05-10-2008, 06:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-10-2008, 07:13 PM by Bharatvarsh.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Second dhu and ashyam's posts. 90% of a baby's brain is formed (neurons are encouraged to make more connections to their neighbours, and thus increase intelligence) by age 5. If a baby is in a stimulus-rich environment, its brain will grow more. Most "upper caste" people are richer, more well educated, and have the time and initiative to make their baby's brain grow. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All correct, but that has nothing to do with specifically stating IQ results by caste, its only when we make causal attributions without much data that we are skating on thin ice.
If I were to say Kammas (my caste) have a comparitively low IQ as a group based on a number of repeated IQ test results, then I am stating a fact, but I said nothing about why this is, for all I know it could be due to genes, environment, or an interaction of both. Stating that caste and IQ are correlated doesn't mean that one can make a causal attribution.
To find out why this group has a lower IQ, you would then need to go to the next step and do adoption studies, so you study the average IQ of low income Kamma children adopted by say well off Brahmin parents (who could offer them the stimulating environment that their own kids enjoy), if the differences were mainly due to this difference in environment then you would find that the IQs of these well off Brahmin-adopted Kamma kids will be closer to those of upper class Brahmin children rather than their low income Kamma counterparts. If you find the opposite then you could say that socio-economic differences cannot solely explain the differences. But whatever findings you obtain they need to be replicated a number of times before a firm conclusion can be drawn, and in the end if socio-economic factors don't account for most of the IQ difference then its more likely that genes or an interaction between genes and environment play a role in the IQ difference.
Now would a lay person know all this, I doubt it, but does that mean we should stop research because the average person on the street is ignorant of the difference between correlation and causation, absolutely not, in that case its the job of the education system to better prepare students to understand how scientific methodology works (and which I find that Indian Education System is woefully unprepared to do).
Claiming everything to be some gora conspiracy is no answer, if that really was the case you wouldn't see results published consistently showing that North East Asians have a higher average IQ than those of European descent, now correct me if I am wrong but the last time I checked Koreans, Chinese etc were not even considered Caucasian let alone white.
All correct, but that has nothing to do with specifically stating IQ results by caste, its only when we make causal attributions without much data that we are skating on thin ice.
If I were to say Kammas (my caste) have a comparitively low IQ as a group based on a number of repeated IQ test results, then I am stating a fact, but I said nothing about why this is, for all I know it could be due to genes, environment, or an interaction of both. Stating that caste and IQ are correlated doesn't mean that one can make a causal attribution.
To find out why this group has a lower IQ, you would then need to go to the next step and do adoption studies, so you study the average IQ of low income Kamma children adopted by say well off Brahmin parents (who could offer them the stimulating environment that their own kids enjoy), if the differences were mainly due to this difference in environment then you would find that the IQs of these well off Brahmin-adopted Kamma kids will be closer to those of upper class Brahmin children rather than their low income Kamma counterparts. If you find the opposite then you could say that socio-economic differences cannot solely explain the differences. But whatever findings you obtain they need to be replicated a number of times before a firm conclusion can be drawn, and in the end if socio-economic factors don't account for most of the IQ difference then its more likely that genes or an interaction between genes and environment play a role in the IQ difference.
Now would a lay person know all this, I doubt it, but does that mean we should stop research because the average person on the street is ignorant of the difference between correlation and causation, absolutely not, in that case its the job of the education system to better prepare students to understand how scientific methodology works (and which I find that Indian Education System is woefully unprepared to do).
Claiming everything to be some gora conspiracy is no answer, if that really was the case you wouldn't see results published consistently showing that North East Asians have a higher average IQ than those of European descent, now correct me if I am wrong but the last time I checked Koreans, Chinese etc were not even considered Caucasian let alone white.