Saturday, October 15, 2016

"IQ and wealth of Nations": A mere Fiction



IQ OF AFRICANS:-

A table has been presented in Lynn's book showing average IQ data sets on African population. Let me take the example of Nigeria and Sierra Leone:-

Lynn and Vanhanen (2006) accorded a national IQ of 69 to Nigeria on the basis of three samples (Fahrmeier, 1975; Ferron, 1965; Wober, 1969), but they did not consider other relevant published studies that average IQ in Nigeria is considerably higher than 70 (Maqsud, 1980a,b; Nenty & Dinero, 1981; Okunrotifa, 1976). It's a clear case of data manipulation.

For reasons not given, Lynn (2006) and Lynn and Vanhanen (2006) only used data from the two lowest scoring samples from Nigeria. Most of the remaining samples show higher scores, but those samples were not included in the estimation of the national IQ of Nigeria and Sierra Leone. 

Likewise, Lynn (and Vanhanen) did not consider several relatively high-scoring African samples from South Africa (Crawford Nutt, 1976; Pons, 1974). It is unfortunate that Lynn (and Vanhanen) did not discuss their exclusion criteria.

Almost everyone who has reviewed the IQ data-set on Africa has come to the conclusion that African average IQ is 78 (UK norms).

Even data on other African nations have been shown by manipulation (showing lowest available results). There are many samples on African average IQ where the results are 80+, but all of them have been excluded by Lynn on the basis of high IQs. One such sample is 82 (Wicherts, et al., 2010)

If there are 15 samples shown on Africa with average IQ of 67, there are many such samples with much higher IQ as well. 

Let's look at the few of the samples considered by Lynn. 
1. Wober's (1969) sample of factory workers.
2. Verhaegen's (1956) sample of uneducated adults from a primitive tribe in the then Belgian Congo in the 1950s.
3. Owen's large sample of Black South African school children tested in the 1980s.
4. 17 Black South Africans carefully selected for their illiteracy by Sonke (2001).
5. A group of uneducated Ethiopian Jewish children, who lived isolated from the western world in Ethiopia and immigrated to Israel in the 1980s (Kaniel & Fisherman, 1991).

As can be seen in Lynn's sample on African population, many of his sample are "selected for uneducated tribes", "illiteracy" and are not representative of whole population.

Lynn's work on average African IQ is a clear case of data manipulation where he is clearly taking lowest available samples most of which are biased.


Now, where does it put the African average IQs. As of 2016, average IQ in Africa is 80. As Africa faces a lot of mal-nourishment, long term IQ potential of Africa is 87-92.

It has also been confirmed by PISA reports broken down by race in USA.This article discusses US PISA scores by race:-
http://isteve.blogspot.in/2013/12/overall-pisa-rankings-include-america.html
Asian Americans: 548, Whites: 518, Multi-racial: 507, US average: 492, Hispanics: 465, Africans: 434.

Africans score 84 points behind whites in PISA in USA. Almost entire population has been covered via random sampling and this is the best intellectual result available. 100 points is one standard deviation.
IQ of African Americans: 0.84 standard deviation behind US whites. Or 88 IQ, probably down by 4-5 IQ points because of poverty in black community, etc. Whites do spend 4-5x higher on tuition than blacks in USA which can completely change the PISA results. However for a lower case estimate of African American IQ, I will assume that "the racial PISA gaps in USA is only genetic, not because of differences in amount of spending on tuition". 

Now, an argument is given by "race realists" that 15% blacks in USA have mixed with whites. It is a completely illogical argument. Most of the blacks who have mixed with whites had much high IQs to an extent that racial mixing did not alter African American IQs by any significant value. For a black man to marry a white women, he needs to be equally endowed or have a decent status in the society probably at par with the girl he is marrying. Average or low IQ blacks haven't really mixed. Only the smart ones have been breeding with whites.

Yes, USA has witnessed high IQ immigration from Africa; but it is unlikely to change African American IQ by more than 0.25 IQ as majority were not selected for IQs.

Even if I was to assume that blacks have been mixing with whites randomly in USA, it will still put average African IQ at 86 which is the absolute lower limit of pure African American IQ.

As shown in the data-set on African IQs, average IQ in Africa is 78-82 as of 2016. Long term genetic IQs of Africans on removal of mal-nourishment is at 87-92 IQ (same as Africans in USA who were not selected for intelligence).     

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