Andrew Sabisky Race and Eugenics Controversy

[Genava]

To focus the topic a bit:

This thread is about whether or not people who believe these things to be true and factual should have the right to work as a civil servant or government advisor.

I would be inclined to believe so, but Sabisky has put the government in a politically difficult position by not fully declaring his past remarks and has presented himself as an easy target for criticism.

Is Sabisky a racist? Is this shutting down discussion and debate? Are his ideas (regardless of validity) appropriate for a government advisor? For political reasons, I don’t think so.

It is a common issue among conservatives to deal with this kind of... let's say outrageous claims... from elected members (or chosen by the elected government).

Personally, I really think it hurts the cause and conservatives leaders should do something when a similar case happens.

Moreover, Sabisky looks like a weirdo and a loser*, not enough intelligent to remove these kinds of content from the internet before to get a good position in the gov. He is basically a lucky internet troll. I think to have fired him was a good move from the gov because... he is useless. This is too much effort to protect someone like him. The sacrifice was the obvious solution.

Edit: *from the simple fact he didn't super-forecasted this possible issue from his own claims

[sumskilz]

Or not.

What Happens When Geneticists Talk Sloppily About Race

Okay, Holmes writes:

Reich’s op-ed includes not just vague words, but vague rhetorical logic. It seems to be creating a false balance between, on the one hand, some specifically named people who have expressed what Reich refers to as “insidious” views on race (such as Wade and James Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA ) and, on the other hand, “well-meaning people” who, according to Reich, are perpetuating some kind of “orthodoxy” that resists research on genetic variation. This argument, fleshed out with examples in Reich’s book, is that truculent and overly PC anthropologists, unobstructed by timid geneticists, are suppressing discussion of genetic variation. As Reich characterizes the position in his op-ed: “Average genetic differences among people grouped according to today’s racial terms are so trivial when it comes to any meaningful biological traits that those differences can be ignored.”

I simply don’t know any geneticists who believe this, and few who’d let it pass unchallenged.

So Holmes is saying that he, a computational biologist involved in genetic research, doesn't know any geneticists who believe that the “average genetic differences among people grouped according to today’s racial terms are so trivial when it comes to any meaningful biological traits that those differences can be ignored” and (he believes) there are few who would let the assertion that such differences are trivial go unchallenged. It is clear then, that Holmes believes that geneticists nearly unanimously agree with Reich. If that's true, and I agree that it is regarding human population geneticists, why is reiterating the mainstream view of population geneticists so controversial? Why does it provoke outrage?

What Holmes writes here is a bit of a non-sequitur. The orthodoxy Reich speaks of is not being enforced by geneticists. It is being enforced by elements of the larger society, and in anthropology departments by sociocultural anthropologists, whose antipositivist antistatisical biases are essentially antiscience.

Holmes likewise understands why Reich used the term "races":

The quotes around “races” are ironic. They’re there to subvert the apparent precision of the word, acknowledging—or at least trying to acknowledge—that many non-scientists nevertheless have some intuition that their perception of race can, loosely speaking, line up with guesses about ancestry. The root of Reich’s concern seems to be that if geneticists simply dismiss that intuition, we’ll lose credibility, as larger-scale genetic studies reveal increasingly subtle correlations between ancestry and human-trait variation.

Reich's concern is well-founded. Holmes brings up Nicholas Wade, who both he and Reich consider to espouse racist views. Wade is not some white nationalist posting in dark corners of the internet, he was a staff science writer at the New York Times from 1982 to 2012. His 2014 book was published by Penguin, so completely mainstream. Wade's book is pretty speculative, and I don't think he's very bright, but the general audience for this type a research no doubt sees a guy who was considered kosher for decades by a major mainstream left-leaning media outlet suddenly shouted down as a racist for daring to tell the "truth". Why would they see him as less credible than geneticists whose jobs increasingly appear to depend on deference to "progressive" orthodoxy regarding race?

Nothing Reich wrote was sloppy.

Scientific caveats are important, but when it goes beyond that into reflexive denunciation of anyone who brings up population differences, it is effectively lending credence to a racist worldview. Nobody is less or more of a person because he or she has more or less of a particular aptitude than anyone else. Nobody is more or less of a person if a group he or she can be categorized into has on average more or less of a particular aptitude than another group. The moralistic fallacy is unnecessary.

Moreover, Sabisky looks like a weirdo and a loser*, not enough intelligent to remove these kinds of content from the internet before to get a good position in the gov. He is basically a lucky internet troll. I think to have fired him was a good move from the gov because... he is useless. This is too much effort to protect someone like him. The sacrifice was the obvious solution.

Edit: *from the simple fact he didn't super-forecasted this possible issue from his own claims

I agree with you here.

I also agree with you that a person with a tested IQ of 70 isn't necessarily disabled, but I don't actually see anything outrageous in Sabisky's comments on that topic. First, he claims "the mean black American IQ is... around 85". Regardless of the cause, this is true and is backed up by other types of cognitive testing. He refers to below 75 as "close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation". Mild mental retardation is considered to be in the IQ range of 50 to 70. So again, he is correct according to the mainstream view. He recalls that "typically criminals with IQs below 70 cannot be executed in the USA". His recollection is accurate. He is trying to explain why blacks in the US are disproportionately diagnosed as mentally disabled. Which is true. On statistical grounds, he may very well be correct, based on the following:

Diagnosing Intellectual Disability

Intellectual disability is identified by problems in both intellectual and adaptive functioning.

Intellectual functioning is assessed with an exam by a doctor and through standardized testing. While a specific full-scale IQ test score is no longer required for diagnosis, standardized testing is used as part of diagnosing the condition. A full scale IQ score of around 70 to 75 indicates a significant limitation in intellectual functioning.2 However, the IQ score must be interpreted in the context of the person’s difficulties in general mental abilities. Moreover, scores on subtests can vary considerably so that the full scale IQ score may not accurately reflect overall intellectual functioning.

I actually think there are probably many people with an IQ in that range who shouldn't be considered disabled, but my view evidently runs counter to current trends among researchers in the field.

[Genava]

I also agree with you that a person with a tested IQ of 70 isn't necessarily disabled, but I don't actually see anything outrageous in Sabisky's comments on that topic. First, he claims "the mean black American IQ is... around 85". Regardless of the cause, this is true and is backed up by other types of cognitive testing. He refers to below 75 as "close to the typical boundary for mild mental retardation". Mild mental retardation is considered to be in the IQ range of 50 to 70. So again, he is correct according to the mainstream view. He recalls that "typically criminals with IQs below 70 cannot be executed in the USA". His recollection is accurate. He is trying to explain why blacks in the US are disproportionately diagnosed as mentally disabled. Which is true. On statistical grounds, he may very well be correct, based on the following:

The problem is not in the single facts carelessly taken individually without context. The problem is with the whole argument using different facts to build a narrative suggesting black people average IQ is close to mild mental retardation. Again, my point is that it is not the case because previous Americans generation with similar average IQ or even lower weren't close to mild mental retardation.

Let me took another example, this is like the memes comparing ancient European art to actual African art. This is also a case where the facts are correct but the narrative wrong.

[Ludicus]

don't actually see anything outrageous in Sabisky's comments on that topic

Come on, my dear Sumskilz,stop excusing and rationalizing racism.
His message is: too much melanin makes you dumb. The idiot is a disgusting white supremacist/racist. There is nothing to discuss here, sumskilz.
An account in Sabisky's name made the comments about black IQ in a reply to a 2014 blog post written by an American professor discussing education disabilities in the United States.

And Boris is another racist, 'Watermelon smiles' and 'piccaninnies': What Boris Johnson

[Aexodus]

Come on, my dear Sumskilz,stop excusing and rationalizing racism.
His message is: too much melanin makes you dumb. The idiot is a disgusting white supremacist/racist. There is nothing to discuss here, sumskilz.
An account in Sabisky's name made the comments about black IQ in a reply to a 2014 blog post written by an American professor discussing education disabilities in the United States.

And Boris is another racist, 'Watermelon smiles' and 'piccaninnies': What Boris Johnson

Is sumskilz incorrect, factually.

[Genava]

Is sumskilz incorrect, factually.

From the different quotes you put in the original post, how do you represent yourself the view of Sabisky about the IQ gap between blacks and whites? How do you synthesis the whole?

[Stario]

Sabisky is quite right about the IQ gap between the races. The question is what are we going to do about it as a society to close this gap.

It would be fascinating -a future where parents would be able to select from embryos traits; intelligence; being immune to certain diseases etc.

[Gromovnik]

So he was pushing some discredited pseudo-scientific shlock and it cost him his sinecure. NevAr forget. F

P.S. I thought government sinecures (especially in the field of science) are a bad thing anyway?

[Ludicus]

There is a long history of scientific racism. Of course you can also believe that poor people are poor because they are inherently less intelligent. You can also believe that genes for susceptibility to violence lurk in "black brains", the blacks are genetically more predisposed to violence than others.
Steve Bannon wrote an article in 2016 in which he suggested that some black people who had been shot by the police might have deserved it.

There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent

An excellent article,The unwelcome revival of 'race science' | News | The Guardian

....Yet race science maintains its hold on the imagination of the right, and today’s rightwing activists have learned some important lessons from past controversies. Using YouTube in particular, they attack the left-liberal media and academic establishment for its unwillingness to engage with the “facts”, and then employ race science as a political battering ram to push forward their small-state, anti-welfare, anti-foreign-aid agenda.
These political goals have become ever more explicit. When interviewing Nicholas Wade, Stefan Molyneux argued that different social outcomes were the result of different innate IQs among the races – as he put it, high-IQ Ashkenazi Jews and low-IQ black people. Wade agreed, saying that the “role played by prejudice” in shaping black people’s social outcomes “is small and diminishing”, before condemning “wasted foreign aid” for African countries.

how do you represent yourself the view of Sabisky about the IQ gap between blacks and whites?

A pertinent question.Sabisky is a racist, there is no doubt about that. Ergo, when considering race and IQ, consider an author's motivations.

The question is what are we going to do about it as a society to close this gap.

If you/we are concerned about people's intelligence, let's focus on the environmental /cultural factors. Maternal and infant healthcare,/early life nutrition/exposure to neurodevelopmental toxins such as lead, and others- and last but not least allow free access to education, quality education and universal health care.

[Cyclops]

...
If you/we are concerned about people's intelligence, let's focus on the environmental /cultural factors. Maternal and infant healthcare,/early life nutrition/exposure to neurodevelopmental toxins such as lead, and others- and last but not least allow free access to education, quality education and universal health care.

I agree we need some focus on that, but denying a person's genetic inheritance can affect their behavior and life circumstances is surely as silly as denying institutional bias can affect their behaviour and life circumstances.

I see from my own family experiences the different treatment I get as a "white" tertiary educated male: for example how I interact with police, as compared to family members who identify as aboriginal, or Jewish, or Lebanese (that guy's workplace nickname is "Terrorist", we Australians have such subtle humour) or Sicilian (whoa boy, my bro-in-law nailed his Sicilian/Irish hybrid stereotype in his youth). Seemingly minor things like accent and dialect affect a person's employment opportunities etc, I see this when I'm interviewing prospective employees (I've had some awkward post-interview wrap-ups on this point).

The fact racist nitwits garble pseudo science while denying the reality of something like institutional racism in police forces doesn't invalidate genetic research.

[Genava]

Clearly there is an issue with people distorting the evidences about IQ between human populations and human individuals. On the right, with people suggesting Black people are genetically predisposed to have a lower IQ than others racial categories. On the left, with people suggesting IQ differences are mostly due to environmental factors. The nuance necessary to understand why both are distortions is that there is more intra-group variability than inter-group. It is quite improbable that the IQ gap between racial groups (ie. subjective categories of human populations) is mostly due to genetics. Finally, IQ measurements are not absolute measurements but relative, the comparison of different IQ studies between different countries and different decades is not something you can do blindly, simply by comparing numbers to numbers. The concept of mild mental retardation starting around an IQ of 75 is not an absolute threshold and you cannot compare the IQ measured in any studies to this threshold. This is a fallacy.

[sumskilz]

The problem is not in the single facts carelessly taken individually without context. The problem is with the whole argument using different facts to build a narrative suggesting black people average IQ is close to mild mental retardation.

I suppose that's one plausible inference regarding his intent. Objectively, he gave the most parsimonious answer to the question being asked, employing the terms and definitions found in the scientific literature (references in my previous post). The implication of his answer is that there is no reason to assume the schools are discriminating against black children if a greater relative proportion of black children fit the diagnosis criteria being used. This would be a typical conservative position to take.

Neither Sabisky as a person, nor his personal agenda whatever it may be, are of interest to me. He was a political liability, so he was forced to resign. Your interpretation of his offense on this particular issue differs from what I see circulating.

Quoting the BBC article in the OP:

In a comment on another blog post on a different website in 2014, what appears to be the same user suggested black Americans had a lower average IQ than white Americans.

It is the same everywhere else I've seen, for example:

On a different website in the same year, he suggested that black Americans had a lower average IQ than white.

So counted among his sins is a statement of scientific fact.

It reminds me of a slide from Jonathan Haidt's lecture Why So Many Americans Don't Want Social Justice and Don't Trust Scientists:



My academic background is in biocultural anthropology, to which everything in that left column just happens to be relevant.

The full lecture for anyone interested:

The fact racist nitwits garble pseudo science while denying the reality of something like institutional racism in police forces doesn't invalidate genetic research.

The trouble for me is, it seems many people, especially journalists, can't distinguish the difference between pseudoscience, bad science, and good science that just happens to elucidate realities they don't like. This article, which has been repeatedly posted in this thread, is a cacophony of misinformation, debunked claims, ad hominem, and cherry-picked good science. There is plenty of pseudoscience in the social sciences, yet it often becomes the basis of public policy. How can you study the causes of human behavior while refusing to control for heritability? Many of Richard Lynn's conclusions regarding national IQs aren't suspect because he's a racist, they're suspect because he often uses inappropriate convenience samples. That's bad science. When someone lumps together Richard Lynn and Arthur Jensen, it's a good sign they don't know much about the field, or aren't actually interested in the science.

Here is James Flynn, the foremost proponent of the black-white IQ gap being entirely environmental, discussing Arthur Jensen:

“Arthur Jensen’s life is emblematic of the extent to which American scholarship is inhibited by political orthodoxy,” James R. Flynn, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, said on Wednesday.

“Jensen was a true scientist, and he was without racial bias,” Professor Flynn added. “It never occurred to Arthur Jensen that people would use his data to argue for racial supremacy. Now, to be fair to his critics, over time he became more and more convinced that the evidence did show a genetic component.”

Note, even Flynn recognizes the orthodoxy issue.

You can also believe that genes for susceptibility to violence lurk in "black brains", the blacks are genetically more predisposed to violence than others.

You could believe that there is a gene variant associated with a greater propensity for violence which appears at dramatically different frequencies in different populations, and you would be correct. Which is information that may be useful to intervention efforts.

Exploring the association between the 2-repeat allele of the MAOA gene promoter polymorphism and psychopathic personality traits, arrests, incarceration, and lifetime antisocial behavior

The 2-Repeat Allele of the MAOA Gene Confers an Increased Risk for Shooting and Stabbing Behaviors

A functional polymorphism in the monoamine oxidase A gene promoter

Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children

Monoamine oxidase A regulates antisocial personality in whites with no history of physical abuse

The association between the MAOA 2R genotype and delinquency over time among men: the interactive role of parental closeness and parental incarceration

The nuance necessary to understand why both are distortions is that there is more intra-group variability than inter-group.

At the continental population level that would be roughly 85% vs 15%.

It is quite improbable that the IQ gap between racial groups (ie. subjective categories of human populations) is mostly due to genetics.

To give some sense of the consensus on the US black-white IQ gap, this is from the 2013 survey of expert opinion on intelligence:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Betting on the experts, you'd go with about half genetic (median response 47%).

[Genava]

Quick answer to Sumskilz

1st => it doesn't look like a peer-reviewed paper and the first study quoted from 1984 doesn't seem to agree with their conclusion.

2nd => Two authors are also publishing in Mankind Quarterly.

According to New Statesman, Rindermann serves on the editorial board of the journal Intelligence, has been a frequent contributor to Mankind Quarterly, and has helped to organized conferences for the International Society for Intelligence Research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiner_Rindermann
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankind_Quarterly

Bakhiet, S. F. A., Becker, D., Mohamed, H. F. A., Abdoulaye, H. A., Ahmed, S. A. E. S., & Lynn, R. (2019). Intelligence in the West African State of Benin. Mankind Quarterly, 60(1), 75-92.
Bakhiet, S. F. A., Becker, D., Ahmed, S. A. E. S., & Lynn, R. (2019). A study of intelligence in the state of Ash Shamaliyah, Sudan. Mankind Quarterly, 60(1), 99-105.
https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/hsw/psych...ker/becker.php

So it smells fishy.

[sumskilz]

Quick answer to Sumskilz

1st => it doesn't look like a peer-reviewed paper and the first study quoted from 1984 doesn't seem to agree with their conclusion.

2nd => Two authors are also publishing in Mankind Quarterly.

I assume Synderman and Rothman 1984 refers to the first survey. Here is the 2016 edition in Frontiers in Psychology (same authors). The older editions don't seem to stay online, otherwise I would have linked. James Flynn is also publishing in Mankind Quarterly.

[Genava]

in Frontiers in Psychology (same authors)

Which is a predatory publisher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontiers_Media

Here is the 2016 edition

The same authors tried again in the journal Intelligence recently without mentioning that one of the author is a member of the editorial board.:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...60289619301886

James Flynn is also publishing in Mankind Quarterly

And he is also another member of the editorial board of the journal Intelligence with Rindermann, Richard Lynn and Gerhard Meisenberg (related to the Mankind Quarterly editorial board). James Flynn is not really the perfect and uncontroversial figure.

[sumskilz]

Which is a predatory publisher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontiers_Media

Well, that's not exactly what your source says. It reads: "In 2015 Frontiers Media was controversially included in Jeffrey Beall's list of potential predatory open access publishers", citing the following: Backlash after Frontiers journals added to list of questionable publishers

But feel free to disregard the survey if you like. It seems odd to me to think that if they wanted to fraudulently claim some inflated number for a racist agenda, they would have come up with a median answer of 47% in light of the following:

Twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%[6] with the most recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%[7] and 86%.[8]. IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics, for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood. This phenomenon is known as the Wilson Effect.[9] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[10] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects.[11][12]

And he is also another member of the editorial board of the journal Intelligence with Rindermann, Richard Lynn and Gerhard Meisenberg. James Flynn is not really the perfect and uncontroversial figure.

Flynn is the main scientist you've been citing in support of your IQ arguments in this thread. His work is essentially the star witness in any anti-hereditarian argument on IQ. Don't you think it's a little odd that he publishes in the academic journal that has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment"?

I don't think much of Richard Lynn, but haven't you noticed that everyone who doesn't arrive at the correct conclusion is a racist? How many journals are willing to publish racism? Ad hominems aren't scientific arguments, but they're effective in suppressing publication nonetheless.

James Flynn takes a principled stand: Academic freedom and race: You ought not to believe what you think may be true

[Genava]

But feel free to disregard the survey if you like.

I am not disregarding it, I didn't have the time yet to read the different publications. However, I find highly suspicious the necessity to publish in very low standard journals with bad peer-review and connivance especially when the editorial board is linked with the authors. It smells fishy. I know people can play the victimization card to excuse that, but generally it convinces me they are doing a bad work.

With a low sample of experts, any cherry-picking will have huge effect on the final results. This is not a paper discussing evidences but opinions from experts. So if I see they are relying on very low standard publishing, I have reason to be skeptical. Frontiers is a really bad journal and Mankind Quarterly is simply a piece of where you can find really outrageous claims. Finding that there is people from this journal inside the editorial board of Intelligence is really not a good omen.

And I don't care if someone have the same opinion than me but relies on bad work. James Powell made ty articles about consensus in climate science and I don't care if I generally agree with his opinion. His demonstration was bad and poorly done.

His work is essentially the star witness in any anti-hereditarian argument on IQ. Don't you think it's a little odd that he publishes in the academic journal that has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment"?

There is even Clyde Winters publishing in Mankind Quarterly. Adding black supremacist stuff to white supremacist stuff doesn't make the whole neutral and objective. It makes it more a piece of s...

So the fallacious reasoning of saying that Flynn is publishing in a journal mostly held by his contrarians so it doesn't look like that bad won't be convincing. This is a strategy used by every pseudoscience, trying to be portrayed as the true free-speech promoters.

[ikyu828]

certain races do have superior physique or athletic, just look at the professional sports
so why is it so controversial if other races do have superior intellect

[sumskilz]

There is even Clyde Winters publishing in Mankind Quarterly. Adding black supremacist stuff to white supremacist stuff doesn't make the whole neutral and objective. It makes it more a piece of s...

So the fallacious reasoning of saying that Flynn is publishing in a journal mostly held by his contrarians so it doesn't look like that bad won't be convincing. This is a strategy used by every pseudoscience, trying to be portrayed as the true free-speech promoters.

I don't think I've ever read a study published in Mankind Quarterly, so I couldn't comment on the quality. Though obviously I have read some contributors publications elsewhere. I posted the survey because I thought it might be interesting to some. I probably wouldn't have posted it if I would have known it would be controversial enough that I'd have to write anything more about it. I didn't have any reason to doubt the credibility or seriously vet the authors because (in addition to originally having pulled it off a colleague's website) the conclusion of slightly less than half seems an entirely mainstream view to me, considering it is so low compared to IQ heritability estimates in general. Heritability can be lower with lower socioeconomic status. In any case, it will be population geneticists who finally get the answer sorted, which is already somewhat underway.

That said, the entire argument of the Flynn paper I linked, is that his contrarians' work is neither pseudoscience nor racist.

[Genava]

certain races do have superior physique or athletic, just look at the professional sports
so why is it so controversial if other races do have superior intellect

It is totally possible there are some differences in intelligence between human populations. However, contrary to difference in athleticism giving benefits in specific sports, intelligence is linked with a lot of things in everyday life and has bigger impact on us. I find unlikely there are huge genetics differences because of different human history and evolution.

And clearly, for the same gene pool, IQ has increased of 30 points in less than a century in white countries. The same happens even faster in several Asian countries recently. So it should be carefully assessed and freed of political exploitation.

That said, the entire argument of the Flynn paper I linked, is that his contrarians' work is neither pseudoscience nor racist.

Flynn has defended Lynn several times in the past and he continues in this direction even if they do not share the same view. However someone like Lynn is really obsessed with this question and sometimes it really looks like a confirmation bias.

Again in Intelligence Journal:

In Italy, north–south differences in IQ predict differences in income, education, infant mortality, stature, and literacy

Regional differences in IQ are presented for 12 regions of Italy showing that IQs are highest in the north and lowest in the south. Regional IQs obtained in 2006 are highly correlated with average incomes at r = 0.937, and with stature, infant mortality, literacy and education. The lower IQ in southern Italy may be attributable to genetic admixture with populations from the Near East and North Africa.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...60289609000956

Personally, I don't believe they are censored. There are plenty of countries and plenty of private companies publishing scientific research with good quality peer-review. From an Ockham's razor perspective, the hypothesis they are simply excluded for their poor job is more plausible than a global censorship.