84% of surveyed intelligence researchers believe the gaps are at least partially genetic.[1] This statement is not just an appeal to authority, it is also inaccurate.
Why did you reply to MissionCriticalBit when it was I who made that claim? I almost didn’t see it. Also pointing out that the academics who study this stuff for a living don’t believe in it is not fallacious, but rather a very useful piece of information. Anyway, I wanted to give the HBDers another shot so I downloaded the survey (can we all agree that paywalls for publicly funded research is bullshit?) and I have two important things to note: genetic gaps is not equivalent to racial gaps, and the survey itself admits it is unrepresentative. It was an internet survey:
The EQCA was an online survey administered from May 2013 to March 2014.
and had a high nonresponse rate:
a total of 265 responses were received, which produced a response rate of 19.71%.
with respondents who are different than the field as a whole:
In the current study, the EQCA sample leaned slightly to the left (54%, Table 2). The left tilt of the EQCA sample was small compared to the left tilt observed for psychologists overall, who overwhelmingly identify as left-liberal (90% or higher, Duarte et al., 2015). [...] In addition, the EQCA sample was predominantly male (83%), far exceeding the male share of APA membership, which is mostly female (57%, APA Center for Workforce Studies, 2015).
which heavily biases the results in favor of your position:
In contrast, compared to female and left (liberal) experts, male and right (conservative) experts were more likely to endorse the validity of IQ testing (correlations with gender, politics: r = .55, .41), the g factor theory of intelligence (r = .18, .34), and the impact of genes on US Black-White differences (r = .50, .48).
EDIT: To respond to missioncriticalbit below. My comment was about the sentence “HBD is not generally accepted in academia”. The reason I can’t show you a survey that shows you that is the same reason I can’t show you a survey that zoologists don’t believe in unicorns, they don’t engage with it so there is no survey available (even the bad survey by anon rationalist is not about HBD). But I don’t want to make an assertion without citing anything, so what is the best available option? How about an example of a professional biologists with no conflict of interests using publicly available data to create a well received paper that has been seen more than 12000 times that clearly rejects HBD.
Missioncriticalbit just makes assertions without citing anything. The reason I don’t respond and refused to continue to read his reply is not because I am afraid, but because he hadn’t cited anything, didn’t engage with my writings and outright insulted me.
The reason I respond in an edit instead of a reply is because the HBDers have removed half a dozen of my latest comments from the frontpage while taking away a big chunk of my voting-power on this forum. I’m not inclined to give them another way to take away my voting-power, but I don’t want to silence myself, so using the edit button is my workaround.
First, that depends on what you mean by “this stuff”; Bird does not study intelligence nor behavioral genetics for a living, he’s a plant geneticist. Skewed though the survey may be, it’s probably more representative than a single non-expert.
Second, why do you suppose the non-response rate is so high and so skewed? And might it have something in common with your own refusal to continue our conversation on merits of your list?
I suspect that professionals who prefer not to respond, rather than respond in the negative about genetic contributions to the IQ gap, are driven by contradictory impulses: they believe that the evidence doesn’t allow for a confident “100% environmental” response and, being scientists, have problem with outright lying, but they also don’t want to give the impression of supporting socially unapproved beliefs or “validating” the very inquiry into this topic. So they’d rather wash their hands of the whole issue, and allow their less squeamish colleagues to give the impression of moderate consensus in favor of genetic contribution.
Differential response within the survey is again as bad.
The response rate for the survey as a whole was about 20% (265 of 1345), and below 8% (102) for every individual question on which data was published across three papers (on international differences, the Flynn effect, and controversial issues).
Respondents attributed the heritability of U.S. black-white differences in IQ 47% on average to genetic factors. On similar questions about cross-national differences, respondents on average attributed 20% of cognitive differences to genes. On the U.S. question, there were 86 responses, and on the others, there were between 46 and 64 responses.
Steve Sailer’s blog was rated highest for accuracy in reporting on intelligence research—by far, not even in the ballpark of sources that got more ratings (those sources being exactly every mainstream English-language publication that was asked about). It was rated by 26 respondents.
The underlying data isn’t available, but this is all consistent with the (known) existence of a contingent of ISIR conference attendees who are likely to follow Sailer’s blog and share strong, idiosyncratic views on specifically U.S. racial differences in intelligence. The survey is not a credible indicator of expert consensus.
(More cynically, this contingent has a history of going to lengths to make their work appear more mainstream than it is. Overrepresenting them was a predictable outcome of distributing this survey. Heiner Rindermann, the first author on these papers, can hardly have failed to consider that. Of course, what you make of that may hinge on how legitimate you think their work is to begin with. Presumably they would argue that the mainstream goes to lengths to make their work seem fringe.)
84% of surveyed intelligence researchers believe the gaps are at least partially genetic.[1] This statement is not just an appeal to authority, it is also inaccurate.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289619301886
Why did you reply to MissionCriticalBit when it was I who made that claim? I almost didn’t see it.
Also pointing out that the academics who study this stuff for a living don’t believe in it is not fallacious, but rather a very useful piece of information.
Anyway, I wanted to give the HBDers another shot so I downloaded the survey (can we all agree that paywalls for publicly funded research is bullshit?) and I have two important things to note: genetic gaps is not equivalent to racial gaps, and the survey itself admits it is unrepresentative.
It was an internet survey:
and had a high nonresponse rate:
with respondents who are different than the field as a whole:
which heavily biases the results in favor of your position:
EDIT: To respond to missioncriticalbit below. My comment was about the sentence “HBD is not generally accepted in academia”. The reason I can’t show you a survey that shows you that is the same reason I can’t show you a survey that zoologists don’t believe in unicorns, they don’t engage with it so there is no survey available (even the bad survey by anon rationalist is not about HBD). But I don’t want to make an assertion without citing anything, so what is the best available option? How about an example of a professional biologists with no conflict of interests using publicly available data to create a well received paper that has been seen more than 12000 times that clearly rejects HBD.
Missioncriticalbit just makes assertions without citing anything. The reason I don’t respond and refused to continue to read his reply is not because I am afraid, but because he hadn’t cited anything, didn’t engage with my writings and outright insulted me.
The reason I respond in an edit instead of a reply is because the HBDers have removed half a dozen of my latest comments from the frontpage while taking away a big chunk of my voting-power on this forum. I’m not inclined to give them another way to take away my voting-power, but I don’t want to silence myself, so using the edit button is my workaround.
First, that depends on what you mean by “this stuff”; Bird does not study intelligence nor behavioral genetics for a living, he’s a plant geneticist. Skewed though the survey may be, it’s probably more representative than a single non-expert.
Second, why do you suppose the non-response rate is so high and so skewed? And might it have something in common with your own refusal to continue our conversation on merits of your list?
I suspect that professionals who prefer not to respond, rather than respond in the negative about genetic contributions to the IQ gap, are driven by contradictory impulses: they believe that the evidence doesn’t allow for a confident “100% environmental” response and, being scientists, have problem with outright lying, but they also don’t want to give the impression of supporting socially unapproved beliefs or “validating” the very inquiry into this topic. So they’d rather wash their hands of the whole issue, and allow their less squeamish colleagues to give the impression of moderate consensus in favor of genetic contribution.
Differential response within the survey is again as bad.
The response rate for the survey as a whole was about 20% (265 of 1345), and below 8% (102) for every individual question on which data was published across three papers (on international differences, the Flynn effect, and controversial issues).
Respondents attributed the heritability of U.S. black-white differences in IQ 47% on average to genetic factors. On similar questions about cross-national differences, respondents on average attributed 20% of cognitive differences to genes. On the U.S. question, there were 86 responses, and on the others, there were between 46 and 64 responses.
Steve Sailer’s blog was rated highest for accuracy in reporting on intelligence research—by far, not even in the ballpark of sources that got more ratings (those sources being exactly every mainstream English-language publication that was asked about). It was rated by 26 respondents.
The underlying data isn’t available, but this is all consistent with the (known) existence of a contingent of ISIR conference attendees who are likely to follow Sailer’s blog and share strong, idiosyncratic views on specifically U.S. racial differences in intelligence. The survey is not a credible indicator of expert consensus.
(More cynically, this contingent has a history of going to lengths to make their work appear more mainstream than it is. Overrepresenting them was a predictable outcome of distributing this survey. Heiner Rindermann, the first author on these papers, can hardly have failed to consider that. Of course, what you make of that may hinge on how legitimate you think their work is to begin with. Presumably they would argue that the mainstream goes to lengths to make their work seem fringe.)