Race and IQs

[Anomalocaris]

The null hypothesis simply states that whatever you are seeking to demonstrate is really not there, despite what you think are the evidence for it being there.

The null hypothesis could either be 1.  there is a difference between average intelligence between to groups, or 2. there is not a difference between the average intelligence between two groups.

Null hypothesis 1 is applicable if the hypothesis being tested is average intelligence is essentially the same between groups.  Null hypothesis 2 is applicable if the hypothesis being tested is average intelligence is essentially different between groups.

This doesn't seem right to me.  Maybe i'm totally wrong in my whole thought process.  Shouldn't the null be that there is no difference in IQ between races.  You either find statistically significant data and void the null or find nothing.

No, null hypothesis doesn’t intrinsically lean one way or another.  It is a devil’s advocate argument, not a argument from a specific position.

[FatAndFaithless]

This doesn't seem right to me.  Maybe i'm totally wrong in my whole thought process.  Shouldn't the null be that there is no difference in IQ between races.  You either find statistically significant data and void the null or find nothing.

No, null hypothesis doesn’t lean one way or another.  

It does not assume that in the absence of evidence one or the other is more likely to be true.

Null refers to “what ever you think is the reality there is really not the reality”.   It is a devil’s advocate argument, not a argument from a specific position.

Right.  And what science strives to do is prove the null hypothesis incorrect when testing a hypothesis.

[The Grand Nudger]

All this null hypothesis business aside, the reason that scientific racism is classified as psuedo-science isn;t that we can;t find differences between groups.  We can, even when they aren;t really there, lol.  It;s that those differences fail in every instance to support the conclusions drawn, and even moreso the claims made from those conclusions.

The idea, for example..that africans should be considered to have the intelligence of an 11 year old white child?  Ridiculous, nothing more than an attempt to infantalize blacks...made all the more amusing by the fact that peoples iq scores tend to go -down- as they age, not up.  Telling us that an african should be considered the equal of an 11 year old white child is to tell us that they should be considered to be smarter than a 25 year old white adult.

[ohreally]

This doesn't seem right to me.  Maybe i'm totally wrong in my whole thought process.  Shouldn't the null be that there is no difference in IQ between races.  You either find statistically significant data and void the null or find nothing.

No, Anom has it right.  The null hypothesis is just the default counterpoint to any assertion/hypothesis being tested.  To prove an assertion/hypothesis you would have to show the null hypothesis to be incorrect.  

"Smoking causes cancer" ->  a claim.  The null hypothesis would be "Smoking does NOT cause cancer."  Through all the medical and scientific testing we've done, the null hypothesis was proven incorrect, and we know that smoking is a cause of cancer.

Using your example, isn't "There is a difference in IQ between races" a claim?  And the null is "There is no difference in IQ between races" ?

[Alexmahone]

1 or 2 IQ points.

Remember the values are averaged over an entire race.

Entire race?

Where does one race end and another begin?

Dr Philippe Rushton says that race is more than skin deep. You can tell a person's race even from their bone or DNA. That proves that race is a meaningful concept, not just a social construct.

[The Grand Nudger]

Further, supposing that there actually is some difference, it would be a difference -within- the races based upon selection of a hereditary trait.  The proposal that the "race" accoiunts for this is nothing more or less than the notion that the "white gene" or "asian gene" also accounts for intelligence.  Find me that gene.

Now...based upon this wonderful not-construct, which group gets my blisteringly high iq scores, and from which one of them did I inherit the race based smart gene? My maternal grandfather is full blown crow off the rez, maternal grandmother was born in ireland. My paternal grandfather was mixed, paternal grandmother was western european. You see my avatar up there, lookin white as a freshly bleached bedsheet. Two guesses as to which camp I;d get placed in, and your first guess doesn;t count.

I've got a whole lot of the lesser races blood in my veins, no asian, and a sparing amount of anything that a racist would consider caucasian.

[Angrboda]

No, Anom has it right.  The null hypothesis is just the default counterpoint to any assertion/hypothesis being tested.  To prove an assertion/hypothesis you would have to show the null hypothesis to be incorrect.  

"Smoking causes cancer" ->  a claim.  The null hypothesis would be "Smoking does NOT cause cancer."  Through all the medical and scientific testing we've done, the null hypothesis was proven incorrect, and we know that smoking is a cause of cancer.

Using your example, isn't "There is a difference in IQ between races" a claim?  And the null is "There is no difference in IQ between races" ?

I think, if I'm understanding this, the failure to demonstrate a difference between the null hypothesis fails to support the claim, but does not on that account thus support the null hypothesis. It's a difference, if I understand things correctly, between accepting the null hypothesis ex hypothesi, and accepting it absolutely.

[FatAndFaithless]

No, Anom has it right.  The null hypothesis is just the default counterpoint to any assertion/hypothesis being tested.  To prove an assertion/hypothesis you would have to show the null hypothesis to be incorrect.  

"Smoking causes cancer" ->  a claim.  The null hypothesis would be "Smoking does NOT cause cancer."  Through all the medical and scientific testing we've done, the null hypothesis was proven incorrect, and we know that smoking is a cause of cancer.

Using your example, isn't "There is a difference in IQ between races" a claim?  And the null is "There is no difference in IQ between races" ?

Yup.  To prove the assertion "there is a difference in IQ between races" correct, they would have to prove the null hypothesis "there is no difference in IQ between races" false.

And if someone wanted to prove the assertion "there is no difference in IQ between races" correct, they would have to prove the null hypothesis "there IS a difference in IQ between races" false.

With either claim, you (whoever is trying to prove one or the other) does the legwork, gathers the data, calculates all the statistics, etc.

And Jorm is correct - just because someone fails to disprove the null hypothesis doesn't mean the null hypothesis is necessarily true. It just means that their efforts have not yet disproved the null hypothesis. Like if some theist is unable to prove that god exists, that doesn't support the assertion that god does NOT exist, it just means that we lack proof for the existence of a god. Or, just because I cannot disprove the null hypothesis of a number of gumballs in a jar being even, doesn't mean that the number of gumballs is actually even - we just can't prove that it's odd, right now, with the available evidence/methods.

[Anomalocaris]

No, Anom has it right.  The null hypothesis is just the default counterpoint to any assertion/hypothesis being tested.  To prove an assertion/hypothesis you would have to show the null hypothesis to be incorrect.  

"Smoking causes cancer" ->  a claim.  The null hypothesis would be "Smoking does NOT cause cancer."  Through all the medical and scientific testing we've done, the null hypothesis was proven incorrect, and we know that smoking is a cause of cancer.

Using your example, isn't "There is a difference in IQ between races" a claim?  And the null is "There is no difference in IQ between races" ?

Yes. But the null hypothesis still depends on the claim.

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Entire race?

Where does one race end and another begin?

Dr Philippe Rushton says that race is more than skin deep. You can tell a person's race even from their bone or DNA. That proves that race is a meaningful concept, not just a social construct.

That doesn’t answer my question.

It is possible to say the Pacific Ocean and Indian oceans are different, but where you chose to demarcate one from the other can still greatly effect their average traits.

[Pat Mustard]

Fixed this sentence to make it accurate.  The way you wrote it was simply a one lie piled upon another in an unsafe and rickety fashion.

So I guess you're one of those liberals who think that everyone is equal. Interestingly, if you think the mean IQ's of different races are the same, the burden of proof is on you.

So you really that think then. Nice to know that there's no point expecting rational and evidence based discourse from you.