Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.
He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.
The revelations once again raise questions about the willingness of Rufo – a major ally of Ron DeSantis and powerful culture warrior in Republican politics – to cultivate extremists in the course of his political crusades.
The Guardian emailed Rufo to ask about his repeated platforming of extremists, and asked both Rufo and the Manhattan Institute’s communications office whether they had vetted Pallesen before publishing the interview. Neither responded.
It’s controversial to say that different groups have different average IQ’s now?
…and this is equivalent to blood libel? What an absurd position to take. Noting that Ashkenazim are smarter and have higher educational attainment on average doesn’t imply that they secretly control the world.
There’s lots of ways to criticize categorizing groups by IQ scores: point out that this is the average and incredibly intelligent individuals can emerge from many groups, cite the cultural bias of most IQ tests and how IQ tests may not be accurately measuring G, note that groups are adapted to different environments and on average each have different abilities because of these adaptations and none are objectively superior to another, point out that IQ is only ~57-80% heritable meaning that intelligence can arise, (or diminish,) from any group, etc.,
Honestly it seems like they are proving this asshole’s point, that academia, (or at very least The Guardian,) is biased against information that doesn’t fit with a political narrative. That said, many of his other views and conclusions drawn are abhorrent and I disagree with them vehemently; one can recognize group differences without suggesting racial hierarchy.
Edit: Originally I posted that heritability of IQ was 85%, and that was inaccurate.
If it has anything to do with race or ethnicity. Uh yes.
Groups don’t stop having different average IQs simply because they are defined as racial or ethnic, intelligence is 57-80% heritable after all. What should be controversial is discrimination based on average test scores of other people, not acknowledgement of reality regarding differences between groups.
But race and ethnicity themselves are not determinative.
Citation needed. Most citations I could find said genetics may account or anywhere from 30 to 50% of a person’s intelligence. But they have no idea what genes would possibly be contributing to that and how. So basically it’s a hypothesis with zero proof. Either you are operating on junk science or straight up eugenicist.
While it is true that random groups of people may have different average IQs. It has more to do with what they eat, how often they eat and their exposure to different ideas than it does their genetics, etc. Even then, IQ is not actually a useful measure of intelligence.
I stand corrected! According to wikipedia:
Thanks, I’ll edit my comments to reflect this. Intelligence remains heritable, just not as heritable as I thought.
One cannot discount the role of nature in the nature vs. nurture debate. Some twin studies are quite remarkable in illustrating the significant role it plays.
the tests themselves are biased, and should not be used as a metric at all.
IQ tests are pseudoscience. The topurpose of the test was from the very beginning to decide which groups are unfit to live.
Yes, it is highly controversial, and rightly so. First, an IQ is a number that is based on an intelligence test and intended to measure an individual’s cognitive ability in comparison with a reference population, typically with other people of similar ages and in the same country (i.e., the population that they belong to). Intelligence tests are meaningless for group comparisons such as comparisons between countries or ethnic/religious groups, and doing so represents a misuse and misinterpretation of IQ scores. Researchers are not “biased” against this based on their political opinions. They simply object to the objectionable use of these tests.
Second, group comparisons about intelligence are also problematic for a variety of other reasons, and studies that claim to find group differences tend to conflate them with other between-group differences (e.g., different socioeconomic, nutritional, educational influences, among others). These studies are essentially pseudo-science.
Finally, although genetics do seem to play a significant role for cognitive ability, it’s important to realize that statements like “IQ is x% heritable” are statistical estimates. These estimates are obtained by comparing sources of variance that can be attributed to shared vs. non-shared genetic and environmental influences. As such, any heritability estimate is specific to its social context (e.g., countries). In fact, heritability estimates tend to be higher in more equitable societies, because they reduce the impact of environmental influences (e.g., wealth, parental education), thus increasing the relative proportion of variance that can be attributed to genetics (but obviously genetics in, say, Sweden still work the same as they do in the US).