I'm now inclined to think that Steven Pinker went too far in stressing the genetic contribution to ability in The Blank Slate. The several hundred genes that are involved in the formation and development of the human brain are indeed important and I wouldn't quarrel with the "70-80% contribution" as being a rough-and-ready description when thinking of the abilities required in modern industrial society. But what is being increasingly realised from neurological research is the considerable shaping effect that takes place in the rear cortex during the very earliest years of childhood (that is, the death of millions of brain cells which are not used in the immediate environment and the subsequent networks that are left). This is something that schools can't really influence. Some recent studies in England suggest that young middle-class children of low-to-moderate ability at 4/5 years age are already starting to pull away in performance from 'working'-class children of moderate-to-high ability. By the age of 10/11 the difference is considerable. There appears to be a very strong two-away effect going on between the 'basic brain kit' that the genes contribute to the new born child and the 'basic kit' (of the fairly fully-developed rear cortex) that the child is left with at puberty -- as the individual starts his long march to fairly full brain maturation (by the subsequent full development of the frontal lobes in which brain cells continue to be formed) at 25 or so. The "scholastic" or "informational" shaping effect of Ashkenazi Jews in their very earliest years of life therefore seems to more fully potentiate the original genetic inheritance -- and was then shaped even further by the tradition of arranged marriages, preferentially directed by parents towards males of obvious intellectual ability. The effect of this between about 1400 and 1870 (when large-scale emigration of Ashkenazi Jews to western Europe and America started occurring -- thus exposing their relative high ability to a wider world) has obviously been considerable and is further supportive evidence of the realisation of evolutionary biologists from more general studies that mutational and selection effects can occur much more rapidly that was realised until fairly recently. (Fifty years ago most biologists would even state that the human species was so different from all others that evolution had stopped!) I think that the same effect of what can roughly be called "scholastic inbreeding" occurred also among the diaspora Chinese who typically have IQ scores of about 106 (many of them now returning to mainland China and already having a significant effects there in, it seems to me, just the same way that Ashkenazi Jews have had in many areas of American life during the last century). I am becoming increasingly convinced that the same sort of effect is occurring more generally in all the developed countries -- an increasing cultural separation between professional middle-classes and the rest, of which that part of ability which is measured by IQ scores is a significant feature. There is a substantial IQ-score divide between north and south England, for example. The more egalitarian the education system becomes, the more selective it becomes and the more stratified society becomes. All the evidence is pointing to the fact that the more that left-wingers want to achieve a "fairer" society (and I don't quarrel with that) by means of education, then they will have to start thinking about intervention in the earliest weeks, months and years of a child's life. My assessment is that this sort of 1984 scenario can't be achieved politically in any significant way at all, so I'm increasingly thinking that society in developed countries is already beginning to separate into two groups of different ability and that this can't be stopped. This is not a time for ideological shibboleths. If there is any possibility of this trend being reversed, we need to accelerate research into brain studies.
Keith Hudson
At 00:19 26/11/2003 +0100, Christoph Reuss wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,2763,605806,00.html
Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday November 25, 2001
The Observer
A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians
are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal.
Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been
urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away.
Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research
publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it
may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical
dogma.
'I have authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and
Science, and this has never happened to me before,' said the article's lead
author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of Complutense
University in Madrid. 'I am stunned.'
British geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer added: 'If the journal didn't like the
paper, they shouldn't have published it in the first place. Why wait until
it has appeared before acting like this?'
The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New York,
claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its extreme
political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. The article has been
removed from Human Immunology's website, while letters have been written to
libraries and universities throughout the world asking them to ignore or
'preferably to physically remove the relevant pages'. Arnaiz-Villena has
been sacked from the journal's editorial board.
Dolly Tyan, president of the American Society of Histocompatibility and
Immunogenetics, which runs the journal, told subscribers that the society
is 'offended and embarrassed'.
The paper, 'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with
other Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in
immune system genes among people in the Middle East.
In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the idea
that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in the
region. In doing so, the team's research challenges claims that Jews are a
special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be inherited.
Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East share a very similar gene pool and
must be considered closely related and not genetically separate, the
authors state. Rivalry between the two races is therefore based 'in
cultural and religious, but not in genetic differences', they conclude.
But the journal, having accepted the paper earlier this year, now claims
the article was politically biased and was written using 'inappropriate'
remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its editor told the journal
Nature last week that she was threatened by mass resignations from members
if she did not retract the article.
Arnaiz-Villena says he has not seen a single one of the accusations made
against him, despite being promised the opportunity to look at the letters
sent to the journal.
He accepts he used terms in the article that laid him open to criticism.
There is one reference to Jewish 'colonists' living in the Gaza strip, and
another that refers to Palestinian people living in 'concentration' camps.
'Perhaps I should have used the words settlers instead of colonists, but
really, what is the difference?' he said.
'And clearly, I should have said refugee, not concentration, camps, but
given that I was referring to settlements outside of Israel - in Syria and
Lebanon - that scarcely makes me anti-Jewish. References to the history of
the region, the ones that are supposed to be politically offensive, were
taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and other text books.'
In the wake of the journal's actions, and claims of mass protests about the
article, several scientists have now written to the society to support
Arnaiz-Villena and to protest about their heavy-handedness.
One of them said: 'If Arnaiz-Villena had found evidence that Jewish people
were genetically very special, instead of ordinary, you can be sure no one
would have objected to the phrases he used in his article. This is a very
sad business.'
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
