What if there really are racial/sexual differences between people?

[Furbyz]

You may not realize this, but your example exists. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it, but there was a book in the 90's called The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Basically a Harvard statistician and psychologist started compiling studies on intelligence and posited that intelligence was the single most important factor in life.

While the research itself was mostly undisputed the conclusions were widely ridiculed. For example, they concluded that low intelligence caused poverty, not the more widely believed poverty causes low intelligence.

Anyway, they found that on average Yiddish people had the highest IQ, followed by East Asian, and I don't remember the exact breakdown after that, but Caucasian was higher than African, so racists everywhere were given some fairly recent garbage to hang their hate hat on. That didn't seem to be their intent, but it's what happened.

Here's the wiki article if you're interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

 

[bobmd13]

Is there a difference between racial groups and the sexes, hell yes.

Each branch of the homo sapiens tree has developed to live in a particular environment.

A black person has more melanin than say an Irishman, therefore he does not suffer from sunburn when exposed to direct sunlight.

I know this seems an extreme example but Ireland has the second highest level of skin cancer in the world. We are also pretty good at heart disease as well but that's a dietary problem which is changing. I love an Ulster Fry/Irish Fry but we know now it is a heart attack on a plate and now its a treat for the majority.

The link below shows the difference in the sexes, sorry guys but we die younger.

One note I should make on this link.

For those outside of the UK, Bath is a prosperous area in the South of England. The second link relates to Glasgow in Scotland and if you actually look at the figures its scary.

In both articles women outlive men by a considerable margin.

Bath: http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/services/your-council-and-democracy/local-research-and-statistics/wiki/life-expectancy

Glasgow:http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/apr/16/commonwealth-games-2014-glasgow-lowest-life-expectancy-uk

Now I come to a strange one, how about left handedness.

In some reports, it is stated that left handed people die younger than right handed ones.


I refer you to this report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23988352

Now as a leftie,I suffered prejudice in school in the 70's (yes I am that old) with me being hit across the left hand with a yard stick (think a Metre rule for those younger). Every day 10-12 times a day for a year whack.

Why not change hand I hear, because unlike most lefties, I have very little fine motor control of my right hand.

Note: I turn the page slightly and write straight on with a fountain pen.

I also have a lovely looping cursive with a slight backward slant and I refused to give it up. (All that has changed in 40 years is that its now neat,larger and slightly more loopy ).

When I trained as a nurse, in the 80's (and yes I am male),I had to be trained by a consultant plastics surgeon how to use scissors. This may sound strange but surgeons kits come in left and right handed sets. Microscopic nursing kits at that time did not.

I worked for 3 month's in my 3rd year as a nurse in plastic surgery. This isn't boob jobs , but microsurgery dealing with bullet and bomb blast injuries little hint 18 hours was a norm at work.

Another factor that must be pointed out that I had patients refuse care due to the fact I was left handed.

Maybe in 30 years time we may see a change in left handed life expectancy, but please remember all machines and weapons are made for a right handed person.

There is one advantage of being left handed, our chance of losing the ability to speak after a CVA (STROKE)is considerably lower as our speech center (what American spelling even on UK set up, sorry lost it there)is centralized in the brain.

So in conclusion,

Yes there are differences between each and every branch of the Homo Sapiens Genus (sorry but Microsoft does not allow Sapien as a word).

There are differences between men and women, there are differences between racial groups its a fact live with it.

What we need to look at, is not the differences but the similarities between us.

We all breathe,eat,shit.

We all love our families (generalization)

We all strive.

What we need to do is try and help everyone equally.

Socialist medicine for the world and these debates would end.



Just as a side note here for our US readers. Average wage in the UK £27,000 -$46,100. (I work for the government nowhere near that figure).

So £27,000 -£9440 (individual tax allowance before tax) =£17,560 taxable income.

Since this is lower than £41,150 ($70,366) tax rate is 20% of income.

So tax due is £3512 ($6,005).

National insurance is about a quarter of that on top. so in reality we pay in taxes £4,390 a year before VAT (sales tax only applies on luxury goods,basic foods have no VAT or children's shoes/books/newspapers).

National insurance pays for medical care and a state pension.

Do I need Health Insurance ? NO.


Now I need a heart transplant, heart is found cost to me NOTHING.

No treatment costs,no nursing costs, nada not a sue.

I have a life threatening condition which requires medication cost to me, guess what NADA.

MRI needed cost NADA, USA cost $25,000

Lifelong treatment no cost in the UK.

 

[Voulan]

There certainly have been examples of supposedly scientific studies being used to further particular social goals. For example, at the end of the 19th Century when women started to ride bicycles more many studies came out from male doctors and the like trying to prove that biking for women was extremely hazardous for their health, leading to several very stupid laws put into place to restrict their cycling. Social studies examining this time period saw that this was during the time when women started to gain more independence by getting their own work and making their own way around the city, and this was seen as being emasculating. A Really bizarre idea that we can see now, but back in the day it was taken very seriously (and probably not such an active, conscious way to keep women in their place but that was certainly the result).

But the whole sexism and racism debates have gone through a very long period of social history and have been battled at every step of the way, despite what science tells us. So to some extent the social aspects don't completely effect what scientific studies find. It just takes a long time for people to let go of old prejudices and believe something completely new.

This is also reflected by stereotypical expectations and internalised racism/sexism. For example, if people expect black people to struggle their way to better jobs because they believe they're less intelligent or some other stupid idea, people will begin to actually believe it despite what science tells us. Then some black people might even use this as a form of self-identity.

Also, the idea of different human races was created simply to categorise different ethnicities and physical appearances across the world. It wasn't until the whole colonialism and evolution issues came into play that any actual biological things were attached to the different groups. So 'race' has been tarred by years of bias and prejudice and hardly has any scientific background any more.

Whenever some form of power-play or hierarchy and elitism comes into scientific debates, I'm inclined to completely ignore them.

 

[Olas]

If you're going to raise the bar and start insisting that I back up everything I say with sources, you could at least start by doing the same yourself. I don't see why the onus is specifically on me.

You're the one making claims, therefore you're the one who the onus is on to back them up.

We're both making opposing claims. Or are you not claiming that scientists are able to operate in a manner that is completely unbiased? Because if not then we can end this conversation now.

Considering just how much more extreme your claim is, that humans can operate (in complicated fields no less) without bias,

That's not extreme at all, nor is it strictly speaking a claim.

Yes it is, it is very much a claim. I don't know how you can even dispute that. And I would definitely argue it's an extreme one considering the sheer number of cognitive biases found in humans.

Claim: noun an assertion of the truth of something, typically one that is disputed or in doubt.

If it isn't a claim then explain how. It seems you want to deny that you are making a claim because, if you felt you were, then you would be hypocritical to not back up what you're saying with evidence as you're asking me to do.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

This is not support. This is just a pointless link to distract from your argument. At no point did I ever assert that cognitive biases don't exist. Please don't waste my time with irrelevant distractions.

It's not intended as a distraction, it's intended as support for the idea that humans are loaded with biases. I knew you weren't going to accept it, nothing short of a peer reviewed scholarly journal article on the exact subject we're talking about would suffice I assume.

To be fair, being aware of a bias makes one much more likely to avoid it,

And there, we're done. No need to argue this point further, you've already completely undermined your case. It is as you now admit, possible to consciously choose not to operate on bias. Therefore, it is possible for scientists to do this as well. Your claim: "But when making decisions as complex as what to research, how to carry out the research, and how to organize and present the findings, there is no way to remove bias even a considerable amount, and I'd raise the question of whether it's even a good idea to try," is now demonstrably false because you just explained the way that it can be done- being aware of the bias.

My god, are you for real? I make a slight concession that some people are able to avoid some cognitive biases and you act like I've somehow disproven that any cognitive biases are present in the scientific community at all.

This isn't just a leap, this is a full on pole vault. You make it seem like you're desperate for anything to support your rapidly crumbling argument, so you're grabbing onto anything I say that mildly supports it and inflating it into something far more significant. The fact that some cognitive biases can be avoided does not mean that 100%, or even 1% of people in the scientific community are totally unbiased. In fact, I don't think there's a single human being on the planet who is without any cognitive biases. They are a natural part of how out brains work and it is a constant uphill battle to remove them.

Also, something is only "demonstrably false" if it's falsehood is capable of actually being demonstrated, not merely if I say something that seems (to you ) to agree with it being false.

You seem to not understand the way research actually works. It's not a spur-of-the-moment kind of deal. Researchers in my experience

What is your experience exactly? You've mentioned "you're experience" twice now without elaborating.

spend months pouring over their article submissions, writing and re-writing them, agonizing over the nuance of just about every word in them. They get colleagues to look over their work to put it in the best possible shape. Then they submit it to a journal where likely it's reviewed double-blind and anything that shows any ideological bias is often sent back for editing. At many, many points along the way there are people asking "Does this have bias?" because being caught with bias is a sure way to halt the publication process in its tracks. Since you are admitting that conscious attention to potential bias can make it avoided, you have demonstrated that your own argument is wrong.

Once again nothing has been "demonstrated" by either of us. I also don't appreciate being treated like an idiot who doesn't know the basics of scientific peer review. As you said, it's a long, tedious process that mostly involves humans, humans who've entered into the same field of study and research even, and while I'm sure they try their best, I don't think it's even remotely possible for them to be perfect in removing error or bias from their work.

Of course this is almost beside the point because, to quote my first reply to you:

Even under the assumption that the process itself is carried out in a purely mechanical fashion without bias towards results, the decision of what to investigate and research has to be based on something

If you want to believe that the process of scientific investigation really is perfect then fine, but I stand by my latter point that decisions about what to research not only possess but necessitate a certain bias.

However, expecting even the most knowledgeable, level headed person to be free from all these biases all the time is just ludicrous.

I never made such an expectation. Don't start tilting at strawmen now.

If it seems like I'm attacking a strawman argument, it's because you make your actual argument is somewhat unclear. You said earlier that the fact that people are able to realize their own biases means that the scientific community is without bias. This seems to almost imply you think the individuals within the community are unbiased. If we're to assume however that all the individuals within the community are biased, the notion that they can produce unbiased findings becomes harder to believe.

For a specific example of a scientist exhibiting a bias, I'll use the most well known scientist of all time Albert Einstein[footnote]Keep in mind I'm using Einstein because he's well known, not because I think his well known intellect makes him more reputable than your average scientist.[/footnote]. Einstein was enormously skeptical of quantum theory until his dying day, even after it had reached near universal acceptance and recognition within the scientific community. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he was almost insistent that the universe could not be fundamentally in-deterministic. His irrational insistence of a deterministic universe that acted the way that made the most sense to him was ultimately a scar on his legacy.

Yeah... this is pretty much completely irrelevant to the topic of the thread. We're not talking about scientists strongly believing in one scientific theory over another. We're talking about scientists with ideological bias trying to censor scientific research that doesn't conform to their ideology.

No we're not. Now you're the one attacking a strawman. I'll admit I did use the word "censor" earlier, which was wrong of me because the word implies a deliberate effort is being made, however that's clearly not what I have been arguing this whole time. What I'm trying to demonstrate with this case is that it's possible for a scientist to have a very strong inclination towards a certain idea, even if evidence doesn't support it, and that this can influence their choice of research. I'm not suggesting that Einstein would ever have gone out of his was to tamper with, or hide evidence of quantum theory (although I would also be surprised if nobody ever had done something to this affect) but merely by questioning it constantly and desperately trying to find holes in it he turned his mental faculties into a deadweight for the march of scientific progress.

To your point, however, he did get left behind by the scientific community who welcomed the new theories without his blessing. But before you blow this out of proportion, this does not prove that a scientific bodies will always immediately see beyond personal cognitive biases, as seen in countless examples throughout human history from Neptunism, to Eugenics, to Freud's Oedipus complex.

Considering he fact that a field of study needs to have a certain degree of interest in order to even get started, I would say no. Can you think of a a non-arbitrary method of selecting experiments that somehow bypasses the personal choice by any human being?

I never argued that experiments are selected non-arbitrarily. Of course they are not. This is another irrelevant strawman. It's obvious that scientists are going to choose experiments that they are interested in, usually because of a combination of personal interest, perceived likelihood of professional advancement by adding discoveries to their name, the likelihood of making a new discovery in that area of inquiry, and a desire to support a scientific theory that the researcher is personally invested in.

Okay, so you've just admitted that scientists choose fields of research, and specific experiments even, based on personal motivations. This has been my main point from the beginning, so it's somewhat important.

With us now in agreement over this, does it not logically follow that if a specific field of study were particularly unpopular, such as the possible differences of intelligence between people of different races, genders, etc, that that field would more likely remain ignorant of new discoveries and thus be suppressed of new information, not out of evidence tampering or censoring, but out of an absence of new information being provided through research. Essentially the scientific equivalent of a lie by omission.

Again, don't misread what I'm saying. I'm not making any claims about race/gender being linked to intelligence, I'm simply making a rational (non-empirical) claim about the possibility of such a discovery being suppressed if it were in fact true.

No one has argued that these forms of non-arbitrary research motivations don't exist and it's ridiculous to propose they have to in order for scientists to do their work objectively. The debate rages in linguistic circles, for example, between believers in Universal Grammar and believers in other theories of language acquisition, but in no way does the fact that people passionately support one side over the other suggest that their published research will be biased or censored to support such a blatantly hateful stereotype as proclaimed by the OP.

You come across as being very upset, it's obvious you're very passionate about this, and I'm fine with that. But I still think it's unfair of you to characterize anything OP has said as "blatantly hateful". Just because OP doesn't believe scientific institutions are as rock solid as you do doesn't mean he harbors some sort of inner hatred of them.

On to your main point, wouldn't you agree that if one of these two sides you mention were to have more supporters, that that side would have an overall advantage even if both sides tried their best to use objective reasoning to argue their case? Inevitably the more people who try to make a case for a certain point, the more likely one of them is to make a convincing one.

Are you being serious? Since when did this theoretical discussion turn into scientific investigation?

Since the moment the OP criticized science and claimed there were biases resulting in research being censored.

And why would that then require all further discussion on the topic to be framed as some sort of scientific investigation, especially when his entire point was theoretical? In fact wouldn't it be paradoxical for a person who's criticizing science to then use the scientific method to argue his point?

The way in which you take his criticism of science to an almost personal level really makes your response seem almost childish and overzealous. If you're so certain about the purity of science, then there's no reason to get angry and defensive about it. If someone told me they thought the Earth was flat I wouldn't throw a hissy fit about it and start criticizing them and accusing them of harboring vulgar beliefs, I'd simply explain to them how nonsensical their ideas are and let them decide if they want to see reason.

Besides, I was never claiming anything in particular about the scientific community, I was simply making the rational observation that if the scientific community were to be suppressing anything, it would be through choosing not to research it in the first place, not through deliberate tampering with an actual experiment.

And I'm telling you that's an incorrect notion of how science works. "The scientific community" doesn't "choose" not to research certain things. People who are hungry for publication credits on their resume so they can break out of the throngs of under-paid grad-student research assistants and become one of the elite few professors can and do research anything they can get their hands on. If there is an area that's not being investigated because the imaginary community of biased scientists doesn't want to look into it, you can bet that will be the first place a hungry research assistant will look to do research because that's where all the low-hanging fruit is.

Unless, as OP suggests, certain findings in that area could cause them to be chastised and hated by the public, if not for the findings themselves then for the decision to conduct the research in the first place. I'm not saying this would deter people entirely, but it seems incredible to suggest it wouldn't have an affect at all. I sure wouldn't want to be connected to such a finding.

Your insistence that I need to have an observation before speculating on anything flies directly in the face of what these forums are about.

Not at all. This is a thread about scientists being biased to conceal evidence of inherent racial or gender inequality. If people don't have evidence of that happening, then arguing for it is nothing more than conspiracy-theory nonsense to trump up a false veneer of respectability for racism and sexism.

No, now you're just making unfounded assumptions about what you think OP's real thoughts are. OP's topic WAS theoretical, regardless of whether you believe it harbors any actual bigoted beliefs or not, and you could replace racial differences with any other controversial topic and his point would still be fundamentally the same. Even if his example is untrue and has zero observable evidence to stand on, the underlying idea is still a valid one that has some reasoning behind it and therefore I think is worth discussing.

When people say things like "maybe we're all living in the Matrix" they aren't saying it because they just saw a guy pick up a telephone and disappear. They're saying it because it's an interesting, coherent idea that's worthy (at least in their mind) of discussion.

 

[Lightknight]

Still no reason to make sweeping generalizations, treat people like shit because of it, or act like you're better than an entire fucking group of people because of it.

You're absolutely right that individuals can have any kind of qualities and should always be evaluated by their own personal merits.

But hopefully that's not what we're discussing. We're discussing the topic of whether or not races and genders have significant differences on average.

So the point is that there are aggregate differences when the only quality selected on is Race or Sex. Clearly distinguishable Physiological and Psychological differences (though the psychological differences may be far more socially driven). Does this mean that black Ted is better than white Mike at micro-biology because of his race alone? Not likely due to the extreme complexities of the impact of social conditioning. But is it possible that humans from various regions of the world have evolved under slightly different enough circumstances that predisposed the race towards certain advantages or disadvantages?

Sure. It's possible and even likely. Heck, since race is generally based on skin color we can say that sun resistance is the most blatant example. But even with all these averages you're going to have people making up the numbers being on all sides of the bell curve themselves and you're going to have the potential of a social environment overcoming and negative predisposition through positive social training (like higher quality education or more involved parents).

The real problem is that people seem to be afraid of acknowledging these differences. Like it will somehow make one group inferior or less human. In reality, we'll likely find that much like the birds of the Galapagos islands, certain groups should have a predisposed advantage in one area that another group is disadvantaged in while that group should have an advantage in another area that the first group is disadvantaged in. Such is the nature of specialization.

<img src="http://swimtownpools.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/race-in-sports-infograph.jpg"

(please note that if this were an image of sex ratios we'd see 100% on one side and 0% on the other. This is relevant because women can play in the pros on men's team, but men can't play on women's teams)

It's important to accept that there are differences just for truth's sake alone while also accepting that individuals can always have their own unique properties and qualities that do not fit the statistics. Learning to accept the averages as statistically significant, which they are, doesn't have to result in a bigoted response that it somehow makes one group inferior. This should instead become a way to acknowledge the genetic diversity of the human race and to celebrate our differences. Unfortunately, this discussion has been used by so many genuinely evil people throughout history that the topic is marred for legitimate discussion. I just hope we eventually move past that mentality.

 

[PhiMed]

Or are you saying that doctors used to believe women couldn't have GI bleeds?

The assumption was that that wasn't what was (at least generally) happening, it could a long time for that assumption to be challenged.

And even more important: are you suggesting that the "belief" that blood loss can lead to iron deficiency is somehow discriminatory or prejudiced?

No, not at all. But the automatic assumption that a medical condition must have different causes in men and women, which went uncorrected for quite some time, would seem to indicate that something is going wrong with the way gender is viewed.

By comparison, doctors neglecting to do a proper diagnosis on fat people, and just assuming that whatever the complaint is, it's due to them being fat. People are making assumptions, and skipping a few important steps in their job.

It is still often "assumed" (not automatically, as you so erroneously suggest) that a young woman with no evident blood loss from any other source (i.e. no reports of blood per rectum, no hemoptysis (vomiting blood), no hemorrhage from other sites) who presents with iron deficiency is iron deficient because of menstrual flow, especially if there are no obvious nutritional causes. Not because of discrimination, but because it's the most likely explanation.

Iron deficiency is incredibly rare among young men, but is relatively common among young women. In fact, the "normal" range of hematocrit (a measure of the number of red blood cells contained in a volume of blood) is different for men and women because if you applied the same range to both sexes you would incorrectly characterize a large number of people as being either anemic or having polycythemia. Whether it's GI loss or urogenital loss, there is a difference, backed by science, in male and female physiology as it applies to iron stores. It would be stupid and dangerous to ignore this difference, and do a full endoscopic examination of every woman who came in with iron deficiency. If every single woman who came in with iron deficiency underwent a colonoscopy and esophagogastroduodenoscopy to look for a bleeding source, when there's an obviously evident source of bleeding as part of her normal physiology, there would be a huge increase in the number of endoscopic evaluations, along with all the additional utilization of resources and potential dangerous complications from the procedures that entails.

The practice of medicine involves the selective gathering of information, and the selection of which information to seek has to be influenced by assumptions based on demographic data. It makes no sense to test for sickle cell anemia in a Scandinavian white person unless you have a really good reason, and it makes no sense to test for cystic fibrosis in a Ghanaian black person unless you have an equally good reason. If we did not selectively gather information based on the information available to us (including demographic data), we would order every single test on every single person who walked through the door. Money would be wasted, and people would be harmed. It would be an unmitigated disaster.

There are examples of historical gender bias that resulted in harm to patients (assumptions about coronary artery disease in females, for example), but this isn't one of them. You don't know anything about the job physicians do. Talk about things about which you are knowledgeable.

 

[carnex]

OK there are physical differences and almost nobody tries to deny these. Men are generally stronger then women, racial strenght on the other hand is strange. In compound strength exercises with no high techniques blacks dominate as they are in running. But in more technical strength sicplines as well as isolated muscles competitions (strongman for example) blacks and whites are more equal (at least according to sports). Asians really drew the short straw there and I don't know about Latinos, Hawaiians etc. But that is not contraversial.

What is, is mental side. But even if we are, on average, born with same potential it's proven that circumstances that surround mother during child bearing and surrounding child during early childhood have great influence on intelligence and basic social skills of people. There for more abusive cultures, higher rate of single parent households etc are detrimental to children. And stating that is kind of controversial due to the stereotypical cultural representations of races, but I would say that it varies more between places than between races.

But between men and women it is proven that our brains function somewhat differently even if intelligence is about the same. Women have stronger connection between brain halves and from that women are better at multitasking, men are better at plowing through problem in a straight line etc

All this is known, but research upsetting this balance of mental capabilities would, while it would probably be published in respected science journals, have hard times getting accepted by public. That happened all through history and I don't think humans changed all that much.

 

[Lightknight]

All this is known, but research upsetting this balance of mental capabilities would, while it would probably be published in respected science journals, have hard times getting accepted by public. That happened all through history and I don't think humans changed all that much.

The issue with studying mental capabilities is a wide range of social issues that can easily impact the results. Poverty, culture that disregards education, broken homes. These appear to have a far larger impact on individuals than genetics. Physical attributes are easy to measure.

Are there likely variances in mental capabilities in aggregate? Sure. But I don't know if we'd ever be able to have tests that would correctly account for all the possible social impacts that alter the result.