The Guardian view on intelligence genes: going beyond the evidence

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: April 1, 2018 at 3:15:04 PM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Guardian view on intelligence genes: going beyond the evidence
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> The Guardian view on intelligence genes: going beyond the evidence
> ‘Hereditarian’ science seeks to link genetics to cleverness and could have profound changes on the social policy 
> debate. That would be wrong
> By Editorial
> Apr 1 2018
> <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/01/the-guardian-view-on-intelligence-genes-going-beyond-the-evidence>
>
> Humans are fascinated by the source of their failings and virtues. This preoccupation inevitably leads to an old 
> debate: whether nature or nurture moulds us more. A revolution in genomics has poised this as a modern political 
> question about the character of our society: if personalities are hard-wired into our genes, what can governments do 
> to help us? This is a big, creepy “if” over which the spectre of eugenics hovers. It feels morally questionable yet 
> claims of genetic selection by intelligence are making headlines.
>
> This is down to “hereditarian” science, a field dominated in this country by Robert Plomin, a psychologist at King’s 
> College London. His latest paper claimed “differences in exam performance between pupils attending selective and 
> non-selective schools mirror the genetic differences between them”. With such a billing the work was predictably 
> greeted by a raft of absurd claims about “genetics determining academic success”. What the research revealed was the 
> rather less surprising result: the educational benefits of selective schools largely disappear once pupils’ innate 
> ability and socio-economic background were taken into account. It is a glimpse of the blindingly obvious – and 
> there’s nothing to back strongly either a hereditary or environmental argument.
>
> Yet Professor Plomin’s paper does say children are “unintentionally genetically selected” by the school system. Such 
> a claim, as one geneticist put it, “could have been lifted right out of The Bell Curve”. This is a reference to a 
> 1994 US book that retailed a form of highbrow racism in which white people’s success was ascribed to higher average 
> IQs. Professor Plomin endorsed the book’s data but not its authors’ conclusions. Central to hereditarian science is a 
> tall claim: that identifiable variations in genetic sequences can predict an individual’s propensity to learn, reason 
> and solve problems. This is problematic on many levels. A teacher could not seriously tell a parent their child has a 
> low genetic tendency to study when external factors clearly exist. Unlike-minded academics say the heritability of 
> human traits is scientifically unsound. At best there is a weak statistical association and not a causal link between 
> DNA and intelligence. Yet sophisticated statistics are used to create an intimidatory atmosphere of scientific 
> certitude.
>
> Buried beneath the science is a troubling policy prescription. We are all individually different and unaware of what 
> our lot in life is to be. Ignorant of our talents, we are predisposed to maximise the welfare of the worst-off in 
> case we end up at the bottom of society – even if this means burdening the successful. What if genetic testing 
> forewarned us of our fates; would the load be shared differently? Almost certainly so – and to the detriment of the 
> poor. If intelligence is largely inherited and the reason for failure then attempts to remedy it are doomed. This is 
> what is so pernicious and incendiary about these ideas: they conceal a tendentious opinion about compensatory social 
> programmes.
>
> While there’s an undoubted genetic basis to individual difference, it is wrong to think that socially defined groups 
> can be genetically accounted for. The fixation on genes as destiny is surely false too. Medical predictability can 
> rarely be based on DNA alone; environment matters too. Something as complex as intellect is likely to be affected by 
> many factors beyond genes. If hereditarians want to advance their cause it will require more balanced interpretation 
> and not just acts of advocacy.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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