Fad diet research assignment Videos

The "more diversity" within than between is wrong for a number of reason. The easiest way to show why this is wrong is by example of the Dog. That oft repeated statement is also true of dogs, so we must conclude from this that there are no "breeds", or at least no relevant differences between breeds. Clearly that's absurd. //www.sciencemag.org/content/304/5674/1160

I didn't write this, all credit goes to Sean Last How and Why Scientists Lie About Race Carleton Coon was one of the greatest anthropologists of the 20th century and a champion of the study of racial differences. In 1961 he was elected president of the American Anthropological Association. It was during this year that Carleton Putnam's infamous book Race and Reason came out. Putnam's book argued that there were significant differences between the races and that this had important political implications. A few anthropologists became upset when they saw the book gain popularity and wanted the AAA to intervene. But they knew that Coon supported the book and that, as a result, having the AAA take action against it would be difficult. So they organized a secret meeting behind Coon's back in order to issue a statement denouncing Putnam's work. Coon found out about the meeting and went to stop it. Upon entering the meeting Coon asked all the association members who had actually read Putnam's book to raise their hands. Only one rose. He then asked for the hands of everyone that had even heard of the book prior to that meeting. Only a few hands rose. None the less, the statement against the book passed. Coon, disgusted by the actions of his peers, resigned from the AAA (1). This incident stands out in the history of science as a particularly clear example of scientists not living up to what people expect of them. People often take what scientists say for granted. They trust that scientists have looked at the evidence rationally and are giving the public as accurate an account of all the relevant facts as they can. When explaining science to laypeople researchers are expected to only make authoritative statements on topics they are knowledgeable of, to not lie about scientific evidence, and to not omit obviously relevant facts. People trust scientists to do these things and so feel comfortable taking what they tell them for granted. Of course, this trust can be violated. Because scientists are the only group trusted to explain scientific facts, no one but another scientist is in a position to catch a researcher who fails to live up to these expectations. Because of this, the trust that the public puts in science can be abused if many researchers are involved in deceit or if a few especially powerful ones are. In the first part of this post I will establish that scientists have abused the public's trust when it comes to race. Anthropologists and geneticists have lied, omitted relevant facts, and acted in ignorance, while denying the existence and significance of race. In the second part of the post I will try to explain why, and how, this happened. Variation Within and Between Groups If you've ever read anything about whether or not biological races exist you have probably heard that scientists know that they don't and that this is because there is more genetic variation within races than between them. When I first heard this argument I assumed that it made sense within the relevant scientific context. I assumed, for instance, that valid biological groups must have more genetic variation between them than within them and that this was a standard commonly used in biology. I think these are the assumptions that most people who accept this argument unconsciously make. Since these arguments are being made by respected biologists such assumptions are seemingly reasonable. But, unfortunately, they are also false. In-order to understand why these assumptions are false we need to have some background knowledge about the genetic measurements being used. This argument is based on a measure of genetic differentiation known as the fixation index which was invented in the 1930's by the population geneticist Sewall Wright. A score on Wright's fixation index is known as an Fst value. Calculating an Fst value requires the use a measure called "heterozygosity" which is simply the probability (0-1) that two alleles (gene variants) picked at random will not be identical. You calculate the Fst value of a specie by subtracting the probability of heterozygosity within a sub-population form the probability of heterozygosity within the species as a whole and then divide by the probability of heterozygoisty within the species as a whole. Fst = Heterozygosity (species) - Heterozygosity (subpopulation) / Heterozygosity (species) In other words, you take the probability of two gene variants non being idential when picked from the same species, subtract that probability when the gene variants are picked from the same sub population, and then divide by the probability when they are taken from the same species. This will tell you how big the difference between the species and subpopulation heterozygosity is relative to the size of the value of heterozygosity for the whole species. So if an Fst value is 0.3 then we can say that the probability of heterozygosity increases by 30% if pick our alleles from the entire species instead of the same subpopulation. Heterozygosity is often called a measure of "genetic variability". So another way of putting this is that 30% of the species genetic variability is contained between groups and 70% if contained between them. The higher an Fst value a species has the more genetically significant its populations are said to be. Deciding how large of an Fst value is "significant" is difficult and somewhat arbitrary. Writing in 1978, Wright proposed the following guidelines "We will take F = 0.25 as an arbitrary value above which there is very great differentiation, the range of 0.15 to 0.25 as indicating moderately great differentiation. Differentiation is, however, by no means negligible if F is as small as 0.05 or even less" (2). We can see then that Wright was very reluctant to say that small Fst values proved that population differences didn't exist. A great deal of research on Fst values was being done when Wright wrote those sentences. This is because in the late 1960's our ability to measure genetic variation in populations was greatly increased. One of the pioneers of the new methods being used was Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin. In 1972 Lewontin applied these methods to humans and calculated an Fst value of .063 (3). Thus, only 6.3% of human genetic variation exists between races. Lewontin reasoned that because the vast majority of genetic variation was contained with the races, racial classification was of no genetic or taxonomic significance. Lewontin did not present any argument for this conclusion. He seemed to take it as self evident that an Fst value of .063 was insignificant. This should strike you as surprising. Recall that Sewall Wright's guide lines for interpreting Fst values suggested that an Fst value of .063 indicated moderate genetic differentiation within a species. Lewontin was contradicting a founder of population genetics and the inventor of the relevant genetic measure but offered no justification for his disagreement what so ever. Lewontin's argument didn't just contradict a leading authority in the field. It also contradicted the norms of zoology in general (4) (5). There are many species which have recognized subspecies and Fst values of less than .063. For instance, the Red Winged Black Bird has 5 recognized subspeices and an Fst value of .01, the Plain Zebra has 6 recognized subspecies and an Fst value of .03, the Canadian Lynx 3 recognized subspecies and an Fst value of .033, and the African Buffalo has 5 recognized subspecies and an Fst value of .059. The list could go on. In fact, consistent with Wright's view, many modern papers in zoology have argued that an Fst value supports the existence of a subspecies so long as it is larger than zero (6). Clearly then, Lewontin's argument was based on an unjustified standard that was completely divorced from standard zoological practice. Given this, it may surprise you that the anthropological community responded very positively to Lewontin's argument. Even today the American Anthropological Association references Lewontin's argument approvingly in their statement on race (7) and it can be found as an argument against the existence of races in many physical anthropology textbooks (8). Lewontin and other scientists who push his argument are not being honest with the public. They are omitting relevant facts. Saying that the vast majority of genetic variation within the human species exists within, rather than between, races sounds pretty convincing. But it would sound a lot less convincing if people were told that this is true of almost every species that contains subspecies and that the standard used to decide that the genetic differentiation present in humans is insignificant was made up out of thin air and completely divorced from the norms of biology. The fact that they aren't told this is obviously irresponsible. Jensen: 1969 A few years before Lewontin published his paper denying the existence of race the intelligence researcher Arthur Jensen published an article called "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" in the Harvard Educational Review (56). In that article Jensen suggested that blacks might be less intelligent than whites for genetic reasons and, in so doing, started the modern debate on Race and IQ. Few articles in the history of science have been lied about as much as this one. Because these lies will appear several times in this post, Jensen's arguments are worth briefly reviewing. To begin with, it is important to be clear about what Jensen was arguing. He was not arguing all black people are dumber than all white people. Rather, he was saying that the average black scores worse on intelligence tests than the average white. Nor was he saying that genetics explains all of this gap. He was saying that genetics might explain some of the gap. And he didn't believe that this view had been proven. Rather, he was arguing that all the available evidence taken together made a partly genetic interpretation more probable than a purely environmental one and that, as a result, a partly genetic interpretation is not, to use his term, "totally unreasonable". In-order to understand some of Jensen's arguments it's important to understand what Jensen meant by the term "race". Jensen viewed races as a breeding populations that differed from each-other in allele frequencies due to evolving somewhat separately for many generations. According to Jensen, if the races differ in frequency for most alleles and a trait is heritable then the races will probably differ in that trait to some extent for genetic reasons. This is a highly intuitive argument: if two populations have different gene pools then it is hard to see how they could posses traits significantly effected by genes to the exact same degree. This is relevant to racial differences in intelligence because behavioral geneticists had, by then, shown that intelligence was moderately heritable. So, by Jensen's reasoning, it is unlikely that the races posses the same genetic potential for intelligence. And study after study after study had found that blacks score worse on intelligence tests than whites. Given this, it isn't hard to see why Jensen would be inclined accept to a partly genetic explanation of the gap. When Jensen wrote his article it was no secret that blacks scored worse than whites on intelligence tests. But most researches assumed that this gap was caused by environmental factors. Jensen agreed that the environment played an important role in explaining group differences. But he didn't think that the evidence supported the idea that genes didn't play a role aswell. For instance, many researchers had posited that racial differences in poverty caused the intelligence gap. But comparing blacks and whites of the same socio-economic status only decreased the IQ gap from 15 points to 11 points. Another popular theory was that the tests were culturally biased against blacks. But Jensen pointed out that the black/white IQ gap is larger on tests that researchers considered culturally fair and smaller on culturally biased tests. Jensen also argued that the environmental variables which disadvantage individuals within populations don't seem to explain group differences. In support of this Jensen cited a study which looked at how the following variables, among others, predicted IQ within and between groups: parental education, time spent on children's homework, reading material in the home, foreign languages spoken at home, preschool attendance, and self esteem. The study found that these and other variables were correlated with IQ differences within populations but poorly predicted differences between populations. For instance, by all measures native American's were more disadvantaged than blacks but native Americans score higher than blacks on intelligence tests. Jensen also thought that there was some positive evidence which favored a partly genetic interpretation. Firstly, there is the fact that black children tend to regress towards a lower mean than white children. This means that black people with high or low IQ's will tend to have children with IQ's closer to 85 while whites with high or low IQ's will have children with IQ's closer to 100. Jensen argued that this should be expected based on genetic theory and would be hard to explain on a purely environmental theory. Jensen also noted that there are racial differences in the maturation process which may relate to IQ. Tests administered to 9 month old babies showed that blacks develop motor skills faster than whites do. Blacks were also known to mature faster in terms of brain wave changes and skeletal development. And, within populations, people who physically mature faster tend to have lower IQ. Thus, the slower maturation of blacks seemed linked to their lower intelligence. And this was hard to explain without invoking genes. Lewontin on Jensen The most popular argument argument Jensen consisted of a straw-man formulated by Lewontin in 1970 (57). In his article Lewontin wrote "The Fundamental Error of Jensen's Argument is to confuse heritability of a character within a population with heritability of the difference between two populations." In other words, differences within a population for a given trait can be largely due to genes even if differences between populations are entirely due to the environment. For instance, imagine that we have two gardens with plants of different heights. It could easily be that the plants within each garden differ in height because of genes while most of the height differences between the two gardens are caused by the fact that one has better soil than the other. Jensen assumed that the black/white IQ gap was largely heritable just because IQ differences within populations are largely heritable. And that, Lewontin points out, is fallacious. The problem with Lewontin's rebuttal is that it misleads readers about what Jensen actually said. Recall that Jensen said that a trait would likely differ between populations for genetic reasons if it was largely heritable and the populations had had limited gene flow for many generations. The logic behind this is that such populations would have different gene pools and so exhibit different levels of traits that are heavily influenced by genes. Jensen never argued that the heritability of a between group difference logically follows from the mere fact that differences in IQ within populations is highly heritable. Rather, the heritability of IQ must be combined with the evolutionary history of the races in order to honestly recount Jensen's argument. Thus, Lewontin did not describe Jensen's argument honestly. And this misrepresentation of Jensen's argument has been repeated by other science writers and even in textbooks (58). Lewontin's Motives After seeing how Lewontin mislead the public about Fst values and lied about Arthur Jensen you might wonder what Lewontin's motives were. I think it is pretty clear that they were political. Richard Lewontin was (and is) an anti racist activist. Even in the scientific journal article in which his argument against the existence of race initially appeared he condemned the negative social impact of racial categorization. Lewontin would go on to be active in groups aimed at condemning politically incorrect science (9). Decades of this kind of behavior would eventually lead evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to remark that Lewontin was well known for letting his leftist politics interfere with his science (10). Race is a Social Construct If there is any argument against the existence of race that is more popular then Lewontin's it is that race cannot be biologically real because it is a social construct (35). This argument has been made by countless academics and is intended to be the single most important take away from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum's exhibit on race (36). When people hear that race is not a biological concept but, rather, that it is a social construct they assume that categories that are valid and used in biology are not social constructs. In other words, they assume that being a valid biological category and being a social construct are mutually exclusive. After all, if they were not mutually exclusive then race being a social construct wouldn't tell us whether or not it is a valid biological category. Race's status as a social construct would be irrelevant. This idea, that biological validity and social construction are mutually exclusive, is the implicit background knowledge that researchers present to lay people when they make this argument. But it isn't true. . Biologists have long known that taxonomic categories below the level of species are invented by humans rather than discovered in nature. For instance, consider this quote from the 1700's by Linnaeaus, the founder of modern taxonomy, on the nature of varieties (the primary intraspecific taxa prior to the rise of the subspecies): "Species and genera are regarded as always the works of Nature, but varieties are usually owning to culture." (37). Similarly, Johan Blumenbach, the father of physical anthropology, wrote in 1775 that racial categories, which he thought were useful in science, were arbitrary (62). And in 1777 the Prussian philosopher Emmanuel Kant referred to races as "artificial divisions" (63). Later writers were even more explicit in their views. Erynst Mayr, probably the most important taxonomist of the 20th century and the inventor of the most popular modern conception of subspecies, called subspecies "a purely subjective" category. He went on to say "the subspecies is merely a strict utilitarian classificatory device for the pigeonholing of population samples" (38). In fact, when responding to a complaint about the subjectivity of subspecies taxonomy J. Tilden wrote "We should, I feel, have a mental reservtion that our systems exist more in our mind than in nature. However useful our system may be as a tool, we cannot assume that no other system could be devised to express the same concepts as well or even better. By this line of reasoning, the concept of subspecies should no more be under fire than any other level of classification, since all are equally the products of man's ingenuity." (39) Race, of course, had been considered as equivalent to a subspeceis since the time of Darwin. And so we see that race being a social construct is no difficulty at all. Many thinkers in the history of taxonomy have said that subspecies are categories invented by people rather than categories discovered in nature. And, in fact, some reputable taxonomists viewed all taxonomic categories this way. None of these thinkers viewed this as a problem: whether or not a category was created by man or nature has no bearing what so ever on whether or not it it useful in science. Thus, viewed with the proper background knowledge, the idea that race cannot be a biologically valid category because it is socially constructed is just another example of scientists leading people astray on race. Unlike in the case of Lewontin's arguments, I do not think that geneticists and anthropologists are purposefully misleading the public in this case. In order to know that subspecies have long been regarded by many important taxonomists as socially constructed you would have to know something about the history of the philosophy of taxonomy. This is not an area that geneticists or anthropologists are usually well versed in. And so I give researchers the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are accidentally misleading the public as a result of their own ignorance. The fact that these scientists are acting out of ignorance rather than intentional dishonesty doesn't let them off the hook. When scientists speak confidently on an issue related to their science the public assumes that they know what they are talking about. By not alerting the public to the fact that they don't really know what they are talking about these researches have still tricked people into believing things based on false assumptions. The Mis-measure of Morton At this point I want to move away, for a moment, from concentrating on particular arguments and instead concentrate on a man. To my knowledge, no other anti race realist academic even approaches the level of dishonesty exhibited by famed paleontologist Steven Jay Gould. Because of this, I think he deserves a great deal of attention. One of the most popular books ever written on race was Steven Jay Gould's 1981 The Mismeasure of Man. In it, Gould covers in detail research which attempted to establish racial differences in brain size and intelligence. The aim of the book is to show how the racist beliefs of scientists have unconsciously impacted their work so as to produce misleading results that conform to their racist prejudices. The Mismeasure of Man was praised in many circles (11). It won various awards when it was published and has been rated as one of the greatest books of all time by Discover and Modern Library. It's profoundly influenced lay people's perception of racial science. To recount all the books dishonestly would require a post, or book, of its own. So I will just mention a few examples here. Some of Gould's most blatant falsehoods concerned a 19th century American anthropologist named Samuel Morton. Morton was an early researcher on craniums and collected what was, at the time, the worlds large collection of skulls. He compared the skull sizes of different races and found that Whites had larger heads than other groups. Morton's work on racial differences in brain size attracted Gould's attention because Morton was an early researcher in a tradition that links intelligence differences between groups to brain size differences. In his coverage of Morton Gould made several accusations. First, there was the measuring of the skulls. Morton measured head volume by filling skulls with seed or lead shot and then dumping said seed or lead shot out and measuring its weight. Gould, based on nothing but a hunch, accused Morton of packing the heads of whites more tightly than he did the skulls of non whites in-order to make white skulls appear larger. Morton's skulls have since been reexamined and it is now known without a shadow of a doubt that Morton measured his skulls fairly (12). But by the time these analyses were carried out the damage done to Morton's reputation had already been done. Unfortunately, Gould's coverage of Morton was not limited to rude speculation. Gould also resorted to outright lies. These lies were prominently exposed by a 2011 paper published in PLOS Biology (13) which stated:"One of Gould's best-known charges against Morton is that Morton was biased in his reporting of the cranial capacity averages for these subsamples: “It is intriguing that Morton often reported Caucasian means by subsamples, which permitted him to assert the superiority of Teutons and Anglo-Saxons. But he never broke down the Indian mean.…Thus, the fact that some Indian subsamples exceeded the mean for Americans of Anglo-Saxon stock remained hidden in his raw data. (Morton never calculated the Indian subsample means at all; I have recovered them from his data.)”.But Gould's claim, which has been repeated numerous times, is false. Morton routinely reported “Indian” subsample means, doing so at least 12 times in Crania Americana, the publication referenced by Gould. " This is about as clear as a lie gets. Gould accused Morton of not doing something that he in fact did a dozen times. Gould also accused Morton of abusing his sub-samples in-order to depress the head size of Indianans. For instance, Gould informed his readers that "“Morton's Indian mean had plummeted to 79 in3.… But, again, this low value only records an increasing inequality of sub-sample size. Small-headed (and small-statured) Peruvians had formed 23 percent of the 1839 sample; they now made up nearly half the total sample" So, according to Gould, Morton's estimation of Indian head size had decreased over the years because Morton's sample of Indians was increasingly made up of small headed Peruvians. This sounds like a perfectly reasonable criticism until you realize that when Morton calculated his average he averaged between the average of each sub sample. If, for instance, Morton had three sub samples then he would find the average of each sub sample, add the averages together, and divide by three. The sub samples were not weighted for their size. So an increase in the size of a sub sample would have no effect what so ever on the population average. The article in PLOS-Biology goes on to explain "In fact, the more likely candidate for manipulating sample composition is Gould himself in this instance. In recalculating Morton's Native American mean, Gould [1] reports erroneously high values for the Seminole-Muskogee and Iroquois due to mistakes in defining those samples and omits the Eastern Lenapé group entirely, all of which serve to increase the Native American mean and reduce the differences between groups." Gould on Jensen In The Mismeasure of Man Gould also attacked Arthur Jensen. Unlike Morton, Jensen was alive when Gould's book came out and so was able to write a review exposing the ways in which Gould mislead his readers (14). Jensen gave a long list of lies Gould said about him in the Mis-measure of man. Here I will only give one example. The reader can find Jensen's article online to see the full list. "Gould claims that I have defended a g, or general intelligence, which is "reified as a measurable object" (p.318). Yet in the same chapter from which Gould is supposedly paraphrasing my views (Jensen, 1980a), I stated unequivocally that "[I]ntelligence is not an entity, but a theoretical construct.... The g factor may also be termed a theoretical construct, which is intended to explain an observable phenomenon, namely, the positive intercorrelation among all mental tests, regardless of their apparently great variety" (p. 249)." Gould on Eysenck Jensen was not the only living scientist who Gould lied about in The Mismeasure of Man. On pages 150-151 Gould discusses the views of Hans Eysenck. Eysenck, following Jensen, had pointed out that people who physically mature faster tend to have lower IQ's and that blacks physically mature faster than whites. Eysenck argued that these facts supported the view that genes explain part of the B/W IQ gap. Gould begins his coverage of Eysenck by characterizing him as a "genetic determinist" who argues for "black inferiority". He didn't bother to tell his readers that Eysenck was a well known anti-racist who had to leave his home country because he refused to join the Nazi party (59). Gould goes on to argue that Eysenck "ignores the fact that black children, in a racist society, generally live in poorer environments, which may lead to lower IQ". But we've already seen that this isn't true. It was well known, and explicitly acknowledged by Eyenck, that the best controls for socio-economic status that researchers had access to didn't account for most of the B/W IQ gap. One could argue that those controls are flawed and so poverty might account for more of the gap than they imply. But to suggest that the role of poverty simply never occurred to Eysenck is obviously dishonest. And so we see that Gould, to public acclaim, dishonestly represented the work of both old and contemporary researchers in The Mismeasure of Man. The Left Half of the Honesty Bell Curve Gould also wrote a highly influential review of the 1994 book The Bell Curve for The New Yorker (15). In it, Gould helped to jump start the myth that The Bell Curve was a book about white genetic superiority. Gould stated " The Bell Curve, with its claims and supposed documentation that race and class differences are largely caused by genetic factors and are therefore essentially immutable, contains no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism". As is typical of Gould, this is not an honest description of the book. The Bell Curve's conclusion in the section on Race and IQ is crystal clear. Murray and Heirnstein, the authors of The Bell Curve wrote "If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not justify an estimate." (16). It is, therefore, clearly not true that The Bell Curve argues that racial IQ differences are "largely" due to genetic reasons. And this lie, furthered by Gould, has been printed in countless journals and magazines since 1994. Gould's Motivations As with Lewontin, it is worth asking why Gould would mislead people about racial science. The answer, I believe, lies in the preface of The Mismeasure of Man. In the preface Gould tells his readers about how his parents were immigrants and that, as a result, he had been engaged in anti-racist activism from an early age. Gould probably saw his writing as an extension of this activism. And may have thought that bending the truth was okay when it furthered an important social goal like ending racism. Of course, when the public trusts what people like Gould tell them they are counting on scientists to not engage in this kind of activism. And so Gould's extremely influential work is a serious mark against the reliability of scientists in this area. The AAA Following the controversy that surrounded The Bell Curve various scientific organisations released statements on race purporting to summarize the relevant scientific evidence and the views of modern scientists. Perhaps the most well known of these documents is the American Anthropological Association's 1998 Statement on Race (17). As you might expect given the circumstances surrounding Coon's resignation as president of the AAA in the early 60's, the statement is full of misleading information. For the sake of brevity, I am only going to mention their most obvious act of dishonesty here. The AAA begins by recognizing that Americans view races as being defined by differences in observable physical features. They write "In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences." The AAA then goes on to argue that this view cannot be defended in light of modern science. They write "With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups." It is clear that the AAA is referring the the human Fst value when they say that most physical variation lies within races. But, as I covered above, an Fst value is a measure of genetic variation. It is not a measure of variation in observable physical differences. And physical variation does not always coincide with genetic variation. Large genetic differences between people often lead to no differences what so ever in their observable characteristics. And tiny genetic differences between people sometimes lead to extreme differences in their physical characteristics. This is part of the difficulty in asking whether or not the genetic differences between two groups are "significant": the size of the genetic difference between two groups doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the size of the phenotypic difference between two groups. The AAA attempted to side step this complexity with dishonesty. They first establish that the everyday concept of race is based on observable physical characteristics and then mislead readers into thinking that the human Fst value is a measure of the structure of variation in said physical characteristics. But it's not. And the writers at the AAA surely know this. Before moving away from these numbers that AAA states "Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes." But an Fst value of .06 does not mean that the races only differ in the frequency of 6% of their genes. It simply has nothing to do with that what so ever. It seems unlikely to me that the people at the AAA don't understand basic population genetics. But if they do then they must know that they are misleading people with their statement. In other words, they are lying. The AAA's motivations for lying to the public are made clear towards the end of the statement. Much of the document reads more like a political speech than a statement by a scientific body. The AAA, when supposedly issuing a statement on the modern state of race as a scientific concept, felt it appropriate to devote considerable coverage to Hitler, slavery, prejudice, and other political, non scientific, issues concerning race. Thus, like Gould, and Lewontin, the AAA is guilty of allowing politics to interfere with science and, as a result, has mislead the public on race. Race at the Millennium Around the same time that the AAA released their Statement on Race evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves entered the race debate. Since then, Graves has become one of the most ardent anti-race realists of the last twenty years. Graves has written multiple books denying the reality of race, has been interviewed on the topic by the New York Times (18) and PBS (19), has written articles appearing in collections of anti race realist work (20), and has even debated prominent race realists in live settings (21). It is beyond the scope of this post to say everything that can and should be said about Graves. Instead, I will just take two examples that demonstrate that Graves is dishonest. The first examples comes from page 164 of Grave's book The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. On this page Graves summarizes what are, according to him, the arguments put forward in The Bell Curve to show that the black white IQ gap is caused by genetics. He states that Heirnstien and Murray rely on three pieces of evidence: first, that there is a large IQ gap between blacks and whites, second, that the gap has been around for a long time, and third, that the gap persists even after controlling for socio-economic status. From these facts Hernstein and Murray conclude that the B/W IQ gap must be caused by genetics. This is extremely misleading for at least two reasons. First, as already noted, The Bell Curve did not argue that the black white IQ gap is primarily caused by genetics. Second, when reviewing the arguments for the view, taken by others, that the gap is due to genetics Herrnstein and Murray cited far more evidence than what Graves tells his reader about. For instance, Herrnstien and Murray also pointed out that black children raised in white homes grew up to have the same IQ's as black children raised in black homes and the black white IQ gap tends to be larger on a specific IQ sub test the more heritable the subtest is. In fact, the evidence that Graves does refer to isn't even presented in the section of The Bell Curve that is explicitly dedicated to presenting, and criticizing, the evidence for the genetic view of the B/W IQ gap! How Heritability is Measured: Fact vs Fiction On the exact same page of the exact same book Graves goes on the make this extraordinary statement: "To a professional geneticist their argument is utterly flawed. It is impossible from phenotypic data alone to apportion genetic and environmental sources of causality". In other words, Graves is claiming that you can't estimate the heritability of trait based on data about observable physical characteristics of an organism. This statement is at odds with the leading textbook on Behavioral Genetics which states "Quantitative genetic designs estimate heritability indirectly from familial resemblance." (60) So how do researchers determine the proportion of phenotypic differences between individuals within a population that is due to genetic, rather than environmental, differences between said individuals? According to a popular evolutionary biology textbook, there are basically two ways (22). The first method is used for non-humans and involves creating an extremely inbred population and seeing how phenotypically similar parent and offspring are. The second method, which was referenced by the behavioral genetics textbook quoted above, involves comparing how phenotypically similar different members within a family are and seeing if relatives who are more closely related genetically are also more phenotypically similar. Clearly, both of these methods derive heritability estimates from nothing but phenotypic data. We've seen that Graves was misleading about heritability in general. But maybe he was just being unclear and specifically meant the heritability of group, rather than individual, differences. I think examining Bergmann's rule will be rather illuminating in this context (23). Bergmann's rule is a theory which states that populations that live in colder climates will tend to evolve to have larger bodies than populations which live in hotter climates. The reasoning behind this is that larger bodies will produce more heat (because they have more cells) and lose less heat (because they have a larger mass to surface area ratio) and so be more adaptive in cold environments. This theory is widely accepted and cited approvingly in anthropology textbooks. The evidence presented for the theory is simple: organisms that live in colder environments do in fact have larger bodies. Note that this evidence consits of no direct genetic information. It's based entirely on phenotypic data. And yet, it is accepted in the relevant field as valid evidence for group differences being caused by genetics. Bergman's rule is just an example. If you look at the popular theories about group differences in skin color, height, and eye lid stricture, you will find similar lines of reasoning. And thus we see that Graves grossly mis-represented how scientists estimate the heritability of traits. Whether we are considering within or between population heritablity, researchers, including geneticists, often justify their theories using nothing but phenotypic data. Graves felt comfortable saying what he did because he knew that his audience would look to him for information about how genetics works. He even attempted to heighten their trust in him as a scientist with statements like "To a professional geneticists their argument is utterly flawed". He built up his own credibility, and attacked the credibility of his opponents, so that he could get away with lying. Clearly, Graves acted in a way that is not deserving of the public's trust. Race Genes Graves, like Lewontin and Gould, is just an individual. And the AAA is an influential academic organization, but it does represent anthropology. So you might think that, unlike Graves and Lewontin, most biologists are trustworthy about race. To see if this is true, let's consider the claims made about race by the largest biology study ever conducted :the Human Genome Project, The human genome project produced two findings that were claimed to show that race does not exist. The first finding was that there are no genes that are present in all the members of one race but not present in any member of another race. This is an indisputable fact. But to say that this shows that races do not exist implies that people who do think that races exist believe in these "race genes". But this not how scientists historically thought about race. Before the 20th century, races were primary defined in terms of differences in various observable physical traits such as head shape, hair texture, and skin color (24). During the great synthesis of modern biology races were defined either as groups that differed in terms of allele frequencies (25) or as groups that live in different places that differ in any way (genetic or not) that taxonomists considered significant (26). And modern definitions of races tend to emphasize shared ancestry and people being more similar to members of their own race than to members of other races. At no point in history was there a mainstream conception of race that relied on "race genes". And so the existence and usefulness of race cannot be refuted with this simplistic talking point. We're All 99% The Same The second finding that the HGP produced was that all humans are "99%" the same genetically. This fact is taken by many to indicate that there can't be significant differences between organisms that are so closely related and, therefore, there can't be any significant genetic differences between individuals or races. This argument sounds reasonable, but it actually betrays a deep ignorance of genetics. As was previously mentioned, DNA is made of base pairs. Many of these base pairs play a role in determining what a cell does and/or what other genes do. And significant differences between cells can be caused by their DNA differing in just a few base pairs. For instance, sickle cell anemia, a serious disease, is caused by a single base pair of DNA changing. With this in mind, consider the fact that the average pair of humans differ by 3 million of these base-pairs (27). It's true that 99% of our genomes are identical. But the idea that 1% of our DNA being non identical can't produce significant differences is ridiculous. For those who remain unconvinced, consider that humans share 95% of our their genome with chimpanzees and 50% of their genome with bananas(28)! But most don't realize how big of a difference "1%" of a genome can make. When they hear a geneticists say that race is meaningless because we are all 99% genetically the same they assume that this means that a 1% difference is insignificant. Those are the assumptions that one has to make in-order for the HGP's claims to make any sense. But those aren't the facts. And the geneticists involved surely knew this. Thus, once again, we see that scientists aren't trust worthy on race. A Troublesome Letter The Human Genome Project wasn't the last time that a group of geneticists would mislead people about race. In May of 2014 long time science writer for the New York Times Nicholas Wade released the book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. The book argued that human races are biologically real and that genetic differences between them might explain significant cultural differences between populations. As happened with The Bell Curve, anti-race realist scientists quickly lined up to misinform the public about the contents of Wade's book. No where was the more clear than in a letter condemning Wade's work which was submitted to the New York Times and signed by more than 140 geneticists (29). The letter stated: "Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results, political institutions and economic development. We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork." So, according to these 140 geneticists, Wade implied that the work of population genetics justifies his view that population differences in intelligence and socio-political institutions are caused by evolution rather than the environment. The truth is that Wade never said that work in genetics substantiated his views on these subjects. In fact, in the preface of the book wade states: "Readers should be fully aware that in chapters 6 through 10 they are leaving the world of hard science and entering into a much more speculative arena at the interface of history, economics and human evolution ... The conclusions presented in these chapters fall far short of proof. However plausible (or otherwise) they may seem, many are speculative." (Page 15) Moreover, Wade doesn't even argue that IQ differences between populations are caused by genetics! In his book Wade makes clear that he wont take a side on the Race and IQ debate. He states: "The hereditarians say that since the IQ gap is substantially innate, the Head Start early education program has failed, as was predicted by Arthur Jensen in 1969, and so will similar interventions. The environmentalists deny this,saying the gap in educational attainment is closing, and that it is the racist nature of society that impedes African American advancement. That issue needn't be resolved here. " (page 190) In fact, the only point at which he does seem to take a side on the debate is when he appears to embrace a non genetic account for the gap when he says: "There is a 10 to 15 point difference in IQ scores between the richer and poorer countries of Europe, yet these differences disappear when the inhabitants migrate to the United States, so the differences are evidently an environmental effect, not a genetic one. If European IQ scores can vary so widely across different decades and locations, it is hard to be sure that any other ethnic differences are innate rather than environmental." (Page 192) Just as when the Bell Curve was released, Wade is being crucified for even suggesting that it is possible that racial IQ differences are caused by genes. He doesn't think they are. But he didn't call hereditarians nazi's either and so Wade is, by implication, a racist who deserves to be lied about. And just like when The Bell Curve was released, scientists realize that they can't tell the public what the book actually says and so are simply lying about it instead. It is possible that most of the 140 scientists who signed that letter to the NYT didn't even read Wade's book. This would be analogus to what happened in the AAA with Race and Reason in 1961. But either way, these scientists are clearly not worth trusting. When you sign a letter, as a scientist, condemning a book, people expect that you know what the book says. They expect that your letter isn't filled with lies. And they form opinions on the book and the issues it pertains to based on your letter. Anyone who assumed these things about the 140+ geneticists that signed this letter was duped. The Myth of Consensus My final example comes from October of 2014 when anthropologist Robert Sussman released his book The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea. In the book, Sussman attempts to explain why it is that so many people continue to believe that human races exist. This is a mystery because, according to Sussman, scientists have known for decades that race doesn't exist. He writes "In 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a statement asserting that all humans belong to the same species and that “race” is not a biological reality but a myth. This was a summary of the findings of an international panel of anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, and psychologists.Since that time similar statements have been published by the American Anthropological Association and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and an enormous amount of modern scientific data has been gathered to justify this conclusion.Today the vast majority of those involved in research on human variation would agree that biological races do not exist among humans. Among those who study the subject, who use and accept modern scientific techniques and logic, this scientific fact is as valid and true as the fact that the earth is round and revolves around the sun." (30) The motivation behind this quote is obvious. Sussman is attempting to appeal to a consensus so that anyone who wants to be rational will walk away feeling embarrassed for ignorantly thinking that race exists. But this feeling will be unwarranted, because the consensus that Sussman described doesn't actually exist. In the beginning of the above quote Sussman says that a statement issued by the UN in 1950 claimed that "race is not a biological reality but a myth". This is simply not true. The statement actually contained the following: "A race, from the biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens. These populations are capable of inter-breeding with one another but, by virtue of the isolating barriers which in the past kept them more or less separated, exhibit certain physical differences as a result of their somewhat different biological histories. These represent variations, as it were, on a common theme. In short, the term “ race ” designates a group or population characterized by some concentrations, relative as to frequency and distribution, of hereditary particles (genes) or physical characters, which appear, fluctuate, and often disappear in the course of time by reason of geographic and or cultural isolation. These are the scientific facts." (31) The statement went on to say: "Human races can be and have been differently classified by different anthropologists, but at the present time most anthropologists agree on classifying the greater part of present-day mankind into three major divisions, as follows : The Mongoloid Division, The Negroid Division, (and) The Caucasoid Division." The UN's statement did talk about the "myth of race". But it was referencing the public's confusion about the biological reality of race. The statement said "To most people, a race is any group of people whom they choose to describe as a race. Thus, many national, religious, geographic, linguistic or cultural groups have, in such loose usage, have been called “ race “, when obviously Americans are not a race, nor are Englishmen, nor Frenchmen, nor any other national group.Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews, are not races, nor are groups who speak English or any other language thereby definable as a race; people who live in Iceland, or England, of India, are not races; people who are culturally Turkish or Chinese or the like thereby describable as races." Thus, the 1950 UN statement did the exact opposite of what Sussman claims: it upheld the biological reality of race while damning the various "mythological", non biological, conceptions of race that were held by the public. Sussman either didn't read the UN's statement, in which case he deceived his readers by implying that he knew what the document said, or he did read the statement, in which case he is a liar. Sussman also points to statements released by anthropological associations in the 1990's to justify his claim that scientists agree that race doesn't exist. I've already demonstrated the propagandist nature of one of the statements that Sussman refers to. Since Sussman is trying to show that there is a consensus on the non-existence of race, it will be worth reviewing one statement that Sussman decided not to tell his readership about. Around the same time that these American Anthropological Associations were issuing their statements denouncing race there was an international conference held in Moscow entitled "Race: Myth or Reality" (32). The conference drew in both geneticists and anthropologists from Eastern and Southern Europe. At the end of the conference, three statements were endorsed by this group of experts. It read, in part " (1) According to the old anthropological tradition big human morphological variations which are the result of polymorphism united by common origin in certain geographical areas had been given the name »races.« (2) Reality of the racial subdivisions of Homo sapiens are supported by the totality of the scientific data investigated on the different levels of human organism: morphological, physiological and genetical. Racial classification created with regard for morphological criteria clearly enough reflect the phylogeny of the separate populations and groups of populations. (3) Negativism to the race concept which became apparent during the last decades, in many respects might be explained by the psychological shock which all progressive humanity had felt in the epoch of Hitlerism." Clearly then, Sussman cherry picked which statements to and not to expose his audience to based on whether or not they would support his narrative. Sussman eventually states that just about everyone who studies human variation today agrees that races don't exist. He compares this consensus to the wide spread agreement on the fact that the Earth is not flat. But Sussman never refers to the academic literature that exists on the opinions of experts on whether or not race exists. And this is for good reason: it shows that there is no consensus. There are basically three methods of measuring whether or not scientists think that races exist and are worth talking about: surveys directly asking researchers whether or not they believe in biological races, studies looking at what percentage of journal articles on human variation utilize racial categories when explaining biological differences between people, and studies looking at how race is treated in textbooks. In America the most recent surveys and data on journals comes from the late 1990's and early 2000's. Survey data suggests that about one in three American anthropologists believe that biological races of humans exist. Surveys of articles published in physical anthropology journals suggest that about 20% of them utilize race when describing biological variation in humans (32). An analysis on high-school biology textbooks found that over 90% of them utilized race when describing medical differences between populations (33). And a recent study of 18 anatomy textbooks found that all of them that talked about human variation utilized race when doing so (34). Finally, a recent survey of intelligence researchers found that 83% thought that genetics explained some part of why blacks score lower on intelligence tests than whites do (61). Thus, in America, a substantial number researchers believe in human races and utilize them in journal articles. And the limited data we have suggests that racial categories are widely used in America textbooks on human variation. But even this picture is misleading because researchers outside of America view race far more positively (32). Surveys given to Polish biological anthropologists find that roughly 75% of them believe in human races. And an analysis of 12 polish physical anthropology textbooks found that all 12 of them endorsed the existence of human races. Surveys have also found that most anthropologists in central and Eastern Europe believe in human races. Perhaps the most surprising findings come from China. Studies have shown that virtually every article published on human variation in Chinese biological anthropology journals utilizes race as a biological concept. Thus, there seems to only be one place in the world that that has a consensus about whether or not races exist. That place is China and the consensus is that race is a biological reality. Sussman is deceiving people so that he can bully them into believing that races do not exist. Sussman's attempt to construct a false consensus so he can appeal to an authority that doesn't really exist should make anyone think twice about trusting the so called experts on race. Why lie? At this point the motivation behind the behavior of these researchers should be clear. Lewontin, Gould, the AAA, ect, all had obvious political motives. They were anti-racists who caught up in their political convictions acted dishonestly as a result. These lies have been widespread and extremely influential. The public, especially the educated public, has been conned into believing a false narrative about science and race. We would like to think that this kind of thing can't happen in science. After all, the ideas of science are supposed to be tested. And scientists are supposed to change their views to fit the evidence, not alter and lie about the evidence to fit their views. And regardless of what their views are they are supposed to honestly report the evidence to the public. Of course, there is always a temptation to lie about one's ideological opponents. But if a few scientists fail to live up to these standards other scientists are supposed to call them out on it. In the minds of many, this is how science is supposed to work. But the examples I've gone over in this post shows that science doesn't always work that way. This poses an interesting set of questions. Why did so many scientists become politically motivated to lie about race? And why didn't other scientists alter the public to what was going on? Most puzzlingly of all, how did most American scientists themselves get duped into believing that race doesn't exist based on arguments that are founded upon lies? American Politics To begin to answer this question we have to take note of the political context of the 1960's in relation to race. The memory of the second world war, and the associated demonization of racial thought, was still fresh in many peoples minds. This was especially true of the many jewish intellectuals who fled Germany in the 1930s and took refuge on America's academia. And, of course, there was the civil rights movement. In academia intellectuals were decrying racism and demanding that the government take a more active role in reducing racial disparities. In the media the past students of those intellectuals' were helping to spread their message and in the streets there were protests and riots. Beginning in the 1960's, a signification proportion of the American public engaged in forms of racially motivated political activism that would have a profound impact on the academic debates about race in the years to come. No Dissent Allowed This intellectual climate that started in the 1960's did more than just motivate anti-race realist sentiment in academia. It also censored opposition to race denial. As we've already seen, Charles Murray advanced fairly moderate views in The Bell Curve. And yet, he was denounced as a racist and a white supremacist. Similarly, Jason Richwine was a successful researcher at the heritage institute before it came out in 2013 that his Harvard phd thesis had been about the relevance of ethnic IQ differences to immigration policy (46). He was attacked as a racist and fired for simply acknowledging the fact that IQ differences between ethnic groups exist! The researches who have actually come out and said that there are important genetic differences between the races have been treated even more poorly. Phillipe Rushton was a Canadian psychologist that argued that racial behavioral differences had evolutionary origins. There were protests against him and a criminal investigation for hate speech was launched (47) (48). For a while he couldn't even give lectures live in class (49). Arthur Jensen, one of the most eminent intelligence researchers of the last 60 years, not only had protests lead against him but had a sufficient number of leftists attempt to assault him that he was escorted by guards around campus for years. This was all because Jensen suggested that racial differences in intelligence are likely partly, but not wholly, genetic in origin and that, because of this, we should focus on things other than closing intelligence gaps when trying to help minority children in school (50). Finally, there's James Watson. Watson is most known for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. He is a noble prize winning geneticist. In 2007 he voiced his beliefs that the prospects for Africa's development might be somewhat limited by intelligence difference between the races that are genetic in origin. For expressing these beliefs Watson, one of the most influential geneticists alive, was fired from his position and hasn't been able to find work since. His financial situation was gotten so bad that he is now selling his noble prize (51). Imagine that you are an average researcher. Given what happened to intellectual giants like Jensen and Watson you can be reasonably sure that your career will be destroyed if you come-out as a race realist. So it wouldn't be surprising if race realists remained silent while race denial made front page news. And this is exactly what happened. By the late 1980's almost all the public voices in intelligence research and anthropology were anti-race realist ones. But anonymous surveys of both groups showed that most researchers were still race realists (52) (53). And thus we see that race realist scientists were effectively silenced. Confirmation Bias in Science This silencing of dissent left race denying scientists in a difficult position: they were left with the responsibility of criticizing their own views. Research on confirmation bias clearly shows that the human mind is not designed to do this. Conformation bias describes the tendency of people to seek out information that agrees with their beliefs and ignore information that does not. Confirmation bias was initially demonstrated by a series of experiments involving the "2-4-6" game (40). In these experiments participants were shown a card displaying the numbers 2, 4, and 6 and told that that the number pattern conformed to some rule. Participants were tasked with discovering the rule by producing new sets of 3 numbers and asking the researcher whether or not it also conformed to the rule. Rather that hypothesize a rule and then ask about sets of numbers that did not conform to it, which could falsify the their theory, participants mostly asked about sets of numbers that did conform to the rule they suspected was at play. As a result of discovering information which conformed with the participants initial belief and not looking into any evidence which would likely falsify their belief participants became highly confident in their hypothesized rules. But almost all of them got the rule wrong. A set of later experiments which exposed people to opposing literature on gun control and affirmative action revealed a very specific set of biases that the human mind tends to follow: when allowed to chose the material they read, people mostly read material that agrees with them, people spend much more time scrutinizing material that does not agree with them than material that does agree with them, and when exposed to equal information on both sides of an issue people become more sure that their initial position is correct and that the opposing view is wrong (41). One might think that these biases are simply the result of people not knowing enough about the subject to properly evaluate the data. But, in fact, in the relevant studies the more knowledge a person knew about politics the more these biases tended to effect them. Studies have confirmed that confirmation bias effects scientists just like it does the rest of us. Experiments that used scientists as their participants found that researchers rated evidence as being of higher quality when it agreed with their preconceived beliefs (42). And a study which had reviewers that worked for scientific journals as its sample found that they rated papers with identical methodologies as being of higher quality when their results aligned with

Race Denialism is widespread in our Universities.

Science now shows that the old "race" categories simply are not supported by the evidence. Again, science doesn't always fit with what we think of as common sense or everyday experience. Isn't it just possible that what we think "races" exist because we've been taught they do? Pigmented skin is very often held up as a "racial" characteristic, yet its found in unrelated populations across the world with quite distinct population histories. So, we need to challenge ourselves and take a good hard look at the evidence! Just because we think something is "real" doesn't make it so.

i was a bit disappointed with the shallowness of this video. a clear "there is more diversity within a "race" than there is between "races" would have helped, but that statement wasn't as clearly stated as i'd hoped. the video seems more opinion than supported by data, and my racist acquaintances will be pointing that out.

sponsors of american dietetic assotiation in the usa: kellogs, general mills, pepsi,cocacola, mars, unilivar, drug companies.. should i go on? how on hearth do we still belive there is no conflict of interest behind dietitians??

the link at the end is a private video