Which race is smarter

Galaxian · **#81** by **Galaxian** » Nov 02, 2011 10:13 am

Don't know why everyone pussyfoots around this basic & boring question. It is well know that ALL people from the age of 1 to 100 are EXACTLY of the same IQ, or whatever you all it, to the 10th decimal place. That ALL of them can be a Buddha, Newton, Einstein, or Galaxian, if the mood took them. There, no one's offended. :nod:

Made of Stars · **#82** by **Made of Stars** » Nov 02, 2011 11:23 am

Chuck11 wrote:
Witticism wrote:My point is that at the human genetic level there is more diversity within a "taxonomic groupings (e.g. clades or subspecies)" than between "taxonomic groupings (e.g. clades or subspecies)" so the point is moot.And that is my point – it is arbitrary and any studies relating X to the genetics of ‘race’ will be arbitrary and ultimately of little scientific validity.

This belongs in a different section; take it there. This is what we are dealing with

These population's are objectively delineated using the program STRUCTURE. Your point about within and between variance is known as Lewontin's fallacy and it's a fallacy on multiple accounts:

1. What's important is the correlations between genes; that's what allows individuals to be unequivocally assigned to populations. Hence, Witherspoon et al (2007):
A good measure of the robustness of racial genetic differentiation is the answer to the following question: ‘‘How often does it happen that a pair of individuals from one population is genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?’’ In fact, if many thousands of loci are used as a basis for judging genetic similarity and when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations, the correct answer, which many will probably ﬁnd surprising, is: ‘‘Never.’’ ("Genetic similarities within and between human population.")

2. When it comes to FST values, 5-15% variance is generally considered to be a moderate amount of variance. Here is a lovely passage from a recent paper on those "low" FST values:
We analyzed a data set composed of short tandem repeat (STR) allele frequencies for eight loci genotyped in both humans and chimpanzees (Deka et al. 1995). These data made it possible to see how FST played out when no one could dispute taxonomic and genetic significance. The answer surprised us...In our analysis, FST was 0.12 for humans, but for humans and chimpanzees together, FST rose only to 0.18 (Long (2010) "Update to Long and Kittles’s “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races”(2003): Fixation on an Index."

3. As we are diploids, the within population variance is comprised of inter-individual variance and intra-individual variance. When comparing individuals between populations, you have to factor out the latter, which substantially raises the relative within/between individual variance.

Now, what is important here is that socially defined races and racial self identification correspond with ancestral populations, clusters, taxonomic races, or whatever. They don't have to perfectly correspond because we are talking about average differences, just reasonably correspond. (Imaging, a situation in which you have two heterogeneous groups comprised respectively of 90% German Shepherds and 10% Chihuahuas and 90% Chihuahuas and 10% German Shepherds -- you can still ask and investigate if a) one group is taller, b) if the difference has a partial genetic basis, and c) if this is due to --on AVERAGE -- breed i.e. race.) So the question is: "Does self identified race correspond with "ancestral populations, clusters, taxonomic races, etc." And the answer is "yes."
We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic
population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure
Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African
American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States
and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed
near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/
ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On
the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within
each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/
ethnicity—as opposed to current residence—is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.
Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed (Tang et al., 2005.)

Honestly, what do you make of the hundreds of ongoing admixture studies? The ones that look like this:

Admixture Mapping to Identify Spontaneous Preterm Birth Susceptibility Loci in African Americans
Manuck, Tracy A. MD; Lai, Yinglei PhD; Meis, Paul J. MD; Sibai, Baha MD; Spong, Catherine Y. MD; Rouse, Dwight J. MD; Iams, Jay D. MD; Caritis, Steve N. MD; O'Sullivan, Mary J. MD; Wapner, Ronald J. MD; Mercer, Brian MD; Ramin, Susan M. MD; Peaceman, Alan M. MD; for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network (MFMU)

OBJECTIVE: Preterm birth is 1.5 times more common in African American (17.8%) than European American women (11.5%), even after controlling for confounding variables. We hypothesize that genetic factors may account for this disparity and can be identified by admixture mapping.

METHODS: This is a secondary analysis of women with at least one prior spontaneous preterm birth enrolled in a multicenter prospective study. DNA was extracted and whole-genome amplified from stored saliva samples. Self-identified African American patients were genotyped with a 1,509 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) commercially available admixture panel. A logarithm of odds locus-genome score of 1.5 or higher was considered suggestive and 2 or higher was considered significant for a disease locus.

RESULTS: One hundred seventy-seven African American women with one or more prior spontaneous preterm births were studied. One thousand four hundred fifty SNPs were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and passed quality filters. Individuals had a mean of 78.3% to 87.9% African American ancestry for each SNP. A locus on chromosome 7q21-22 was suggestive of an association with spontaneous preterm birth before 37 weeks of gestation (three SNPs with logarithm of odds scores 1.50–1.99). This signal strengthened when women with at least one preterm birth before 35.0 (eight SNPs with logarithm of odds scores greater than 1.50) and before 32.0 weeks of gestation were considered (15 SNPs with logarithm of odds scores greater than 1.50). No other areas of the genome had logarithm of odds scores higher than 1.5.

CONCLUSION: Spontaneous preterm birth in African American women may be genetically mediated by a susceptibility locus on chromosome 7. This region contains multiple potential candidate genes, including collagen type 1-α-2 gene and genes involved with calcium regulation.

Are they all predicated on a misunderstanding about race? If so, why don't you start emailing to authors and letting them know?

I'm endlessly bemused that people cite differences in microsatellite markers, SNPs, SRTs etc as contributing anything pertinent to a discussion of this particular aspect of phenotype.

Chuck11 · **#83** by **Chuck11** » Nov 04, 2011 10:56 pm

Made of Stars wrote:I'm endlessly bemused that people cite differences in microsatellite markers, SNPs, SRTs etc as contributing anything pertinent to a discussion of this particular aspect of phenotype.

Why?

Made of Stars · **#84** by **Made of Stars** » Nov 04, 2011 11:28 pm

Chuck11 wrote:
Made of Stars wrote:I'm endlessly bemused that people cite differences in microsatellite markers, SNPs, SRTs etc as contributing anything pertinent to a discussion of this particular aspect of phenotype.

Why?

This is why:

Finally, using just SNP data we predicted ~1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes...

Emphasis mine. Compare this with:

We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants.

Emphases mine again.

I'm aware that markers like this can pick up differences between whole populations, but too often they're abused as representing something more specific.

Chuck11 · **#85** by **Chuck11** » Nov 05, 2011 1:08 am

Made of Stars wrote:Genetic determinants 'yes', SNP data as predictors of specific phenotypic differences 'no'. I'm aware that markers like this can pick up differences between whole populations...

I'm not sure what your point is. Here was mine:
1) Linkage disequilibrium with SNPs account for a large portion of the genetic variation in intelligence within populations
2) Given the amount of genetic variance between populations, with respect to SNPs, and the magnitude of the differences in question, linkage disequilibrium with SNPs COULD account for ... between populations X and Y

Someone was insinuating that there was too little genetic variation between the populations in question for (2) and I was explaining why this is not the case.

but too often they're abused as representing something more specific.

Can you give me an example? Most often, the abuse runs in the reverse (refer to my interlocutors above). It's frequently argued that there's "too little" genetic difference on average for there to be significant differences in specific.

Made of Stars · **#86** by **Made of Stars** » Nov 05, 2011 3:50 am

Chuck11 wrote:1) Linkage disequilibrium with SNPs account for a large portion of the genetic variation in intelligence within populations

Evidence for a causal relationship? The abstract you cite above indicates that SNPs only account for 1% of the variance.

Chuck11 · **#87** by **Chuck11** » Nov 05, 2011 8:43 am

Made of Stars wrote:
Chuck11 wrote:1) Linkage disequilibrium with SNPs account for a large portion of the genetic variation in intelligence within populations

Evidence for a causal relationship? The abstract you cite above indicates that SNPs only account for 1% of the variance.

The abstract says that LD accounts for 50% of the variance within the population and that the SNP data alone independently predicts 1% of the variance in another population. The methodology is explained here:

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) have found hundreds of SNPs that are significantly associated with complex traits such as height...However, in most cases, the published SNPs reliably associated with a trait explain only a small proportion of the known genetic variance...This has been called the ‘missing heritability’ problem (Maher 2008). We proposed two hypotheses that could explain this missing heritability. It could be that the SNPs used in GWAS explain all the additive genetic variance but most of them have such a small effect that they are not significant and therefore not reported. Alternatively, it could be that the mutations causing variation in height are not in perfect linkage disequilibrium (LD) with any of the SNPs and therefore part of the genetic variance is undetected by the SNPs.

There is no discordance between the 1 and 50%. As for causal relationship, the estimate is a lower bounds estimate for narrow heritability or the additive genetic component, so the relationship is G --> P.

Made of Stars · **#88** by **Made of Stars** » Nov 07, 2011 11:17 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the second quote completely debunks your argument, and supports my point that SNPs etc don't correlate causally with traits like intelligence, and therefore have no place in a discussion of associations between 'race' and 'intelligence'.

jamest · **#89** by **jamest** » Nov 08, 2011 1:03 am

It seems self-evident to me that black people are, often, physically superior to white people in many respects. This is evident in many sports, at least, where black people consistently rule the roost (boxing and athletics, for instance). As a white person, I just have to accept that as fact, rather than try and make some politically-correct sociological excuses to defend the apparent failings of white peoples, in comparison.

We need to accept that there are general distinctions to be made between different racial groups. To try and argue otherwise, just seems to me to be a lie borne of the ideal of 'equality' and the fucking irritating PC lobby. The different races are no-more ~equal~ in capabilities than are different species of animals. We all have our unique physical/mental/emotional [and perhaps 'spiritual'] strengths and weaknesses, but even those are judged from a particular perspective.

This all makes for uncomfortable reading, particularly within the light of the PC ideal to mark us all as equals. Yet, physically/mentally/emotionally/spiritually, we simply are not - whether as individuals or specific groups. However, this does not make any of us more or less worthy than anyone else, even if we as particular individuals are one of those who are physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually, weak.

Some here would do well to read an overview of John Rawl's Theory of Justice. All men are born equal, not by virtue of their attributes, but by virtue of the fact that they are all of the same human family... and [should] strive as a single species to give the same respect and quality of life to every individual as one would do for one's own immediate family, regardless of their apparent limitations.

... It is irrational to justify equality, then, from the perspective of physical homogenity. That's not where we will find the source of our equality, if indeed such a source does exist.

What irritates me the most about this conversation, is that the equality/respect/love/justice which should be prevalent between us all, should be argued for by some goon-notion that we are all physically equal. That's just a fucking lie. A major distraction, too.

Spearthrower · **#90** by **Spearthrower** » Nov 08, 2011 7:21 am

jamest wrote:It seems self-evident to me...

I think that whenever something seems self-evident to oneself, one should always question why it is self-evident.

A lot of the rest of your ill-informed post deserves to be split off and added to the Is race real? cess-pit.

Personally James, I think you owe yourself a lot more than falling for these superficial appearances rather than actually inquiring into the hard biological evidence that completely contradicts your feelings. Feelings, I am sure you are aware, that are in no small part constructed by the society and peer-group you grow up in.

Chuck11 · **#91** by **Chuck11** » Nov 09, 2011 4:01 am

Made of Stars wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but the second quote completely debunks your argument, and supports my point that SNPs etc don't correlate causally with traits like intelligence..

So, continuing with the next paragraphs in the linked paper:

The purpose of the study was to estimate the proportion of variation in height that is captured by the SNPs that are used in GWAS. Our study differs from published GWAS in that we estimate the total variance explained by the SNPs without focussing on individual SNPs. Consequently, our estimate is not diminished by the failure of individual SNP effects to reach a significance threshold. If most causal variants for human height have such low frequency in the population that they are not in LD with the (common) SNPs on the commercial SNP arrays then the method we used would not detect much more additional variance than already accounted for by the published genome-wide significant loci. If, however, there are many causal variants that are in LD with the common SNPs but the effect sizes are too small to be detected with genome-wide significance, then our method would pick up their contribution to additive genetic variation.

We found that the SNPs explain ~45% of the phenotypic variance (Yang et al. 2010). This is substantially more than the ~10% explained by published, significant SNPs but less than the heritability of 80%. Thus the SNPs track approximately half of the known additive genetic variance. The difference between 10% and 45% is due to many SNPs with such small effects that they are not individually significant in GWAS. However, about half the genetic variance is left unaccounted for. We showed that this amount of missing heritability is expected if the mutations causing variation in height are similar to SNPs with minor allele frequency (MAF) < 0.1. The causal variants are expected to have lower MAF than common SNPs because they are more likely to be subject to some form of natural selection that leads to variants negatively associated with reproductive fitness to be at low frequency. Our study is the first to show that at least half of the heritability for height (typically estimated using twin and family studies) is captured by common SNPs.

As with height, intelligence.

As for my argument, refer back to my Nov 05, 2011 1:08 am post. This discussion concerns the amount of genetic diversity between populations; specifically, the issue is whether there is "enough" genetic variation between populations to code for the phenotypic differences in question. I am trying to demonstrate that there is. The reasoning is as follows: Differences in general intelligence are largely coded for by SNP differences, specifically in the linkage disequilibrium between SNPs (i.e. the non-random association of alleles) and in SNP frequency differences. The average between to within population ratio for SNP frequency differences is about 15/85 and the average between to within ratio for SNP linkage disequilibrium is larger than this. Now, the ratio of the proposed genetically conditioned phenotypic differences is of about the same magnitude (discussed above) as this (i.e. 15/85). Therefore, were we to assume that IQ genes were randomly spread throughout the total genetic diversity, we would predict that the phenotypic differences were, in fact, genetically conditioned. Of course, we have no a priori reason to assume this, but we also have no a priori reason to assume otherwise (i.e. the genetic differences with respect to IQ could be more or less than average.)

and therefore have no place in a discussion of associations between 'race' and 'intelligence'.

I don't understand this. I explained the place. It's as if someone said, "The bucket isn't large enough to hold the salt water, therefore there's no salt in the bucket." And I pointed out that the bucket is large enough and that the bucket holds quite a bit of water and that the only question is whether it's saltwater or just water.

Chuck11 · **#92** by **Chuck11** » Nov 09, 2011 4:10 am

Spearthrower wrote:Personally James, I think you owe yourself a lot more than falling for these superficial appearances rather than actually inquiring into the hard biological evidence that completely contradicts your feelings. Feelings, I am sure you are aware, that are in no small part constructed by the society and peer-group you grow up in.

What "hard biological evidence" contradicts his feelings? Please tell. (In my Oct 30, 2011 10:47 am, I was at least able to give 17 lines of weak evidence.) What stands out about this issue is the paucity of evidence either way.

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