..............FREGARDS
Posted on 06/16/2006 9:32:09 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
CHICAGO -- Last September, Bruce Lahn, a professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, stood before a packed lecture hall and reported the results of a new DNA analysis: He had found signs of recent evolution in the brains of some people, but not of others.
It was a triumphant moment for the young scientist. He was up for tenure and his research was being featured in back-to-back articles in the country's most prestigious science journal. Yet today, Dr. Lahn says he is moving away from the research. "It's getting too controversial," he says.
Dr. Lahn had touched a raw nerve in science: race and intelligence.
What Dr. Lahn told his audience was that genetic changes over the past several thousand years might be linked to brain size and intelligence. He flashed maps that showed the changes had taken hold and spread widely in Europe, Asia and the Americas, but weren't common in sub-Saharan Africa.
Web sites and magazines promoting white "racialism" quickly seized on Dr. Lahn's suggestive scientific snapshot. One magazine that blames black and Hispanic people for social ills hailed his discovery as "the moment the antiracists and egalitarians have dreaded."
Dr. Lahn has drawn sharp fire from other leading genetics researchers. They say the genetic differences he found may not signify any recent evolution -- and even if they do, it is too big a leap to suggest any link to intelligence. "This is not the place you want to report a weak association that might or might not stand up," says Francis Collins, director of the genome program at the National Institutes of Health.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
PING!
Hmmm... the time frame might be wrong, though - it is believed that 100000 years ago is the time frame for separation of migrating groups from Sub-saharan population, and about 40000 years for the separation of [proto-] East Asians. Why would the same mutation recently and independently occur in isolated populations? Wouldn't it be easier for it to happen between 40 and 100K years before present?
Oh brother, I can just here the neo-nazi's and the kluckers and other idiots now.
political correctness strikes again
Sub-Saharan Africa uniformly scores low on all the IQ research aggregated in Murray and Herenstein's(sp?) "The Bell Curve". It would suck to be them, a full standard deviation down. Doh!
Yep. This crap brought to you by knuckle-draggers who obviously do NOT have the new genetic improvements...
Science must always be politically incorrect (or at least politically unencumbered)or we end up back in the middle ages with Copernicus and Galileo locked in the tower. I find it rather disturbing that liberals are the quickest to condemn one man's real science whilst simultaneously promoting agenda-driven junk-science. And they're also the loudest at denouncing the historical Christian church for having exhibited that very same PC-driven attitude in days of yore. Ahh... the contradictions and incongruities of being a liberal. No wonder they're always so...angry and uptight.
Also see Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, "IQ and the wealth of nations" - their book has much more detailed tabulations.
Excellent point. What bothers me most though is the PC treatment of science. I mean, what does humanity want to do, die off in a haze of political correctness? Science isn't supposed to be biased toward any particular political perspective. Besides, who knows what admitting truths and seeking solutions will bring to huamnity? So long as basic ethical strictures govern, strictures defined by the species as a whole, science can accomplish astonishing advancements for the species.
ping
..............FREGARDS
Ping the whole list for this?
A curved bell Bump!
Ah, yes. But it appears far too often that junk science is that which we disagree with while - of course - "real" science is the science that produces results we like.
Both liberals and conservatives are guilty of this.
were all likely participants on this thread calm and logical, yes.
as that is not the case, no.
this thread is likely to turn into a race-bashing fest, and I doubt any of us want to witness or partake of it.
We'll get around to that stuff in some other century when we're all a bit more genetically homogenized. Oh, wait! There'll be nothing to study then.
Why not? This topic has everything. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.
I propose that the genetic differences that may be a factor in an increase in intelligence can be easily explained by which group had earlier access to a fast food diet. I know that I can feel the old synapses cracklin' at the very thought of a couple of Big Macs and a GIANT fry or 3.
The article seems to be a good one, but is only available to subscribers. Too bad.
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