Jason Malloy on P.Z. Myers

Split Rock · #21 3rd November 2008, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by Aggie

There used to be certain viewpoints that the pro-evolution posters at this forum did not generally tolerate disagreement with, even though these viewpoints had nothing to do with evolution or even with science in general. One of them was the amount of respect that everyone here seems to have for P.Z. Myers, the evolutionary biologist who runs the blog Pharyngula. The expectation that everyone here should feel this way about him didn’t used to bother me, since I used to respect him a lot also—after all, my Captain Occam comics definitely got more publicity as a result of him posting about them than from any other single source. But more recently, I’ve learned that to a certain extent, my respect for him has been ill-founded.

I have been corresponding with Jason Malloy, who’s probably the only blogger who can be considered a greater authority on evolution than P.Z. Myers is. Malloy’s blog, Gene Expression, is the original evolution blog, founded around a year before Pharyngula. Within the past year, Jason Malloy has been interviewed by the New York Times, and the article for which he was interviewed eventually won a Pulitzer. At least one of his blog posts has also gone on to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypothesis: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retri...06987708001540

All this goes to say that if there’s anyone in the blogsphere who can provide an authoritative answer to the question of whether P.Z. Myers deserves the amount or respect he’s normally given, it’s Jason Malloy. And here is what Malloy has had to say about this topic:

I’m not sure if anyone here remembers what the issue regarding Larry Summers was, but he was the president of Harvard who was attacked for suggesting, at a conference devoted to the topic of women in science, that their under-representation in this field might be for reasons other than social factors. It isn’t difficult to see from the original text of Summers’ speech how much P.Z. Myers is distorting it, but I’ll quote the summary of it from the Boston Globe just to make it clearer.

Although the Globe article isn’t clear about this, from the original text of Summers’ speech it’s possible to see that what he was describing about the difference in test scores is not that men have higher average scores than women do. What he was saying is that men have greater variance in scores than women do, with more scores at both the upper and lower end of the range. The average is the same, but if skills at both the upper and lower end of the range are more common among men than among women, qualified male applicants will be more common for a job that requires skills at the upper end of it.

Now compare this to what P.Z. Myers said about Summers; that a room of accomplished women with careers in the sciences were “all walking, talking refutations of his claim”. Anybody who’s taken an introductory-level course in statistics (which is certainly a requirement to get Myers’ level of education in biology) will be aware that saying there is some statistical tendency for a group is not the same as saying this applies to every member of the group. In other words, I can see that Malloy’s point about this is right—Myers has no excuse for making the claim that he did here.

I see the same thing in the thread Malloy linked to as an example of what Myers is like in debates. Myers’ assertion was that the measured difference in average IQ between races is caused by a difference in socio-economic status; a claim which is already rejected by the American Psychological Association. Malloy replied to this with several lines of evidence showing that SES does not have enough effect on IQ to account for the difference. Rather than attempt to refute this in his reply, Myers simply quoted more of the sources Malloy was using, showing that they didn’t think genetic factors were the cause either, as though this disproved Malloy’s point. Several times, Malloy commented again to say that he wasn’t making the claim that genetics were the cause (“I did not make the claim that any intelligence difference was genetic here”) and that Myers’ point was thus irrelevant, but Myers continued to reply with two sentence-quips that did not even acknowledge what Malloy was saying about this. (“Jason--I read your references. They suggest the opposite of what you are saying.” That was the entirety of one of Myers’ replies.)

If this forum were still the way it was when I left it for a while several months ago, I expect that the way the other members would react to my pointing out these things about P.Z. Myers probably would be fairly similar to what Myers himself said about Larry Summers and to Jason Malloy: angry responses that assume me to be saying something I’m not, or one-liners that sound as though the person replying didn’t even read my post. I used to get these sorts of replies a lot. If that’s the way things go in this thread, I’ll probably disappear for another few months, until I decide it’s time to test the conditions here again.

Maybe this board has improved since then, though. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see: what do the people here have to say about this major shortcoming of a person whom most of you admire?

Hi Aggie, nice to see you back

A few points I would like to make:

1. I know of Myers, but have read little of his blogs. He is not sancrosant to me, or anyone else here, as far as I know.

2. I agree with some of the things Larry Summers said, such that women tend to see family as a more important priority than their career. And that this attitude can explain some of why they lag behind men in scientific careers. Much of what he said was blown out of proportion.

3. As far as IQ tests go, what are you measuring? The ability to take an IQ test. You are certainly not measuring intelligence, since how well you are educated impacts how well you do on the exam. For example: If I was very intelligent, but poorly educated, how would I do on an IQ test? Poorly. Also, if I recall from your previous thread on this subject, test scores are higher for blacks in the US compared to Africa. Clearly, the test is affected by parameters outside of intelligence. Now, you have shown some attempts at "correcting" for SES factors, such as education, and shown that the numbers improve (more evidence that IQ tests do not measure intelligence). Yet, there is still a 10 point gap. Why are you concluding that the "corrected" tests have compensated for all the potential factors that can alter the test scores, rather than conclude that the "corrected" tests have not compensated for all such factors?

4. I remain skeptical of the importance of a 10 point difference in average IQ test scores between groups compared to the large variation between individuals within each group.

Aggie · #22 4th November 2008, 01:00 AM

Originally Posted by Split Rock

As far as IQ tests go, what are you measuring? The ability to take an IQ test. You are certainly not measuring intelligence, since how well you are educated impacts how well you do on the exam. For example: If I was very intelligent, but poorly educated, how would I do on an IQ test? Poorly. Also, if I recall from your previous thread on this subject, test scores are higher for blacks in the US compared to Africa. Clearly, the test is affected by parameters outside of intelligence. Now, you have shown some attempts at "correcting" for SES factors, such as education, and shown that the numbers improve (more evidence that IQ tests do not measure intelligence). Yet, there is still a 10 point gap. Why are you concluding that the "corrected" tests have compensated for all the potential factors that can alter the test scores, rather than conclude that the "corrected" tests have not compensated for all such factors?

I think you ought to look at some of the material I linked to—especially the APA statement, Malloy’s article about Watson, and Jensen and Rushton’s peer-reviewed paper from 2005. There are a few lines of evidence described in them that suggest IQ is measuring more than test-taking ability.

One is something I’ve already talked about a little in this thread: IQ is a very accurate predictor of academic and economic success. Education affects success in these areas also, so this doesn’t disprove the idea that education affects IQ, but it still suggests that IQ is measuring more than just test-taking ability. (Since presumably, economic success depends on more than test-taking ability.)

Another way of measuring intelligence that’s talked about in Jensen and Rushton’s paper is mental chronometry, which measures the speed at which the brain processes information. A typical mental chronometry test would have the subject sitting in front of a red light and a blue light, and when one of the light turns on, they have to push a button of that color as quickly as possible. This measures the subject’s synapse speed, which is the main neurological factor that determines intelligence. This isn’t something that test-taking ability would affect, and unlike the comparative nature of IQ tests, mental chronometry also provides an absolute measurement of synapse speed in milliseconds. As that paper mentions, mental chronometry tests show about the same difference in intelligence between races that traditional IQ tests do.

There are two things that need to be considered about the difference between the U.S. and Africa in this respect. One is that most African-Americans in North America are not 100% African by ancestry; I think the average of their ancestry is somewhere between 65% and 75% African. So even this different in intelligence were 100% genetic, we’d expect to see some difference in scores between continents. But there are also environmental factors affecting intelligence that are much more significant than education, and the big environmental difference between the U.S. and Africa is that malnutrition is much more common there. When you consider that in addition to the difference in racial admixture, I think the difference in IQ between Africans in Africa and African-Americans is about what we’d expect to see.

One other thing I should mention about this is that from my own perspective, I don’t consider it 100% certain that genes are playing a role in this difference in IQ. But I do think it’s likely enough that I have a pretty serious problem with the attitude of people like Myers, who think that no good scientist should ever hold this opinion. One of the reasons I feel this way is that among some of the genes which have been discovered that affect IQ, the alleles which raise it are already known to be higher among Europeans and Asians than among Africans. With this in mind, it becomes a question of Occam’s razor: we can’t know for sure that there isn’t some environmental factor which could completely explain the difference in IQ, but all of the obvious ones can be tested and ruled out, and in the meantime there’s an observed genetic pattern sitting in front of us which can provide a very straightforward explanation. The most that can be said against the genetic hypothesis is that it’s in need of more attention and testing before it can be considered certain, which is virtually the opposite of the attitudes of people like Myers, who think that scientists should never consider this hypothesis at all.

Originally Posted by Split Rock

I remain skeptical of the importance of a 10 point difference in average IQ test scores between groups compared to the large variation between individuals within each group.

First of all, most estimates (such as those at Wikipedia) place it around 15 points, although that doesn’t really matter for what we’re discussing.

But anyway, the reason it’s important is because people make it important. What I mean by this is that a huge amount of attention gets paid to the racial achievement gap, and the supposed discrimination that’s the cause of it, and people who think it’s caused by discrimination and nothing else have all sorts of accusations about this against companies and colleges where African-Americans are under-represented. I would love it if people could just stop paying attention to this issue, let everyone succeed economically when they’re able to, and not pay attention to the fact that it’s a little more common in some ethnic groups than others. But as I mentioned in my OP, as long as people are unaware that this gap could be caused by anything other than discrimination, I don’t think this will be able to happen.

Naraoia · #23 4th November 2008, 07:02 AM

Originally Posted by Aggie

Another way of measuring intelligence that’s talked about in Jensen and Rushton’s paper is mental chronometry, which measures the speed at which the brain processes information. A typical mental chronometry test would have the subject sitting in front of a red light and a blue light, and when one of the light turns on, they have to push a button of that color as quickly as possible. This measures the subject’s synapse speed, which is the main neurological factor that determines intelligence. This isn’t something that test-taking ability would affect, and unlike the comparative nature of IQ tests, mental chronometry also provides an absolute measurement of synapse speed in milliseconds.

Well, I by no means consider myself representative of humanity (or, indeed, any part of humanity

), but my experience is that I get totally mental-blocked when I'm under pressure or expecting a trigger like that I must respond correctly to.

It's the kind of situation when adding two two-digit numbers takes me minutes, and it also affects my non-conscious responses (as in sparring

). I'd be an idiot to suggest that this kind of thing is what causes the difference, but has it been investigated/accounted for? Added for clarity (I was pretty much chased from the computer room this morning, someone had it booked for a lecture, so I made this post in a bit of a hurry.): I mean something like stereotypes, expectations - both other people's perceived expectations and the subjects' own - et al. stressing people out or otherwise influencing processing speed. I think there was something like that done about women's maths abilities.

Aggie · #24 4th November 2008, 06:37 PM

Originally Posted by Naraoia

Well, I by no means consider myself representative of humanity (or, indeed, any part of humanity ), but my experience is that I get totally mental-blocked when I'm under pressure or expecting a trigger like that I must respond correctly to.

It's the kind of situation when adding two two-digit numbers takes me minutes, and it also affects my non-conscious responses (as in sparring ). I'd be an idiot to suggest that this kind of thing is what causes the difference, but has it been investigated/accounted for? Added for clarity (I was pretty much chased from the computer room this morning, someone had it booked for a lecture, so I made this post in a bit of a hurry.): I mean something like stereotypes, expectations - both other people's perceived expectations and the subjects' own - et al. stressing people out or otherwise influencing processing speed. I think there was something like that done about women's maths abilities.

Something I think is worth keeping in mind about any of these tests is that most of the time, they aren’t performed specifically for the purpose of comparing IQs between races. It’s not like a person goes into one of these tests being told, “We’re testing you so we can see if your race has lower average intelligence.” IQ tests (and alternative intelligence testing methods like mental chronometry) are routinely done for all sorts of reasons, and people like Jensen and Rushton usually just analyze the testing data that already exists, in order to search for these kinds of patterns.

So the real question is, would stereotypes stress out a person enough to lower their reaction time when they’re just having their intelligence tested for a routine reason, and race isn’t being brought up at all? That seems kind of unlikely.

Something about this that might be more significant is that just as East Asians tend to have above-average scores on traditional IQ tests, mental chronometry shows their reaction time to be above-average also. Since synapse speed represents a physical upper limit on possible reaction speed, it isn’t possible that stereotypes are causing them to do better on these tests than would be an accurate measurement of their synapse speed. If you’re going to ascribe the difference in reaction times between whites and Asians to stereotypes, the only possibility is that there’s some sort of stereotype against white people that’s causing them to do more poorly on these tests than would be an accurate measurement. The idea that stereotypes are having this kind of effect on Caucasians, who are a majority in the U.S., doesn’t seem likely either.

Naraoia · #25 5th November 2008, 10:07 AM

Originally Posted by Aggie

...people like Jensen and Rushton usually just analyze the testing data that already exists, in order to search for these kinds of patterns.

It doesn't have to be specifically for that purpose. Stereotypes don't stop existing when people aren't tested specifically for their effects.

Hmm, I've actually found a discussion of the effect of stereotypes on performance (might have been the one I remembered, it certainly was in SciAm online), and it seems a much more complex phenomenon than a simple "whether you think you can or you can't, you are right" relationship (but what did I expect from something as complicated as humans

). Being aware of a stereotype can decrease (if negative) or increase (if positive) performance, but apparently the effect depends on all sorts of other things, such as how important it is to you to perform well in the task.

By the way, the method of mental chronometry you described doesn't seem to measure synapse speed directly (or do they have electrodes in your brain while you're pushing buttons?). And even if it did, it would only measure current and not maximum synapse speed. So as far as I can see without plunging into the literature, the psychological factors that may boost or decrease test performance could influence mental chronometry in exactly the same way.

Aggie · #26 5th November 2008, 10:38 AM

Originally Posted by Naraoia

By the way, the method of mental chronometry you described doesn't seem to measure synapse speed directly (or do they have electrodes in your brain while you're pushing buttons?). And even if it did, it would only measure current and not maximum synapse speed. So as far as I can see without plunging into the literature, the psychological factors that may boost or decrease test performance could influence mental chronometry in exactly the same way.

In a given person’s brain, synapse speed is fixed. If I remember correctly, it’s determined by the thickness of the fatty coating at the end of each neuron. If stress is having some sort of paralyzing effect, that wouldn’t actually slow down the synapses; it would just make the mental task unnecessarily complex so that the number of synapses required to perform it increases.

If you need a citation for this, I can get one from Ferahgo the next time I see her (she’s out of town right now), since some of her psychology courses have covered the specific mechanics of this. Her textbooks probably explain it in better detail than I can.

Anyway, if stereotypes are going to stress people out the way you described, it’s possible that this would slow down people’s reaction times by making them require more complex mental operations. (Although if this is happening even when the person is being tested for a reason that has nothing to do with race, it means stereotypes would have to be slowing down their reaction time for everything—when they’re driving cars, when they’re playing sports, or when they’re trying to swat a mosquito—do you really think that’s likely?) But when the test is operating correctly, as it would in the absence of stereotypes, the only thing that affects the results other than synapse speed is the speed at which people can move their muscles, and the 2005 paper I linked to takes that factor into account.

So as I said, since synapse speed can’t be increased by positive stereotypes, the only way to explain the difference in mental chronometry between Europeans and Asians via stereotypes is if negative stereotypes against Europeans are decreasing their performance.

Naraoia · #27 5th November 2008, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by Aggie

In a given person’s brain, synapse speed is fixed. If I remember correctly, it’s determined by the thickness of the fatty coating at the end of each neuron. If stress is having some sort of paralyzing effect, that wouldn’t actually slow down the synapses; it would just make the mental task unnecessarily complex so that the number of synapses required to perform it increases.

My mistake. Correction noted.

Anyway, if stereotypes are going to stress people out the way you described, it’s possible that this would slow down people’s reaction times by making them require more complex mental operations. (Although if this is happening even when the person is being tested for a reason that has nothing to do with race, it means stereotypes would have to be slowing down their reaction time for everything—when they’re driving cars, when they’re playing sports, or when they’re trying to swat a mosquito—do you really think that’s likely?)

Being black has completely opposite connotations in intelligence tests and sports. Does it have any at all in more neutral things like fly swatting?

So as I said, since synapse speed can’t be increased by positive stereotypes, the only way to explain the difference in mental chronometry between Europeans and Asians via stereotypes is if negative stereotypes against Europeans are decreasing their performance.

Or if baseline performance isn't anywhere near max performance and Europeans aren't as motivated to perform above baseline as Asians are. I find that more likely than negative stereotype. Of course, for all I know the difference could be a true racial difference, but it's hardly true that negative stereotype is the only way to explain it.

As I've said, I've seen no sign that mental chronometry actually measures synapse speed (again, correct me if I'm mistaken).

(N.B. I really don't know what to think about these issues and I don't have the time, much less the motivation, to read enough to form an informed opinion. I just find it fun looking for possible holes

)

Aggie · #28 5th November 2008, 03:09 PM

Originally Posted by Naraoia

As I've said, I've seen no sign that mental chronometry actually measures synapse speed (again, correct me if I'm mistaken).

Well, if mental chronometry tests aren’t measuring that, they aren’t doing what they’re designed to do. I guess that’s possible, but it’s a fairly well-established testing method, and the results are always pretty consistent with those of a normal IQ test. That would make sense if it’s measuring synapse speed (which is the main neurological factor that influences IQ), but I’m not sure how you would explain this otherwise.

As J. Philippe Rushton pointed out on NPR here, there are close to 100 different ways of measuring intelligence, and they all correlate with each other pretty well. So whatever ways that you think the tests are inaccurate, you’d need to either come up with a type of inaccuracy that can affect them all in exactly the same way, or explain why multiple confounding factors would all have the same effect.

For normal IQ tests, the stereotype threat possibility definitely doesn’t explain why scores would differ between 100% African children raised by white families and mixed-race children raised by white families, especially when the mixed-race children believe themselves to be 100% African. I don’t think the stereotypes are any different—as I said before, 50% African people such as Obama are still just thought of as being “black”—but even if the stereotypes are different, people aren’t able to be affected by stereotypes of a heritage that they don’t know they have. So any explanation for the IQ difference that ascribes it to inaccurate testing will have to explain why stereotype threats for mental chronometry, and whatever’s causing the difference for normal IQ tests in the adoption study, would both affect the results in exactly the same way.

plindboe · #29 6th November 2008, 05:39 AM

Originally Posted by Aggie

Neither of the two explanations you’ve given adequately explain the data, though. For mixed-race children with a white mother and a black father, prenatal exposure shouldn’t be any different than for a child with two white parents.

True, but the original study doesn't seem to separate the mixed children into 2 groups of 1."White mother & black father" and 2."Black mother & white father", it simply says "One white and one black biological parent". So let's consider the possibility that prenatal exposures was a significant contributor to the measured differences. Then mixed children with a white mother and black father would score an IQ more similar to children with 2 white biological parents, and mixed children with a black mother and white father would score an IQ more similar to children with 2 black biological parents. But since the study has lumped these scores into the same group, the average score they present would wound up somewhere in the middle.

That said, I do find the study results very interesting but inconclusive, and you've certainly peaked my interest more in the subject. When I have more time some day, I'll read more about it.

Peter

RobertByers · #30 6th November 2008, 06:47 AM

i am a creationist.
I post on Myers thing and nail them pretty good.
Yet he is right that there is no difference between human beings in thinking save cases of retardation.
In fact I was banned at IIDB for this subject .

all people can achieve the same. The bible teaches this.
Differences are due to the equation of motivation and information.
Of coarse men prevail over women in math. The only reason one cares about high math is the prestige of it. men are more on the make then women. men prevail over women in any field that can not be fixed or open to judgement. so business, sports etc.
Math just can't be faked. Gotta have the right answer. No memory work of answers like state capitals.

Anyone can tell in anything women are not motivated as men to achieve. In numbers and intensity.
likewise ethnic groups up or down have motivations separate from others.
In fact the ris of modern civilization was from Protestant motivations especially Puritan/Evangelical. This is why the english world prevailed in intellect over the rest. Even closer observation can reveal the scottish enlightment as pound for pound at the time prevailing over the english.
The true orbit of intellectual success is still not understood any more then why blacks prevail in sports.
Motivation equals greater skills learned in the endeavor.