM and Microcephalin variants Bruce Lahn's work indicates as undergoing positive selection are in fact "IQ" genes; furthermore, I'm not only going to abide by the implicit assumption that any such genes must be coding for more "IQ" rather than less* (since when have peasant farmers needed to be smarter than hunter-gatherers?), but also that there are only 10 "IQ" genes in total, accounting for all IQ variation which can be ascribed to genetics. I'm going to make the assumption that epistasis is totally unimportant, in order to make the model tractable (this biases things in favor of the IQ cranks because the more complex the genetic interactions which govern "IQ", the less likely it is that they're going to isolate the underlying genes any time soon), and in addition, I'm going to assume that environmental factors have only a marginal effect on IQ, leading to at most 5 points either way in the best and worst circumstances. Finally, I'll assume that each one of 10 loci is responsible for exactly 10% of the total variation (reasonable, as otherwise one would have to imagine the existence of at least one as-yet unmapped "IQ" gene which accounts for an even greater proportion of variation) - say 10 points each - and that there are only 2 alleles at every locus: if a person has two copies of the "good" allele, he gets 20 extra IQ points, if he has just one copy, we give him 10 IQ points, and if he only has two copies of the "bad" gene, he gets no points whatsoever.

Under the model described above, a person who has 1 copy of each good gene will have an IQ between 95 and 105 depending on the quality of his or her environment, a person who has 14 good alleles and 6 bad ones will fall between 135 and 145, while any genetically lucky person who has 2 copies of all 10 good genes will have an IQ between 195 and 205. Given all the above, as well as the existence of two genetically differentiated subpopulations P_A and P_B, what can we logically conclude about the relative intellectual capabilities of the typical members of both groups based on the news that IQ genes 1 and 2 (henceforth IQ_1 and IQ_2) have a frequency of 70% and %80 in P_A, while the same genes occur at a frequency of 40% and 50% in P_B?

If you answered "Nothing", hand yourself a prize: the fact is that we haven't been told anything at all about the frequencies of all the other IQ genes, and for all we know there might be frequency differences in those that suffice to completely swamp any effects which arise from differences in IQ_1 and IQ_2: if IQ_3 = 20%, IQ_4 = 30% and IQ_5 = 40% in P_A while IQ_3 = 65%, IQ_4 = 55% and IQ_5 = 60% in P_B, and if the rest of the IQ_N occur at the same frequency in both groups, then P_B will be the one whose members have the higher average IQ, not P_A, and the fact is that even under the extremely simplistic model we have here, there are an astronomical number of ways in which one can obtain each one of any such outcome even with IQ_1 and IQ_2 distributed as mentioned: if we disregard which particular IQ weighting gets assigned to what locus, this is easy to demonstrate using the theory of integer partitions - taking the distinct orderings into account just inflates the answer by a multiple of n!, where n = 8 if we take IQ_1 and IQ_2 as given. The only circumstance under which we would be safe in assuming that the frequency differences in IQ_1 and IQ_2 implied the lower intellectual capability of P_B would be if we knew that the two groups did not differ at IQ_3, IQ_4, ..., IQ_N, but this assumption is entirely unwarranted in light of the fact that we already know that the two groups have differing allele frequencies at very many loci, a point of which "race realist" cranks are usually eager to remind us; making it even more dubious would be any research report which indicated that the "good" alleles at IQ_1 and IQ_2 were under strong selective pressure in P_A, as an identity of the rest of the "IQ" allele frequencies would leave us with the conundrum of explaining why their benefits should be less evident for population P_B.

Of course, in all I've said so far I've assumed that the the frequency differences were on the order of 30% for each of IQ_1 and IQ_2, but what if the differences turn out to be just 3% each - or, mathematically equivalently, there turn out to be 10 times as many IQ loci, or 100 in total, and each one is responsible for just 1% of IQ variation? This is where our assumptions about the impact of environmental differences come in, as it is obvious that even the extremely restricted influence we attribute to environment would be more than enough to completely swamp the genetic differences between P_A and P_B, so that even though one might think P_A ought to do better on average in IQ tests (an assumption which is itself completely unfounded, as I've explained above), the members of P_B could actually end up with an average IQ as much as 4 points higher than those of P_A! The only way we'd be able to sort out which group had greater intellectual potential would be to place the members of both in identical (and ideally uniform) environments, but this too would only be possible if, say, there weren't any phenotypical differences between the two groups which led us to take it as an "incongenial fact" that the members of P_A were of lower intelligence by nature (with only "politically correct" cowards supposedly stopping we "few", "brave" souls from frankly discussing said "fact") and therefore treating them differently, expecting and demanding less of the members of P_A, and providing them with inferior environments while continually, vocally putting down their capacities in the name of "scientific discussion" [sic] ...

I've said a great deal so far about how population genetics works in theory, but in the next half of this article, I'll be discussing how everything I've written about here applies to research results disclosed here and here. If at the end of that piece any of you are still in doubt as to the laughable pseudo-reasoning behind the puffery coming out of the mouths of certain "race realist" fools, then nothing under heaven and earth will ever convince you.

Comments

[Chuckles]

[...for instance, this paper, which finds that APoE, although repeatedly implicated as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease amongst white Americans, is not associated with elevated risk in either African-Americans or Hispanics...]

Just to chip something in really quick. APoE shows up as a risk factor in African Americans under the age of 75 - but not in AfAms over 75 or in certain African populations over or under 75.

http://iospress.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?wasp=dbf86f2082bb41e09718e74625791663&referrer=parent&backto=issue,5,9;journal,14,38;linkingpublicationresults,1:105656,1

Another study replicates much the same: It confers 2ce as much risk on AfAms than it does on Yoruba.

http://www.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2004/february/hendrie.pdf

Yet, you dont find anybody making generalized statements about "Alzheimers among Blacks" or putatively associating APoE 4 with that particular manifestation, do you?

How people, with all this previous knowledge of how Genes and Proteins interact can proceed to even make insinuations about Intelligence in the face of such environmental variability in the effect of a gene product is beyond me.

What is even weirder is that we know that certain genes implicated in African Americans as risk factors for some condition are entirely without effect in African populations - and that this occurs even within African populations. Yet, kookist glee cannot be contained (and indeed, what can contain it? Its been 400 years and counting, aint it?)

Lahns research claimed lower frequences for microcephalin and ASPM in certain SubSaharan populations. Were we even to assume that microcephalin and ASPM had any effect whatsoever on Intelligence - such an assumption would contribute NOTHING to making definitive statements about Blacks, African Americans or even about Africans as a whole. To put it bluntly, were we to confirm it to be the case among the San, it would not contribute nothing to making statements on Intelligence about the Asante; talk less of African Americans! This is of course the problem introduced by Population Stratification (or the Fallacy of Confounding by Ethnicity).

See for instance, this interesting example on Skin Colour which for all intents and purposes is a less complex trait than Intelligence:http://www.nslij-genetics.org/ld/hoggart03.pdf

The authors note the problem with regards to African Americans, Afro-Hispanics and Carribeans by opining:

[...Although the importance of hidden stratification as a source of false-positive results in genetic-association studies has been questioned (Morton and Collins 1998;
Wacholder et al. 2002; Cardon and Palmer 2003), it remains a source of difficulty when studying recently admixed populations, such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans (Thomas andWitte 2002), in which
variation of admixture proportions between individuals is maintained by continuing gene flow or socioeconomic stratification (Parra et al. 2001)...]

Yet, I would bet, that with any study that considered Africa, or even SubSaharan Africa as whole, the problem would be of much greater.
But we have all this insinuations and wildly and quite frankly illiterate suppositions being made already about ASPM and Microcephalin and Intelligence. The Fallacy of Confounding by Ethnicity would undermine any such associations were we to assume that those 2 genes had anything to do with Intelligence or Brain wiring or Brain Power [sic, sic, sic] but this is something the study itself doesnt go so far as to claim.

This stuff is obvious to any Freshman Biologist. The reason we continue to hear these illiterate claims trotted out about genes, IQ, and Intelligence / Homosexuality / Alcoholism / Jazz is because there are predetermined biases - Kuhnian paradigms if you wish - within which these "scientists" and "science lovers" are operating. They cant hold off on their excitement to wait for all the data to come in and every new study on the issue will be twisted and wrenched apart to justify their ideology.
I mean, some of these folks can be really ridiculous. I was watching Vince Sarich on C-SPAN some time ago talking about Race and Pharmacogenetics. An African American Doctor was making the point that the urgent steps needed to combat disease among African Americans lay now in funding and infrastructure and that the USG should solve what it could see as obvious material deficits first before poking around in Genes. Sarich rebutted and said "No" - the genetic aspect could be cleaned up very quickly. I was like "Wha?" Of course, Sarich is the same Moron who wrote that book with Miele in which he expressed suprise that some Africans were able to change the Wheel of a Car (his friends car broke down somewhere in Central / Southern Africa) - a book in which he trotted out claims from Arab writers as a background to his discussion on lesser black intelligence.

[sabra]

Abiola, if you speak German, following interview may be of interest to you. claim by lahn is that alleles do boost iq. can you pls confirm translation.

-----

There is an interesting essay on Lahn’s findings (in German) in the Sunday edition of Germany’s leading highbrow daily newspaper.

http://www.faz.net/s/Rub268AB64801534CF288DF93BB89F2D797/Doc~ED4D75A2232FB4B7B8DC56CE5FB77CD64~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html#top

The author Volker Stollorz seems to have interviewed Lahn.

New to me was:
1. Lahn already submitted for publication a study comparing IQ of people with and without haplogroup D of gen ASPM. The result is not revealed outright but it is strongly hinted that it does not correspondent to pc.

[Abiola Lapite]

"claim by lahn is that alleles do boost iq."

I don't make my scientific conclusions based on unverifiable and unreviewed newspaper articles in which anyone can make any outrageous claim.

"The result is not revealed outright but it is strongly hinted that it does not correspondent to pc."

What the fuck is "PC"? Please save the tired bullshit for someone else.

[Abiola Lapite]

By the way, Mr. Anonymouser, you might want to try your hand at translating the following excerpt of the article you linked to:

[Es seien also nicht die Hirnbiologie oder irgendwelche höheren kognitiven Fähigkeiten, sondern die zeitliche Kontrolle der Zellteilung, die beim Menschen unter extremem Selektionsdruck stünden. Mit Blick auf die Arbeiten von Bruce Lahn argwöhnt sie: „In der Biologie des Menschen sind simple Erklärungen fast immer falsch.”]

Also disclosed in the article is that Lahm apparently is in a bit of a rush to make some money off his discovery, which would explain the mysterious claims about dynamite discoveries still up his sleeves:

["Lahn beeindrucken solche Einwände wenig. Er hat längst Patente auf Gentests gemeldet, mit denen er die fraglichen Variationen in größerem Maßstab aufspüren will."]

I'm most likely not a carrier of either of these "IQ" [sic] genes, and am almost definitely *not* homozygous for any of the two, but here I am able to pick up on things you seem to have missed in an article written in 1 of the 4 languages I speak well: whatever the function of these genes, they clearly can't be crucial to the ability to use language or to reason properly, and I'll hold my IQ up to yours or anyone else's any day of the week.

[Frank McGahon]

"but this too would only be possible if, say, there weren't any phenotypical differences between the two groups which led us to take it as an "incongenial fact" that the members of P_A were of lower intelligence by nature (with only "politically correct" cowards supposedly stopping we "few", "brave" souls from frankly discussing said "fact") and therefore treating them differently, expecting and demanding less of the members of P_A, and providing them with inferior environments while continually, vocally putting down their capacities in the name of "scientific discussion" [sic] ..."

Well put. I don't think these "race realists" fully appreciate the extent to which *they* are the problem. They tend to claim that "racism" has a negligible effect but when you examine what they mean by "racism" it turns out to be a self-serving revised definition which only embraces the loony fringe of white suprematism and the like and excludes all the prejudices, caricatures and "conventional wisdom" they peddle. The latter is, in the end, more harmful as considerably more people subscribe to these than to outright race-hatred.

[Abiola Lapite]

While we're on the subject of "race realists" [sic], I find it interesting that one particular specimen of such is busy making the rounds of the biology blogs lecturing their authors on how proper science is done!

http://thequestionableauthority.blogspot.com/2005/09/drawing-careful-conclusions.html

It must be wonderful to be so brilliant at science despite never having actually studied it at the university level, let alone practiced it; what an ego it must take to lecture neuroscientists and zoologists on the stuff they learnt in graduate school.

Does this guy have *any* arguments up his sleeve that don't involve invoking the authority of Bruce Lahn as if he were an infallible oracle? To hear him go on, one would think the first and last word on the implications of any scientific finding must come from the one who makes it; by that standard I guess we do live in a steady-state universe and quantum mechanics must be false, as those were the conclusions drawn by Albert Einstein, instigator of the two.

[Frank McGahon]

I thought his curt reply at Andrew's blog (to an innocent query by another commenter about why precisely Gardner's multiple intelligences theory was "genuinely absurd"*) was just typical - no explanation, no precis of the argument, just a list of reading references knowing full well the person won't bother tracking them all down. Curiously, I discovered the cites and exact page references were repeated verbatim at Wikipedia's page on IQ, which would lead one to conclude:

1) He actually wrote Wikipedia's IQ page himself,

2) Great minds think alike,

3) Fools seldom differ

or if one was feeling particularly uncharitable

4) He didn't read the papers cited but merely cut and pasted them from Wikipedia.

* by the way, I don't mean to make any claims about Gardner's theory one way or another

[John]

The map is interesting and contains a lot more wrinkles than our friends at GNXP would admit to. For example the frequency of ASPM is zero/almost zero in North and East Asia. lower than most of Africa. While being nearly 50% in PNG where the population is descended from people who hugged the south Asian coastline in their migration from Africa and never went anywhere near the "evolutionary pressures" of "ice age Eurasia".

I had to laugh when "Godless capitalist" first claimed that the PNG % was because of "European" incursions into PNG. And then decided it *must* be a "mistake".

Almost as funny as when discussing Katrina/New Orleans he described the population of Puerto Rico as "white". Not that it really matters one way or another. But since when for GNXP purposes have Puerto Ricans or other "hispanics" for that matter, ever been "white", ffs.

[dof]

"since when have peasant farmers needed to be smarter than hunter-gatherers?"

Obviously, to hide stuff from the taxman and to be able to lie convincingly.

[Abiola Lapite]

But the best way to do that is to play dumb, and what better way to play dumb can there be than to actually *be* dumb? (Hmm, this armchair speculation thing sure is easy, isn't it?)

[Chuckles]

[...because of "European" incursions into PNG...]

A conclusion they never arrive at when discussing putatively admixed populations like the Fulani, or even glorified Hamites like the Tutsi. Or for that matter, the supposedly admixed Berber, all of whom are Nomadic peoples.
I just laugh when someone starts telling me about the "IQ" of SubSaharan Africa in one breath and then the same fellow belts out the Hamitic theory in the next. To these folks, the only "real" Africans are Pygmies, Bushmen and Masai.

Charles Murray's recent article in Commentary even spoke of testing the IQ of "Nigerian Blacks" against that of Kenyan Blacks. Yeah, yeah, yeah - I know...He has degrees in *History* and *Political Science*. Good grief.

[odocoileus]

Wonder if there's any relationship between ASPM and prion based diseases like kuru and Kreutzfeld Jacob?

[David B]

Of course Abiola is quite right to point out that genes often have pleiotropic effects. It is entirely possible that a gene with effects on brain function has been selected in Eurasia for some other reason, e.g. disease resistance.

But a pleiotropic explanation of the spread of the gene does not somehow cause its effects on brain function to vanish: if it really does have effects on brain function, and if it really has been strongly selected, for whatever reason, in some geographical regions, then people in those regions are likely to differ (on average) in brain functions from those in other regions. (Likely, but not certain, since there might be other genes with the same effect in those other regions.)

There are a lot of 'ifs' in the last sentence, so it is premature to draw any firm conclusions. I am still agnostic about whether there is any genetic basis for IQ differences between populations. But Abiola would be well-advised to start preparing a fall-back position in case his front-line defence is routed.

[Abiola Lapite]

"if it really does have effects on brain function, and if it really has been strongly selected, for whatever reason, in some geographical regions, then people in those regions are likely to differ (on average) in brain functions from those in other regions."

This is a non-sequitur: the changes in the gene sequence which have been selected for need have absolutely no effect on the brain itself. Genes don't act in a vacuum, and we already know for a fact that both ASPM and MCPH1 are expressed in many other tissues besides the brain.

"But Abiola would be well-advised to start preparing a fall-back position in case his front-line defence is routed."

This is a lame bit of rhetorical smoke-blowing: I've no need to "prepare" anything, as I'm not the one who needs to be defending my position but those who claim to already know what the functional significance of these gene variants are, without having done any of the actual lab work or association studies required. All the bluster about "defences" being "routed" can't hide the fact that the ridiculous assertions being made by certain of your co-bloggers aren't in the least substantiated by hard evidence.

The crux of the matter is this: there is *zero* evidence that these new gene variants have anything to do with brain *function* per se, *zero* evidence that what they affect is "intelligence", *zero* evidence that if they do affect "intelligence" it must be to *increase* it, *zero* evidence that any effects they may have in certain populations need also appear in others, and *zero* evidence that other populations with low frequencies of these new variants don't themselves have variants of *other* genes whose effects overwhelm any impact these two may have.

In light of the preceding facts, for the likes of Jason Malloy and Steve Sailer to be running around crowing about finding "proof" of the "incongenial fact" [sic] of lower "black" intelligence only shows how utterly stupid the two of them are, and they're the ones who can expect to find themselves grasping for genetic equivalents of epicycles and equants to explain away their rubbish. The odds are something like 1 in 10,000 that I carry the new variant of Microcephalin, and 1 in 16 at best that I have the new ASPM variant, but there can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever that I'd outperform any of these two idiots on *any* IQ measurement test without even breaking a sweat, so it's clear to me at least that whatever these alleles code for, it isn't required for superb (yes, superb, I'm not going to indulge in false modesty) intellectual functioning.

[Jason Malloy]

"In light of the preceding facts, for the likes of Jason Malloy and Steve Sailer to be running around crowing about finding "proof" of the "incongenial fact" [sic] of lower "black" intelligence only shows how utterly stupid the two of them are"

I don't know how many times I have to repeat what my positions are without you persistently trying to claim I have said something entirely different or even something just the opposite. I didn't crow about finding "proof", in fact I explicitly *rejected* this on your blog - to you, personally - a few short weeks ago, the last time you accused me of the exact same nonsense:

Me: "I never purported to "prove" anything about race, and I've explicitly disavowed this a number of times"

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2005/08/looting_vs_borr.html#comment-9042985

And I even clearly reiterated this position on Andrew's blog as it relates to the Lahn study:

Me: "The available evidence indicates that at least some racial differences in intelligence (and brain size), more likely have a genetic component. [**] 3) This Lahn evidence is consistent with, though does not "prove", such differences"

http://universalacid.blogspot.com/2005/09/human-brain-still-evolving.html#c112638032303080124

Read that quote again, and compare it with your assertion.

Yet, given my exact words to the contrary, you keep asserting that I have claimed this to any audience you can muster. I wonder why? Could it be that you'd *like* people to think my claims are more extreme than they actually are, so you can attack strawmen and dismiss them more easily? Something akin to the Communists perversely *hoping* for the material situation in Capitalist countries to get worse in order to “heighten the contradictions”, I think you *want* me to be making these claims you have falsely attributed to me, so you can more easily tell people that the whole issue is scientifically illegitimate.

Similarly when I don’t impossibly qualify each and every sentence against every possible misinterpretation, you eagerly pounce on the opportunity to give it the most uncharitable spin possible (even when other sentences in the same conversation reveal that I’m talking about averages, etc.). Take the "incongenial fact" quote - just more attempted misrepresentations, of the most underhanded sort. Lower black intelligence *is* a fact recognized by the APA:

"The relatively low mean of the distribution of African-American intelligence test scores has been discussed for many years. Although studies using different tests and samples yield a range of results, the Black mean is typically about one standard deviation (about 15 points) below that of Whites (Loehlin et al, 1975; Jensen, 1980; Reynolds et al, 1987)."

http://www.michna.com/intelligence.htm

So, it *is* a “known” that “ . . . the Black mean [on intelligence tests] is typically about one standard deviation (about 15 points) below that of Whites . . .”.

Could it be that you'd like people to think I'm claiming that *you* aren't intelligent and that all blacks score lower than all whites? Or that the fact must extend to any assemblage of people definable by anyone's criteria as 'black'? Or that this is somehow true by every possible philosophical or operational definition of intelligence? Or that I’m claiming that a genetic role in this difference is a fact?

Could it be that you'd like people to think my claims are more extreme than they actually are, so you can dismiss them more easily?

The answer is ‘Yes’.

Frank,

“just a list of reading references knowing full well the person won't bother tracking them all down. Curiously, I discovered the cites and exact page references were repeated verbatim at Wikipedia's page on IQ”

I notice you didn’t include a link to the Wikipedia page in question – the reason is because you didn’t tell the truth about what you found, and you knew it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ

Contrary to your assertion the reference list at the bottom shows that only the Hunt reference from my list is present – without any trace of the other two references that I cited (and even the Hunt reference was cited slightly differently – not “verbatim”):

http://universalacid.blogspot.com/2005/09/human-brain-still-evolving.html#c112645400027273577

You blatantly lied about what you found.

Why are people here so eager to misrepresent me in such obvious ways? Could it be the desperate tactics of a losing army and an exposed fundamentalism? Pinker had your MO down pat (along with all those crazed Larry Summers critics who used the same transparently bratty tactics):

”The taboo on human nature has not just put blinkers on researchers but turned any discussion of it into a heresy that must be stamped out. Many writers are so desperate to discredit any suggestion of an innate human constitution that they have thrown logic and civility out the window. Elementary distinctions – “some” vs. “all”, “probable” vs. “is” vs. “ought” - are eagerly flouted to paint human nature as an extremist doctrine”

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_2_27/ai_98252932/pg_2

[Abiola Lapite]

"Lower black intelligence *is* a fact recognized by the APA:"

No, lower *IQ scores* amongst *African-Americans* is a "fact", not the lower "intelligence" of "blacks." This is what lies at the heart of your problem: your glib equation of culture-bound testing performance with "intelligence", and then your extrapolating from the test scores of one group to "blacks" in general, in keeping with the general penchant of you and certain other individuals I won't name to talk of "blacks" this and "blacks" that. If something negative can be said of one group of "blacks" anywhere, you lot don't waste time not only jumping to speculation about its genetic roots, but extending the shortcomings of that group to that of all people whose origins lie south of the Sahara.

["Could it be that you'd like people to think my claims are more extreme than they actually are, so you can dismiss them more easily?

The answer is ‘Yes’."]

The answer is that your claims *are* pretty extreme, and if you don't like people taking them as such maybe you ought to stop making such claims. I don't need to exaggerate anything about your views for them to come across as nauseatingly racist, but you seem to be so coccooned within the little world you and your fellow GNXP habitues inhabit that you seem to have lost touch of just how repulsive your notions really are to outsiders.

You'd like people to think of you as a fair-minded albeit bold thinker, but the fact is that whenever there's an opportunity to interpret new information in more than one way, you never hesitate to look with particular favor on the anti-black slant, and if it takes suspending all distrust of individuals as shady as Richard Lynn and Rushton to do it, you don't have a problem with that either. If a documented liar who has called for the "phasing out" of all those who aren't white or Asian, and who sits on the board of a foundation which was funding a blatant neo-Nazi like Roger Pearson as recently as 1992, says that Africans have IQs in the range of 65 to 75, you give him the benefit of the doubt, but a Harvard professor like Richard Lewontin gets your scorn for being a Marxist; if a kook like Sailer given to ridiculous theories about Africans not valuing their children as much as the rest of humanity, or not being prone to care as much about the sexual fidelity of their spouses, happens to imply that "blacks" have more natural "rhythm" than others, and therefore a greater inborn affinity for jazz and basketball, you let it slide as sensible theorizing, even while lecturing actual researchers with peer-reviewed publications to their name for their supposed ignorance of the scientific method, simply because they happen to practice the sceptical attitude which is at the very heart of that method. The day I ever see you look with a critical eye on anyone whosoever claiming that some research result or other is the smoking gun for "black" intellectual inferiority, criminality, or any other notion long the stuff of racist stereotyping, however crazy, is the day I'll eat my hat.

[Jason Malloy]

Abiola,

“I don't need to exaggerate anything about your views for them to come across as nauseatingly racist”

If this were true you wouldn’t keep doing exactly that:

“The day I ever see you look with a critical eye on anyone whosoever claiming that some research result or other is the smoking gun for "black" intellectual inferiority, criminality, or any other notion long the stuff of racist stereotyping, however crazy, is the day I'll eat my hat.”

Once again, you assert I am waving about claims of a “smoking gun”- you just keep on repeating it as if no one is looking - compare it again with my actual words:

“This Lahn evidence is consistent with, though does not "prove", such differences"

Again, logic and civility: out the window; elementary distinctions: flouted. No respect (for me or yourself), no engagement of actual claims or ideas, just strawmen and personal attacks. And bad logic:

“ . . .and if it takes suspending all distrust of individuals as shady as Richard Lynn and Rushton to do it, you don't have a problem with that either. If a documented liar . . . says that Africans have IQs in the range of 65 to 75, you give him the benefit of the doubt, but a Harvard professor like Richard Lewontin gets your scorn for being a Marxist”

Such junk. Do you think evidence and logic is based on “trust”, as if science is little more than a playground game of telephone? Should I agree with Lewontin’s terrible logic (and lack of evidence) on any given subject because, wow, he’s a “Harvard professor”? What nonsense - JBS Haldane and JM Smith were Marxists too, and they mostly had scientific integrity, and I view their science with respect regardless of their nauseating politics. The bottom line is that Lewontin wasn’t wrong about some subjects simply because he was a Marxist, but because he was actually wrong – his anti-genetic assertions were often illogical and/or empirically false (and that his disgusting totalitarianism was related to these beliefs is certain, but obviously the two don't require eachother).

Examples:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/lewontindebunked.pdf

http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1985-01-24notinourgenes.shtml

Now, the flipside of that coin is that I don’t need to simply “trust” Rushton or Lynn, as science already has a framework of checks and balances such as peer-review and independent replication and published forums for criticism and responses. I didn’t “trust” or give anyone “the benefit of the doubt”; I own, and have read, and am equipped to understand and logically evaluate, all the studies I have referenced, and they are all peer-reviewed. Many of them have independent replication as well.

I have no need for Lynn’s “authority” on African IQ, the scores are, for the most part, lower than all other regions of the world, I own the Raven’s conversion tables and have converted scores myself from those papers and papers that Lynn (seemingly) doesn’t even know about; there are a large number of different researchers and published papers, and African results have been examined with little success (as of yet) for finding much internal and external bias – there is, after all, a scientific method for examining test bias. Dozens of African population scores from North America, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe show similar results, with very little conflicting evidence. Academic scores are available for many countries without IQ data and show similar patterns. I do *not* have political or personal ill will toward sub-Saharan populations (and *especially* not toward individuals of any background) but there are behavioral trends (analogous, and seemingly no less robust than male and female behavioral trends, young and old behavioral trends, etc) that are apparently universal for some reason. Genes can’t be dismissed a priori, and in fact are reasonably one of the more parsimonious explanatory paths. Sociological, psychological, and Behavior genetic data from American black populations (who are the best researched black population and fit within this larger pattern) are consistent with genetics in ways that are not plausibly consistent with any environmental explanation yet proposed. Which is why people who “argue” with me seldom compete with their own falsifiable explanations and research cites, because they know they will lose, and it is much easier to simply condemn and call names rather than compete, a la Nancy Hopkins.

I recall when we first started arguing this topic a year or two ago for African-Americans, you *did* try and compete, in a fair and scientific way, with your own social science positions. You started out with the standard and likely ones - economics, culture, racism – and when they were all empirically smacked down you started veering into unfalsifiable auxiliary theories (untestable racism, etc.), and then realizing your weak standing, switched to a defensive position. The defensive strategy has three tiers of argument, with the strongest at the top, weakest on bottom: First tier - finding logical and empirical flaws in opposing research and arguments. Second tier – highlighting untested assumptions and holes where alternative theories can hide (the “Ohio hominid” strategy). Third tier – misrepresentations, ad hominems and semantic casuistry (e.g. “race doesn’t exist”, “no measure for “intelligence””, etc.). The first tier is entirely acceptable, the second can be acceptable but is more often abused (especially if it is not paired with a workable competing position, allowing for “strong inference”. For example, “Intelligent Design” is basically entirely a second-tier defensive strategy against natural selection), and the third tier is bogus and a certain indication of ideological nonsense.

Right now you are basically hanging-on by only the second two tiers of the defensive position. This is pretty much all you can do – after all, how can you dispute empirical matters like e.g. the validity of African IQ scores without any knowledge of what things like item consistency or Cronbach's alpha coefficient are? You can’t, which is why you pretend such matters are based on fluffy justifications like “trust” or “plausibility” – you don’t know or care to know the literature, you just know it’s wrong and racist.

This post is a good example, from you, of the second tier defensive position - if, if, if, if, if – letting everyone know ahead of time that even if predictions keep going in my favor and the evidence keeps looking “how it should look” given my position (which I assume you anticipate it will, which is why no metaphysically devastating Ehrlich-Simon type bets are forthcoming), there will be knowledge holes that you can safely retreat to for a long time. OTOH, The Lahn study, to me, signifies widely repeated arguments that were seriously used against my position that weren't plausible and now are no longer consistent with the empirical literature at all. It represents new information that fits comfortably within my position, and allows new predictions that will strongly test the explanatory strength of my position (i.e. I predict these genes are related to brain-size and intelligence). I could, of course, use a second-tier infinite regress on you if you supported some sort of environmental position for differences (correlation isn’t causation!) – but you don’t, because you know yours is the "default position" by normative consensus and simply _requires no_ logical or empirical defense and you’ve already tacitly accepted defeat on this front – which is the hallmark of the nihilistic defensive strategy.

Your post and many of your comments to and about me are also good examples of third tier defensive strategy. Keep calling me a racist, keep attributing to me damning words and positions I did not defend: “some” vs. “all”, “probable” vs. “is” vs. “ought”, etc. This all works to enforce tabooed silence and mute a subject and information that you would rather (and can only) wish away rather than engage.

[Frank McGahon]

The prize for obtuseness goes to....

[If this were true you wouldn’t keep doing exactly that:]

It is true, and the reason people "keep doing that" is that you whinge, complain and act offended anytime anyone calls you for being a racist. As if we were all living in some alternative universe where the word racist only applied to the likes of the murderer of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas - John William King (about whom, incidentally, your buddy Sailer managed to find some words of understanding - http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050227_segregation.htm - apparently it's all the fault of insufficient segregation by race in prison). The fact, whether you like it or not, is that any dictionary definition of racism you care to choose applies to your "position".

One test, for how true this assertion - "I don't need to exaggerate anything about your views for them to come across as nauseatingly racist" - is, is how comfortable you would be expressing your views to a bunch of strangers. Go to a bar or coffee shop, start talking about these "incongenial facts". According to you, the "stealth consensus" should assert itself and people will be nodding their heads in agreement. My guess is that you're reluctant to test this little hypothesis.

And before you start crowing about argumentum ab popularum - my point here is to demonstrate the veracity of the statement "Jason Malloy's views would be considered racist by most ordinary people" and not (in this case) the rightness or wrongness of those views per se.

[dsquared]

I've never understood why so many people who believe that black people are intrinsically genetically stupid and violent balk at being called "racists". If you thought that all the science proved that point, then why *wouldn't* you be a racist?

[Chuckles]

[...This Lahn evidence is consistent with...]

How so? How is the presence of allelic differences consistent with racial differences in intelligence - if those allelic differences cannot be infered from the current data to have *anything* to do with Intelligence? I am not going to assume here: but the PNG, the Amerindian and the Yoruba data look like stinkers to me. Pursuing a line that argues coincidence with the onset of Human culture and organization etc certainly isnt consistent with a 2% ASPM occurrence for the Yoruba. You might recollect that as recently as 1952, the urbanization index for the Yoruba was lower than that of Britain, Germany and the US but higher than that of Canada, France, Sweden, Greece and Poland. If the civilizational structures needed to maintain such urbanity over centuries is not a function of intellect, I dont know what is. How about PNG? Is this consistent with the view that these alleles confer an advantage in intellect? The data is not consistent with what is commonly held to be populational achievement on a broad scale. It simply isnt.
And it certainly isnt consistent with modern day data - I am willing to bet that the literacy rates among the Yoruba today - and even their educational achievements surpass that of generally acknowledged more "favored" peoples. This is something that is directly testable. It seems to me that those who would wish to interpret this data as being consistent with h-bd induced differences in Intellect are so eager that they fail to notice that the data might very well be demolishing all their assumptions.

[...This is pretty much all you can do – after all, how can you dispute empirical matters like e.g. the validity of African IQ scores without any knowledge of what things like item consistency or Cronbach's alpha coefficient are?...]

And I suppose peer reviewed studies showing cultural bias in supposedly culture disaggregated I.Q tests can be safely wished away?

[Abiola Lapite]

"This post is a good example, from you, of the second tier defensive position - if, if, if, if, if – letting everyone know ahead of time that even if predictions keep going in my favor and the evidence keeps looking “how it should look” given my position (which I assume you anticipate it will, which is why no metaphysically devastating Ehrlich-Simon type bets are forthcoming)"

This is so incredibly stupid it's puzzling to me that I should ever have wasted a second of my time trying to debate you. Pointing out the hidden assumptions you base your claims on is "a second tier defensive position" only in your cramped little mind: sane, intelligent people simply call this sort of thing the scientific method.

"This is pretty much all you can do – after all, how can you dispute empirical matters like e.g. the validity of African IQ scores without any knowledge of what things like item consistency or Cronbach's alpha coefficient are?"

More of the same old standard Malloy condescension, from an arts-student moron whom I could teach statistics in my sleep: that you should even dare to say such a thing after being exposed abusing elementary terms like "heritability" shows that what you lack in the brains department, you more than make up for in sheer chutzpah. It wasn't enough for you to try to teach zoologists and neuroscientists how to do science, and now you have the presumption not only to tell me what I do or don't know about "item consistency" and "Cronbach's alpha coefficient", but even to lecture me on the "empirical" nature of the "validity" of scores of people from a continent I've actually lived in but *you* have never even stepped foot on! Here, you ignorant little creep, are some examples of art created by one of those supposedly brain-dead African peoples you deem yourself an authority on:

http://reti.blogspot.com/2004/01/met-ife-from-ca-350-bc.html

and here is a little something on their history:

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2005/06/a_cultural_time.html

Naturally, being an Old Africa Hand and all, and armed with the power of "item consistency" and other high-falutin' concepts which escape the understanding of my puny mind ("galois cohomology and automorphic forms I can handle sah, but that correlation stuff's just too bloody 'ard, by 'eck!") I'm sure you can tell us all about how these IQ-70 cretins also built Sungbo's Eredo and Benin-Iya, the world's second-largest architectural feature. Oh, I know, some white Egyptians or mixed-race Hamites must have told them what to do!

*Of course* your fraudulent little Pioneer Fund eugencist ideologues *must* have the real score on Africa since they're using "Cronbach's alpha coefficient": how could anyone possibly disagree then?

"You can’t, which is why you pretend such matters are based on fluffy justifications like “trust” or “plausibility” – you don’t know or care to know the literature, you just know it’s wrong and racist."

An idiot like you lecturing me on what I do or don't know about "the literature" is just about the height of gall. This is the self-same literature I've critiqued in the following posts, but which you're either too lazy to look up or too poorly equipped in the memory department to remember.

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2004/09/richard_lynn_fe.html
http://reti.blogspot.com/2004/02/quackery-in-name-of-human-biodiversity.html
http://reti.blogspot.com/2003/12/east-asian-iq-myth.html

"This all works to enforce tabooed silence and mute a subject and information that you would rather (and can only) wish away rather than engage."

Oooh, these evil P.C. liberals are stifling dissent! We're so oppressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! You really *are* of incredibly limited intelligence: in the very self same post in which you dare to allude to creationists while referring to myself, you have absolutely no problem engaging in the same paranoid rationalizations about liberal orthodoxies "stifling debate" that they do; I'm actually surprised you didn't come out and start ranting about the need to "teach the controversy!"

You know what, you conceited little shit? Don't come around these parts any more: you are an irredeemable, idiotic, excessively self-regarding little racist bastard, nothing but a cretinous worm who thinks insulting people far more knowledgeable and intelligent than himself makes him an eloquent and penetrating debater, and if I ever come across you in the real world, you better be ready to be on the receiving end of some of that bad ol' nigra rascality and drapetomania you peddle elsewhere. I've had it with arrogant little fuckwits like you. The scum whose propaganda you love to promote like to call others "vermin", but few people deserve that appellation more richly than you, "godlesscapitalist" and the other cockroaches who spend their time ranting on your site about an imaginary "stealth consensus" which supports their crackpot views.

[dsquared]

Am I being unusually slow on this, or is this puported proof of the reality of "race" contra Lewontin really quite underwhelming from a statistical point of view?

If I understand it right, this professor is claiming that, given 7 billion people each of whom have c50K genes, he can project a couple of dozen basis vectors onto the (50k^4) space of possible genotypes. Surely the correct response to that is not so much "wow, looks like the PC types were wrong about race!" as "congratulations, you have reinvented the game Twenty Questions".

I would bet decent money at short odds that, if I was allowed to fuck around sufficiently with principal component analysis and was allowed to pick my targets in advance, I could find "correlated sets of genes" which were characteristic of Scorpios, Capricorns, Geminis etc etc in my sample, and thence to go on to tell out-of-sample people that they were "genetically 40% Scorpio, 20% Leo with Virgo rising" and so on. Hmmmm I might even actually go through with this as I bet there is money in it; the guy who invented "Astro-Tarot" made out like a bandit.

[Abiola Lapite]

"I would bet decent money at short odds that, if I was allowed to fuck around sufficiently with principal component analysis and was allowed to pick my targets in advance, I could find "correlated sets of genes" which were characteristic of Scorpios, Capricorns, Geminis etc etc in my sample, and thence to go on to tell out-of-sample people that they were "genetically 40% Scorpio, 20% Leo with Virgo rising" and so on."

Shh! Herr Doktor-Professor Malloy hat gesprochen, and who are the likes of you and I to doubt after that? What, you think your econometric training actually gives you any more insight into the uses and misuses of statistics than the universal genius who goes by the name Jason Malloy? These guys learn *everything* in their art history classes!

That's the thing about cranks like this guy: it never seems to connect with them that any sufficiently large dataset can be tortured to confess to any thesis whatsoever, which is why data mining has such a bad name. They already know what the answers *must* be to the questions they're asking, and any statistical manipulation is justified if it helps "prove" their claims, as is any source of data which seems to endorse it, however dubious: just look at the following data table and tell me you aren't doubled over with laughter, not just at the antiquity of many of the results quoted (especially in light of how large the Flynn Effect can be over a few decades) and the small sample sizes claimed as representive for entire nations which are far larger and more culturally diverse than the countries of Europe, but also at the ad-hoc, varying "adjustments" made for the Flynn Effect for the different nations.

http://www.isteve.com/IQ_Table.htm

Also note that the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test referred to so often is the very same one I was referring to here:

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2004/12/culture_free_te.html

But Mr. Malloy being both an honorable man and a genius to boot, that article from the APA's own website must be a load of PC rubbish and culture-free IQ testing is obviously unproblematic, notwithstanding the difficulties there are in establishing precisely *what* a "correct" answer is on such things, and *why* it happens to be "correct."

http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2004/12/on_the_dangers_.html

I've tolerated "debate" with racist idiots like Jason Malloy far too long. He clearly lacks the brains or the open-mindedness required to appreciate how little he knows or how illogical his arguments are, and all I get out of the deal is agro from seeing racist filth spewed as "truth" on my site by a fool who can't grasp why any black person would be annoyed at the 21st century equivalent of Nazis peddling anti-semitic "rassenhygiene" propaganda, let alone with the petulance and conceitedness that this little turd routinely displays.

[Andrew]

"I could find "correlated sets of genes" which were characteristic of Scorpios, Capricorns, Geminis etc etc in my sample"

How funny would it be if there actually turned out to be genes that predisposed people to conceive at certain times of the year? I can see the horoscopes now: "Libra: you are likely to want to snuggle with your partner during the long nights of the winter." "Aries: you get lonely during the summer."

(PS not to be a pedant but the current estimate on # of human genes is ~20-25k)

[Chuckles]

It was good to see all them old reti.blogspot.com posts...I should return there more often.

[...the understanding of my puny mind ("galois cohomology and automorphic forms I can handle sah, but that correlation stuff's just too bloody 'ard, by 'eck!")...]

Well...since you got into University through affirmative action, it is only natural for a *white* arts student to try to make up for your deficiencies in the mathematics department: while you stand, genuflect and ahumm in appreciation. Ye Gods Be Praised.

[...If I understand it right, this professor is claiming that, given 7 billion people each of whom have c50K genes, he can project a couple of dozen basis vectors onto the (50k^4) space of possible genotypes...]

Vectors chosen to fit predefined categories no doubt. Just keep looking until you hit something. Reminds me of the Armand Leroi article in the NYT (I think): fellow just stopped short of saying every individual is a race. The predictive value (not suppported by every study) is often offered up as "proof" - but it is a posteriori vis-a-vis self reported racial classifications. That a forensic detective can pinpoint race from semen samples is hardly supporting evidence: When technology advances to the level of Individual determination - are we going to say we got 10 billion races on the planet then? The genetic support for race supports is because that is what the investigators are looking for. With any luck - the determined forensic detective could pin down criminals to specific populations in SSA - Efik, Igbo etc - It isnt as if there is any shortage of dozens of markers to distinguish these populations from each other - are they then "real" races in any sense of the word?

http://www.nature.com/gene/journal/v4/n7/abs/6364017a.html

If the argument is that phenotypic features are taken as "whole" and this infers a social realization of Race - would a Yoruba scientist who can tell Fulani, Habe and Nuer apart purely by feature integration be justified to classify them into "Races" - and then serve up the genetic markers diferring between them (since definitely there will be tons of them) as proof or supporting evidence? The answer is no.
The genetic proof offered by a lot of the "race researchers" - many of them good people - is proposed as supporting evidence for something a)pre-determined, b)denominatively unlimited: i.e who gets to say where statistically significant genetic differences stop being evidence for Races?

The usage is also ludicrous - a guy gets a sample from me and says: You're black. But this has no relevance to me if I am Ikwerre. So I say no - I am Ikwerre: The significance of the Racial Category is socially determined and many times, exists only in the mind of the researcher. Self reported racial identifications as indicates of behavior are very limited in their scope. One is black in America, West African in Africa, Nigerian in West Africa, Igbo in Nigeria, Onitsha Igbo in Igboland. Are there genetic indicates for all this? Where is the genetic indicator for the behavioral changes that accompany these switches in identity? - Unless we assume that there is a universal "Negro" category which shares common behavorial patterns and for which even a posteriori genetic markers might serve as indicares BUT the cultural evidence just doesnt support this. There is no universal "black behavior". This is empirical and directly testable on an ethnographical scale except in the minds of some, for whom those markers identifying "blacks" would mean all the world.