Slashdot Mirror
Gene Found That May Affect IQ in Males
Chowser writes to tell us the AZStarNet is running an article stating that North Carolina scientists claim to have identified a gene that affects IQ in males. The difference is apparently quite striking, with the average IQ difference between those that had the gene and those that didn't being approximately 20 points. From the article: "However, he stressed that the IQ results in his research were based on a group average; individual males carrying the gene version had a wide range of IQ scores. While females also can carry the variation, it does not appear to affect their IQ, he said."
Firstly, the article (and /. blurb) says females in general, not specificaly Caucasian ones. It's fairly well known that a lot of genes relating to nervous system development are X-linked, in some work by my colleagues looking at sleep and IQ, this is something that is controlled for by considering the mother's IQ. I would be interested if there were any variations with race, however. At a conference I'm just about to fly back from, one of the talks detailed how one metabolic mutation was carried by 10% of Caucasians, this fell to 4% in Chinese populations, and only 1% in Japanese.
Am I the retarded person here? Here is a direct quote from the article:
The researchers studied about 300 children with an average age of 10. The children, all Caucasian, came from six counties in the Cleveland area.
Now, if you can tell me how the hell you figure that the females were anything but Caucasian, I'd really appreciate it. Perhaps I'm just a dumbfuck with this specific gene and my 20 point IQ gap is causing me to misunderstand "The children, all Caucasian".
The standard deviation of IQ is 15 or 16 in most scales. A difference of 1.25 standard deviations is not small.
However, without knowing the frequency of the gene in the tested population, it's impossible to know if the difference is statistically significant. If the group was 50% male and 50% had the gene, it almost certainly represents a real difference; if only 5% had the gene, that's only 7-8 guys, and the "difference" is pretty likely to be random chance.
It's also worth noting that the difference could be in developmental speed rather than in level---i.e., the guys with the gene could just take longer to develop, but be just as smart by age 25, or could be associated with some other factor that is merely correlated with intelligence (such as, say, alcoholism which can lead to poverty which can lead to a less intellectually-nurturing home life).
Basically, this article gives us a sound bite with almost no useful information---shoddy reporting.
It is very interesting that this gene only seems to be expressed in males. I wonder what the result would be if they tested the effect of this gene in gay people? Would they score more like straight males (- 20 points) or females (no difference)?
If the gene doesn't affect gays, it might provide some explanation for why an apparently genetic trait that limits reproductive success (homosexuality) nevertheless seems to be present in a significant percentage of the population.
Mod me troll for this if you want, but it's a serious question.
Most probably the reason that that " females also can carry the variation, [and] it does not appear to affect their IQ" is that females carry two mostly different X chromosomes and therefor have a backup for any defective gene, while men have only one X chromosome plus some dumb little Y chromosome that encodes our dicks and little else.
If they knew what they were talking about they'd ask whether a women with TWO of this gene had a lower IQ just like a man with one.
Probably they do, but also, no doubt, they couldn't find a large enough population of women with two of this gene to know.
Various genetic disorders can be carried by females, but only manifest in males. I guess we have this to compensate. I wonder how many other positive genes manifest only in males?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
This explains that Simpsons episode when Lisa was depressed because she thinks she will turn out to be a loser, but then it turned out only the male Simpsons were like Homer and all the females were doctors and scientists.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Ah, there's the rub.
The problem with testing for intelligence is that we're really not quite certain what we're looking for. Spatial reasoning? Problem solving? Mathematical calculations? Reading comprehension?
It's nearly impossible to test "smarts" in any consistent way because of the varied background and education of each individual. Worst-case scenario, you actually end up testing a person's memory.
Take my family for instance. I'm a 145... which seems high enough, you'd think. My oldest sister scored a 175 and wasn't really taking the test that seriously (which is just as well, since scores in that range are wildly inaccurate anyway). Everyone else in the family is somewhere in between; I, with my "genius" IQ, am actually the slowest of the bunch. The net result is that none of us really put much stock in IQ tests.
My sister is definately a genius by any definition. She's a master of all disciplines: an artist, physicist, linguist, mathematician, writer, everything. Not only can she compete in every field, she excels. She, with less to work with than the average McGuyver setup, could conquer the world in an hour.
She was followed by a brother with similar capacity and opportunity. The two of them made being smart not only cool, but reachable for the rest of us. The opportunity for learning for the rest of us was immense. Every curiousity could be satisfied, and even the most complicated concepts can be taught if you have a highly-capable teacher.
So now, while I don't personally think I measure up to the mental level of all the great minds of our day, all the "intelligence" tests I take tell me that I do. Compared to a history exam, IQ tests seem easy--like I'd studied for it. In a sense, I guess, I have. I have an uncommonly strong educational background that gives me a noticable edge.
So what does that mean? Are IQ tests really worthless? If you could create an IQ test for which the results weren't affected by prior education, would it be useful? Would the results be different?
One of the funniest bits of this article was on the subject of correlation:
But so far, connections between IQ and specific genes have been just correlations, with little supporting evidence. The new research, Jirtle and other experts said, will need to be replicated before it is considered definitive.
Unless there is something in the research that the article failed to capture, I don't see how this would amount to anything other than a correlation, as there isn't any evidence of the mechanism by which the gene is causing this effect, or an observation of the gene causing the effect (tricky with genetics, but nonetheless).
sigs are a waste of space
Erm, the minimum wage has been over $3/hr for TWENTY-FIVE !@#%ING YEARS, BUDDY.
Now, then, going on that logic, if the owners of a business were making so little money that $3/hour was so much that their own labor was worth less, I hardly would fault the wage-earner in that equation as much as the "business" (read: lack of) owner...
In 1980, when the minimum wage exceeded $3/hour, my family business--running out of, basically, our freaking garage--paid our employees $40k/year. Yeah, the minimum wage really got in the way.
People who bitch about the minimum wage betray their utter ignorance of basic high-school level economics.
I agree with h4rm0ny with a couple of things to add. At our point in civilization, the greatest societal good seems to be the greatest good for the greatest number, also known as utilitarianism. But I think the true criteria for "advanced" society is the degree to which it provides for all people. A society is only successful when the needs of everyone are met. Consider that 50,000 people are born every day and 40,000 people die from starvation on a global level. Is civilization "succeeding" because more people born then are dying because of a lack of food? I would say that as advanced as we humans claim to be that our claim to greatness is lacking if as many as 40,000 die from famine each day. Consider that native american tribes and the hunter-gatherer tribes before them had no "class" of people who were homeless, and only starved in the case that there was no food for anyone. Capitalism, does not seem to be the best system in place for meeting societies needs. Also consider a civilization of Indians (that is, in India) who existed 1,500 years ago and did not require police, advanced government, or a military to enforce rules. They lived in cities, farmed, and lived in peace until their lack of military means led to their being forced into slavery by their invadors, the Caucasions from the Caucaus mountains. This ancient civilization was just ahead of its time, it was not stupid, for those of you who will contend that it is. If society today resembled theirs, we would not behave because of the rule of law, we would do good unto our neighbors because we would understand it is in our best interests and the societal good to do so. Post-Newtonian logic argues that there seems to be an inter-relatedness or oneness to the world. That is, what we do to another, we do to ourselves. If we behave in a self-interested manner we see the obvious evil that arises because of it. This was the main point that both Buddha and Jesus shared: that selfishness and not loving another as you love yourself (in Jesus' case) was the cause of societal woes. Humanities main problems stem from its short-sighted approach to its needs in that we feel that once we have met the needs of our individual person, we are satisfied. If a new paradigm were established and societal good and its success were determined on the basis of the degree to which every person in said society is provided for, you would see a very different culture and economy than you see today. Instead of a GREATLY disproportionate distribution of goods that is say, 90% of the wealth being in the hands of the top 5%, you would see wealth be at LEAST more EQUALLY shared among all sectors of society, knowing that societal good is measured in its ability for all to be satisfied. Also, Rousseau's social theory in part bases itself on a theory that if we were all waiting to be born, and did not know whether we would be born rich or poor, we would, assuming that the rich would be, by far the minority, would rather have a roughly equal society where all are basically provided for. This would seem more logically than playing the "lottery" and merely hoping to be one of the few fabulously rich people in the world yet to be created. But as for the original point about intelligence, it seems that a society obsessed with production would value innovation and technology which would make intelligence important. However, I know plenty of intelligent people who have somehow missed the point of life and who also think things which are ridiculous becase they fail the wisdom check to make informed observations and form accurate opinions about the facts of life. And again, the featured article in this story says there is a great deal of variance among those who had the genes just as a group. That means that some who have the altered gene and have an IQ which is 20 pts less than it would be may, in some cases, be smarter than people who don't have the altered gene and therefor and 20 pts more than they otherwise would. If you think intelligence is key to living the good life,
I usually get moderator points quite frequently - normally, it's when I've just done some metamoderating, a duty I confess I often ignore. However, I don't really use them for anything.
The problem with having modpoints is that, if a discussion is on a topic I know something about, or at least that I care about, then I'd far rather post replies than moderate. So I end up making use of my modpoints by going into discussions I neither know nor care about and shooting down First Posts, GNAAs, goatses and copy-paste trolls...
This may be why we've developed this stereotype of moderators as clueless. If they knew about the stuff being discussed, they'd be discussing, not moderating - so just like I always do, they've gone into a discussion they care little for and are doing the best they can there.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The thing that I think is really funny about IQ tests is that they correlate well to academic ability, but seem to be unrelated to the real-world success of the individuals tested. If they don't relate to ones actual ability to be a productive member of society, it's hard to argue that they're meaningful.
Actually, the "best" (i.e. most efficient) solution for society would be to execute the unproductive members.* We don't actually do that, of course, because as a society we're more concerned with being humane than being efficient.
Actually, a better solution would be to offer vasectomies with a $1,000 bonus upfront for volunteering to be sterilized.
Maybe $10,000 to women because of the medical complications involved.
Anyone could volunteer regardless of race and wealth status. Those who were hard up for money (or of lower caliber who wanted money for drugs etc) would tend to gravitate towards this as an easy way to get money.
Therefore they would not be producing unwanted children or children they could not support. Since the program was totally voluntary, anyone who really wanted children could just opt to not go through the process or perhaps reverse it with a more exspensive procedure down the road.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
My comment was indeed speculative, however, I would be interested to see longitudinal data of IQ tests repeated across a varied population over time, following them from early childhood through adulthood. As an aside, the article noted that the "scientific conference" was in Durham, NC. The researchers are from Duke, which if i'm not mistaken, is in Durham, NC. Is anyone familiar with this conference? Or are we talking about a Duke biology department poster session.... BIG difference.
Yeah, great idea. "Hey, that guy's smarter than most of us, which means he's a potential threat to society, therefore we should keep very close tabs on him even though he's done nothing wrong , we're just pretty sure he will eventually, because... well, he can."
Hey, better yet, why not just preemtively lock up anyone with a sufficiently above-average IQ? After all, they're capable of far more than the average "sheeple", certainly more so than the average police officer or federal investigator (percieved as his "natural enemies" just because he's capable of outsmarting them, nevermind whether he would actually try), and worst of all these intelligent folks tend to question established norms that should never be questioned (eg. laws, rules of behavior, patterns of thinking, etc.).
A friend of mine once made the observation that having a working brain in a society that values everything except intelligence is almost like having a real superpower. Yes, it means that smart people can do things that the majority of people can't. However, as parent so sadly illustrated, it also makes them a target, for the very same reason. The average person fears what they don't understand, and they don't understand people that possess greater mental faculties than themselves.
And before anyone flames me too harshly, bear in mind that I'm not suggesting any kind of "superiority" of intelligent people -- human nature and failing knows no IQ score. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of fearing someone, of suspecting them to be of greater criminal inclination, than those of average (or lower) intellect. To associate one's predisposition to commit crime or harm others as being directly proportionate to intellectual capacity a "because they're smart enough to get away with it" is beyond asinine.
Got a reference handy? I may be reading this incorrectly, but Psychology Today published an article that appears to disagree with you.
Psychology Today is essentially the same as Redbook. It is very watered down, and almost pseudoscience. I would in no way put it in the same ballpark as Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, even though those are fairly watered down as well, they don't focus on relationships or gossip. The latter magazines also have a variety of topics in them.
An example of the BS that psychology today puts out is what you quoted. Two siblings that have different measured IQ at one time will average to be basically the same after time.
Duh!
IQ can vary as much as 10 points or more within an individual at any given time. 15 points is the standard deviation. These scores can particularly vary in younger subjects that take the test because of things like they don't have a very long attention span, they don't give a shit sometimes if ever, they are stoned at the time, they are lazy, or whatever reason.
Now, if Psychology Today said, "IQ is supposed to level out with age" and showed that all people over 60 years old had the same (I guess higher or lower) IQ, then this would be saying something. Maybe.
The average IQ of a middle class American is about 110 (middle class is actually not "middle"), and the average IQ of the population is about 100, again with a standard deviation of 15.
For the most part, kids have about the same sociological level as their parents, as well as many of the other traits due to genetics and 18+ years of training.
Anecdotal experience leads me to believe that if you stay on at a "burger flipper" job for more than a year you could be the manager. My son went to work for a pizza place to earn money while at college. The turnover was so high that he learned all the positions in 6 months. When the assistant manager quit, he got that job. When the manager quit he got that job. By the end of 18 months he was offered stock and a position in their corporate IT department.
I also have a friend who started at McDonalds and now owns four McD's - so it can happen.