Here's a segment of the Morgan Freeman-narrated science show Through the Wormhole on "Is There a Superior Race?" featuring John Hawks in a spiffy hat on a recent evolution, IQ expert Linda Gottfredson, and dog intelligence guru Stanley Coren.
Unsurprisingly, the part with Prof. Gottfredson of the U. of Delaware discussing racial differences in average IQ appears to have disappeared through a wormhole. You can, however, still read the subtitles to the vanished video here.
Unsurprisingly, the part with Prof. Gottfredson of the U. of Delaware discussing racial differences in average IQ appears to have disappeared through a wormhole. You can, however, still read the subtitles to the vanished video here.
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29 comments:
Those videos don't show Gottfredson.
You going to talk about Obama's executive fiat or are we going to have to suffer through more pop analysis about hollywood innuendo?
You going to talk about Obama's executive fiat or are we going to have to suffer through more pop analysis about hollywood innuendo?
Ah, readers. Don't you just love 'em?
I wanted to see Gottfredson, but that has to be one of the most annoying websites ever designed.
BTW, she has some excellent papers available through the Wikipedia page on her.
- A Solid Citizen
I think there is going to be lots of footage hitting the cutting room floor re IQ differences
The full video is downloadable online. First they review recent developments: 1) There has been a recent acceleration of adaptive evolution, including malaria resistance, brain genes, and lactose tolerance. 2) Humans are 99.5% the same, but humans chimps are 97% the same, so there is room for differences between human groups.
Then they get to the idea of variation in intelligence, and start by going over how dog breeds differ in intelligence. Then they bring in Gottfredson, who gives the data on average IQ scores by ethnicity, and the data on sibs vs strangers having more similar IQs (but they don't mention twin studies, which would undermine the environmental response coming next).
Freeman replies that 1) IQ tests may be culturally biased 2) IQ are narrow and don't predict being Picasso 3) Group differences may reflect differences in schools and nutrition.
Then they talk about the energy consumption of the human brain (20% of the body's energy budget), and talks about the tradeoffs limiting larger brains.
They finish off by talking about the potential to use biotech to create more intelligent humans, and the possibility that the children of the rich will be enhanced first.
"the possibility that the children of the rich will be enhanced first."
I'd bet on the children of Chinese labor camp inmates being the first test subjects.
"The full video is downloadable online."
Where?
Steve,
Torrent sites.
Okay, but the parts with Hawks and Coren are watchable legally on the TV network's own website.
I watched it on youtube, where Gottfredson did not seem to be censored. I thought it odd that she stated the average Hispanic IQ in the U.S was 5 points below African Americans, I always read it was between blacks & whites.
I was surprised that they covered as much as they did. Even though Morgan Freeman makes those bogus arguments that the effects of environmental factors render IQ differences meaningless at 24:00. I checked John Hawks's website and twitter and he does not mention his role in the show. I wonder if the show manipulated his message somehow.
Did the clip with Gottfredson actually vanish, or was it never posted at http://science.discovery.com/videos/through-the-wormhole-is-there-a-superior-race/
in the first place? There are three clips less than three minutes long from a half-hour episode. This seems typical considering what they have posted from other episodes from Season 3.
Interesting comment in the Gottfredson segment that 'groups of people' vary in median IQ from around 70 to around 130. I'd have liked to hear what groups they were thinking about - general population of Africa vs New York Times newsroom of Ivy League graduates?
I think the hardest thing for many people (especially smart people) to grasp is that IQ 100 is set as the 'average' for Western industrialised nations, but on that standard the global average IQ is closer to 85, and so IQ 130 people are much much rarer than IQ 70 people. Hence ridiculous claims that IQ 70 is inherently 'retarded'.
As TGGP above graciously noted via high-lighted youtube link at 7:48 pm, the url for the explicitly-impaired is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdti5Rr8rhs
In her 1994/1997 article, "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" -- the one that was signed by 52 academics in the heat of the Bell Curve wars -- Gottfredson writes:
"The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks."
Unless the underlying data have changed significantly in the years intervening, my guess is that she simply misspoke in the documentary when she claimed that the Hispanic average was around 80. All of the major data I've seen support the "midway" observation. Someone should ask her to clarify.
Exactly how did it come to pass that black men are the preferred messengers for science?
Black men also are portrayed in most films as the voice of moral authority.
Can Morgan Freeman even do long division? Neil DeGrasse Tyson on PBS is a real physicist and I have no objection to him, but Freeman is just an actor who is good at gravitas posturing. Someone has decided that black men are to be the face of enlightenment. I find this offensive.
I also object to Chiwetel Ejiofor in 2012 being the only moral person in America. He plays a brilliant black scientist who has to constantly lecture the all the white Nazi-like others about decency. He looks out of his big puppy dog wet eyes and sees path to righteousness.
I'm not to happy with Dennis Haysbert who acts in a series of commercials where the white guy is shown to be the doofus
I believe the the Hollywood movies preference for blacks to play computer programmers is also well known.
There is a lot of anti-white pro-black propaganda being spread.
Albertosaurus
Linda Gottfredson's IQ numbers from "Through the Wormhole, Is There a Superior Race"(from the subtitles):
There are differences between racial ethnic groups on the average in I.Q. The average white I.Q. is arbitrarily set at 100. Blacks in the United States and in many other western countries average 85. Hispanics – the average would be about 80. Native Americans around that level. And then Japanese and Chinese Americans above the white average. And then Ashkenazi Jews probably around 110, 115.
Yeah,Morgan Freeman has got the market cornered for the portrayal of sanctimonious,numinous and preternaturally wise negroes.Starting with Bonfire of the Vanities.A film which could not be released today, mild as it was.
"Exactly how did it come to pass that black men are the preferred messengers for science?"
Blame it on all those ex-cons who got out of prison and became scientists.
"Black men also are portrayed in most films as the voice of moral authority."
You mean they're not?
"Can Morgan Freeman even do long division?"
OK, I'm going to overlook the raunchy pun and just note that long division is a white thing.
But he is the one who invented the prosthetic tail for the dolphin in that movie.
"pat said...
Can Morgan Freeman even do long division? Neil DeGrasse Tyson on PBS is a real physicist and I have no objection to him, but Freeman is just an actor who is good at gravitas posturing. Someone has decided that black men are to be the face of enlightenment. I find this offensive."
Ditto. By the way, here's Robot Chicken's take on the sainted Morgan Freeman (pardon the ad at the beginning):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXToalcqgvc
I'm not to happy with Dennis Haysbert
The voice of Allstate Insurance. Why I'm with GEICO.
"Black men also are portrayed in most films as the voice of moral authority."
Given that statement, and given that Blacks voted 96% for Obama in 2008, we should follow our exemplars of moral authority, Blacks, and vote what we see in mirror on Election day. Just follow the example of our moral masters and vote your skin color.
"Neil DeGrasse Tyson on PBS is a real physicist"
You sure about that? A real, live scientist who does research and discovers things? Or are you thinking of the type of "scientist" that makes for a great high school teacher?
You see, after Harvard undergrad, Neil enrolled in the Ph.D. program at University of Texas.
Racism (of course) led UT to KICK HIM OUT without a doctorate.
This was before Columbia and Princeton (who everybody knows would NEVER promote Af-Ams for "diversity" purposes ahead of competence, of course) discovered his amazing talents of...um...well, talking, certainly...but as for research discoveries, well, they're kind of vague on that issue.
http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2012/02/star-power/
At UT:
Quote
"Back in the lab, though, things weren’t going as well. Tyson wasn’t making progress on his dissertation, and professors encouraged him to consider alternate careers"
"After Tyson finished his master’s thesis, his advisors dissolved his dissertation committee—essentially flunking him."
“I still don’t talk about it much,” he says, “because it was a failed experiment, and I’ve moved on from that chapter of my life.”
Racism, of course, is the ONLY explanation.
"Yet the same qualities that doomed Tyson as a UT graduate student also brought him the fame and success he enjoys today. His intense focus makes him a riveting public speaker; his cultural savvy is key to his teaching. And if he ever puts research before outreach, the world will see a lot less of him."
Note: Tyson can TALK, for sure. He's entertaining as a public relations personality, without a doubt. But real, honest-to-goodness research-type scientist stuff?
"After UT, Tyson transferred to Columbia, where he earned his PhD in 1988. From there, it was a straight shot to a postdoc at Princeton"
Of course. Princeton would never miss a chance to give a riveting speaker a Ph.D. in astrophysics so he can go on to do groundbreaking research in gravity waves -- er, I mean, head up a planetarium.
"That’s the way Tyson sees it: UT didn’t believe in him, while Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton did."
“When I look at my life, the tracks of my success take a detour around Texas,” he says. “It’s the only place where I didn’t succeed, and I’m still figuring out what that means.”
It's the only place that was HONEST with you, Neil, that's what it means.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson has to be a smart guy. No matter how diversity-friendly a school is, you can't get a Ph.D. in physics without passing numerous courses in electrodynamics and quantum mechanics and relativity and so on, and that takes brains. Affirmative action isn't going to get you a cheat sheet for those final exam questions. (Not yet anyway.)
But he doesn't seem to have done much actual science! I had thought of Tyson as mainly a popularizer, like Carl Sagan. But Sagan's Wikipedia page says he published over 600 scientific publications, while Tyson's page doesn't give any evidence of original scientific work after he finished got his degree. If Tyson were white he would probably have struggled through a couple of post-doc positions, and then ended up in business or on Wall Street. Instead, after getting his degree in 1991, by 1995 he was director of the Hayden Planetarium, and Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive. What's up with that?
Well, actually, I think we all know what's up with that...
Can't download the subtitles on my computer. Anybody care to share Linda's lines?
Shockley had been forewarned by Pioneer Fund grantees in the mid-60's to be wary about the media. Accordingly, he developed his own "safety engineering" policies to try to avoid media abuse. One was to give "exam questions" to would-be reporters to check their "homework". The use of pro bono legal help in advance could prevent abusive deletions.
Pat/Albertosaurus.
yes, its pretty much routine, blacks are always raised up in a position of moral authority in TV roles, in advertising. You might want to check out this site:
<a href="http://antiwhitemedia.com</a>
I just watched the show on YouTube, and I thought it was remarkable that John Hawks, who effectively said that race really does exist, and Linda Gottfredson, who claimed that racial differences in intelligence are real and genetic, were both essentially unrebutted. Yes, Freeman briefly went through the usual objections to intelligence testing, but there were no guest scientists advocating the opposite views. I'm actually kind of shocked that there haven't been protests against the show.
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