Re: Junk Science in non-science media
israeliteknight
> Author points out that scientists don't rely on non-science media for
> their scientific knowledge. Also describes the unreliability of
> (aallegedly) scientific conclusions presented in those non-science media.
>
> ##############
>
> http://bitchmagazine.org/article/mad-science
>
> Mad Science: Deconstructing Bunk Reporting in Five Easy Steps
> By Beth Skwarecki
>
> *Beth Skwarecki majored in biology but ended up as a programmer and a
> writer. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
>
> Bitch Magazine --Spring Issue
>
> British scientists have uncovered the truth behind one of modern culture's
> greatest mysteries: why little girls play with pink toys. Is it because
> toy companies flood whole store aisles with the color? Or because
> well-meaning relatives shower girl babies with pink blankets and clothing?
> Nope. According to the men in lab coats, it's purely biological.
>
> Apparently, women are hardwired to like pink because our cavewoman
> foremothers spent their days gathering red leaves and berries amongst the
> trees while their husbands were out hunting. Later, women needed to notice
> red-faced babies and blushing boyfriends. And why do men like blue?
> Because it's the color of the sky.
>
> This evolutionary just-so story takes up three pages of a 2007 issue of
> Current Biology. To back up the assertion that pink is a universal girly
> preference worth examining, the authors refer to a 1985 study finding that
> little girls use more pink and red crayons in their drawings than little
> boys do.
>
> Dig further, however, and the story completely falls apart.
>
> British women do prefer pink, but the author's claim of a "robust,
> cross-cultural sex difference" turns out to be neither. The scientists
> compared British natives with Chinese immigrants to Britain, and glossed
> over the differences. For example: The girliest color in the British
> results, a purplish-pink, was in fact the Chinese men's favorite.
>
> Nowhere do scientific findings get more mangled than when they're about
> the differences between men and women. According to the science pages,
> women aren't just biologically hardwired to prefer pink to blue. We're
> also predisposed to backstab one another in the workplace, cry in the
> boardroom, and have both lower iqs and less of a sense of humor than men.
>
> Some misleading stories come from bad science, where the study authors'
> conclusions aren't supported by their own data. Others are well-conducted
> studies whose conclusions mutate upon contact with the mainstream media.
> Newspapers and websites are prone to playing fast and loose with their
> reports on studies, often neglecting to reveal salient facts about a
> study's sample group or methodology.
>
> The fact is that science articles aren't designed to be read by
> non-scientists. College and grad students in the sciences are trained in
> how to do it: They review papers and discuss them in journal clubs; learn
> how to question methodologies (Is that sample really big enough? Was that
> the right test to use?); and learn how to be critical of authors'
> interpretations (Do the results really mean what they say they mean?).
> Students also know to look at context for each study, looking up previous
> papers on the subject, reviewing the authors' previous work, and searching
> out any evidence of bias that might color a study's findings.
>
> Journalists looking for a quick story, however, do little such research.
> And in an age where news sites, wire services, and blogs pick up stories
> with lightning-fast speed, bad research gets around. When London's Sunday
> Times reported on a 2007 study claiming that men get dumber in the
> presence of blond women, the paper got the name of the journal wrong,
> citing the Journal of Experimental Psychology rather than the Journal of
> Experimental Social Psychology. Nearly every subsequent news article
> repeated the error because they were content to simply reword the Times'
> version of the story rather than finding and discussing the study itself.
>
> The Times reported that blond-exposed subjects "mimic the unconscious
> stereotype of the dumb blonde." But that's not exactly what the study
> tested. Rather, subjects - most of them female - fared slightly worse on
> online trivia quizzes after rating hair color (is she a blond, brunet, or
> redhead?) on pictures of beauty queens. You could just as easily say that
> beauty queens make people dumb, or photos of dazzling smiles make people
> dumb. It seems this study made the news mostly because it could be
> illustrated with photos of Marilyn Monroe and filled out with dopey quotes
> from blond models and actresses, as well as blond jokes from the Times
> itself.
>
> Ben Goldacre, who writes the "Bad Science" column for the UK's Guardian,
> speculates that science stories come in three varieties: the wacky story,
> the breakthrough story, and the scare story. Most widely reported studies
> ongenderseem to fall into the wacky category - the supposed innate
> preference for pink is one of them - and their media strength is that they
> tend to support existing stereotypes of women, reassuring readers that
> social stereotypes do, in fact, reflect reality.
>
> We can't put all the blame on mainstream media, of course. Scientists are
> part of the same culture as the rest of us, and they too have biases that
> shape their hypotheses and interpretations. The scientific community can
> also be as fad-driven as popular culture, creating a climate in which many
> researchers simultaneously geek out over one specific theory while
> competing ideas get lost or abandoned. So let's learn how to read between
> the lines of these dubious articles. Next time you see an article
> reporting that women are happiest when they're picking up their man's
> dirty socks, try asking these questions:
>
> 1. DO THE CONCLUSIONS FIT A LITTLE TOO WELL WITH CULTURAL STEREOTYPES?
>
> Science has the capacity to surprise and amaze us, but sometimes it's more
> satisfying when you can jump up and say, "Yes! I knew it all along!" Which
> is why articles touting the awesomeness of traditionalgenderroles are an
> evergreen subject in the science pages.
>
> A 2007 study from the American Society for Cancer Research journal Cancer
> Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention titled "Physical activity and
> breast-cancer risk" found fame in such headlines as the BBC's "Housework
> cuts breast-cancer risk." That's not to mention the 2006 study on
> housework and cancer in Canadian women, the 2005 study on housework and
> cancer in Chinese women, or the 2004 study ... you get the idea. [See
> "Home Is Where the Cardio Is," Bitch no. 27]
>
> The reality? Being physically active seems to help prevent cancer, and the
> researchers behind the recent studies have been counting housework as
> physical activity. Housework, sports, and active jobs all had significant
> effects in reducing cancer risk, and the authors think the key may be
> frequent, low-impact exercise.
>
> An author on several of these studies, Christine Friedenreich, told the
> Calgary Herald that in past studies, researchers counted jobs like
> construction work as physical activity, but not housework - and it turns
> out that domestic tasks are, duh, hard work.
>
> This means that many women are getting more exercise than they (or their
> doctors) had realized. That should be good news for them - but instead,
> the message imparted by the news reports is, "Get back into the kitchen!
> That's all the exercise you need!"
>
> It's worth noting that one of the study's sponsors, Cancer Research UK,
> answered questions about the 2006 study on its website, pointing out that
> for many of the older women in the study group, housework was their
> primary form of exercise. The organization went on to address charges of
> sexism directly, making sure to mention a related 2006 study that found
> housework cuts the risk of bowel cancer for both men and women,
> concluding, "There's absolutely no excuse for men to dodge the dusting!"
>
> 2. DOES THE STUDY AGREE WITH THE HEADLINE?
>
> Behind every junk-science headline is a scientific journal article.
> Sometimes the university or organization that was home to the study sends
> out a press release to mainstream outlets, hoping for attention; other
> times, journalists simply scan the abstracts of academic journals for
> newsworthy fodder. Chances are a story will make the papers if it's got
> some kind of hook - weird (like the idea that housework has curative
> properties), controversial (like claims that men are smarter than women),
> can be illustrated with bikini babes (like the dumb-blond study), etc.
> Especially for online news outlets, these hooks are valuable because they
> make good linkbait: the kind of thing they hope you'll forward to friends
> or post on your blog.
>
> The London Times probably hadn't read the full study titled "Prejudice
> against women in male-congenial environments: Perceptions ofgender-role
> congruity in leadership" when they summarized it under the headline
> "Office Queen Bees Hold Back Women's Careers" in a 2006 article. The
> paper's charge - that "women bosses are significantly more likely than men
> to discriminate against female employees" - may indeed have surprised the
> study's authors.
>
> The actual study went something like this: Participants weren't put in a
> boss's role, but an observer's. They read a purposely vague description of
> a manager who was being considered for promotion and were asked to imagine
> how qualified the candidate was, and whether he or she was likely to
> succeed. The study made a number of interesting points that the Times
> could easily have reported on - for instance, that female managers were
> judged to have both very masculine and very feminine traits, possibly in
> an attempt to reconcile theirgenderwith the traditionally
> masculine-associated role of leadership.
>
> Both the male and female participants were optimistic about the male
> manager's success, but not about the woman's (except when she worked in a
> female-dominated industry). Sounds pretty realistic, right? The
> researchers thought so too. They write, "Participants' predictions about
> the [female] candidate's future salary ... mirrored the fact that women
> earn less money in the same position [than] men do in real life." So where
> are those "queen bees" that the Times so gleefully name-checked? Exactly.
>
> It's not difficult to track down the science behind the story. Look for
> the names of the researchers, the journal their work appeared in, and (if
> you're lucky) the title of the article. Type whatever info you've got into
> Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com), and soon you'll be looking at an
> abstract for the paper. Scientific journals are usually locked behind
> paywalls, unfortunately, so you may need to call upon a pal at a
> university for access to the entire study.
>
> 3. CAN YOU SPOT THE DOUBLE STANDARD?
>
> Whether it's lions fathering all the cubs in their pride, or human males
> getting a pass for cheating on their girlfriends, males sleeping around
> rarely make the news - it's the natural order, after all - unless the
> article is happily touting the genetic advantages a male gets from
> spreading his dna around.
>
> But when female cheetahs were found to do the same by a Zoological Society
> of London study, the study's words about "promiscuous" felines were
> quickly outnumbered in Google's index by the phrase, "cheetahs are sluts!"
>
> Study author Dada Gottelli was quoted thus: "Mating with more than one
> male poses a serious threat to females, increasing the risk of exposure to
> parasites and diseases. Females also have to travel over large distances
> to find new mates, making them more vulnerable to predation." Sounds like
> a cheetah-specific version of certain sex-ed curricula: Don't sleep
> around, girls, or you'll catch lots of diseases and the male cheetahs
> won't respect you in the morning. Male cheetahs, however, aren't
> "promiscuous" - they're creating a healthier gene pool.
>
> Not too surprising, then, that most of the coverage glossed over the
> evolutionary benefit of promiscuity for both male and female cheetahs:
> Multiple cubs by multiple cub daddies increases the likelihood of genetic
> diversity - a definite positive for a threatened species. Furthermore, the
> study noted that the rates of infanticide in cheetahs are much lower than
> in other big-cat populations, likely because male competitors don't know
> which offspring might be theirs. But why let the facts slow down a good
> headline?
>
> In a human example of a double-standard story, women were found to be
> "worse oglers" than men, according to the Sydney Morning Herald summary of
> a study published in the journal Hormones and Behavior. (The Herald
> inexplicably illustrated its story with headshots of Sharon Stone and Mr.
> Bean). What does that even mean, you ask? When researchers showed "sexual
> stimuli" (read: Internet porn) to heterosexual men and women, they
> expected women to look more at faces and men to look more at genitals. The
> newspaper reported that, in fact, "almost the reverse was true."
>
> Actually, the study says that men looked at women's faces more than women
> did, and men and women looked with equal frequency at the pictured
> genitals; women who weren't on oral contraceptives looked slightly more.
> So where did that headline come from?
>
> The study authors didn't originate the "worse oglers" language; they even
> warn in the study that they can't say why subjects' gazes lingered where
> they did, or whether they were turned on as they looked. So it's not fair
> to say that the study was about "ogling," a word that suggests that
> looking is lustful and perhaps inappropriate.
>
> To say that women are "worse" at ogling, we have to believe, first, that
> ogling is bad, and second, that men do it at some normal, baseline level
> that women are exceeding. The judgmental language makes it sound like
> women in the study were indulging a bad habit. Right there in the headline
> is the double standard: If men ogle, it's normal, but when women do it,
> they're "worse."
>
> 4. IS THERE ANOTHER CONCLUSION THAT WOULD BE JUST AS VALID?
>
> Sometimes a news story is an accurate representation of the scientists'
> conclusions, but the scientists' conclusions don't follow their results.
> Take this 2005 BBC headline: "Men Cleverer Than Women." The study, at the
> time of the headline yet to be published in the British Journal of
> Psychology, claims that as iq scores rise, thegendergapwidens, with 5.5
> men for every woman scoring at the "genius" level of 155 or higher on iq
> tests. That's all the evidence the authors (one of whom, Richard Lynn, has
> published similar studies on racial differences in iq) give to support
> their claim.
>
> But there is another, equally powerful explanation that's been considered
> for years before this study came along: iq tests - which don't measure
> intelligence directly, but try to approximate it - have a wealth ofgender, racial, and cultural biases.
>
> In a 2000 survey of sex differences in intelligence called "The Smarter
> Sex: A Critical Review of Sex Differences in Intelligence," in the
> Educational Psychology Review, Diane Halpern and Mary LaMay write that
> Lynn's approach "rests on the belief that the test of intelligence is
> really measuring what psychologists mean by intelligence, and that it is
> doing so in a way that will yield a fair assessment for males and females
> - two assumptions that may not be justified."
>
> Statistically, men do outperform women on certain types of questions, but
> the reverse is also true; test designers use this fact to calibrate iq
> tests, balancing male-biased with female-biased questions so that men and
> women average the same scores on the same test. Addressing Lynn's research
> directly, Halpern and LaMay say, "Using data from tests that are designed
> to yield no sex differences to argue for a difference is psychometric
> nonsense." Either the tests were miscalibrated (and thus biased) or Lynn's
> results are a fluke: Probably the latter, since other studies (like a 1995
> study on a population similar to Lynn's, done by scientists at the
> Flinders University of South Australia and published in the British
> Journal of Clinical Psychology) found no difference between males and
> females.
>
> So why even report the latest study from this obviously biased researcher?
> Perhaps it's reassuring to believe that sexism isn't sexism, it's science;
> that the status quo reflects some kind of natural order; and that anyone
> who claims otherwise is a whiner. Or perhaps Lynn's studies make the news
> because he's sort of a one-man show of bunk science - after all, this is
> the same guy who claims that African-Americans have higher iqs than
> Africans because they have Caucasian genes that make them smarter.
>
> Then there are the stories that point the finger at feminism for a variety
> of historical incidents and ills. The 2007 Boston Globe story titled
> "Stone Age Feminism? Females joining hunt may explain Neanderthals' end"
> is one of these.
>
> The supporting study, authored by archaeologists Steven Kuhn and Mary
> Stiner, turned on the hypothesis that Neanderthal women participated in
> hunting alongside Neanderthal men. The dangers of hunting - among them,
> getting stomped and gored by various beasts - along with the fact that
> many cavegals' lives were cut short before they could produce baby
> Neanderthals, meant that the breeding population dwindled and the species
> died out.
>
> But the evidence for this "stone age feminism" wasn't evidence at all. The
> hypothesis that the women hunted alongside the men was developed because
> the study's authors found no clues suggesting that Neanderthal women were,
> well, homemakers - no grinding stones and bone needles that would signal a
> traditional division of labor in the species. So is it possible that male
> and female Neanderthals hunted together successfully, and the species
> dwindled for some other, totally unrelated reason? And, for that matter,
> why not hypothesize that coed hunting parties actually contributed to the
> Neanderthals' longevity? More than 100,000 years of existence is nothing
> to sneeze at, after all. Why jump to the conclusion that feminism ruins
> everything? Ah, yes: because it's a story that will sell papers.
>
> 5. IS THE STUDY EVEN SCIENCE?
>
> In his "Bad Science" column, Goldacre reminds us that so-called studies
> may not have studied anything at all. A hair-removal cream company once
> asked Goldacre to come up with a formula calculating which celebrity had
> the sexiest walk. "We know what results we want to achieve," they told
> him, naming celebrities with shapely legs whose high-ranking walks could
> move units of their product.
>
> When Goldacre refused, another scientist supplied the company with a
> formula, thinking it would be used as a joke. The company's press release
> became an article in the Telegraph, crediting a nonexistent "team of
> Cambridge mathematicians" and with no mention of the so-called study's
> actual source.
>
> Lesson learned: If you can't find the source article, it may not actually
> exist.
>
> In another example of non-science, BBC News studiously reported in late
> 2007 that humor "comes from testosterone." The article? Based on a British
> Medical Journal study recording the casual responses of passers-by to a
> unicyclist. The article notes that little boys had more "aggressive"
> responses to the unicyclist (trying to knock him over) and young men made
> the most jokes - typically an unimaginative variant of "Lost your wheel?"
> - with elderly men's jokes being less hostile ("Does it crush your
> bollocks, mate?"). The article also featured a graphic showing the ebb of
> testosterone in men over time; since young men have the most testosterone
> and made the greatest number of jokes, the author concludes, testosterone
> must be the source of humor.
>
> If all you read was the BBC piece, you might think that there's a clutch
> of professors somewhere in England taking this theory seriously. In fact,
> the deliberately hilarious study was published in the BMJ's Christmas
> issue, famous for its joke articles. (A study from the previous year was
> titled "Surgeons are taller and more handsome than physicians" and used a
> photo of George Clooney as a control.)
>
> The fact that the BBC didn't pick up on the joke speaks volumes about the
> mainstream media's unceasing appetite for gendered potshots. How many of
> us would really be surprised to see a "legitimate" report linking
> testosterone and humor? Would it look anything like the 2005 report from
> Stirling and St. Andrews universities in the UK that claims testosterone
> causes women to be "career-driven" like men? The humbling take-home
> message from these studies is that traditionally masculine traits still
> belong to men - even when women share them.
>
> Although there is an element of humor in how wrong the news media can get
> science, the trend isn't a harmless one. While plenty of smart people
> question biased headlines of all stripes, casual readers - particularly
> young ones - are likely to skim the stories and tuck them away in the
> pocket of their brains where stereotypes are kept. It's bad enough when we
> see images of women as passive, petty, dumb, or slutty in fiction or
> advertisements, but stereotypes that come with the lofty stamp of science
> have the air of being, well, factual.
>
> After all, if women are biologically wired to be weak or catty or dumb or
> humorless, then there's nothing wrong with writing consistently airheaded
> female movie and tv characters, dismissing women in positions of power as
> "bitches" or "too emotional," or claiming that institutional sexism
> doesn't exist, women just aren't smart enough to be ceos, grand masters,
> or surgeons. These studies reassure people that media images reflect
> reality, that society reflects biology, and that nothing can or should be
> changed.
>
> Perhaps we should just take solace in one final study, released by the
> American Psychological Association in 2005 but picked up by very few
> mainstream sources. The title? "Men and women found more similar than
> portrayed in popular media."
>
> ____
<<<So why even report the latest study from this obviously biased
researcher?
Perhaps it's reassuring to believe that sexism isn't sexism, it's
science;
that the status quo reflects some kind of natural order; and that
anyone
who claims otherwise is a whiner. Or perhaps Lynn's studies make the
news
because he's sort of a one-man show of bunk science - after all, this
is
the same guy who claims that African-Americans have higher iqs than
Africans because they have Caucasian genes that make them smarter. >>>
Actually, he's correct that "African-Americans" do have more Caucasian
genes than Africans, but from what I've witnessed, that's made them
stupider, not smarter.
F'rinstance, you don't see Africans burning down their OWN cities like
"African-Americans" burnt down Detroit and East Lost Angeles, do you?
The murder rate in the US cities dominated by blacks is ten fold
higher than in any city of Africa.
These are things that suggest some kiind of mental problem, if not
mental illness, wouldn't you say?
There are many other errors in this article, which we will tackle one
by one.
israeliteknight
I would like to understand more about what his motivation is for
wanting it to appear that men and women are "more similar than
portrayed in popular media".
They are DIFFERENT.
They are VERY DIFFERENT.
Celebrate the HUGE DIFFERENCES because it will ALWAYS BE.
But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and the
man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ, 1
Corinthians 11:3
israeliteknight
Such a mind numbing, racist, sexist statement is really hard to find a
place to even begin to understand or critique. We must first remember
the role played by the huge race/sex gap of 234 GRE points between
Asian men and black women, which just recently, in spite of all the
media hooplah [which they claim WE should not ever trust at face
value] about the "narrowing of the gender gap", jumped by another 33
points, to 267. What this proves is that their mental acuity is just
not at the level required for them to even comprehend much less
analyze what these tests and data mean. Only those who score at the
higher end understand it, and it's not possible for them to impart
this intelligence or knowledge to someone with a GRE quantitative
score of 386, or 267 points lower.
The most honest study of intelligence would be to start with a clean
slate "designed to yield no sex differences", without the pre-
determined agenda of narrowing the "gender gap", with no understanding
or knowledge of exactly what the gap is. It would NOT be honest or
valid to design a test which starts with the subjective and sexist
goal of proving "equality" between sexes, and then claim success while
ignoring ALL other data.
The problem is, "When Wechsler was developing his IQ test, he found
that out of 105 tests assessing skills in solving maze-puzzles,
involving the most heterogeneous populations throughout the world, 99
showed an incontrovertible male superiority. (Wechsler resolved this
type of problem by eliminating all those tests that resulted in
findings of significant sex differences.)",so they really have not had
the benefit of analyzing any "IQ test" which hasn't been biased in
that fashion anyway.
After decades of being taught that the sexes are "equal" in
intelligence based on such biased "research", American women [and many
American men as well] actually believe it in spite of 100% data to the
contrary.
Standardized tests like SAT for example have shown consistently for
decades that the sex gap between the sexes of ALL of the races is
exactly the same--and this is a far better measurement of intelligence
than Wechsler's manipulated and mangled and massaged data. Many of
these tests have also been politicized, but because industry tends to
seek the best college graduates and universities tend to seek the best
high school graduates, test scores can be twisted a bit less often
than "IQ tests" administered by a government which has lost sight of
its job. In other words, there is honor amongst thieves.
"Lynn's results are a fluke"? What a silly girlie statement.
Professor Lynn has spent decades researching numerous sources and
reached conclusions which NO honest mathematician or scientist or
engineer or physicist can dispute, or would want to dispute. He's
taken plenty of barbs just being HONEST, so why would he MISREPRESENT
his findings anyway to INCREASE the flow of insults? If they really
don't "trust" his data, which shows the IQ's of 185 nations, all they
need to do is use their simple keyboard connected to the internet to
open any number of international tests which VALIDATE every single
point on his data, like PISA or TIMSS.
Of course what they don't like, based on the following statement, is
that there are 94 nations with IQ's of 84 or lower, that most of these
nations are black African nations, that two dozen black African
nations have IQ's lower than 70 [considered borderline retarded by
psychologists], and that two African nations have IQ's of 59:
> Lynn's studies make the news
> because he's sort of a one-man show of bunk science - after all, this is
> the same guy who claims that African-Americans have higher iqs than
> Africans because they have Caucasian genes that make them smarter.
Actually I too question the notion that mixing a black with an IQ of
59 with an Asian with an IQ of 106 would produce offspring any smarter
than the black. But he's correct that "African-Americans" do have
more Caucasian genes than Africans. From what I've witnessed, though,
that's made them stupider, not smarter.
F'rinstance:
You don't see Africans burning down their OWN cities like "African-
Americans" burnt down Detroit and East Lost Angeles, do you?
The murder rate in the US cities dominated by blacks is ten fold
higher than in any city of Africa.
These are things that suggest some kind of mental problem, if not
mental illness.
Exactly how big is the "gender gap" within different races? Each
year, for decades now, more than a quarter of a million college
graduates have taken the Graduate Record Exam hoping to get into
graduate school, and EACH year this gender gap is EXACTLY the same as
that reported by Professor Lynn. The gap between sexes is 74 points
for Other Hispanic and Other, 72 points for White, 66 points for Asian
and Mexican, 56 points for Puerto Rican, and 42 points for black. How
big is that? While there's not an exact one to one correspondence
between GRE scores and PISA scores, they're based on the same type of
scale and are roughly equivalent. The gap between the US and Mexico
is 68 PISA math points, smaller than the 72 GRE point gap between
White men and White women. Considering that this represents a four
fold difference in per capita income ($12,000 vs. $48,000) this simply
cannot be discounted as an insignificant difference.
Israel scores 78 points lower than Belgium and 72 points higher than
Columbia, very significant race gaps, and smaller than the gender
gaps.
Each year more than 1 million high school graduates take the SAT test,
and again the gender gap within each race is consistent.
Howard Wainer analyzed the SAT math scores and college grades for
47,000 math majors and found an IDENTICAL gap, except that he also
discovered why it is that so many educators think that men and women
are "equal"--women who get As have identical math skills of men who
get Cs, and women who get Bs have identical math skills of men who get
Ds. Most significantly, women who get Cs have significantly lower
math skills than men who flunk, who get Fs, meaning that the letter
grade given to women is three letter grades higher than that given to
men with the same skills.
Also significant are the 13,050 boys who scored higher than ALL the
girls but still received an A, the same letter grade given to girls
who scored up to 251 points lower.
"... a 1995 study on a population similar to Lynn's, done by
scientists at the Flinders University of South Australia and published
in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology ... found no difference
between males and females"
With this voluminous data right at her fingertips, why oh why did Beth
Skwarecki accept at face value an obscure study from lower Slobovia
(actually lower South Australia), without even mentioning why she
trusted this over Professor Lynn's data, TIMSS, PISA, SAT, GRE, IAEP,
NAEP, ACT; or even what the sample size was, or what was meant by
"equal", or which TRAIT it considers "equal", or what the methodology
was, or who was tested or studied, or if it included only Aboriginies.
Most likely she doesn't even know this because she never bothered to
check it out, the key to which is her statement "a population similar
to Lynn's". In order to accomplish this, the "study" would have had
to examine the IQ's of the entire globe, because this is the main
focus and result of Professor Lynn's research.
She accepted it as correct for only one reason: it fits her
predetermined bias, and she doesn't have the intellect to grasp just
how important this DESIGNED IN sex difference is, to both men and
women.
The 68 PISA Math point gap between the U.S. (474) and Mexico (406)
corresponds with an 11 point gap in IQ, about 6.2 PISA points per IQ
point. The 80 TIMSS Math point gap between the U.S. (504) and Jordan
(424) also corresponds with an 11 point gap in IQ, about 7.3 TIMSS
math points per IQ point. So the 72 point GRE quantitative gap
between White men and White men has a strong probability of being in
the range of 9.9 to 11.6 IQ points, and the lowest gap between sexes,
42 points, the one between black men (446) and black women (404), has
a strong probability of being in the range of 5.8 and 6.8 IQ points.
israeliteknight
American Whites score lower on international standardized tests like
TIMSS and PISA, so what makes her believe in the first place that
American blacks don't score lower than their counterparts in Africa.
Sao Tome comes to mind: they have an average IQ of 59. How do we know
Obama's isn't even lower?
israeliteknight
> preference for pink is one of them - and their media strength is that they
> tend to support existing stereotypes of women, reassuring readers that
> social stereotypes do, in fact, reflect reality.
>
> We can't put all the blame on mainstream media, of course. Scientists are
> part of the same culture as the rest of us, and they too have biases that
> shape their hypotheses and interpretations. The scientific community can
> also be as fad-driven as popular culture, creating a climate in which many
> researchers simultaneously geek out over one specific theory while
> competing ideas get lost or abandoned. So let's learn how to read between
> the lines of these dubious articles. Next time you see an article
> reporting that women are happiest when they're picking up their man's
> dirty socks, try asking these questions:
>
> 1. DO THE CONCLUSIONS FIT A LITTLE TOO WELL WITH CULTURAL STEREOTYPES?
>
> Science has the capacity to surprise and amaze us, but sometimes it's more
> satisfying when you can jump up and say, "Yes! I knew it all along!" Which
Charts and graphs can be seen in the proper format at:
http://christianparty.net/iqwechsler.htm
> "Using data from tests that are designed
> to yield no sex differences to argue for a difference is psychometric
> nonsense." Either the tests were miscalibrated (and thus biased) or Lynn's
> results are a fluke: Probably the latter, since other studies (like a 1995
> study on a population similar to Lynn's, done by scientists at the
> Flinders University of South Australia and published in the British
> Journal of Clinical Psychology) found no difference between males and
> females.
Such a mind numbing, racist, sexist statement is really hard to find a
place to even begin to understand or critique. We must first remember
the role played by the huge race/sex gap of 234 GRE points between
Asian men and black women, which just recently, in spite of all the
media hooplah [which they claim WE should not ever trust at face
value] about the "narrowing of the gender gap", jumped by another 33
points, to 267. It proves that their mental acuity is just not at the
level required for them to even comprehend much less analyze what
these tests and data mean. Only those who score at the higher end
understand it, and it's not possible for them to impart this
intelligence or knowledge to someone with a GRE quantitative score of
386, or 267 points lower.
The most honest study of intelligence would be to start with a clean
slate "designed to yield no sex differences", without the pre-
determined agenda of narrowing the "gender gap", with no understanding
or knowledge of exactly what the gap is. It would NOT be honest or
valid to design a test which starts with the subjective and sexist
goal of proving "equality" between sexes, and then claiming some empty
unproven success, while ignoring ALL other data.
What? American Whites score lower than their counterparts in Europe,
so why would we not believe that American blacks score lower than
their counterparts in Africa?
Actually I too question the notion that mixing a black with an IQ of
59 with an Asian with an IQ of 106 would produce offspring any smarter
than the black. But he's correct that "African-Americans" do have
more Caucasian genes than Africans. From what I've witnessed, though,
that's made them stupider, not smarter, suggesting that an IQ of 59
might actually be a HIGH estimate.
F'rinstance:
to Lynn's". In order to achieve this, the "study" would have had to
examine the IQ's of the entire globe, because this is the main focus
and result of Professor Lynn's research.
She accepted it as correct for only one reason: it fits her
predetermined bias, and she doesn't have the intellect to grasp just
how limited her intellect is.
The 68 PISA Math point gap between the U.S. (474) and Mexico (406)
corresponds with an 11 point gap in IQ, about 6.2 PISA points per IQ
point. The 80 TIMSS Math point gap between the U.S. (504) and Jordan
(424) also corresponds with an 11 point gap in IQ, about 7.3 TIMSS
math points per IQ point. So the 72 point GRE quantitative gap
between White men and White men has a strong probability of being in
the range of 9.9 to 11.6 IQ points, and the lowest gap between sexes,
42 points, the one between black men (446) and black women (404), has
a strong probability of being in the range of 5.8 and 6.8 IQ points.
To further verify this hypothesis, let's look at other tests, like
TIMSS taken by half a million students each year in 45 countries
around the world and compare the race and sex gaps to the GRE gaps.
At the 15 year old level, the largest gap in TIMSS math was in Korea,
at 17, in the same range as the average PISA gap of 11 and the NAEP
gap of 2 for 15 year olds. But by the 18 year old level, or the 12th
grade in the US, this gap skyrockets. The gap in regular math in
Norway is 54, in advanced math in Austria is 80, in science in Norway
is 54, in physics in Switzerland is 83. Some very significant gaps
between countries are not that large. For example, the gap between
the US and Japan is only 64 points and the gap between the US and
Lebanon is only 71 points.
Pretty obvious, isn't it? This tells us that the GRE sex gap between
White men and White women in the US is almost identical to the TIMSS
sex gap in a variety of mental skills between White men and White
women in Austria, Switzerland, and Norway, ancestors to many of us.
Even though the amount by which boys scored higher than girls at the
8th grade level was small, in every TIMSS country but two it increased
*dramatically* by the 12th grade.
The result was that our boys scored higher than only 4 countries,
Kuwait, S. Africa, Colombia, and Iran, and our girls scored DEAD last,
1 point lower than both Colombia and S. Africa, 53 points lower than
our boys, 239 points lower than girls in Singapore, and 307 points
lower than boys in Singapore.
> ##############
israeliteknight
DE-EDUCATION: OUR TWELFTH GRADE GIRLS SCORE 76 POINTS LOWER THAN OUR
EIGHTH GRADE BOYS
The charts and graphs can be seen in their proper format at
http://christianparty.net/timss.htm
Because media, educators, bureaucrats, politicians, and other powers
that be studiously ignore the sad state of our high schools, as
evidenced by SAT, TIMSS, NAEP, etc., and instead focus only on 8th
grade performance, less than 7% of Americans are aware of just how low
we scored in TIMSS at the 12th grade level. Comparing 8th grade
scores understates the problem because 45 countries who participated
in this study of more than half a million students around the world
proved that the last four years of a student's education is the most
important part, and 8th grade scores obviously miss that part. Of 45
countries whose 12th graders participated in TIMSS Math, the boys in
35 of those countries scored higher than the 8th grade math score, and
those in 7 countries scored lower. In the US, 12th grade boys scored
56 points lower and 12th grade girls scored 104 points lower. Where
Swiss 8th graders scored 46 points higher than ours in math, their
12th grade boys scored 102 points higher than our boys and 133 points
higher than our girls.
How shocked they all would be if they realized that our 12th grade
girls scored DEAD LAST in physics, 130 points lower than girls in
Norway and almost 200 points lower than boys in Norway, simply because
the scores of American girls from the 8th to 12th grade dropped even
faster than our boys, whose scores dropped even more than that for
most girls. Conversely, relative to their 8th grade scores, 12th grade
boys in Cyprus scored 89 points higher, in Norway scored 84 points
higher, and in Sweden scored 66 points higher.
Whatever their high schools are doing that ours aren't we'd better
start doing QUICKLY or it won't be long before we're a dark smudge on
the "global economy".
TWELFTH GRADE TIMSS SCORES
EIGHTH VERSUS TWELFTH GRADE
Every nation which participated in this part of TIMSS, which is mostly
European nations (and not the Asian nations like Korea, Japan,
Singapore, and Taiwan who blew the pants off our 8th graders) scored
higher, MUCH higher, than us.
The US is the only country whose 8th and 12th graders participated in
TIMSS who experienced such a dramatic drop in scores from 8th to 12th
grade. Where our eighth graders scored only 3 points lower than
Norway's (500 vs 503), our twelfth graders scored 67 points lower (461
vs 528, for a decrease of 64 points), Where our eighth graders
scored 13 points HIGHER than Iceland's (500 vs 487), our 12th graders
scored 71 points lower (461 vs 534, for an 84 point swing).
Netherlands was 41 points higher at eighth grade but 99 points higher
at twelfth grade, Denmark 2 points and 86 points, Sweden 19 points and
91 points. The average increase in these countries was 34 points.
correlating IQ and TIMSS
When this TIMSS data is correlated with Professor Lynn's IQ of
Nations, r-squared is .57, showing a close relationship between this
historic record of intelligence by nation and the most advanced and
comprehensive measure of intelligence of half a million students
around the world we've ever witnessed. Making the assumption that
this TIMSS data is more accurate or more up to date or a better
assessment of IQ or more representative of the type of student
demanded by industry than his data might not be precisely correct, but
it enables us to create a template for measuring worldwide IQ by sex
using TIMSS scores as a guide.
Based on this test, and this test alone, the greatest decreases
required to get an r-squared of almost 1.0 are 9 points for Italy and
Canada, 8 points for the US, and 6 points for Germany and Czech
Republic. The greatest increases are 7 points for Denmark, and 5
points for the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland, and Slovenia.
Nation Lynn IQ Adjusted IQ TIMSS Score Adjustment
i.. Netherlands 102 107 560 5
k.. Sweden 101 106 552 5
w.. Denmark 98 105 547 7
l.. Switzerland 101 104 540 3
x.. Iceland 98 103 534 5
z.. Norway 98 102 528 4
u.. France 98 101 523 3
o.. New Zealand 100 101 522 1
v.. Australia 98 101 522 3
f.. Austria 102 101 518 -1
ar.. Slovenia 95 100 512 5
g.. Germany 102 96 495 -6
r.. Hungary 99 94 483 -5
h.. Italy 102 93 476 -9
aj.. Russia 96 92 471 -4
ag.. Lithuania 97 92 469 -5
ac.. Czech Republic 97 91 466 -6
aa.. United States 98 90 461 -8
ab.. Canada 97 88 446 -9
ev.. South Africa 72 72 356 0
Is this adjustment justified? In this day and age of electronics and
semiconductors, and now semiconductors in every product all the way
from cars to watches, de-emphasizing physics education [or in the case
of the US, apparently actually sabotaging it] ought to be considered
an economic crime, if not an outright criminal act. Our extremely
poor performance in the 8th grade in the first place, coupled with a
DROP in scores from 8th grade to 12th grade that few other countries
experienced, coupled with the social pathology brought on by
multiculturalism, coupled with our having the undisturbed highest
rates of divorce, homicide, violent crime, incarceration, and debt the
industrialized world has ever seen, it would be amazing if Professor
Lynn's estimate of an IQ of 98 for the US isn't 20 points lower rather
than just 8 points.
Since the exact same thing is happening to the WHITE RACE in Canada,
the Czech Republic, Germany, Russia, and Lithuania, the 9, 6, 6, 4,
and 5 point drops, respectively, might actually reflect REALITY. iow,
it might actually be true that Professor Lynn is being kind, or is
using data from a time BEFORE our multiculturalism disaster, and that
TIMSS IS more accurate now.
The 5 and 9 point adjustments for Hungary and Italy, respectively, ARE
justified, because multiculturalism had already ruined both countries
centuries ago and neither does well in any of the other tests (even in
PISA, a test of 15 year olds, both scored much lower than the average,
491 and 462 respectively). There really isn't a single international
test which supports an IQ of 102 for Italy, so if there's any "error"
in any of Professor Lynn's data [and my bet is that there's not], then
this might be it.
Now we can use this chart to estimate the IQ and thus the IQ gap
between 12th grade boys and girls in different countries in a way that
our so-called "educators" REFUSE to do (thus causing the complete
collapse of God's Orderly Arrangement). After almost five decades of
"affirmative action" in this putative Christian nation, what have we
got? The anchor man (or in this case, the anchor "person") on these
tests is the 12th grade American girl at 393, and the rising star is
the 12 grade affirmative-action-free Norwegian boy at 589, almost 200
points higher, thanks mostly to the fact that he WAS educated in high
school and DID score 84 points higher than Norwegian 8th grade boys
(versus our 56 point DROP for boys from 8th to 12th grade). AND
Norwegian girls increased their score from 8th to 12th grade while
ours DECREASED them by 104 points.
If our chart is correct, then this 196 TIMSS point gap represents a 35
point gap in IQ, a real monument to the success of multiculturalism.
From that chart, we can now create the following table and get a very
accurate representation of IQ from a PHYSICS perspective. If physics
is an important skill to an industrialized nation (which of course it
MUST be), then this "gender gap in IQ" within each country of 6 to 16
IQ points, which averages 10.75 points, and which is present in EVERY
country, MUST be important:
TIMSS nation 12th grade physics 8th grade physics Sex Estimated IQ IQ
"Gender Gap"
Australia 524 527 Boys 102 10
Austria 459 544 Boys 90 11
Canada 499 526 Boys 97 10
Cyprus 561 472 Boys 108 12
Czech Republic 514 569 Boys 100 14
Denmark 540 511 Boys 104 10
France** 470 542 Boys 92 6
Germany 515 512 Boys 100 12
Greece 525 490 Boys 102 7
Latvia 509 496 Boys 98 7
Norway 589 505 Boys 113 12
Russia 563 535 Boys 108 10
Slovenia 576 545 Boys 111 16
Sweden 586 520 Boys 112 12
Switzerland 519 548 Boys 101 14
United States 446 502 Boys 87 9
Australia 474 532 Girls 92
Austria 399 536 Girls 79
Canada 440 530 Girls 87
Cyprus 496 475 Girls 96
Czech Republic 440 558 Girls 86
Denmark 483 494 Girls 94
France** 437 536 Girls 86
Germany 453 509 Girls 88
Greece 489 478 Girls 95
Latvia 468 491 Girls 91
Norway 523 501 Girls 101
Russian Federation 507 536 Girls 98
Slovenia 487 537 Girls 95
Sweden 517 518 Girls 100
Switzerland 444 543 Girls 87
United States 393 497 Girls 78
Average 495 519 96.2 10.75
And finally we have the following chart which demonstrates very
clearly where the winners and losers are. You will not hear this from
the "mainstream media": "Pure race Norwegian girls score 77 points
higher than our multicuturalized boys". Of course you also won't
hear: "American boys down 56 points, Norwegian boys up 84 points", nor
will you hear: "American girls down 104 points, Cypriot girls up 21
points".
Is it true? From this perspective, it absolutely positively is true.
Is it important? It's about a billion times more important than what
happened to some suicide bomber who killed an alien enemy foreign jew
12,000 miles away, half a century ago