Ms. Sujatha Byravan trots out an overused set of old chestnuts in the article, “Would Watson be different if he were black?” (The Hindu, Oct 30th). These were quite typical of the articles that sprouted all over the world in the wake of Watson’s indecorous comments implying that intelligence has a racial component.Here are some logical and scientific fallacies that I was able to spot in this specific article. Did you do any better?“Eugenics in Germany, Lewis Terman and the ‘Brahmin’”
The “Ad Hominem” attack, the first, possibly the oldest, definitely the most oft-used. “This view look similar to the ones held by Hitler. So, Sir, you are nothing but a Nazi.”
“Race is a sociological division, not biological one”
The “weak form of the antecedent implies stronger form of the consequent” fallacy. The conditional is “If there are no discernible markers at all which could be proven to be crucial to racial identity, then race is a sociological division, not a biological one.” This conditional is true, a weaker form of the antecedent is also true. (There is no single, clearly demarcated marker which can identify the race of a person.) But the unchanged form of the consequent is gleefully asserted.
The support for the above proposition comes off the assertion that there is no single, clearly demarcated visible marker which can identify the race of a person. This is true, but there is a set of genetic markers which, with their phenotypes, makes identifying the race of most people a cinch. Tightly curled hair, eye angle, skin colour and eye/hair colour are all features which overlap between racial groups. None of these, in itself, is a racial marker. But between them (and more like them), there is a classification which we do with very high probability every day and which can also be done using mathematical tools in an automated manner.
“Can’t measure, don’t compare”
It is undeniable that people have different levels of intelligence. It has been also shown again and again that there is a strong correlation between racial groups and IQ scores. This is true for both regional IQ assessment tests, as well as tests in the same region between different groups, for instance, between Blacks and Whites in USA. So, in the face of such evidence, what is the logical way out? Question the assessment method itself!
There are two fronts on which IQ tests are attacked: that IQ tests are biased towards certain races, or that IQ tests are biased towards certain cultures. Both are unfalsifiable and tautological, given the actual results. In all IQ tests, certain groups do better than others, so the test must have been biased against the latter!
Here is a falsifiable set of experiments to prove or disprove the validity of IQ tests. Take a homogenous population, and measure the success of a person, for some definition of success. For instance, this could be the income or wealth, if you believe that a person’s ability is reflected in his/her earning capacity in that society, or it could be some peer review ratings of job ability that happens in large organizations. Also measure the IQ score of that person as per some standard psychometric test. Now calculate the correlation between the ability of the person as measured by the success score and his/her IQ score. A high correlation should put to rest the question of ‘validity’ of IQ tests.
The second test is to measure the IQ scores of different racial groups, from the same environment, for example, the same region, the same median income families and the same level of education of the parents. A strong correlation here should establish the link between racial groups and IQ scores.
Actually, both these types have been done, and the results are there for all to see: There is a strong correlation between the standard IQ tests and a person’s ability and there is a strong correlation between a person’s racial group and their IQ score. Fire up your browser and search the web using your favourite search engine for a set of scientific articles like the one here http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
Another point that could be made is that the measures of success that were proposed above are essentially “Western” concepts and so there is no surprise when there is a strong correlation between those and another “Western” concept like IQ tests. My response is to ask the people to come up with measures which are “Indian” or “African” which would involve the same root objectives: quality of life, health, education, law etc, and prove that this measure is unrelated to IQ.“Nature vs nurture”That a person’s intelligence is the product of the inherited characteristics and the environment is generally accepted. But just because “nurture” plays an important role in the development of intelligence, would you ignore the contribution of “nature” to the same characteristic? The height of a person is a character which is impacted heavily both by genes and environment. Would one say that, because nutrition and physical habits play an important role in determining a person’s height, it is invalid to talk about the genetic contribution?
“Racial differences may be genetic but are superficial – ’skin-deep’”
While the authors and others of the same ilk would not argue against differences in individuals due to their genetic makeup, their hackles would go up in a jiffy, if the same argument is applied to groups. Why would differences between populations which led to the selection of genes favouring different athletic abilities, hair colour, eye structure etc. stop short of making differences to more ’sacrosanct’ features, such as intelligence or morality? That is, they would like to believe that the body and mind is a “Blank Slate” as far as certain taboo features are concerned, but it is not, for other more superficial differences. (As a comical aside, there is a measured correlation between brain size (a metric that you cannot endlessly argue about) and race. If the intelligence level is to be the same regardless of race, then does it not mean that the people with larger brain sizes are less ‘dense’?)
One chestnut surprisingly absent is the all-too-frequent assertion that there are more differences between individuals than between racial groups. This is taken to mean that differences between individuals are dominantly (85%) because they are different individuals, and only marginally (15%) because they belong to different racial groups. This conveniently glosses over the fact that 15% of genetic diversity will disappear if a race is removed from the distribution. In other words, there is a genetic marker, just that it is not a single gene.
For what it is worth, my own opinion is that it would be unfortunate if people are discriminated against based on their race or skin colour, in their education or their career. My own utopian dream would be a world where the racial differences are obliterated by interracial marriages, and regional differences are diluted by an increasingly permeable and hence irrelevant national boundaries. But it would not do to snuff out any discussion on crucial differences that exist today and hence the solutions that we need for the upliftment of different societies may be very different based on their innate advantages.
Watson would be different today if he were black. He would not have been hounded out of his job.
