It's out of my area of expertise too, as it is Fraser's, but I can still spot it for a clear overgeneralisation. If he had support for his statement, and I mean "sure-fire" "all experience in the world tells us" support, the offending one, he would have got off on "genuine academic purpose" grounds.

And I'd agree, were it not offensive.

Remember, the pen is mightier than the sword.

Again I'm not sure what papers he submitted in his defence, but I would be very surprised if they supported his overgeneralization.

Had his views been academically sound they would have been deemed to have been made in good faith.

Now I accept you don't agree with it, because you have a more liberal concept of free speech than I do. If what he said wasn't wrong or offensive I'd have a problem with it. But a minor limitation of free speech to encourage people not to make overgeneralised racially offensive statements, and a mild form of punishment when they do, is just not a concern for me.

Firstly, just how, where and when is this public debate to take place, who adjudicates it, is a result decided upon, and if so when and by whom? If the WN crowd branch-stack it should we accept the result. Should we have a poll on Lateline like the election debates? I've got lot's of questions about just how a fair debate is going to somehow come about.

Secondly, his statements were not only wrong, they were racially offensive. There's no law against being wrong.

It's a very minor limitation on freedom of speech to encourage people not to make racially offensive over-generalisations as fact in public forums such as newspapers. I don't have a problem with it.

Why not?

I agree genetics are not completely irrelevent, although I don't see them as relevent as you. Consider that African American's, despite supposedly having less than 25% European genetics, are already averaging 15 more IQ points than Europeans did 100 years ago, I think that shows environment is by far the dominant factor.

See where I'm going? Every couple of generations, a sparrows fart in evolutionary terms, they bridge the gap. The lag is mostly because of historical differences in environmental factors.

I suggest you brief Andrew Fraser on the finer points of that last sentence article before he makes any comments on Dr Lahn's work.

Well Australia may not be the US (thank Christ), but it's certainly not the USSR either. Fraser has hardly been sent to a gulag, he's been asked to apologise over his racially offensive over-generalisations, and IMO it's only his stubborn refusal to do so that may see him in the courts. He made an incorrect and offensive public statement, so what's the big deal with expecting an apology?

Again, you should be Fraser's spokesperson.

Jerry

JERRY:

Well I suppose we will have to agree to disagree. I believe that no man should ever have to face a quasi-judicial tribunal and/or a court of law because of their ideological or political views especially ones made in good faith. Now, Fraser may have placed his foot in his mouth but I genuinely believe that he believed what he wrote…

The fact that those views may be incorrect or exaggerated along with possibly being offensive does not in my Americanised view change my position on the matter.

Such views should be combated in the public arena with debate and/or in academic circles. I would rather all people have their say whether they are Stalinists or Neo-Nazi’s while allowing society to judge their message.

That is my take on this and it will likely not change in the near future.


I do seem to have some backing from a study published in Royal Economic Society's Economic Journal. Again I am not claiming that this is etched in stone...

LONDON: Nature, not nurture, is the main determinant of how well children perform at school and university, according to a study to be published this week.

The researchers came to their conclusion by comparing how well adopted children did at school when they were brought up alongside parents' biological children. The relative effects of genes and the home environment were then separated out. Previous studies have suggested that the home environment, and in particular the level of family income, is the most important determinant of educational attainment.

But the new study, to be published in the Royal Economic Society's Economic Journal, will argue that while income and home environment account for about 25 per cent of educational attainment, inherited intelligence is responsible for the rest.

SOURCE: ‘Good genes beat good homes as guide to pupils’ school success – Times Online UK – November 6, 2005.

Second the increase of intelligence quotient scores over decades or years is referred to as the Flynn Effect if I am not mistaken?

The big problem with this theory is it is not a constant. According to a recent 2005 study by Owens and Teesdale 500,000 Danes illustrated that the decade by decade increase of Intelligence Quotient scores beginning in the 1950’s has not only peaked but reverted back to pre-1991 levels. A similar study by Professor Philip Adey and Professor Michael Shayer showed a similar regression in IQ scores in the United Kingdom in a study of IQ tests over a three year period and compared to results from the mid-1990's and 1976.

Now I fully support Owens research! He is right! I believe that the IQ’s of Danes and Brits have stopped going up! Why? The Danes were dumb enough not to realise the Mohammed Cartoon fiasco would have pissed off the Muslim world as it did and the Brits keep electing Tony Blair and New Labour into power. If this is not evidence of a decrease in IQ I do not know what is!

All kidding aside though one cannot assume that population groups across the board will continue to increase in IQ based on the theoretical Flynn Effect. We cannot assume that in 50 years time that Sudanese who have an average IQ of 72 according to Prof. Richard Lynn will have IQ’s in the high 80’s or 90’s based on a theory that lacks consistency.

The gap stopped bridging in the 1980's. The Flynn Effect if an accurate may have peaked for the African Americans at that point. Professor Richard Lynn estimated the peak was in 1989 if I am not mistaken...

CHICAGO—The achievement gap between African-Americans and whites, which narrowed for much of the 20th century, has stalled and is likely to persist for generations unless something is done to improve the learning experiences of African-American children, contends new research at the University of Chicago. Derek Neal, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, is the author of an upcoming chapter, “Why Has Black-White Skill Convergence Stopped?” to be published later this year in the Handbook of Economics of Education.

In the chapter, Neal traces the educational progress of African Americans during the 20th century. He argues that the experience of the past 15 years is an ominous departure from the pattern of sustained progress observed throughout most of the 20th century.

The 1940 Census is the first source of national data on educational attainment, and Neal points out that the black-white education gap among young adults fell steadily from 1940 to 1990. In 1990, however, black-white convergence in educational attainment stopped. “Among men and women ages 26 to 30 in 2000, the black-white educational attainment gap is slightly larger than the corresponding gap in 1990,” he said.

Scores on standardized tests follow a similar pattern. “From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, black children made striking gains in achievement while scores for white children remained relatively flat,” Neal said, but test score gaps among 9- and 13-year-olds stopped closing in the late 1980s.

SOURCE: 'Black-White Achievement Gap Has Stopped Narrowing' - AScribe Newswire - Apr. 28, 2005.

Frank, stop being so childish and perhaps you'll make some friends

__________________
Client: In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!
Tailor: But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look at the world, and look at my trousers.
(Beckett)

Maybe you should practice what you preach?

http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/foru...0&postcount=48

http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/foru...6&postcount=54

http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/foru...8&postcount=79

Australia should do what Australia needs to do. You have competent leaders.

Just don't expect America to sacrifice it's agriculture industry for Australia's profits.

Food is a basic necessity. There is no reason for America to be dependent on foreign nations who OBVIOUSLY put their own interests above America's.

Get it?

Well don't hate America because it is the land of plenty. That just makes you jealous and shows your grievances are personal and not egalitarian.

I can't empathize with that, especially when it is obvious that everybody would love to see America fall. Everyone wishes America the worst and then they expect Americans to level the playing field for them? Whatever.....

China undercuts American manufacturing with cheap labor. What can we do?

Everybody deals with it.

__________________
One day, I will sneak across the border into Canada and be an illegal alien. It will be fun.

Jihad, I think as usual you selectively interpret the meaning of my post. The fact that the US has better land and resources is not an issue for me - good luck to you - but when in addition you have farm subsidies and the like - something which politically is really a form of agrarian socialism - we can't compete with you. In view of this - the FTA is not in our interests.

If academics in this country point this out - and it is in fact the truth - I don't believe they should be silenced.

This is not America, this is Australia - and although the PM might like to redefine it as a state of the US - we are a different country with a different history - and there is absolutely no reason for us to put up or shut up when our government does something which we are not in agreement with.

In actual fact - the criticism was not of the US - but of the FTA. It was NOT in the interests of our primary producers (and several other sectors) to sign it.

Please Jihad - try to stop reading everything I say as anti American. When you do you reveal more about your own biases than you do about mine.

We'll have to disagree on this one, but it's been good going through it again, rounding off the rough edges we clashed over earlier.

I guess my view isn't Americanised enough for you. I feel his words are actions with consequences, and he should be responsible for their actions.

It's the classic rights vs responsibilty payoff.

Fair enough. I'm all for people having a say, for freedom of speech, but I think encouraging people to thinking a little critically about their claims before opening their mouths, particularly in public forums on sensitive topics, isn't a bad thing, rather than having people free reign to spout out offensive misinformation merely on the grounds they happen to believe it.

Yes, lets agree to disagree.

Firstly there is no mention in that article of race whatsoever. So if you have retarded genes chances are your children will too, whether you are black or white. No surprise there.

Now look at this sentence:

There is a gaping hole, a glaring weakness in this statement. I don't know if it was from a dickhead journo or a dickhead academic, but one of them is probably a dickhead, and I suspect it is the journo. See if you can guess what the weakness is.

I think the Poms have turned the corner, but I reserve my judgement until after the next Ashes series. The Danes are foever a lost cause, but they make good enough pastry for me to excuse their limitations.

Firstly, we should never assume anything, and few theories in social science are ever constant. Like you said, these theories are not etched in stone.

Now I believe the gains in IQ are mostly in the lower half of the distribution and gradually decreased from low to high IQ. This holds well for those on the "nurture" side of the debate, it explains how the Danes and Poms IQ's have effectively plateaued, and the gains made by blacks over the last century. I personally contend black IQ's will reach and plateau at around the same level a decade or two after the highly seemingly unlikely event of their educations ever being funded equally. Until such a time it would be a mistake to prescribe the difference to genetic differences, especially given the gains in black IQ's have followed the gains in their share of the education fnding pie.

You'll notice the words I put in bold. Despite gains over the last century, the average educational environment of blacks simply isn't as rich as that of whites. You can safely assume black IQ scores will plateau lower than white scores whilst their education remain less a priority than whites, and by and large the US education funding pattern reflects this. So of course these differences in IQ and SAT scores will persist, and there is seemingly a much more valid reason for them than racial differences.

I contend you give them a decade of equal education and opportunity, they'll get equal scores.

Jerry

In all honesty I would want to see the research itself before making a concrete judgment on the issue. That is why I said that it is not etched in stone...

Which would be a fair theory had the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Studies not illustrated that students with two black biological parents by age 17 had an average IQ 89 while adopted children two white biological parents with an IQ of 106. Interestingly enough the Asian students from the northeast scored highest of all in three differing studies though they suffered from environmental weaknesses not experienced by the above control groups...

Interestingly enough Michael G DeGroote of the School of Medicine of McMaster University has claimed a link between brain size and intelligence:

What is interesting about this is that the IQ scores cited above seems to correlate to brain size of the subjects:

Three main procedures have been used to estimate brain size: (a) weighing wet brains at autopsy; (b) measuring the volume of empty skulls using filler; and (c) measuring external head size and estimating volume. Data from all three sources triangulate on the conclusion that, after statistical corrections are made for body size, east Asians average about 17 c[m.sup.3] (1 cubic inch) more cranial capacity than whites who average about 80 c[m.sup.3] (5 cubic inches) more than blacks. Ho and colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin analyzed brain autopsy data on 1,261 American subjects aged 25 to 80 after excluding obviously damaged brains and reported, in the 1980 issue of Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, that, after controlling for age and body size, white men averaged 100 grams more brain weight than black men, and white women averaged 100 grams more brain weight than black women. With endocranial volume, Beals and colleagues computerized the world database of up to 20,000 crania and published their results in the 1984 issue of Current Anthropology. Sex-combined brain cases differed by continental area with populations from Asia averaging 1,415 c[m.sup.3], those from Europe averaging 1,362 c[m.sup.3], and those from Africa averaging 1,268 c[m.sup.3].

Using external head measurements I have found, after corrections are made for body size, that east Asians consistently average a larger brain than do Caucasians or Africans. Three of these studies were published in the journal Intelligence. In a 1991 study, from data compiled by the U.S. space agency NASA, military samples from Asia averaged 14 c[m.sup.3] more cranial capacity than those from Europe. In a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel measured in 1988 for fitting helmets, I found that Asian-Americans averaged 36 c[m.sup.3] more than European-Americans who averaged 21 c[m.sup.3] more than African-Americans. Most recently, I analyzed data from tens of thousands of men and women aged 25 to 45 collated by the International Labour Office in Geneva and found that Asians averaged 10 c[m.sup.3] more than Europeans and 66 c[m.sup.3] more than Africans.

SOURCE: Race and crime: an international dilemma - Rushton, J. Philippe - Society, Jan-Feb 1995 v32 n2

Going back to the IQ tests; specifically 'East Asians' score the highest, whites are a close second while blacks bring up the rear on such tests. In my view this would appear to be a fair argument for heredity being influential in intelligence scoring. I do believe environment plays a part as well though...

The problem here is that black students who were placed into the 'Head Start' program seemed to eventually suffer the same regression toward the mean as other black youth. Black youth who came out of the program immediately had an IQ improvement of 30 points...though three years later the same tests placed them back in the 80's score range.

To be specific a study of childhood enrichment in the early 90's produced similar short-term results. J.S. Fuerst of Loyola University tracked and monitored 684 black children who attended specially funded 'Head Start' type programs that were so intense, advanced and far-reaching that Mr. Fuerst referred to them "Head Start to the fourth power." The children remained in these programs for two to seven years, and had significantly better test scores than a control group outside of the program. However, a decade later, after the children had returned to regular schools, their performances were practically indistinguishable from those of children who had not received the special classes. This reflects the results of the Transracial adoption studies.

[quote=Frank]Or you could just make your point?

It's pretty obvious. There's no mention of the quality of schooling.

Now again I suspect the journo has made this omission, not the academic, but I don't know for certain. Either way, it shows the claim up for being utter crap.

But returning to our race debate, I would warn against falsely assuming that blacks are scoring lower IQ scores because of genetics so long as significant differences in the quality of education between black and white exist, and have historically.

It's not surprising that whites adopted by whites who live in a white state (13:1) and are sent to white schools have higher IQ scores than blacks adopted by whites who live in a white state and are sent to white schools. What is more telling to me is despite these conditions "the average IQ of "socially classified" Black children was greater than the U.S. White mean" (Wiki). Despite the disadvantages of being adopted, and being adopted by people of another race and obviously not biological children, and being a minority in their community, these kids did quite well in a well funded system. This is a strong indication of what black kids can do given a relatively equal playing field, something we've never had en masse. Lastly, I think the authors of the study agree with me that environment is the dominant factor, not genetics, although I'm aware there is an ongoing debate.

Again, there is nothing surprising here. The "head start" program probably equates with a better white school, and three years after leaving the program and returning to a typical underfunded black school their IQ scores had dropped.

What part of this scenario isn't absolutely screaming environment factors from the rooftop?

You could take a bunch of white kids from their "normal school" for two to seven years and placed them in a black school, then put them back in their "normal school", checking their IQ results throughout and it would show the opposite pattern.

Jerry

It's pretty obvious. There's absolutely no mention of non-home environmental factors, which would include schooling quality. This isn't a factor?

Now again I suspect the journo has made this omission, not the academic, but I don't know for certain. Either way, it shows the claim up for being utter crap.

But returning to our race debate, I would warn against falsely assuming that blacks are scoring lower IQ scores because of genetics so long as significant differences in the quality of education between black and white exist, and have historically.

It's not surprising that whites adopted by whites who live in a white state (13:1) and are sent to white schools have higher IQ scores than blacks adopted by whites who live in a white state and are sent to white schools. What is more telling to me is despite these conditions "the average IQ of "socially classified" Black children was greater than the U.S. White mean" (Wiki). Despite the disadvantages of being adopted, and being adopted by people of another race and obviously not biological children, and being a minority in their community, these kids did quite well in a well funded system. This is a strong indication of what black kids can do given a relatively equal playing field, something we've never had en masse. Lastly, I think the authors of the study agree with me that environment is the dominant factor, not genetics, although I'm aware there is an ongoing debate.

Again, there is nothing surprising here. The "head start" program probably equates with a better white school, and three years after leaving the program and returning to a typical underfunded black school their IQ scores had dropped.

I mean, what part of this scenario isn't absolutely screaming "environment factors" from the rooftop?

You could take a bunch of white kids from their "normal school" for two to seven years and placed them in a black school, then put them back in their "normal school", checking their IQ results throughout and it would show the opposite pattern.

Jerry

I do not make any such assumptions. I believe that there is a division between genetics (Brain size etc...) and the effects of environment. I tend to share the conclusions of the following study though the numerical division is not certain to me...