Jason Malloy on P.Z. Myers

But it appears as if you're trying to get a rise out of members here, who you think look to Meyers as some kind of an 'authority' figure, and that if you show him to be wrong about something, then that should somehow crush his 'worshipers'. It's as if you're trying to push buttons to get reactions, yet you premise this whole thing with complaining about the reactions of members here which caused you to leave for a couple months.

I see what you're trying to do but I'm more inclined to think you'll learn nothing useful. It's just a poor experiment IMHO. Whatever the results are, you won't be able to tell if it's because responders are naturally like that or because you manipulated them into a reaction.

Also, Malloy confuses racial differences with differences due to environmental factors. In other words, the argument he seems to make is that the differences between blacks and caucasians are due to some inherent racial difference, when this need not be the case. This is emphasized by the APA's finding that differences in group IQ between African Americans and caucasians seem to be closing as more African Americans find their way into jobs of a higher social status: "It is possible, however, that this differential is diminishing. In the most recent re-standardization of the Stanford-Binet test, the Black/White differential was 13 points for younger children and 10 points for older children (Thorndike et al, 1986). In several other studies of children since 1980, the Black mean has consistently been over 90 and the differential has been in single digits (Vincent, 1991). Larger and more definitive studies are needed before this trend can be regarded as established." (see here. This might mean that IQ differences between black and Caucasians are indeed social constructs and not inherent differences.

I don’t see how you’re getting that Malloy is arguing that any specific factor is the cause of the IQ difference. He’s argued elsewhere for what he thinks is causing it, but as I quoted from him in my OP, in that thread he was very clear that he was not trying to argue here that it has a genetic cause. He was disputing one very specific claim that Myers made: that low SES was the cause of low IQ.

I think you might be making a similar mistake here to the one Myers made, in assuming that it has to be either SES or something inherent, so evidence against something inherent is the same as evidence that it’s caused by SES. This is a false dichotomy.

Or am I missing something here? Why do you say that Malloy is claiming the difference in IQ is due to something innate, when he specifically stated in that thread “I did not make the claim that any intelligence difference was genetic here”?

Also in that thread, Myers makes it sufficiently clear that he doesn't think it is just SES. From Myers: "I disagree. Poverty and a history of oppression came first, and we have an ongoing cycle of social factors that keep African-Americans down. And that's an opinion the sources you cited seem to share." So nowhere does Meyers make the claim that it is only SES.

Then why does he state that the claim "...1000 kids of any race could be raised to be successful college kids." is false in conjunction with differences between groups. Meyers was in this part referring to a "blank slate" state where different groups of kids, given the exact same circumstances, will achieve the same thing. I can imagine Malloy stating that a certain percentage of kids will not make college level for whichever reason. There is a natural variability within groups on this level. However, he states "within and between groups" in this context, implying that there is some inherent, non-cultural difference between 1000 black kids and 1000 white kids that would make the percentage of white kids to achieve college higher than that of black kids.

He claimed that in the second comment of the thread. Anon said in the first comment there, “Low intelligence is a major cause of poverty; that's the way the arrow of causation points.” The APA analysis I linked to in my OP agrees with that conclusion, but Myers replied to say “You've got your arrow reversed.” That is to say, that the arrow of causation points from poverty to low IQ, not the other way around.

That’s what Malloy was disputing. Myers showed that the sources Malloy was using didn’t think there was enough evidence to conclude it was genetic, but they didn’t support Myers’ claim about the arrow of causation pointing form poverty to low IQ.

When you look at his claim about it being caused by a history of oppression, it also isn’t really different from the SES claim. Slavery ended after the civil war, and institutionalized discrimination ended in the 1960s, so the African-Americans who are currently applying to college were born around 25 years after the end of this oppression. For African-American who were born in 1990 and are now taking SAT tests, what social factors would there currently be to negatively affect their test scores, that result from their ancestors having been oppressed before these people were born? Well… there’s the fact that African-Americans still tend to not have as much money as Caucasians, but that’s the SES claim again, which Malloy’s evidence shows to be incorrect. What other ways could a history of oppression possibly be affecting people who weren’t born until 25 years after the oppression stopped?

OK, I see what’s confusing you. That was an entirely separate thread, which Malloy had a problem with unrelated to the problem I was just describing with PZ’s SES claim. In the SES thread, he was trying to stay off the topic of whether there are environmental factors other than SES that cause the difference in IQ, but that’s what his problem is with the claim you just quoted.

Part of the problem with this is just what you stated: between individuals, variation in adult IQ is around 80% genetic, and the APA analysis states that academic success depends very heavily on IQ. So it’s very unlikely that 1000 people of any group, chosen at random, will all have what it takes to become successful college students. But Malloy is also referring to something else here, which is that whatever is causing the IQ difference, controlling for environment doesn’t seem able to make it go away.

His article here talks about this. The most relevant part of his post is the part about the Minnesota transracial adoption study, which studied how it affected black and white childrens’ IQ to be adopted and raised by a family of the opposite race. This removes cultural influence as well as economic factors, so it’s about as close as any experiment can come to removing environmental influence entirely. Here’s the data from it:

IQ at Age 7:
W-W 111.5
W-B 105.4
B-B 91.4

IQ at Age 17:
W-W 101.5
W-B 93.2
B-B 83.7

W-W = Adopted children with two white biological parents.
W-B = Adopted children with one black and one white biological parent.
B-B = Adopted children with two black biological parents.

IQ tests given to young children tend to have inflated scores, so the decrease in IQ between age 7 and 17 isn’t significant for what this is measuring. The relevant thing is that when black children are raised in a white cultural and economic environment, this doesn’t significantly increase their IQ, nor does being raised by a black families lower the IQ of white children. Perhaps more significantly, mixed-race children have an IQ around halfway between the two, even when they are raised under the mistaken information that they have two black biological parents.

Between the 100% African children and the mixed-race children, a difference in IQ of around 10 points exists even though both are raised in the same cultural and economic environment, both have the same cultural identity as African-Americans, and in some cases they are not even aware that they have different biological parentage. What possible environmental factor could Myers think can be equaized in order to make this IQ difference go away?

But the sources Malloy cited don't negate the direction from IQ to poverty. They say that some ethnic groups on average have lower IQs than others and that this difference is not completely explained by poverty, but not that poverty does not cause low IQ. At best they tell us that this is not the entire story. And Meyers already says that.

Because while the oppression stopped, the effects of that oppression take a longer time to go away. It's not only schooling and and money that effect this, but the complete set of culture, stimulation at home, fitting in, expectations directed at the child. These effects take time to undo, they won't go away within a few years and will probably linger longer than a few generations. And indeed, as I already showed, there is evidence that now, about one or one and a half generations later, IQ of African Americans begins to rise in comparison to Caucasian children (that in that APA document you linked to).

I would have a number of possible environmental factors, like different prenatal exposures or expectations of black and white kids in classes based on color (Caste-like minority effect), to just guess on a few possibilities. I would need to read the full article on this to be able to say more. Do you have it? Otherwise I'll need to get it through my library.