Mod Note
Front. Psychol., 23 March 2016
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00399/full
What do you think is causing racial/national differences in cognitive ability tests?
The so called experts that the so called study contacted to complete the survey are simply people who have advocated a difference based on race and intelligence. From your link:
Notice of the study was emailed to experts who published articles on or after 2010 in journals on intelligence, cognitive abilities, and student achievement. The journals included Intelligence, Cognitive Psychology, Contemporary Educational Psychology, New Ideas in Psychology, and Learning and Individual Differences. Notice of the study was also emailed to members of the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR), and posted to the web site for the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID). ISIR and ISSID support intelligence research and host professional conferences with intelligence researchers. Finally, the study was announced at the 2013 ISIR conference in Melbourne, Australia. A total of 1345 people received an email invitation. An expert was defined as a person who had published on cognitive ability or who had attended intelligence conferences and presented research. Compared to Snyderman and Rothman (1988, pp. 46–49), our selection criteria were based more on publications in specific scientific journals and less on membership in scientific organizations. In addition, we used email and a web-based survey rather than traditional mail and paper-pencil surveys.
We received a total of 265 responses from May 2013 to March 2014, at which time the survey was closed. The response rate was 20% of all invitations. The present article focused on cross-national differences and concerned questions toward the end of the survey. These questions were answered by 71 respondents. By comparison, there were 1020 invitations and 661 participants (65%) in the Snyderman and Rothman study.
Each of the "experts" who belong to these groups read like a member list of a white power conference. They surveyed those who believe just like they do. There was no 'outside' expert surveyed.
In short, the "science" behind these studies and its
history has been debunked more times than one can count and the history of this kind of research has often been the basis to support racial segregation.
It would explain why this particular "study" can only be found on websites that support racism and racial segregation. Sites such as American Renaissance, who publish many such racist and bigoted 'papers' that promote racism and racial segregation.
It is also why this study and others like it, never appear in actual science journals. It is
shoddy science. No, shoddy is too nice a word. It is
bunk science.
Now, Phill, I notice that you have been posting this thread on various other forums, from legitimate science sub-forums, to right wing and frankly racist forums like "st0rmfront".
Your belief that race matters in this instance is,
frankly, wrong.
It is important to remember that many environmental factors affect intelligence either favourably or adversely97,98. Prenatal environment affects intelligence, and premature birth can impair it. In a metaanalysis of 212 studies of intelligence, Devlin et al.8 showed that although heritability was high (around 48%), fetal environment accounted for 20% of the correlation of intelligence between identical twins and for 5% of the correlation between non-twin siblings that shared the same womb consecutively. Maternal drug or alcohol use, or exposure to environmental toxins such as lead, can also adversely affect the achieved intelligence of offspring (see studies cited in REF. 89). The duration of breastfeeding during infancy has been associated with higher IQ in a group of more than 2,000 children assessed at age six99. However, this association has been disputed, as it is confounded by maternal age, intelligence and education, as well as by smoking during pregnancy. After adjusting for these confounding factors, breastfeeding during infancy is still associated with enhanced childhood cognitive development (by 2–5 IQ points for full-term infants and 8 points for those of low birth weight)100.
After birth, the environment in which a child is raised also affects their intellectual function. Bouchard et al.83 found that growing up in the same family increased IQ similarities for all types of relatives. Individual’s IQs were more highly correlated with those of their monozygotic twins, non-twin siblings and parents (0.86, 0.47 and 0.42, respectively) if they grew up with them. The strength of the correlations decreased if individuals were raised separately from these relatives (0.72, 0.24 and 0.22). Adopted children’s IQs are also correlated with those of their adoptive siblings (0.34) and adoptive parents (0.19). So 20–35% of the observed population differences in IQ are thought to be due to differences between family environments. Intriguingly, the influence of shared family environments on IQ dissipates once children leave home — between adult adoptive relatives, there is a correlation of IQ of –0.01 (REF. 101). Environmental influences on IQ that persist are thought to be those experiences that an individual does not share with others. Interpreted broadly, these include the biochemical environment in the womb, and the multitude of random events in human life that are difficult to quantify or control. In a recent study of 320 pairs of twins born in the 1960s and given IQ tests at age seven, Turkheimer et al.102 found that environmental factors have a much greater influence on childhood IQ in impoverished families relative to those in families of higher socioeconomic status. The heritability of IQ at the low end of the wealth spectrum was just 0.10. By contrast, it was 0.72 for more wealthy families, indicating that nature is more significant than nurture when socioeconomic status is high, while the reverse is true when socioeconomic status is low. That the genetic contribution to intelligence differs in different environments is a caveat against general inferences based on heritability data.
Inherited intelligence plays a much smaller part and frankly, comparing between races is incorrect. The reason it is wrong is because the groups that are tested are never matched in that they are unequal in parental education, health, nutrition, how often they are tested and pre and post natal environment, from what drugs or medications the biological parents consumed prior to and during pregnancy, to breastfeeding and duration the test subjects were breastfed, to where they live and their socio-economic status within their given communities, to how the test subjects grew up.
How can I put this as bluntly as I can?
We aren't interested. In other words, you don't get to peddle biased research that has no real foundation in science here.
