Christopher Rufo, credited with helping oust school’s first Black president, touted critic associated with ‘scientific racists’
Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.
He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.
The revelations once again raise questions about the willingness of Rufo – a major ally of Ron DeSantis and powerful culture warrior in Republican politics – to cultivate extremists in the course of his political crusades.
The Guardian emailed Rufo to ask about his repeated platforming of extremists, and asked both Rufo and the Manhattan Institute’s communications office whether they had vetted Pallesen before publishing the interview. Neither responded.
The 2019 paper is entitled Polygenic Scores Mediate the Jewish Phenotypic Advantage in Educational Attainment and Cognitive Ability Compared With Catholics and Lutherans. It argues that the high cognitive abilities of Ashkenazi Jews are “significantly mediated by group differences in the polygenic score” – that is, genetically caused. They speculate that “culture-gene coevolution” may influence “Jewish group-level characteristics” like high cognitive abilities.
It's controversial to say that different groups have different average IQ's now?
On the paper’s claims about Jews’ innately high intelligence, Panofsky said that this was a persistent trope among white supremacists that “fits into a larger narrative about Jewish conspiracies and the idea that Jews are controlling the problems of the world from behind the scenes”.
...and this is equivalent to blood libel? What an absurd position to take. Noting that Ashkenazim are smarter and have higher educational attainment on average doesn't imply that they secretly control the world.
There's lots of ways to criticize categorizing groups by IQ scores: point out that this is the average and incredibly intelligent individuals can emerge from many groups, cite the cultural bias of most IQ tests and how IQ tests may not be accurately measuring G, note that groups are adapted to different environments and on average each have different abilities because of these adaptations and none are objectively superior to another, point out that IQ is only ~57-80% heritable meaning that intelligence can arise, (or diminish,) from any group, etc.,
Honestly it seems like they are proving this asshole's point, that academia, (or at very least The Guardian,) is biased against information that doesn't fit with a political narrative. That said, many of his other views and conclusions drawn are abhorrent and I disagree with them vehemently; one can recognize group differences without suggesting racial hierarchy.
Edit: Originally I posted that heritability of IQ was 85%, and that was inaccurate.
Groups don't stop having different average IQs simply because they are defined as racial or ethnic, intelligence is 57-80% heritable after all. What should be controversial is discrimination based on average test scores of other people, not acknowledgement of reality regarding differences between groups.
[to criticize categorizing groups by IQ scores] cite the cultural bias of most IQ tests and how IQ tests may not be accurately measuring G
I'm not sure what made you assume I thought IQ testing was perfectly accurate and unbiased. Lots of people here are arguing against positions they imagine I hold rather than what I actually wrote.
What units does G have or it is a fundamental constant? How does G interact with the physical brain, midi-chlorian perhaps? What particles make up G? Please show me the property table handbook that matches up G with other physical testable measurable units.
Prove to me that it is as real as gravity and temperature or volts. Because if you can't I am throwing it in the basket of horoscopes.
It is a construct. One can argue that G / general intelligence factor does not exist, I believe it does since mental ability seems to correlate with general competence across many domains. I believe it's a better argument that IQ tests may not be an effective method of deriving it.
The g factor (also known as general intelligence, general mental ability or general intelligence factor) is a construct developed in psychometric investigations of cognitive abilities and human intelligence. It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that an individual's performance on one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to that person's performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
I see. So you have faith that it is there, not evidence. And if your test is not good at finding it, it must be the test that is wrong not that you are trying to detect the undectable. The same logic can be applied to horoscopes, prayer, god, and Bigfoot. Did we make a detection? No? Oh well we must have been looking wrong. We have faith that it exists so any type of failure can be safely disregarded with our preconceived notions intact.
Your Midi-chlorianians don't operate like anything else in science. In science we find out things exist by following the evidence, in Midi-chlorianians we assume something exists and find "evidence". I wonder why they don't give you hard evidence of their existence. Why does your god.. sorry G spirit hate you so much?
There's plenty of debate about g in that article if you care to read it.
Your comparisons with bigfoot and horoscopes come across as glib and dismissive. Faith is defined by belief despite a lack of evidence. There's lots of evidence that g is a thing. I mentioned correlates.
Answer my questions. What units does G have? How does spiritual G interact with the physical human brain? What is the G particle? Is G quantized or fully analog? Why can't you produce a property handbook with G as it "correlates" with other physical measurable testable things? Does G act like a point charge? Is there a counter-G and if so what equation models how they repeal? How much does it weight per units G? Does it move in waves or as particles?
You are using the rhythms of science without the actual science. You name the physical thing I can show you as much as you wanted to know about it and then some. But not your Midi-chlorianians. I have more evidence that ghosts, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness are real than G is because I can at least point out to eyewitnesses. No one even claims to have even seen G.
Now admit the father of eugenics is the person responsible for its invention as a concept.
IQ is supposedly the measure of G, in which 100 is average human intelligence, and +-15 represents one standard deviation. It is a measurement based on population averages, derived from various forms of testing, and not some natural unit.
However, if you must insist that non-physical things don't exist, (like many mathematical and sociological constructs are,) note that intelligence has physical correlates.
Now admit the father of eugenics is the person responsible for its invention as a concept.
Okay, evidently he was. I fail to see why this is relevant though. Whether IQ is valid conceptually or not has nothing to do with the one who invented the concept; this is fallacious reasoning. It does, however, make it clear that you think veracity is at least in part determined by ideology of the messenger.
Groups don't stop having different average IQs simply because they are defined as racial or ethnic,
But race and ethnicity themselves are not determinative.
intelligence is 85% heritable after all.
Citation needed. Most citations I could find said genetics may account or anywhere from 30 to 50% of a person's intelligence. But they have no idea what genes would possibly be contributing to that and how. So basically it's a hypothesis with zero proof. Either you are operating on junk science or straight up eugenicist.
While it is true that random groups of people may have different average IQs. It has more to do with what they eat, how often they eat and their exposure to different ideas than it does their genetics, etc. Even then, IQ is not actually a useful measure of intelligence.
Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%, with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
Thanks, I'll edit my comments to reflect this. Intelligence remains heritable, just not as heritable as I thought.
It has more to do with what they eat, how often they eat and their exposure to different ideas than it does their genetics, etc.
One cannot discount the role of nature in the nature vs. nurture debate. Some twin studies are quite remarkable in illustrating the significant role it plays.
Eugenicist pushing junk science duly noted. The twin studies are highly controversial for a number of reasons. But the results from them are not able to be generalized to the population at large in any way. And just to finish. Correlation is not causation. These studies pointed to interesting possibilities. Though That didn't justify them still. But they ultimately prove nothing.
Acknowledging heritability of IQ makes me neither of these things. There's a lot of studies confirming this all cited at the wikipedia link above. Guess they're all "junk science" because they don't fit with your philosophy.
Correlation is not causation.
One likely cannot determine causation in this domain without some very unethical studies. How many correlates does one need before they imply causation?
And again, IQ means little in the big scheme of things. It is not first among many differing attributes which are important to human beings' survival, adaptation and growth.
I agree and I never argued otherwise, in fact I shared a very similar argument in my first post:
groups are adapted to different environments and on average each have different abilities because of these adaptations and none are objectively superior to another
Please don't project positions onto me that I do not hold. That's called the straw man fallacy.
It literally makes you one of those things bubbala.
How many correlates does one need before they imply causation?
All correlation can ever do is imply. Causation is not an implication. No amount of implications can prove causation. They are different things entirely.
You are correlating heavily with eugenicists. You are using the language of eugenics. The measures of eugenics. And the reasoning of eugenics. Now while it's true, I cannot say what's in your heart. All your pro eugenics talk maybe performative and pure bluster. Which honestly isn't any better. However, if this is sincerely not what you're doing. And you don't think you are or don't want to be seen as someone pro eugenics. I suggest you change up where you're getting your information from. I'm not going to tell you where to go. Just suggest that maybe what you're doing now isn't working for you.
Yes, it is highly controversial, and rightly so. First, an IQ is a number that is based on an intelligence test and intended to measure an individual's cognitive ability in comparison with a reference population, typically with other people of similar ages and in the same country (i.e., the population that they belong to). Intelligence tests are meaningless for group comparisons such as comparisons between countries or ethnic/religious groups, and doing so represents a misuse and misinterpretation of IQ scores. Researchers are not "biased" against this based on their political opinions. They simply object to the objectionable use of these tests.
Second, group comparisons about intelligence are also problematic for a variety of other reasons, and studies that claim to find group differences tend to conflate them with other between-group differences (e.g., different socioeconomic, nutritional, educational influences, among others). These studies are essentially pseudo-science.
Finally, although genetics do seem to play a significant role for cognitive ability, it's important to realize that statements like "IQ is x% heritable" are statistical estimates. These estimates are obtained by comparing sources of variance that can be attributed to shared vs. non-shared genetic and environmental influences. As such, any heritability estimate is specific to its social context (e.g., countries). In fact, heritability estimates tend to be higher in more equitable societies, because they reduce the impact of environmental influences (e.g., wealth, parental education), thus increasing the relative proportion of variance that can be attributed to genetics (but obviously genetics in, say, Sweden still work the same as they do in the US).