I already miss Just Science week… Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal wrote an op-ed in the LA Times titled “Can Washington get smart about science?” This post is a response of sorts, mostly an appeal to recognize that the “war on science” goes beyond the participants identified by Mooney and Sokal. For the most part, […]

To follow-up on two older posts, here is a comment on the direct tests of the genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ gap that were proposed by David Rowe and Charles Murray. Each appears to be describing the same set of experiments. The aim of these experiments is to ascertain the relative contribution of genes […]

If there is one trend in American life that most irks [group], it is probably [inconvenient truth]. It’s not the [inconvenient truth] itself that bothers them… It is the perception of [inconvenient truth] and, worse, the … discussion of [inconvenient truth] that is so irritating. It offends their view of [philosophy], helps justify all sorts […]

Charles Murray has a three-piece series of op-eds in the WSJ. They describe education policy recommendations for three levels of the IQ distribution: Intelligence in the Classroom: Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them. What’s Wrong With Vocational School? Too many Americans are going to college.  […]

A new La Griffe is up: Intelligence, Gender and Race. Inspired by Jackson and Rushton (Intelligence 34 (2006) 479-486), La Griffe (Prodigy?) seeks to use a version of the “method of thresholds” to estimate the female distribution of g relative to males. The details are well spelled out in the article. Combining a variety of […]

I left a comment on a hilarious post at GNXP-SB in which I suggested the near-term feasibility of a disposable home paternity test. I can pretty confidently predict that we are less then 5 years from having the technology for a *disposable* home paternity test kit. Matt was skeptical, and outlined his reasoning in a […]

NPR: Harvard Reconsiders Core-Course Requirements Harvard University is rethinking what future graduates should be required to know. The latest plan stresses general knowledge about “how the world works,” rather than academic methodology. The idea is to make classes more relevant to the modern world. Perhaps it’s just a bit of biased editing, but the NPR […]

Ron Bailey covered the Flynn-Murray debate at Reason. An insightful comment was left on the Reason blog: Doesn’t the German study seem obviously flawed? GIs who knock up their temporary girlfriend while stationed abroad are obviously not a random sample. Indeed, they are heavily selected for a particular IQ range (smart enough to get into […]

Wanted: Biologists who can speak ‘math,’ engineers fluent in genetics Biologists, computer scientists and engineers speak different languages: Mention “vector” to a molecular biologist and a plasmid (a circular piece of bacterial DNA used in gene cloning) comes to mind. Say “vector” to an engineer, and she thinks of a mathematical concept. Similarly with “expression”: […]

New Scientist asks: What will be the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years? Geoffrey Miller answers: Applied evolutionary psychology should revolutionise life in three ways by 2056. First, Darwinian critiques of runaway consumer capitalism should undermine the social and sexual appeal of conspicuous consumption. Absurdly wasteful display will become less popular once people comprehend […]

The January 2005 issue of American Psychologist was devoted to the subject of race. As Steve pointed out at the time, most of the issue was complete fluff, with the exception of the paper by David C. Rowe. Rowe had died 2 years earlier, and wrote the paper during the convalescence prior to his death. […]

Video Interesting bits:1. Rose asks about geographical/population differences in brain structure/function — maybe Jim Watson and E. O. Wilson rubbed off on him — but there were no takers. A follow up on sex differences gets a few answers, including the suggestion that lack of male plasticity after stroke could be a result of firmer […]

David Sinclair’s group has published (in a rush) their work on the health and longevity benefits of Resveratrol in mice. Nicholas Wade has good coverage in the NYTimes and Nature has a podcast, a news article, and the research article. In Wade’s article, Sinclair says he, his family, and his lab are taking it at […]

Below the fold is the full text of a paper circa 1993 that reports that freshmen college students tend to misattribute political beliefs to professors on the basis of merely factual material presented in class. The results obviously extend to other areas. When Teaching is Evaluated on Political Grounds Stanley CorenPsychologyUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver […]

There’s another article in Science about women and science. It appears to consist predominately of (1) rebuttals to straw-men arguments and (2) Lewontin-like claims that we’re all the same despite our differences. A great deal of the text deals with describing (without much detail) male-female differences on a variety of criteria. The magnitude of each […]

Heroes would be a cool show if they dropped the retarded voice-overs about “evolution”.

Nobelprize.org: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Roger D. Kornberg “for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription”. First, something entertaining: on The NewsHour, when asked to speculate about why Kornberg is a second generation Nobel-winner, the answer given by the senior Kornberg was “genes”, and this was echoed by the Junior […]

In the NYTimes: Scientists Form Group to Support Science-Friendly Candidates The group: SEA, Scientists and Engineers for America They endorse an admirable set of principles — if only they could be applied universally.

GSS SCITEST4 asks In your opinion, how true is this? … D. Human beings developed from earlier species of animals. Frequency Distribution Cells contain:-Column percent-N of cases HUMANS EVOLVED FROM ANIMALS 1DEFINITELY TRUE 2PROBABLY TRUE 3PROBABLY NOT TRUE 4DEFINITELY NOT TRUE ROWTOTAL GOD 1: DONT BELIEVE 9.351 2.326 2.012 1.012 2.9101 2: NO WAY TO […]

A question from Jason Malloy prompted a quick search of the GSS for data on the cause of the Black-White IQ gap. In 1982, the GSS characterized the skin color of Black participants on a 5-point scale (1:very dark brown to 5:very light brown). The very dark/light categories consist of only 50 and 14 individuals, […]