Xref: utzoo sci.med:23196 sci.bio:4459 sci.research:1527
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!ethan
From: ethan@ut-emx.uucp (Ethan Tecumseh Vishniac)
Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.bio,sci.research
Subject: Re: Who is smarter?
Summary: Of course.....
Message-ID: <44523@ut-emx.uucp>
Date: 21 Feb 91 14:31:49 GMT
References: <1991Feb20.203306.1463@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Followup-To: sci.bio
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin; Austin, Texas
Lines: 52

In article <1991Feb20.203306.1463@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, srwilson@csws13.ic.sunysb.edu (Steve Wilson) writes:
> Recently on the newsgroup, soc.culture.japan, there has been a buzzing
> about an aparent study that was conducted to find out which race is
> physically smarter due to the structure of the nervous system, etc...
> The study aparently said that    Oriental and Jewish people were smater,
> followed by Caucasians...  Is there any basis to this at all... Has
> such a study truly been conducted, and what were the results?...

I just want to let you know that these results are well known to
be true by all of us who are Jewish or Oriental.

         :-)

There have been a number of studies over the years designed to find
out the answer to such things.  The results have shown an amazing
tendency to confirm the suspicions of the scientists involved.  For
a (somewhat vicious) summary read "The Mismeasure of Man" by S.J. Gould.
More recent studies have stopped finding that northern Europeans are
smarter and have tended to find that Jews and Orientals are smarter.
I don't know how you would judge whether superior intellectual
achievement by an ethnic group was genetic or cultural. (I note that
these groups in America place a larger emphasis on intellectual
achievement that the population as a whole.)  

And now for something completely different.....

A friend of mine once told me that as an undergraduate and graduate
student in NYC (some 30 years ago) she couldn't help but notice
that the vast majority of the top students in her classes were Jews.
Of course being a good liberal she knew that this was the result of
cultural influences.  Still, there was always a warm feeling in her
heart that while all ethnic groups might be equal, some were evidently
more equal than others.  Then she started teaching at Rutgers.
She told me that she felt she had made an amazing discovery.  "This
is where all the stupid Jews go to college!".  (My belated
apologies to alumni of Rutgers.)

None of which says much about whether or not intelligence is largely
determined by genes.  The real problem is not whether or not
some ethnic groups have more smarts (an unlikely, but just barely
conceivable proposition) but how to resist the idea that we should
make social policy based on what are evidently small (at most)
statistical differences.




-- 
 I'm not afraid of dying     Ethan Vishniac, Dept of Astronomy, Univ. of Texas
 I just don't want to be     {charm,ut-sally,emx,noao}!utastro!ethan
 there when it happens.      (arpanet) ethan@astro.AS.UTEXAS.EDU
    - Woody Allen            (bitnet) ethan%astro.as.utexas.edu@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU


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