Now Wait a Second...

Much has recently been made over James Watson's comments regarding racial disparities in I.Q. testing. William Saletan, at Slate.com, has borne the brunt of this criticism, and continues to even after issuing an apology for not doing journalistic due diligence. Brad DeLong tells us to read Robert Farley:

Robert Farley of Lawyers, Guns, and Money on William Saletan, who may at last have come to a dim form of self-knowledge:

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Apology Not Accepted, Bill: Saletan:

I missed something I could have picked up from a simple glance at Wikipedia.

For the past five years, J. Philippe Rushton has been president of the Pioneer Fund, an organization dedicated to "the scientific study of heredity and human differences." During this time, the fund has awarded at least $70,000 to the New Century Foundation. To get a flavor of what New Century stands for, check out its publications on crime ("Everyone knows that blacks are dangerous") and heresy ("Unless whites shake off the teachings of racial orthodoxy they will cease to be a distinct people"). New Century publishes a magazine called American Renaissance, which preaches segregation. Rushton routinely speaks at its conferences.

I was negligent in failing to research and report this. I'm sorry. I owe you better than that.

"Hack" doesn't really begin to cover it. Saletan sallied forth with the argument that the evidence for inherent intellectual inequality between races was so compelling that liberals who questioned the science were equivalent to creationists. Now we find that, in addition to not understanding most of the science he was trying to talk about, he didn't even bother to do basic research into the compelling work he was citing.

More Bill:

I wanted to discuss whether egalitarianism could survive if this scenario, raised last month by James Watson, turned out to be true. I thought it was important to lay out the scenario's plausibility. In doing so, I short-circuited the conversation. Most of the reaction to what I wrote has been over whether the genetic hypothesis is true, with me as an expert witness.

I don't want this role. I'm not an expert.

Huh. So I guess that's why Bill devoted two columns to stressing how strong the science was and how reluctant to accept the truth liberals were, and one column to a few half-assed ruminations about the political implications. And I guess that's why he felt the need to write this missive to the liberal masses:

Evolution forced Christians to bend or break. They could insist on the Bible's literal truth and deny the facts, as Bryan did. Or they could seek a subtler account of creation and human dignity. Today, the dilemma is yours. You can try to reconcile evidence of racial differences with a more sophisticated understanding of equality and opportunity. Or you can fight the evidence and hope it doesn't break your faith.

I'm for reconciliation.

Yeah; I'm pretty strongly against reconciliation with someone who thought taunting liberals for not believing shoddy racist science was more important than doing basic journalistic research.

Seriously, what does somebody have to do to get fired from Slate?

But there is another possibility, and that possibility should be obvious. Rushton might be a vicious and horrible racist... and also correct about I.Q. I'm not a geneticist, cognitive scientist, sociologist, or in any other way qualified to comment on the truthfulness of Rushton's claims regarding the science. But he could be right. Just as many Christians accuse evolutionists of being virulently anti-God or anti-religion who were using evolutionary theory to further a more broadly general atheist agenda. And you know what? In some ways they are right. Many atheists do use evolution to further their own agendas, esp. among the current crop of atheists (e.g. Dennett, Hitchens, Dawkins), but that fact alone doesn't make their claims regarding the validity of evolutionary theory wrong.

I've read just enough on the subject to know that there is serious debate on the topic, mostly focusing on whether or not I.Q. testing is an appropriate measure for intellectual ability. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that certain groups of people are genetically more predisposed to certain types of intellectual ability than others as a group, just as certain groups of people are genetically predisposed to certain types of physical or athletic ability than others as a group. This mustn't be a statement of value (and I don't intend it as such) since different genetic intellectual abilities may serve different purposes just as different genetic physical characteristics serve different purposes. Indeed, this is consistent with evolutionary theory.

But it isn't necessarily determinism -- Chinese people are, on average, shorter than Europeans, but that doesn't stop Yao Ming from being a great basketball player -- but if we can identify these differences it can help us understand how to generate an appropriate social policy which does the best service to the most number of people, while maintaining equal opportunities for all. If we ignore this evidence, then social equality will suffer since we may be trying to force people to adapt to roles for which they are not genetically built. It could be like trying to force square pegs into round holes, and that helps no one.

There is an awful lot of uncertainty surrounding the specifics of evolution, and even its underlying assumptions. The same is certainly true of group-based models of genetic cognitive ability. The truth is, we are merely starting to understand how the brain works, and what factors control what stages of development. But the discussion of the topic should be had on the merits, not through singling out individuals' despicable views for criticism without addressing the substance. Straw-man politics and ad hominems will get us nowhere.