The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study was methodologically flawed. “Children with two black parents were significantly older at adoption, had been in the adoptive home a shorter time, and had experienced a greater number of preadoption placements.”

Reframed, the study seemed to find (a) black kids are adopted less readily and (b) the longer a kid spends in the foster system, the lower their IQ at 17. (There is also limited controlling for epigenetic factors because we didn’t understand those well in the 1970s and 80s.)

Based on how new human cognition is, and genetically similar human races are, it would be somewhat groundbreaking to find an emergent complex trait like IQ to map to social constructs like race, particularly ones as broad as American white and black. (There is more genetic diversity in single African tribes than in some small European countries. And American whites and blacks are all complex hybridized social categories.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Transracial_Adoption...

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AuryGlenz 13 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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tptacek 13 hours ago | parent [-]

What? No you can't.

And: it remains perfectly OK to study racial differences in IQ. It's an actively studied topic. In fact, it's studied by at least three major scientific fields (quantitative psychology, behavioral genetics, and molecular genetics). The idea that you can't is a cringe online racist canard borne out of the fact that the studies aren't coming out the way they want them to.

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AuryGlenz 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Does it now? Noah Carl would disagree. He was a researcher at Cambridge University that was dismissed after an open letter signed by over 1,400 academics and students accusing him of "racist pseudoscience" for merely arguing that race-IQ research should not be off-limits.

James Flynn (of the Flynn effect) has also publicly stated that grants for research clarifying genetic vs. environmental causes of IQ gaps weren't approved because of university fears of public furor.

	▲	tptacek 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You're trying to axiomatically win an argument that is already settled empirically. It won't work. You can just read the papers. My point being: the papers exist, and more are published every year. Once you acknowledge that, your argument is dead. Literally no matter what the papers say. Don't make dumb arguments. Noah Carl has a sociology doctorate. He doesn't work in the fields that study this; he just tries to launder his way into them. Flynn is, famously, a race/IQ skeptic.
	▲	akerl_ 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		https://medium.com/@racescienceopenletter/open-letter-no-to-... https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/01/cambridge-... > for merely arguing that race-IQ research should not be off-limits. Help me connect the dots here.