Good genes and bad science
Should anything be off-limits to research? DAVID HAMBLING looks at the rise of racial pop-science
The term “Racial Science” reeks of smug Victorian colonialists, 20th-century eugenicists promoting compulsory sterilisation, and Nazi propaganda. These days few science departments would consider allowing work in such a toxic area. It is not a question of damned data, more an entire field damned to obscurity. But racial science has still found a place in the popular agenda, thanks to a shift in politics and some pop sci bestsellers.
President Trump’s attitude is symptomatic. He has repeatedly credited himself with having “good genes” and talks about his children and grandchildren in the same way, apparently believing their success is a matter of breeding rather than billionaire parents. “Good genes”, the modern version of the “good breeding” which made aristocrats naturally superior to commoners, are a popular belief among conservatives, assuring them that their wealth and position are justified.
The roots of current thinking lie in The Bell Curve, a 1994 book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The book has never really gone away – it is currently number 8 in the Sociology section of Amazon.com. In it, the authors claim that the social differences and inequalities between black and white Americans can be explained by inherited differences in IQ. They downplay the significance of history and the aftermath of slavery, instead suggesting that black people are less intelligent, and this is why, for example, there is more crime in black neighbourhoods and black people have less well-paid jobs.
The Bell Curve was met by an avalanche of criticism. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called it “a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship.” Innumerable books followed, attacking its methods, assumptions and conclusions and putting forward powerful counter-arguments. None came close to the popularity of the original.
Perhaps the most cogent argument against The Bell Curve is the finding by psychologists that IQ is the result of poverty and lack of opportunity rather than the cause. IQ correlates highly with literacy; anyone who has not been taught to read properly has a lower IQ. Similarly, children brought up in dull environments with little stimulation – typically the poor – have lower IQs. And, as social conditions improve, so does measured intelligence.
The Flynn Effect is a well-known but still puzzling gradual rise in intelligence from generation to generation. Better schooling, better nutrition and a more complex and stimulating environment thanks to the greater availability of books, then television, video games and computers may all play a part. Some sectors of society have risen more than others, and the changes that give rise to the Flynn Effect have closed the gap between black and white Americans over the last few decades. That would hardly be possible if intelligence were a matter of race rather than environment.
More recently, Nicholas Wade’s 2014 book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History argued that racial intelligence differences are genetic and amplified by culture. Black people are poor because they have “bad genes” and the effect is exacerbated by their inferior culture. The book was promptly denounced in a letter signed by more than 100 professors of biology and genetics published in the New York Times. Again, this has not stopped it from being highly influential. Telling people what they want to hear sells books.
More subtly, works like Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother make arguments based on culture rather than race per se. While not explicitly citing the genetic superiority of the Chinese, Chua suggests that sociology can explain the superior performance of children raised with traditional Chinese values.
Chua’s book is, however, a mild and even humorous version of a prevalent view in China, where the superiority of the majority Han ethnic group is taken for granted. Some Chinese palæontologists even believe that the Han came from a separate process of evolution, hinting that they are a more advanced version of humanity. This stands in contrast to the accepted ‘out of Africa’ model of human evolution which suggests a common origin for everyone, but it plays better with Chinese nationalists.
Nationalism is on the rise globally, and feeling against migrants has rarely run higher. Again, Trump’s border wall is a symptom. Anything that supports the view that outsiders are inferior tends to be seized on, and popular science works ‘explaining’ racial difference will continue to win an audience, however shaky their foundations.
Mainstream science, meanwhile, can at best play a purely defensive game. Scientific method demands an open mind; setting out to prove racial equality would be unscientific. Far worse though, is the danger that the slightest scrap of research data taken out of context could fuel extremism. No research institution could survive the resulting media storm unscathed, so nobody is willing to risk it.
Science does, however, sometimes bite back. Perhaps the most entertaining example of this is research by sociologists at the University of California, Los Angeles entitled “When Genetics Challenges a Racist’s Identity: Genetic Ancestry Testing Among White Nationalists.” The research, published in August 2017, looked at discussions on the white supremacist forum Stormfront about DNA tests for ethnic origins. White nationalists take these tests to prove their credentials, anticipating Viking blood, or suitably Nordic stock. They are not always pleased with the results. When they discovered ‘non-European’ genes, some of the subjects concluded that the tests themselves were not valid, or that deliberately inaccurate data was being returned because of a Jewish (of course!) conspiracy. Others sought to redefine whiteness.
It could be argued that nothing should be off-limits to science and that real scientific research is needed into the “unexplained phenomena” that The Bell Curve purports to explain. However, in the current climate, researchers have to treat lightly when it comes to exploring racial difference. We may have sequenced our own genome and unlocked many of the mysteries of what it means to be human, but this is one area where science leaves the field to those who are less interested in the truth than their own agenda.
Wade’s book was denounced in a letter signed by more than 100 professors