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William Saletan’s Third Thoughts On Race, Genes, And IQ
By Daniel Koffler / May 5, 2008
Last November, William Saletan wrote a series for Slate on "Liberal Creationism," purporting to show that, according to the best evidence we have, there is good reason to think that observable racial disparities in scores on intelligence tests are irreducible to non-genetic explanations. Or, de-jargoned, that it's time to confront the uncomfortable truth that black people aren't as smart as white people (on average, of course).
Saletan was widely panned, at Jewcy among many other venues, for drawing conclusions based on statistical innumeracy, flagrant misunderstanding of the literature on race, genes, and intelligence, and the "research" of J. Philippe Rushton, a discredited racist crank who years ago took to sending out unsolicited mass-mailings of his pamphlets to every member of the American Sociological Association.
Having brushed his shoulders off, Saletan is back on the race-and-intelligence beat today, and this time he's more circumspect. Much more circumspect. He's having an extended, self-serving dialogue with himself, in an effort to ensure his intended audience (William Saletan) that what motivated the original series wasn't racism, but the admirable conviction that the truth isn't any worse off for our discomfort with it; rather, we're worse off for not facing up to uncomfortable truths.
But of course, no persuasive critic of the "Liberal Creationism" pieces thought that Saletan was motivated by racism. The criticism was that knee-jerk contrarianism led him to present as "the truth" a case based on wafer-thin evidence and shoddy reasoning. Rather than confront the methodological lacunae that prevented him from giving a cogent public presentation of the state of the literature on race and intelligence — some uncomfortable truths, you might say — Saletan instead digs in, offering a general justification of his project of exploring "how to be an egalitarian in an age of genetic differences," by means of some unintentionally hilarious epistemological musings on truth and semantic musings on 'truth':
In retrospect, I was consumed by the wrong word. The flaw in my approach wasn't truth. It was the. Even if hereditary inequality among racial averages is a truth, it's less true, more unjust, and more pernicious than framing the same difference in nonracial terms. "The truth," as I accepted and framed it, was itself half-formed. It was, in that sense, a half-truth. And it flunked the practical test I had assigned it: To the extent that a social problem is genetic, you can't ultimately solve it by understanding it in racial terms.
Can you feel Saletan's pain yet? All he wanted to do was set right racial injustice, a noble goal if there ever was one, and might have succeeded if a pesky definite article hadn't tripped him up. But here's the thing. (And also, a thing.) As the Saletan of November might have put it, truths aren't any less true for being unjust or pernicious, nor does truth come in degrees. A proposition is true, in which case it's a truth, or it isn't, in which case it's a falsehood. Nor is it very difficult to distinguish the truth from a truth. The former is a complete, actual state of affairs, the latter is a proper part of an actual state of affairs. And the truth won't ever contradict a truth or vice versa, because any statement of the truth states all the truths. If you think you've found an intractable conflict between the two, check your work: something's gone wrong somewhere.
For example, the proposition that the best available evidence points strongly towards a genetic explanation of racial disparities in intelligence tests isn't true, hence is neither a truth nor a part of the truth. In other words, it's false. It's false despite being so counterintuitive in these politically correct days (which goes to show that counterintuition isn't foolproof — aspiring contrarian journalists, take note!). Moreover, it's so clearly false that a brief conversation with credible expert in the field ought to suffice to convince you that it's false. And the cause of ameliorating racial inequalities, in which everyone should in principle be willing to join with Saletan, isn't served by promoting falsehoods, since a false theory of racial inequality is no more useful in reforming education and social policy, than a false physical theory is useful in building bridges and tunnels.
What's more, taking the time to do adequate background research in the first place relieves you of the effort involved in months of back-pedaling and TMI-laden internal dialogues about the nobility of your intentions — effort that could be put to better use bringing whites and blacks together at the table of brotherhood.
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Will people NEVER get tired of this? Find the best way to educate people given their talents and cultures and move on.
The whole idea of IQ was developed as a teaching tool, to generate success, not as an excuse for not bothing to teach people based on racial prejudice. In fact, it’s creator noted that comparisons between economic, cultural, and ethnic grous was inherently misleading.
Another argument against hereditarianism in the Mismeasure of Man
has no problems arising from misinterpretation or logical flaws. However,
it seems to have serious troubles with empirical reality (although the news
about this is traveling slowly, and has not yet reached mainstream philosophy
of science). The argument that helped make Gould’s book famous
and that left the strongest impression on many readers is certainly his
criticism of the skull measurements undertaken by the nineteenth century
scientist Samuel George Morton. Gould claimed that the results of Morton’s
measurements indicating systematic differences in cranial capacity
between different races were due to Morton’s unconscious bias, and ultimately
his racist beliefs: "Morton’s summaries are a patchwork of fudging
and finagling in the clear interest of controlling a priori convictions."
(Gould 1981, 54) Gould then went on to propose a concrete explanation
of how the bias worked to distort the measurements, and it is this analysis
that Kitcher called "lucid".
Now, elementary logic demands that if you want to argue that someone’s
mistake is due to some kind of bias or prejudice, you have first to
be sure that the person really made a mistake. In the case of Morton’s
measurements there appears to be no room for doubt about his having
made the mistake. For, the idea that human races differ in average cranial
capacity or brain size sounds to many people like the crudest possible form
of racist and pseudoscientific belief. But notice that the belief is nevertheless
empirical, and that its truth-value cannot be determined by conceptual
analysis or political condemnation. John S. Michael thought that it was
worth checking the data, and in 1986 he remeasured the cranial capacities
of 201 specimens from the Morton Collection. In a paper published in
Current Anthropology he presented the results, and showed that the differences
reported by Morton were basically corroborated by his remeasurements.
Although Michael had qualms of a more general kind (e.g.,
about the legitimacy of "race" as a biological category), with respect to
the issue at hand (the craniological data) his conclusion was that he could
find no indication of the systematic bias Gould ascribed to Morton, and
that in his opinion "Morton’s research was conducted with integrity."
(Michael 1988, 353)
Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, IQ and Heritability, Philosophy of Science 67 (2000), pp.580-602.
The preface to the second edition of TMoM more or less said "Why do I have to do this all over again?"Â
Maybe because Gould never debunked Jensen’s actual arguments?Â
Here is what James Flynn, a consistent critic of Jensen, has to say on the matter: Gould’s book evades all of Jensen’s best arguments for a genetic component in the black-white IQ gap, by positing that they are depen-dent on the concept of g as a general intelligence factor. Therefore, Gould believes that if he can discredit g, no more need be said. This is manifestly false. Jensen’s arguments would bite no matter whether blacks suffered from a score deficit on one or 10 or 100 factors. I attri-bute no intent or motive to Gould, it is just that you cannot rebut arguments if you do not acknowledge and address them. (Flynn 1999a, 373)
Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, IQ and Heritability, Philosophy of Science 67 (2000), pp.580-602.
When Steven J. Gould (ztl) came out with The Mismeasure of Man it was to counteract just this sort of BS. Then came The Bell Curve. The preface to the second edition of TMoM more or less said "Why do I have to do this all over again?" It doesn’t matter how many times it’s debunked. The racists will always find another reason to sprain their shoulders patting themselves on the back over their own superiority.
And Saletan? His columns on Slate provoke a lot of comment from knowledgable people in the fields he touches on. Usually the comments are along the lines of "Puh-leaze. Learn something about this before you go shooting off your mouth."
Linda Gottfredson has provided a good overview of some of the fallacies used to attack the IQ testing.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2008logical-fallacies.pdf
Also, you noted previously that Gould had debunked Arthur Jensen? This is simply wrong. http://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html
In respect of Rushton, I’m not sure how you can call him a crank when someone of the stature of EO Wilson describes him as an "honest and capable researcher". Your ad hominem attack on someone who has published over 250 articles and been a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation since 1988 is very poor.
…as this statement is NOT the truth:
 "For example, the proposition that the best available evidence points strongly towards a genetic explanation of racial disparities in intelligence tests isn't true, hence is neither a truth nor a part of the truth."
 ALL the evidence points strongly to genetic explanations. Read this (including the comments), take two asprin and call me in the morning:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.phpÂ
I also suggest reading this classic from Charles Murray:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/murray1.htmlÂ
And please don't quote back to me Cosma Shalizi's long rant, as this Gene Expression post says everything you need to know about Cosma:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/11/linguist-i-can-use-r-you-cant-thus-your.phpÂ
Just a second–that either/or dichotomy–you sure you want to go there? Isn't that how Saletan got into trouble in the first place? Isn't that the paint he used when he was in the corner?Â
Aren't the questions a matter of how much of the picture he is seeing and from what angle, and are his lenses clear? You could conclude that he is seeing a very small part of the picture, that he is seeing that small part from an angle that skews the data, and that if that wasn't bad enough, he can't see what he's looking at anyway. And he would be just as wrong.
You know the story about Watson, of Watson and Crick. He made the same claims about intelligence–but now there are about 200 genetic markers that show African descent. Turns out Watson is mostly African. This of course demonstrates another principle of human behavior which, if you look, you will see far more than you want to.
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