Fifth part of my notes on What it means to be 98% chimpanzee by Jonathan Marks - a book not about chimpanzees, but about relation between science and society. amazon/What-Means-98-Chimpanzee-People/dp/0520240642 Page 90 ------ 90 The first to challenge this assumption empirically was the pioneering American anthropologist Franz Boas, who measured skulls of immigrants to Ellis Island, and compared them to those of relatives already living in the United States. ---- Wrong. - Sparks, Jantz 2002 A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited: Results point to very small and insignificant differences between European- and American-born offspring, and no effect of exposure to the American environment on the cranial index in children. These results contradict Boas’ original findings and demonstrate that they may no longer be used to support arguments of plasticity in cranial morphology. .... Reanalysis of Boas’ data not only fails to support his contention that cranial plasticity is a primary source of cranial variation but rather supports what morphologists and morphometricians have known for a long time: most of the variation is genetic variation. ----------- 92 “cognitive ability.” Eluding a scientifically rigorous definition, the phrase is left to be explained by a commonsense or folk definition— “cognitive ability” presumably means the mental development possible for a person under optimal circumstances. .. ability is a concept that is generally easy to see only in the past tense. I know I had the ability to be a college professor, because I am one; but how can I know in any scientifically valid sense whether I could have been a major-league third baseman? .. There is no experiment you can devise that will distinguish what one normal child at birth could optimally accomplish as opposed to another normal child. --------------- Wrong. G is well defined and its not what Marks have written. You can test children for IQ, calculate g and predict what it can be able to accomplish. We cannot right now do that at birth, by genetics is step by step closer to this (whether this is a good fact, or terrifying, I cannot decide). Page 93 ---- What are we to make of scientists who assert the existence of real constitutional differences in ability? If we cannot gauge differences in ability in any reliable manner, if ability is not a scientific concept, it is a corruption of science to assert in its name that one group indeed has less ability than another. From the mouth or pen of a politician, the assertion might reflect ignorance or demagoguery; from that of a scientist, it reflects incompetence or irresponsibility ----- Except that we can gauge differences in ability in reliable manner, g is scientific concept. Its just Marks does not know what he is writing about. Page 94 ---- A society in which individual talents can be cultivated without regard to group affiliations, social rank, or other a priori judgments will be a successful one—acknowledging biological heterogeneity while developing the diverse individual gifts of its citizenry. ---- Sure, but its impossible due our natural tendency to create stereotypes. Page 98 ------ The geneticists actually found five subdivisions because they sampled people from five distinct parts of the world, and not other places: like many studies before it, its conclusion was simply loaded into their assumptions. ---- Not true for new studies. Later he writes about genes MAOA; while I am not sure about validity of the studies, some say they are all trash, still during last ten years we have tons of replication of original results. People with different variants of MAOA tend to react different (in statistical sense) to different inputs. Some variants make it many times more likely that people with such varians will behave asocially. And thats why his later criticism fomr page 108 is wrong. MAOA variants do not cause pathologies (though one pathology can be caused by lack of MAOA), but three different known variants, residing in different frequencies in different populations, cause statistically three different outcomes in creating antisocial behavior. Later he reports about frauds in Burts and Bouchards studies. Burt case is still controversial; I have never read anything about controversies with Bouchard, and in fact his Minnesota study is still widely quoted. Page 115 ---- How could the concordance rate for fraternal twins be more than twice as high as the value for brothers generally, unless the study is actually revealing a strong effect of twinship, rather than of genetic identity? Twins tend to be treated similarly, and tend to regard themselves as more similar to each other than ordinary siblings—identical twins even more so. ---- Marks must feel now quite confused by newest studies comparing people by the level of genetical simmiliarity. As you know, siblings do not share exactly 50% of DNA. And the studies show, the more genetically similar siblings, the more similar they are in IQ and other characteristics. On another page crime is defined by social convention. Sure, but the ability to recognize social conventions and follow them may be biologically bsaed. Page 132 ----- If a population is all that a race is, then there are many, many human races, and the word loses its meaning. A race is supposed to be a megapopulation, of which there are few. ----- Except most people I know define race as exactly human population. E.g. human population differing from other by frequency of many genes, or human population which was for significant time not mixing with another due to social or geographical barriers. 135 ---- a family is a social construction. The dichotomy between natural facts and cultural facts is actually a false one, for both sets of facts work together, and they are often inseparable in imparting meaning to our world. ----- Relation between mother and son is not just social construction. Its both. 136 ---- Races are real, as families are real. But they are units of cultural meaning, not units of biology. There is biology there—I am genetically related to my parents and to my daughter, and the Swiss are closer to the Italians than to the Rwandans—but they are not fundamentally natural entities like Drosophila persimilis, or Cetacea, or lithium, or Betelgeuse. ------ At that time I started to not understanding, what really Marks means and what he argues against, as pretty much everything he wrotes here is accepted by people arguing for existence of races. 138 --- if we used several different markers, and got lucky, we could make a guess that she had some West African or Native American ancestry. .. .Only a magic test could enable you to distinguish “European” from “Middle Eastern” ancestry. ---- Damn, I must quickly tell geneticist that their recent works involve magic. In short, yes, you can distinguish European from Middle Eastern in the sense, that the results will be more correct than expected by pure chance. OK, thats it for today; I have made many more notes and I will post them tomorrow and later this day. Marks takes for granted data which supports his position, while demanding higher standards for data not supporting his views. Nothing that special, but the book was real dissapointment.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 13:39:21 +0000
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