Article from Wired:

The overall expected rate of infection was not reduced in the high-risk people who volunteered to take the vaccine, VaxGen said late Sunday. However, the expected infection rate for the 314 black volunteers who received the vaccine was reduced by 78 percent — a finding the researchers said was unexpected. The rate was reduced by 67 percent for all non-white volunteers other than Hispanics.

“This is the first time we have specific numbers to suggest that a vaccine has prevented HIV infection in humans,” VaxGen vice president Phillip Berman said in a statement Sunday. “We’re not sure yet why certain groups have a better immune response.”

The Brisbane, California, company said it planned to continue developing the vaccine and will examine more closely why it worked better in blacks and Asians than it did in whites and Hispanics.

“We don’t know why. There’s a lot of factors that could be involved,” Berman said Monday in a conference call, specifying factors such as geography, age and education. “We need to investigate each one of these possibilities.”

Genetic factors may be at play, the company said.

Genetic factors? What sort of genetics, since all reputable scientists know that “race doesn’t exist.” Of course, the other factors might be be at play and explain the discrepancy (perhaps repeated sexual exposure to multiple strains of the virus?).

I’ve been working & dealing with the fact that my laptop fried this weekend (getting used to working my clunky desktop back up until I can get the laptop situation figured out). So I’ve missed out on the big debate that sprouted this weekend about THE BELL CURVE & racism and IQ and all that….

So, see here Charles Murtaugh’s opinion, Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum, Atrios, Brad Delong, 6th International, Nathan Newman, Kieran Healy….

Not much I’m going to say right now, don’t have the time, but perhaps later. I’m sure GNXP readers can have fun on the boards of these sites.

Update:

Unlike most of those who discuss the Bell Curve, I’ve actually read it, and I found it fascinating and well-written. It is regrettable that Murray and Herrnstein were known to have racial views, and even more regrettable that race was mentioned in the book. This turned debate about the book’s main ideas to discussions of race, which are nearly always emotional and unproductive.

By far the most important idea in the book was independent of race entirely – the strong and strongly researched link between intelligence and social behaviour. (Most of the book analyzes data from a long-term study of Caucasians.) The fact that low intelligence is a leading indicator of criminality, violence, lack of civility, and poor parenting was suspected before but has now been clearly shown. The implications are significant for policymakers, philosophers, pundits, and thoughtful people everywhere, particularly in a world where the average intelligence level is steadily dropping.

I urge anyone interested in these issues to actually read the book, it is well worth your time even if you are unconvinced by or opposed to the authors’ views.

Ole

P.S. I am personally so concerned about the unfortunate combination of dropping intelligence with the correlation of low intelligence to poor social behavior that I’m writing a book about it, to be called Unnatural Selection. Please see http://w-uh.com/ if you’re interested…

I’m going to try & cut down the brown orientation of this blog a bit-but going out in flames-Eric Lien of Mixed Asian points out that Mahathir Mohammed had an Indian Muslim father (also, the article linked notes that his ex-protege Anwar also has Tamil ancestry and is married to a woman of partial Chinese extraction). Mahathir, along with Lee Kwan Hew is one of the few politicans to address human biodiversity, so is it any surprise he’s a “brother” 🙂 Mr. Lee might be too, who knows (via his Malay ancestors)? Of course, that would probably make him rather nervous and queesy. Also, Sister Norah wins a bunch of grammies!

Peace out.

Why does it always have to be one or the other?

I bring this up now because you will see it more and more often rearing its head in the strangest of places. At the Center for the Advancement of Health they are finding evidence, though it isn’t interpreted as such in the article, for self-control to have a genetic basis. This is particularly interesting in light of the findings in recent years regarding polymorphisms in 5-HT2A, tryptophan hydroxylase, and others. Here’s a nice summary of current research on serotonin and suicide. I have always felt that 5-HT2A signalling is related to emotional tolerance to events, and the idea connects the dots between the two phenomena nicely, if true. Of course, as mentioned in the NeLHM article, the statistics are far from conclusive.

I’m reading Mathematics from the birth of numbers by Jan Gullberg [1]. Here is an interesting note in the section on combinatorics:

Our story is a variation of the “no so chance” Ludus Sancti Petri, or Saint Peter’s Game, known from medieval times- typically a shipt was struck by a heavy storm and, to lighten and possibly save the vessel and some of her passengers, half the passengers were thrown overboard. In Europe the fifteen favored persons were most often Christians, the other fifteen Jews. St. Peter, who usually presided, arranged the passengers in such a way that the Christians were saved.

In a Jewish version, Saint Peter was replaced by the Spanish Jew Ibrahim ben Meir Ezra … who saves his fifteen pupils, the other fifteen passengers being drowned. An Arab version favors the Muslims and throws the infidels overboard; an East Indian story lets fifteen good men be saved and fifteen theives be downed….

Who needs to be saved from heathen darkness? If only the idolaters would show out-castes as much compassion as they do cows, I would have no complaints at all….

[1] OK book-though it covers a lot of topics, so you don’t get much detail and depth. Good for lay people that don’t know where to start. I’m skipping around. Not too advanced by the way….

Posted by razib at 03:08 AM

Newsweek has an interesting piece up on the growing black gender gap-as women go to college and enter professional fields at higher rates than men. Shocking statistic, 47% of black women between 30-34 have never been married (compared to 10% of white women).

Well, if you assume the axiom of sameness this is something that might blow you away, but women in West Africa do the farming and operate stalls in markets as free agents. They’ve been doing this for generations [1]. As James Q. Wilson has noted, many African-American “social ills” have their cognate, and likely precusors, in the West African cultural matrix.

Of course, I’m not trying to say that the situation should make anyone happy or complacent, but the independence and self-reliant economic productivity of black women has a long history. This is a not just the out-growth of modernity (and as one train of thought hinted in the article, the result of discrimination against black men in white America).

[1] The intensive plow-based farming that requires a large quotient of upper body strength that dominates in much of riverine Asia tends to require men of course, going a long way to explaining the dominance of the male gender on the village level in India or China. In these societies it is plausible that women don’t have the physical durability to maximize yield in dense plots and keep up a level of subsistence.

Just read Native American scholar Vine Deloria’s Evolution, Creationism and other Modern Myths. This is what I read on the jacket: “Deloria takes Western science and religion to task….” The knives were already sparking on the stone before the first page was cracked, but I was surprised by the book, I have many criticisms to make, but it was thought-provoking. I’ll put up a longer review later in the week, but here is one problem I have, Deloria attacks modern evolutionary theory, “Darwinism,” and tends to look to Behe & Dembski’s Intelligent Design movement for help. One thing I noticed, and confirmed, the scientists used to caricature “Darwinists” are kind of weird (Deloria even admits it at one point). Here are the number of references to evolutionary theorists according to the index:

Stephen Jay Gould, 16
Darwin, 10
Ernst Mayr, 0
JBS Haldane, 0
RA Fisher, 0
William Hamilton, 0
Robert Trivers, 0
E.O. Wilson, 0
John Manyard Smith, 0
Richard Dawkins, 0 (yes, a populizer, but I would forgive the neglect of mathematical biologists like Hamilton & Fisher less well known by the general public if Dawkins was mentioned)

Vine Deloria makes paleontology & SJ Gould’s ideas look a bit like mumbo jumbo. Well, that’s fine, but let us be honest, after the First Book of Dinosaurs phase in your life, if you want to pursue evolutionary theory on the collegiate level, you move past butterfly collection and familiarize yourself with the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. ‘nuf said. Dr. Deloria does a good job showing that butterfly collection is a house of cards. Retitle the book, Butterfly Collection, Creationism and other Modern Myths.

Check out this page that clumps countries according to the ratio of male:female births.

Some notes:

Japan has a ratio of 1.05, China 1.15, which seems to be the East Asian spread. The Japanese prefer girls and unlike other East Asians seem to have successfully discouraged gender selective abortions.

The South Asian nations have sex ratios of 1.05/1.06, the same as the United States, despite the stereotype that sons are preferred. Why could this be? It might be that sex selective abortion is not accessible to most of the population because of monetary concerns. Additionally, South Asians may be more prone to carry more girls to term compared to East Asians , so sex selective abortions do not skew the ratio as much (I assume Japan at 1.05 is close to the natural rate of many East Asian populations, perhaps even shifted toward girls a bit because of couples that manage to find out gender in a country where 75% perfer girls) [1].

Finally, take a look at the countries with the most balanced sex ratios. Very interesting, do you see any pattern?

[1] There are many possibilites, more male fetuses might be spontaneously aborted, or, there might be more genetic males who did not develop the sex characteristics and so are recorded as female. Please note that abortion is illegal in Pakistan and Bangladesh, but legal in India. Nevertheless, the three countries have about the same sex ratio….

The Sunday Post Magazine has an article about arranged marriages for American South Asians. For the non-South Asians at Gene Expression (there are must be at least 2 or 3 of us) it will be educational. My thoughts:

1. Says a meddling aunt “Character is something we can see a little better than youngsters do”. I don’t know if this justifies arranged marriages, but you must admit that most young people can be overly taken with superficial characteristics (beauty, charm) that mean little in the long run.

2. “Traditional Indians don’t expect a partner to be that improbable combination of soul mate/confidante/red-hot lover/best friend.” I’m starting to believe that the concept of a soul mate was a ploy designed to enrich divorce lawyers and self-help book authors. Seriously, finding your “soul mate” is like winning the lottery: It will be great if it happens, but don’t plan your retirement expecting a check from Ed MacMahon.

3. Vibha discusses frustration with trying to meet quality men in bars and clubs. That there is no general social structure to ease people into serious courtship and marriage is a serious social problem. The Internet might mitigate this problem somewhat, but this issue must be addressed. It’s appalling that an American woman would have to agree to an arranged marriage to get help from older, more experienced adults in meeting marriage-minded men.

4. This seems to be a happy ending for Vibha, but forgive me if I am a bit cynical about declarations of bliss from honeymooning newly weds. I wish them all the best, but I’ll believe it when they are still happy together in ten years.

Nonetheless, I shall leave it to the brown folks to comment more.

Steve Sailer points me to this critique of IQ & Wealth of Nations. Long.