Inductivist

Richard Lynn and colleagues have done a series of studies (6) in multiple countries looking to see if there are sex differences in knowledge.  The thesis is that more intelligent people seek out and absorb more knowledge of all types.

The researchers focused on a wide variety of topics. Here are the sex differences in Cohen's d effect size statistics: over, say, 0.8 would be considered large. The black/white IQ gap is around 1.0, for example. A positive effect size indicates a male advantage; a negative Cohen's d means female advantage:

Sex difference--Cohen's d

General knowledge  .53
Games   .51
Jazz and blues  .46
Sports   .39
Finance  .35
Exploration   .33
General science   .32
Politics  .28
Geography  .27
History  .26
Medicine  -.24
Cookery   -.22
Classical music  -.19
Biology   -.11
Film   -.11
Art  -.08
Popular music  -.07
Fashion  -.05
Literature  .01

Men know more in 10 categories, while women take the lead in 8 areas. The female advantages tend to be small. When it is all summed up, men score one-half a deviation more than women. The samples are teenagers and young adults.  The male advantage would probably be bigger if the sample was older--knowledge accumulates with time.

The sex differences make sense. Men tend to know more about the more impersonal subjects: finance and science. Women tend to know a little more in softer "home topics" like medicine and cooking.

The results are consistent with the view that mean male intelligence is a few points higher than the female mean.

It is important for America that we have people who understand and value science.  The General Social Survey asked people residing in the US, "Would you say that astrology is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific?"  Anyone who understands science would not say astrology is scientific, even if they otherwise like it. 

Let's look at the percentage who say astrology is very or sort of scientific listed by ethnic group (sample size = 6,873):

Percent who say astrology is scientific

Black  53.1
Mexican  50.6
Asian Indian  47.4
Puerto Rican  46.4
American Indian  45.1
Filipino  42.7
Spanish  41.2
Norwegian  38.5

All Americans  36.3

Chinese  35.5
Italian  35.1
Portuguese  34.3
Arab  32.1
Irish  31.1
French Canadian  30.8
Polish  29.9
French  29.5
Dutch 29.2
German  28.9
Japanese  28.5 
Czech  27.7
Swiss  27.5
Russian  27.0
Greek  25.0
Scottish  24.3
Jewish  23.8
English  23.5
Danish  21.1
Swedish  15.1

Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians top the list, but some high IQ ethnic groups are toward the top as well; namely, Asian Indians, Norwegians, and Chinese.  Setting aside the Norwegians, there is a tendency for northwestern Europeans to fall to the bottom of the list.  These groups are more skeptical and seem to understand better what it means to be scientific.

Many 19th century thinkers believed that religion would gradually wither away as industrialization and scientific knowledge spread.  Religious belief has proven to be more stubborn than they thought, perhaps because they didn't realize that it has a genetic component, but how much of an antagonism do we see nowadays between science and belief?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asks people how much confidence they have in the existence of God with answers ranging from "don't believe" to "know there is a God."  The survey also asked ten questions that tap scientific knowledge.  I added up the correct answers and estimated the relationship between the this and belief with OLS regression (N = 4,542), and the unstandardied coefficient is -.195.  Standardized is -.265.  In plain English, scientific knowledge predicts skepticism with some accuracy.

Is this link due simply to IQ?  In other words, do smart people seek out scientific knowledge and at the same time come to look on the existence of God with skepticism?  The answer is, not really. When I add IQ to the model, it does significantly predict skepticism, but the effect is weak (beta = -.051) and the coefficient for scientific knowledge only drops a little from -.195 to -.187. 

How about education? People learn more science as they get educated, and perhaps school teaches skepticism about God. When I add years of education to the model, it is related to more skepticism only weakly (beta = -.052), and the science coefficient only drops from -.187 to -.178.  By the way, the effect of IQ on skepticism falls to non-significance with the addition of education to the model.  In other words, IQ is unrelated to skepticism when you take educational level into account. 

So, when you consider knowledge of science, IQ, and education, the factor that really seems to matter for belief is science.  (Of course, causal direction is not clear here. Religious people may tend to stay away from science since they sense it is antagonistic to their beliefs.)

I knew reading America's greatest philosopher, Charles Peirce, would pay off.  He has taught me the root of our current predicament.

You're baffled that supposedly intelligent people now claim there are 56 genders? Peirce informs us that the villain is William of Ockham. You say you're shocked? Isn't Ockham that awesome dude who said that the simpler is more likely to be true? Well, let me educate you. Ockham is an ass.

Plato got it wrong when he claimed that the redness we see in an apple is actually a property that exists in the World of Forms, and is only imperfectly instantiated in a particular apple. In other words, redness truly exists independently of any particular red things.

Then the greatest philosopher in the history of the world, Aristotle, said, "Master Plato, you're off your rocker." He explained that redness is a real thing but it only exists in particular objects.

Later, the Catholic Church fervently embraced Aristotle. Ockham was a devout Catholic, but he got some bad ideas from Muslim fools about God's omnipotence, and ended up concluding that what we call redness is just something humans impose on objects. To Ockham, there are just unique, particular things, and we invent classes and categories.  Do you hear a whisper here?  I can make it out: "Social construction..."

The amazing thing is that modern philosophers took Ockham and ran with it at the same time that modern science was progressing by leaps and bounds based on the old fashioned belief that there are such things as natural classifications. Not just hydrogen and helium, but male and female.

Ockham's view is called "nominalism." Aristotle's is called "realism."  Modern philosophers are generally nominalists, while scientists operate like realists, whether they know it or not.

Until now. Now we see social scientists take Ockham seriously, and it's no surprise that categories that were taken for granted for centuries are now under assault. Nominalists are ANTI-science. They tend to reduce all understanding to dust.

But you science lovers say,"We'll at least they aren't TRUE anti-science people like those evil Catholics." The truth is that in the Roman Catholic church, it is a damn HERESY to be a nominalist. I'm not kidding.

Intelligent Christianity creates the foundation for science, while the universities are trying to destroy it.

This visual shows the quantitative/qualitative divide in sociology.  The obvious difference is the term "data."  Qualitative folks downplay data--the single most important element in science, in my view.  They like flashy theories and flashy politics. I loathe Freudianism and Marxism, for example, because these schools are indifferent to data.

One of the themes I'd like to stress is that sociology is untrustworthy among the social sciences. Not only do sociologists dismiss biological sources of behavior, many of them do not even believe in the scientific method and see research as simply a way to advance their politics. Robert Trivers is right: the more social the discipline, the more corrupt.

Let's take a glaring example. A standard race study goes something like this: "We will use opposition to affirmative action as our measure of racism among whites. This variable is correlated in our data with voting Republican, so we therefore conclude that racism is widespread among Republicans."  Or they use the same reasoning with being in favor of the death penalty: "If whites favor it, it is because they hate blacks." Research like this appears in the prestigious journals all the time.

Let's do a simple validity check to see if there is something to what they are doing. They are claiming that underneath conservative political attitudes lies hatred for blacks.  You can't simply ask whites if they hate blacks because nobody ever admits to it. So you use a proxy which just happens to be an attitude held by your political enemies. If these attitudes are proxies, then they should correlate highly with a more direct measure of  racism.

I would argue the best question available on surveys that taps not liking blacks goes like this: "In general, how warm or cool do you feel towards African Americans?" If political attitudes are good substitute measures, they should correlate strongly with answers to this question. Keep in mind that the correlation should be .8 or higher to be a good proxy. 

I did correlations with General Social Survey data--a sample of 694 whites. What is the size of the affirmative action/coolness association? A whopping .10. And for coolness and the death penalty? An enormous .13. Trivial correlations, both of them. Almost unrelated. These conservative political attitudes are worthless as proxies of racism. 

So here's your situation, conservatives: Your taxpayer dollars support these charlatans who abuse science to vilify and undermine you. And you pay an obscene amount of money to have your kids learn at the feet of these propagandists. 

As a sociologist, I take no pleasure in agreeing with Razib's recent Tweet about sociology: "End it, don't mend it." 

I see that Razib Khan and Audacious Epigone are listed in the index of this book. You should buy it and see what it says.

From the Atlantic:

A few decades ago, Darwinians and creationists had a de facto nonaggression pact: Creationists would let Darwinians reign in biology class, and otherwise Darwinians would leave creationists alone. The deal worked. I went to a public high school in a pretty religious part of the country--south-central Texas--and I don't remember anyone complaining about sophomores being taught natural selection. It just wasn't an issue.

A few years ago, such biologists as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers started violating the nonaggression pact. [Which isn't to say the violation was wholly unprovoked; see my update below.] I don't just mean they professed atheism--many Darwinians had long done that; I mean they started proselytizing, ridiculing the faithful, and talking as if religion was an inherently pernicious thing. They not only highlighted the previously subdued tension between Darwinism and creationism but depicted Darwinism as the enemy of religion more broadly.

If the only thing this Darwinian assault did was amp up resistance to teaching evolution in public schools, the damage, though regrettable, would be limited. My fear is that the damage is broader--that fundamentalist Christians, upon being maligned by know-it-all Darwinians, are starting to see secular scientists more broadly as the enemy; Darwinians, climate scientists, and stem cell researchers start to seem like a single, menacing blur.

I'm not saying that the new, militant Darwinian atheists are the only cause of what is called (with perhaps some hyperbole) "science denialism." But I do think that if somebody wants to convince a fundamentalist Christian that climate scientists aren't to be trusted, the Christian's prior association of scientists like Dawkins with evil makes that job easier.

I reiterate that this theory is conjectural--so conjectural that "hypothesis" is a better word for it than "theory". The jury may remain out on it forever.

Meanwhile, some data to keep your eye on: Check out the extreme right of the graph above. Over the past two years, the portion of respondents who don't believe in evolution has grown by six percentage points. Where did those people come from? The graph suggests they're people who had previously believed in an evolution guided by God--a group whose size dropped by a corresponding six percentage points. It's as if people who had previously seen evolution and religion as compatible were told by the new militant Darwinians, "No, you must choose: Which is it, evolution or religion?"--and pretty much all of them chose religion.

In the Folly of Fools, Robert Trivers describes experimental research which shows that people are more likely to cheat after being told that behavior is determined by a combination of nature and nurture. The idea that scientific views corrode morals made me wonder what the GSS might tell us. I looked to see if biologists are more likely to cheat on their spouse. Only 15 of them were asked about cheating, but their numbers are similar to the general population. Twenty percent of male biologists and ten percent of females have strayed. The corresponding numbers for the overall population are 23 and 14.

Does growing up in a religiously affiliated home discourage going into a scientific field?

Using GSS data, I divided respondents into natural scientists and everyone else. I then divided people into those who had a religion at age 16 versus those with no religion. To control for IQ, I limited the sample to people who scored between 7 and 10 out of 10 on a vocabulary test (sample size = 6,479). .6 percent of those from homes with no religion became scientists. By contrast, 1.4 percent of people from families with a religion grew up to become natural scientists.

The GSS offers no evidence that religion discourages an interest in a career in science.

GSS participants were asked about their confidence in the scientific community. Forty-three percent answered "a great deal," fifty percent said "only some," and 7 percent said "hardly any."

To identify predictors of confidence, I lumped the second and third answers into one low-confidence category, and conducted binary logistic regression analysis. Here is my list of predictors:

Logistic regression coefficients (sample size = 1,435)

Age .00
Female -.31*
Black -.57**
Hispanic .14
Education .09**
IQ .08*
Income .00
Church attendance -.05*
Conservatism -.09*

* statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, two tail test
**statistically signficant at the 99% confidence level, two-tail test

Keep in mind that these are net effects--the impact of each predictor after the influence of the other predictors has been removed.

Females, blacks, conservatives and religious people tend to have less faith in science than their counterparts.  By contrast, people who are smart and educated have more confidence.  Age, Hispanicity, and income do not matter. The strongest predictors are race and education. There is a large difference between blacks and whites. Adjusting for the other factors (e.g., IQ and education) blacks are still more skeptical of science. This might be due to their greater religious fundamentalism and fear of scientific abuse. Or the explanation might be as simple as greater suspicion of (white) institutions in general.

The General Social Survey asks respondents (American) about occupation and ethnic background. Here are the percent of all natural scientists in each ethnic group (those who are less than 5% of the total are excluded):










The ratio refers to the share of natural scientists compared to the ethnic group's share of the total population. You can see that Americans of English, Irish, Italian and especially Scottish descent are natural scientists in disproportionate numbers.

You guys have got to make sure you read comments that go along with posts; otherwise, you miss people like Jason Malloy. I want to summarize his analyses and comments in the post on the relationship between a Darwinian outlook and fertility.

First, belief in evolution is associated with less fertility, independent of theological positions. Second, he reminded readers of my finding that acceptance of evolution predicts a pro-abortion position after controlling for atheism and liberalism.

Third, Jason looked at the predictive power of believing that scientists always seem to be prying into things that they really ought to stay out of. It looks, however, like he is comparing the size of logistic regression coefficients. They are unstandardized estimates and so reflect the metrics of the independent variables. To double check, I'll estimate standardized OLS regression coefficients. (In the case of being in favor of abortion for any reason, I know that I'm violating the assumption of a normally distributed dependent variable, but a statistician friend assures me I can get away with it as long as the skew is no more than 75/25.)

The table shows that believing scientists do not pry is associated with a pro-choice position, but the prediction is not stronger than either political views or belief in God. Although the sign of the coefficient for being pro-scientist is in the predicted direction for family size, the relationship is not significant--an N of only 227 doesn't help (I limited the sample to those ages 45-59 for the fertility analysis). Finally, while political orientation and atheism predict number of sexual partners, a pro-science stance does not.

Like Jason's findings, these show some connection between supporting science and having liberal sexual views and behaviors, but results are not as striking or consistent as suggested in the comments of the earlier post. Jason did much more, but I'll have to look at that later.

Ethnicity and confidence in the scientific community: Americans (GSS respondents) were asked how much confidence they have in the scientific community. The following are the percentages who answered "a great deal":


Percent saying they have a great deal of confidence in the scientific community

Asian Indian 62.5
Chinese 61.9
Romanian 60.5
Arabic 59.3
Jewish 55.6
Greek 53.3
Danish 52.9
Filipino 50.9
English/Welsh 50.5
Hungarian 50.0
Norwegian 49.8
Scotland 49.8
Russian 49.4
French 47.8
Italian 47.7
Polish 47.3
Irish 47.2
Japanese 45.9
Swedish 45.3

All Americans 44.1

German 43.5
Finnish 43.1
Mexican 40.0
Amerindian 35.6
Puerto Rican 35.2
Black 28.9
West Indian 25.0

The numbers vary quite a bit. Compared to West Indians, East Indians are 2 1/2 times as likely to have a lot of confidence in scientists. Asians in general are much more positive than NAMs. Look at the high estimate for Arab Americans. It looks like there is a direct correlation between education, IQ, and confidence.

Faith, Reason, and Revolution: I'm surprised to say it, but I thought this NYT piece by Stanley Fish, reviewing the book Faith, Reason, and Revolution by British literary theorist Terry Eagleton, was interesting.

Weird: Atheist Sam Harris places a premium on a pro-science culture. Even though the focus of his writings is atheism, he seems to think that if society were scientific, belief in God would naturally wither away and human rights would be secured.

So, do countries that value science enjoy high levels of civil liberties? The World Values Survey asked thousands of people in many countries, "In the long run, do you think the scientific advances we are making will help or harm mankind?" For 43 countries, I calculated the correlation between the percent who said advances will help us with Freedom House's 2008 ratings of a lack of civil liberties. I was surprised: it is .54. In other words, countries with lots of faith in science have low levels of human rights.

What is going on here? It looks like people in developed countries have come to take the benefits of science for granted and are more focused on its perceived costs. Anyway, the data here do not support in any straightforward way Harris' idea that faith in science eliminates injustice.

Faith in science and social conservatism: In the comments of the first post on evolution and barbarism, Jason Malloy reported his analysis of GSS data which showed that faith in science is correlated with favoring abortion, independent of the influence of a liberal political orientation.

That made me wonder if social liberalism in general is common among those who really trust in science. I found six GSS questions concerning social issues:


Logistic Regression Coefficients, IV = Faith in science

Dependent variable
Prayer in schools -.872**
Suicide if disease is incurable .387**
Favors gun permit law .179
Marijuana should be legalized .416*
Homosexual sex is wrong -1.687**
Courts are not tough enough -.260

** p < .01, two-tailed test
* p < .05, two-tailed test

Except for crime and gun control, faith in science is associated with socially liberal positions. For guns and crime, the direction of the relationship is liberal, but the relationships are not statistically significant.

It looks like there is a strong tension between faith in science on the one hand and traditional morality on the other. Guns and crime are perhaps seen as practical matters, but the rest of these are morally tinged. Perhaps secularists are drawn to science while being turned off by religion.

Of course, we could focus on the religious side of the coin. Ever since Scopes, evangelicals have felt assaulted by science. When told by elites that you must make a choice, science or superstition, religious folks will throw the former overboard. It looks like Dawkins is doing the same thing to Muslims that Mencken did to evangelicals.

The (non)value of education: My experience as a professor convinces me that students do not learn much long-term that is independent of what they would learn anyway, given their IQ.

Let's attempt a test. The General Social Survey quizzed respondents with eleven basic science questions. I regressed their quiz scores on years of education and a measure of IQ. Here are the results:


OLS unstandardized coefficients (standardized coefficients in parentheses)

Years of education .038 (.107)
IQ .034 (.425)
Constant -4.05

N = 222

To give you an intuitive sense of the results, the model predicts that if you have an IQ of 100 and complete 12 years of school, your predicted science score is 8.6 (out of a 11). If you have the same IQ but finish 16 years of education, you're score is 8.9--not much of a difference. If, instead of being a high school grad with a 100 IQ, you have the same level of education but an IQ of 125, your predicted score is 10.2--a big improvement over 8.6.

I sometimes get the feeling in the classroom that I'm just going through the motions. Students learn plenty, but it's clear that it doesn't stick. These data are consistent with that impression. I'm inclined to think that a GREAT deal of time and resources are wasted. For many, college might do little more than condition students to adopt liberal values.

Oh how the country genuflects to that sacred idea--education. Unless it produces real, useful results, I say bullshit.