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Racial IQ Gap Narrows: Blacks Gain 4 To 7 Points On Whites
Science News ^ | 8-6-2006 | Eric jaffe

Posted on 08/06/2006 2:14:03 PM PDT by blam

Racial IQ Gap Narrows: Blacks gain 4 to 7 points on whites

Eric Jaffe

A statistical analysis of four national intelligence tests indicates that the difference in scores between blacks and whites decreased by about a third between 1972 and 2002. The findings challenge a century-old argument that the racial gap in performance on IQ tests is primarily genetic and therefore invulnerable to social change, say the researchers who performed the new study.

They examined data that have only recently become available to researchers, says William Dickens of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Using test results from a random distribution of people in the United States, he and James R. Flynn of the University of Otago in New Zealand tallied the increases in IQ scores of blacks and whites over 3 decades. Each of the four tests analyzed included two or three groups of people that took the test at different times.

Previous measures of the intelligence gap, which had used localized populations tested only once, found blacks 15 to 18 IQ points lower than whites, Dickens says.

In the new analysis, all four tests reflected a similar gap in 1972 but indicated that blacks have since gained ground in IQ.

"The whole distribution of black cognitive ability is moving up relative to whites," says Dickens. "There's no reason to believe [the gap] isn't going to get more narrow as we move forward and as measures of social equality continue to improve."

Neither increased rates of mixed ancestry nor changes in test content explain the narrowing gap, Dickens and Flynn argue in the October Psychological Science.

Last year, a review by J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario in Canada and Arthur Jensen of the University of California, Berkeley concluded that intelligence is determined predominantly by genetics. The researchers argued that the IQ gap had held steady for a century, despite social-equality efforts, and noted that studies of adopted children and twins have attributed 80 percent of the gap to genetics.

The new data, by contrast, instead indicate that environmental factors contribute greatly to IQ scores, says Flynn. "It's exciting to show that the gap isn't written in the stars," he says.

But the new findings contain many holes, Rushton and Jensen maintain in a rebuttal published with the study. For example, Dickens and Flynn "cherry-picked" their results by leaving out four tests that don't support their conclusions, Rushton says.

Dickens answers that the tests that he and Flynn omitted were less reliable than the ones that they included.

A 4-to-7-point closure in the gap would be "truly astounding," says Linda Gottfredson of the Delaware–Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society.

However, the conclusion "just doesn't fit" with data showing that in the past 30 years, U.S. black children between the ages of 9 and 17 have approached white children in reading scores but not in science and math, she says. If general intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, were really rising, scores would have increased in all subjects.

A fundamental problem with studies of IQ-test results is that "nobody really knows what intelligence is," says psychometrician Peter H. Schönemann of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

The new findings "won't change that many minds," says Doug Detterman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who is editor of the journal Intelligence. More important than measuring a gap, he says, is identifying the specific environmental factors or genes that contribute to intelligence.

If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 4; 7; badnewsfordnc; blacks; education; gain; gap; iq; narrows; points; racial; whites
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To: blam
"Rushton and Jensen maintain in a rebuttal published with the study. For example, Dickens and Flynn "cherry-picked" their results by leaving out four tests that don't support their conclusions, Rushton says."

The usual egalitarian stupidities...

21 posted on 08/06/2006 2:33:00 PM PDT by Reactionary (The Barking of the Native Moonbat is the Sound of Moral Nitwittery)
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To: blam

Stupidity crosses all racial boundaries and is an equal opportunity inhibitor. Look at how many supposedly educated whites are members of the Democratic Party.


22 posted on 08/06/2006 2:34:08 PM PDT by WestVirginiaRebel (Common sense will do to liberalism what the atomic bomb did to Nagasaki-Rush Limbaugh)
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To: blam

I wonder what the correlation between IQ and political affiliation tells us.


23 posted on 08/06/2006 2:36:37 PM PDT by Luke Skyfreeper
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To: blam

Wait a second-- aren't these the same folks who insist there was never any racial differences in IQ to begin with?


24 posted on 08/06/2006 2:39:42 PM PDT by Beauceron
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To: ClearCase_guy

The statistical analysis is interesting, but one can't use it to predict the relative IQ's of any two people in any particular circumstance, so I wonder what value this is, whether true or not. I am white. There are blacks with higher and lower IQ's than mine (I am fortunate that I do have a fairly high IQ, not that you can it, the way I act sometimes). Assuming IQ is relevant to a comparison of people in a particular setting, this statistical information is of no value.


25 posted on 08/06/2006 2:40:30 PM PDT by NCLaw441
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To: blam

Eugenics rears its ugly head again.


26 posted on 08/06/2006 2:43:06 PM PDT by Seruzawa (If you agree with the French raise your hand - If you are French raise both hands.)
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To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide

WHITES are getting dumber?I think the whole country is getting dumber.
Just listen to the tenor of everyday conversations.Trivial fluff about celebrities,TV shows,gossip about"fags", talk of things I have and you don't and who will win how much at the Indian Casino this weekend.
Blacks,whites,Filipinos,Latinos-not one of them very bright as a group from my experiences.


27 posted on 08/06/2006 2:45:14 PM PDT by Riverman94610
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To: Tzimisce
See anything is possible when you dumb down education. :)

You can say that again... Oh wait, I can do that too!

BTTT 'cause it deserves saying AND is not PC!

28 posted on 08/06/2006 2:48:41 PM PDT by SandwicheGuy (*The butter acts as a lubricant and speeds up the CPU*)
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To: Luke Skyfreeper

Correlation between IQ and political affiliation?
Well,polls have shown that the two highest groups who vote Dem in the greatest percentages are high school dropouts and people with Post-Grad degrees.
Now what does THAT say?


29 posted on 08/06/2006 2:50:56 PM PDT by Riverman94610
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To: cvq3842
Ann Coulter was right. My faith tells me all human beings have equal worth. All the libs have are IQ tests, which they have to sweep under the rug.

You are soooooo right! Well said.

30 posted on 08/06/2006 2:52:02 PM PDT by SandwicheGuy (*The butter acts as a lubricant and speeds up the CPU*)
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To: Beauceron

And the same ones that say that race doesn't exist, or that there's no way to tell who's black and who's white.


31 posted on 08/06/2006 2:54:24 PM PDT by aquila48
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To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide
Whites are getting DUMMer

LOL! In your case that is certainly true! I think you were going for 'dumber' right? But that means one who cannot speak, one who is so amazed they are 'Struck dumb' and unable to speak. That is not what you meant, I take it? Congrats on the HTML though.

32 posted on 08/06/2006 2:55:51 PM PDT by SandwicheGuy (*The butter acts as a lubricant and speeds up the CPU*)
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To: Riverman94610
Well,polls have shown that the two highest groups who vote Dem in the greatest percentages are high school dropouts and people with Post-Grad degrees. Now what does THAT say?

I once worked at a University. In my experience, people working on their undergrad degree tended to be reasonably polite, and reasonably bright. People working on Masters were arrogant and kind of dumb. People working on doctorates were very easy to spot: the guy pushing on the door marked "pull" and screaming obscenities at the staff was nearly done with his PhD.

33 posted on 08/06/2006 3:02:38 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("He hits me, he cries, he runs to the court and sues me.")
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To: cvq3842
Ann Coulter was indeed right and her views on IQ will not go over well with the kumbaya crowd here or anywhere.

"Contrary to the party line denying that such a thing as IQ existed, the book methodically demonstrated that IQ exists, it is easily measured, it is heritable, and it is extremely important. Among many other things, IQ is a better predictor than socioeconomic status of poverty, unemployment, criminality, divorce, single motherhood, workplace injuries, and high school dropout rates. Although other factors influence IQ, such as a good environment and nutrition, The Bell Curve authors estimated that IQ was about 40 to 80 percent genetic."

34 posted on 08/06/2006 3:04:23 PM PDT by wardaddy (I have undergone Harpie detox, it was very tough but well worth it)
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To: blam
Since the black kings that sold their own people into slavery presumably didn't sell their best and brightest are their any comparisons between native Africans and white people?
35 posted on 08/06/2006 3:15:46 PM PDT by avile
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To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide

Ya beat me to the punch.


36 posted on 08/06/2006 3:21:14 PM PDT by dr_who_2
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To: blam

The real question is this. Are blacks doing better on these tests or are whites doing worse.

Are blacks IQ getting stronger or are white IQ's gtting weaker.


37 posted on 08/06/2006 3:33:54 PM PDT by sgtbono2002 (The fourth estate is a fifth column.)
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To: chichilarue
how do we know this is not because of intermarriage? they define "black" very loosely.

Why would intermarriage have anything to do with this finding?

38 posted on 08/06/2006 3:36:53 PM PDT by trumandogz
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To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide

Irony...


39 posted on 08/06/2006 3:38:01 PM PDT by dakine
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To: Beauceron
Wait a second-- aren't these the same folks who insist there was never any racial differences in IQ to begin with?

No, everybody knows there are racial differences in IQ scores. The issue is whether there are racial difference in innate intelligence which is an alltogether different question (I don't believe that there are). I think the evidence -- and you can count this article in with that -- indicates that IQ scores are largely dependent on education, and it's no secret that blacks tend to get poorer educations than whites in the United States.

40 posted on 08/06/2006 3:38:46 PM PDT by Alter Kaker ("Whatever tears one sheds, in the end one always blows one's nose." - Heine)
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