Nice versus nasty geneticists: A false dichotomy.

Some scientists writing popular books at the junction of genetic science and society evade profound dilemmas while expressing little understanding of non-science scholarship. Such books might do more harm than good.

In her new popular science book, The Genetic Lottery, geneticist Professor Kathryn Paige Harden says it is important to accept that black people might be genetically predisposed to lower IQs than white:

“If we are to make our commitment to antiracism stable in a post-genomic world, I think it is necessary, however unpalatable, to consider Reich’s question about how we should prepare for scientific discoveries, whatever they might be. Let us not flinch from considering what seems like the worst-case scenario: what if, next year, there suddenly emerged scientific evidence showing that European ancestry populations evolved in ways that made them genetically more prone, on average, to develop cognitive abilities of the sort that earn high test scores in school? How would we “absorb” that fact? Reich answered his question with a plea to ‘treat each human being as an individual’ and ‘accord [each person] the same freedoms and opportunities regardless of those differences’” (p.91).

Geneticist and BBC presenter Dr Adam Rutherford makes the same point, albeit slightly more obliquely, in his popular 2019 lecture and 2020 book; “How to argue with a racist”:

“Would it make any difference if we, as scientists, as honest brokers, did demonstrate that there was a significant biological basis for intelligence or for sporting success that did coincide accurately with folk descriptions of race? If we could do those things, which I think are highly unlikely, but we don’t know, I think are highly unlikely, would that mean that we would treat anyone differently?” (from 1:08.27, bold reflects verbal emphasis).

“intelligence is highly heritable….but we have a poor understanding of the genetics that underlies cognitive performance…so when we see different IQ scores in different populations, and we know that the heritability of intelligence is high (more than 50 per cent), that doesn’t mean necessarily that the different DNA variants account for the differences between the populations” (p. 106, my bold).

It would surprise many non-scientists to learn that popular authors like Harden and Rutherford say Black people have lower average IQs than other racial groups including white, that this helps explain racial inequality and that it might be partly a function of genetics. That is because much of what they write gives the opposite impression.

These popular authors, and others, potentially do a public service in communicating complex scientific ideas to a mass audience. But in recruiting the media to this cause while seeking popularity outside the world of science, they sometimes work around those scientific ideas with obvious potential to alienate members of their wide readership.

For example, while Harden and Rutherford’s views are a matter of orthodoxy within Genetics and Psychology, the nature of of race and its implications for science is a highly politicised matter and many non-scientists say these scientific notions are straightforwardly racist. Harden and Rutherford, in common with many scholarly bodies, therefore employ a workaround which enables them to recognise scientific orthodoxy while ostensibly avoiding what some of their readers will certainly regard as racist sentiments.

The nice geneticist workaround

The workaround has three steps. The first is to insist that that the idea of average Black IQ inferiority is not racist unless it is accompanied by a claim that genetics plays a role. The second step is to assert average Black IQ inferiority and its effect on racial inequality while appearing to insist that this variation is caused solely by environmental factors such as poverty. The third is to repurpose the term hereditarian as a pejorative in the creation of a nice versus nasty geneticst dichotomy.

Geneticists study heredity; the notion of a non-hereditarian geneticist is essentially an oxymoron. But the term has come to be used generally to refer pejoratively to scientists who believe heredity has a larger influence than the environment over human intelligence and behaviour. Here it is used specifically to refer to those who consider the racial IQ variation all geneticists assert is likely caused by both environment and genetics. This sets up a tidy dichotomy of good and bad, or nice and nasty: It is not racist to argue that black people have lower IQs and consequently suffer racially unequal life outcomes per se; it is racist to argue that genetics plays a role.

This nice versus nasty dichotomy is almost universally reflected in media reportage. The nice provide the face of modern genetics; the nasty are the old-order racists. Mainstream genetics is thereby apparently absolved of racism. Popular nice authors like Harden and Rutherford are never asked in interviews if they agree that black people have on average lower IQs than white and that this helps explain racial inequality, nor whether they believe that this claimed inferiority might have a part-genetic cause, because these are popularly assumed to be nasty views (see, for example, question one here).

This workaround has so far been a successful personal risk mitigation device, but only at the expense of coherence and scientific method. Crucially, it evades rather than takes up the challenge leading geneticist Professor David Reich laid down in his widely discussed 2018 New York Times article, cited by Harden above; “How Genetics is changing our understanding of ‘race’”[paywall]. It is therefore a highly unstable means of addressing issues at the junction of genetics and race. This may be seen by examining three of the workaround’s profound intellectual weaknesses.

First, scientists routinely recognise race and racism as social constructs. A social construct is created, modified and perhaps eventually discarded by its users. By definition, it need not have an empirical component. Where such constructions do include empirical criteria, these are determined by users. Simply put, scientists are not the bosses of what racism is.

For example, if Professor Ibram X Kendi’s principle that the IQ metrics scientists use are of themselves racist is widely enough accepted, then the metrics are racist. There is room for discourse, naturally and social constructions are inherently political, but it is an epistemological error to imply, as the workaround does, that people like Kendi are simply wrong. As an aside, the optics of overwhelmingly white scientists insisting that Black antiracists misunderstand what racism is are terrible too.

Second, the nice-nasty dichotomy central to the workaround is pure sophistry. Here, for example, an article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper by Gareth Evans describes the “scientific racism” of one nasty psychologist, Professor Richard Lynn:

“Lynn claims that samples from 50 countries reveal that the average IQ in Africa is 70. Black South Africans, for example, have an average IQ of 66 — slightly smarter than the sub-moronic Ethiopians at 63. IQ, he claims, is an accurate measure of intrinsic intelligence, which means that Africans are thicker than the rest of us, and because ‘intelligence is a determinant of earnings’, black South Africans and Ethiopians are poor”.

And here is nice geneticist Adam Rutherford:

“The value of IQ for science is undeniable. It also correlates well but not perfectly with other measures of cognitive abilities that are often used in scientific studies, such as educational achievement (results in exams) and duration (how long you stay in education). People who score well in IQ tests tend on average to live longer, get better grades at school, are more successful at work and have a higher income. When it comes to looking at IQ scores around the world and between different populations, the picture is far from clear, but there are some undeniable differences. The most up-to-date meta-analyses suggest that countries in sub-Saharan Africa are likely to score in the 80s, as compared to UK IQ standards, though these results are not universally accepted. This, obviously, is significantly lower (p.100)”.

In other words, the nice geneticists agree with the nasty on almost — or even actually — every substantive scientific point; including that IQ is both highly heritable and a good socioeconomic predictor, that Black people score on average lower than white, and that this helps explain racially unequal social outcomes.

The only ostensibly meaningful distinction between the two sides is whether genetics plays a part in this claimed average Black IQ inferiority. Yet as per Harden and Rutherford, nice geneticists do not actually claim there is evidence of an absence of a genetic cause; rather, they agree with the nasty that there is an absence of evidence. This boils the basis of the dichotomy down to a single point of apparent disputation:

Nasty hereditarians say that because most phenotypic, or expressed, traits in humans arise as a combination of nature and nurture then the racial IQ variation both nice and nasty assert probably has a part-genetic cause. Nice geneticists hypothesise that a genetic cause is less likely but, as Harden insists, likely enough to demand recognition of the possibility; “If we are to make our commitment to antiracism stable in a post-genomic world”. This is a trivial distinction which cannot possibly support a meaningful dichotomy.

Third, the workaround relies on an environmental assumption whose practical effect is the opposite from its users’ apparent intention. The obvious negative racial effects of asserting that black people have average lower IQs and that this helps explain racial inequality are not in any useful sense mitigated by the idea that this can be fixed in a few generations through public policy. Rather, this reinforces the position of those who support racist ideologies by attributing Black educational underperformance, relative social deprivation and disproportionate presence in the justice system to lower average IQs.

Moreover, these claims invariably make uncritical reference to The Flynn Effect, coined by psychologist Professor Richard Hernnstein and political scientist Dr Charles Murray in The Bell Curve (p.307), which in turn invites judgement on Black people and Black culture. James Flynn argued that black people live in a; “cognitively restricted subculture” (p.125), that they exercise their brains less and that they make poorer parents even when controlled for social class. The idea that the environment-only argument somehow has greater social or racial utility, or is somehow less inherently contentious, than the genetics argument seems to border on the absurd.

The workaround therefore emerges as an intellectually specious, and politically useless, contrivance designed to mitigate the risk of authors of sciencey books being presented as racist in the popular media. Such a contrivance cannot be the basis for a serious scientific treatment of the intersection of science and race.

If not nice v nasty, then what?

What might a stable basis for a treatment of the junction of science and race include?

The simple fact is that the different epistemological natures of scientific evidence and social constructions mean that a thing can be both empirically evidenced and racist. For scientists, this is an unwelcome notion. But it cuts both ways. Science is widely respected across society and most anti-racist campaigners will not wish to concede that a racist assertion can also be scientifically true, nor to be presented as science-deniers. Scientists and antiracism campaigners therefore both presently have reason to elide this central truth.

Yet the logical point that a scientific fact can be racist or, to put it the other way, that something racist can also be scientifically evidenced is not in any sense a counsel of despair. It is instead potentially the beginning of a stable, logical and honest public approach to the junction of science and race. This may be what David Reich was getting at.

Science is theory-impregnated; scientific progress is hedged around by ethical standards and funding imperatives which reflect political and commercial choices behind the scenes. Meanwhile, social constructions like race and racism are infused with politics; and it would not be credible for anyone to deny that genetics promises extraordinary new public goods.

The research field of health genetics approaches with constructive caution questions around racial variation in respect of group susceptibility to particular adverse health conditions. There exists, in effect, extensive negotiation on the constructed nature of progress and race between scientists, scholars in non-scientific fields and crucially with the most likely victims of racism.

This is a much tougher task, however, for behavioural geneticists. The application of their research to public policy in fields like education or social policy would not lead directly to neat and measurable benefits like health genetics might well. Instead, a poorly thought-through application of behavioural genetics to public policy could have disastrous social consequences and would present considerable political risk.

By employing specious workarounds to stay popular, esssentially failing to grasp the nettle, authors like Harden risk leading the general public, social justice activists and politicians down a rosy garden path and into a big muddy hole no-one can climb out of. This presents a risk to all genetics scholarship.

Perhaps a guiding principle should be that scientists, who are not the bosses of what racism is, should proceed iteratively as they reach a broad consensus with the victims of racism? Might a second be that such victims do what they can to look through the fog created by historical and contemporary racism in order to see the benign purpose of the great majority of contemporary genetic science? And might a third be that some popular sciencey books come with a warning label?