A response to Harriet Hall on "Fed Up"

(Introductory note: this is a post that had been sitting in my blog's draft folder for almost 2 years, which I decided recently to finish and publish. Enjoy!)

In a 2014 blog post on Science-Based Medicine, Harriet Hall attempts to debunk the then-recently released movie "Fed Up", which pointed the finger at Big Sugar as a (possibly even the) main culprit in the obesity epidemic. She seems to disagree with this conclusion and thinks that other factors explain the obesity epidemic than does the increase in sugar consumption in recent years. In this post I will scrutinize her attempts to scrutinize the claims in Fed Up.

First, she tackles the issue of whether there is a correlation between sugar consumption rates and obesity rates. She states that: 

Correlation is not causation, even when there is a strong correlation like the one between the rise in autism diagnoses and the rise in the sales of organic food. There is no such strong correlation between sugar consumption and obesity, much less any convincing evidence of causation.

Sugar consumption has actually decreased around the world even as the rate of obesity has continued to climb. Between 1999 and 2008, American consumption of added sugars decreased from 100 g/d to 76 g/d, mainly due to a reduction in soda consumption."

She is citing a study from 2011 that did indeed reach that conclusion, albeit only with respect to America, rather than "around the world". However, another study, published the month after Hall's blog post (which I therefore won't blame her for not mentioning), found that between 1977 and 2009, added sugar consumption in America increased by over 30%. Globally, sugar consumption trends seem to differ markedly depending on who you ask: one review found that they were "either stable or decreasing in both absolute (g/d) and relative (% energy) terms," while other data suggests that global sugar consumption increased significantly from 2009 to 2015. Also, contrary to Hall's implication that obesity rates "have continued to climb", in America at least, obesity rates have been mostly flat from 1999 to 2010. As for worldwide, to be fair, it seems obesity rates are increasing over the long term (1980-2011). 

Given that the jury still seems to be out on this point, let's move on to Hall's subsequent arguments. For instance, she tries to analyze correlations between sugar consumption and obesity rates and comes up with null results:

This webpage lists per capita sugar consumption by country, and it clearly does not correlate with rates of obesity in those countries. Countries with higher per capita sugar consumption than the US include Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Iceland, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, UK, and Venezuela. According to this source there are 17 countries with higher rates of obesity than the US. Not a single one of those countries has a higher per capita sugar consumption than the US.

On this basis, she states that:

...it’s premature to make the kind of definitive pronouncements that the film makes about the role of sugar [in causing obesity]. 

Peer-reviewed studies (which, though this may seem hard to believe, I trust more than blog posts) suggest Hall is wrong, though. One, for example, found that "High sugar consumption and sedentary lifestyle are associated with increased obesity prevalence." Another found that "Soft drink consumption is significantly linked to overweight, obesity, and diabetes worldwide, including in low- and middle-income countries." Note: most research on this subject seems to focus on soft drinks rather than added sugar overall. According to the NHS, 25% of added sugar people consume comes from sugary drinks. A 2006 estimate from Harvard Researchers was higher (47%), and these researchers said in 2013 that sugary drinks are "the largest contributor to added sugar and top sources of calories in the US diet".  Thus, focusing specifically on sugary drinks seems like a reasonable approach.

Hall then criticizes Gary Taubes, who appears in the movie, for promoting low-carb diets. Rather than citing studies or looking at data, she cites the case of Chris Voigt, who ate only potatoes for 60 days and lost 21 pounds, the opposite of what Taubes would have us believe would happen. Voigt also lowered his cholesterol by 67 points after this diet ended. What Hall doesn't mention is that Voigt is the head of the Washington State Potato Commission, meaning it's literally his job to promote potatoes. Anyway, the validity of one anecdote is very limited, as Hall herself acknowledges, pointing out that Voigt's test was "informal". She then moves on to the main thesis of Fed Up: that sugar causes obesity. She argues that:

The sugar/obesity hypothesis has not been properly tested either. There are plenty of examples of people who eat a lot of sugar and processed foods and don’t gain weight. In fact, one obese boy in the film complains that his brother eats the same way he does but doesn’t gain weight. There are plenty of examples of people who have lost weight and kept it off by reducing calorie intake and increasing exercise. We know some of the factors involved in successful weight loss, and eliminating sugar is not on the list.

Ah, finally, some actual evidence (though only toward the end there), rather than more of the anecdotes with which Hall seems to be so smitten. The paper Hall is citing says that some successful weight loss strategies are "eating a diet low in fat, frequent self-monitoring of body weight and food intake, and high levels of regular physical activity." However, not only is this paper more than a decade old, other studies suggest that eliminating sugar consumption is associated with weight loss. A 2012 study found that "Masked replacement of sugar-containing beverages with noncaloric beverages reduced weight gain and fat accumulation in normal-weight children." For adults, another study found that "a reduction in liquid calorie intake of 100 kcal/d was associated with a weight loss of 0.25 kg."

Next, Hall states that:

Colin Campbell of the Center for Nutritional Studies points out that the evidence showing sugar to be a major factor in obesity is relatively weak and is confounded by total calorie intake and other factors. He says:

I know of no evidence that were we to eliminate all sugar from our diets, presumably leaving the rest of the diet the same, we could rid ourselves of disease and restore our health.

Sure, Campbell has said this, but he is contradicted in this regard by a systematic review and meta-analysis published in BMJ in 2013, which concluded that "Among free living people involving ad libitum diets, intake of free sugars or sugar sweetened beverages is a determinant of body weight."
This is in line with a more recent review, which found that "Sufficient evidence links a high intake of sugar to dental caries and obesity, and high intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages in particular to increased risk of type 2 diabetes."

Towards the end, Hall states, "I favor education over regulation. I’m not against regulating the food industry, but I would like to see proposals tested before they are widely implemented...We can’t just assume that any proposed remedy for the obesity epidemic will work. No matter how slam-dunk it sounds, it must be tested using scientific methods." In fact, however, the evidence that reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages will be effective in reducing obesity and related conditions is compelling. When two Harvard researchers reviewed the literature on this subject in 2015, they found that the results of randomized controlled trials "...provide strong evidence that decreasing consumption of SSBs significantly reduces weight gain and obesity in this age group [i.e. adolescents]."
Conclusion: Hall doesn't really seem to do a good job of addressing the empirical evidence most relevant to the link between sugar and obesity, and the evidence that does exist on this subject indicates that sugar is a major contributor to rising obesity rates. This is not to say that Fed Up is totally accurate, but that its basic point is much more valid than Hall would have you believe.

Poking holes in a semi-prominent "race realist" YouTube video

This is a transcript from a YouTube video I never got around to making-I might make it later if I can figure out exactly how. It is a critique of this video. Enjoy!

In this post I will be examining the issue of race and intelligence, one which has been highly controversial for many decades, if not centuries. I will be doing this by debunking a 2016 video by Libertarian Realist on this subject. This video currently has about 150,000 views, and it was uploaded by Libertarian Realist, who has only about 10,000 subscribers. Now, I could have chosen a video with more views and/or by a better-known YouTuber, but I hope that by making this, I will help address these arguments whether they are made by someone with millions of subscribers or with none at all.

 

This video is a general defense of the hereditarian hypothesis, which claims that races differ in average intelligence, and that these differences are mostly genetic in origin. Given that racism has been a major societal problem for at least that long, it is understandable that claims that seem to legitimize it will be very offensive to some people. When people claim, for instance, that African Americans and/or Africans are less intelligent than whites, some people will just call it racist and move on. But you shouldn’t—you should assess the science to see whether this claim holds water.

 

I’ll try to only focus on the science-related aspects of this 43-minute video, hoping to reduce the amount of time I have to spend watching it or explaining why it’s bullshit. Thus, I will skip the first 29 seconds, which is just clips of some guy on Russia Today and Libertarian Realist himself showing that one of his past videos on this subject was apparently demonetized. Instead, I’ll talk about what the narrator says starting after all that stuff:

[Play original video]

[Pause at 0:50]

Ah, yes, the bogus “heritability” argument. The term “heritability” is one of the most misused and misunderstood terms in all of biology. People often think that if a trait is highly heritable, it must be mostly caused by genetic factors, and that the environment must not have much to do with it. This can also lead people to assume that the environment can’t affect something very much if it’s mostly or highly heritable.

 

But guess what: This isn’t true! In reality, heritability tells us none of the things I just mentioned, which is why, except in very rare cases, it is irrelevant when discussing complex traits like IQ. This is because we already know that genetic factors play a role in literally all human traits—not just IQ. And that’s not even getting into the interaction that can occur between genes and environments, which can render heritability estimates meaningless. This can also allow the

environment to have a big effect on something that is highly heritable. In addition, it is known that heritability estimates do not tell us whether group differences in any traits are genetic in origin.

 

[Resume video]

[Pause at 0:58]

I couldn’t help but wonder where this map came from—I’ve seen similar ones before. I couldn’t find it on Google Images or in any of the links in the original video’s description, but it seems to be very similar (though not identical) to this one:

The original source of this data appears to be the 2002 book IQ and Global Inequality by Richard Lynn & Tatu Vanhanen.

 

[Resume]

[Pause at 1:23]

Yup, he’s definitely basing this part on Richard Lynn’s work. You see, Lynn has reported in multiple books and articles that the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans is below 70. But there are some big problems with his methodology. For one thing, comparing his estimates of national IQs to those of scholastic assessment tests tends to validate his IQ estimates in all areas of the world…except in sub-Saharan Africa. A more comprehensive review of relevant studies by Wicherts et al. (2010) indicates that the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans is more like 82, compared to UK norms.

 

Furthermore, these claims are often based on the results of Raven’s test, which are actually percentiles, not IQs. Researchers like Rushton & Jensen have converted these percentiles into IQ scores based on the bogus assumption that these scores will be normally distributed. They’ve also ignored the fact that it is often unknown what the actual age of a child taking the test will be, as there were no birth records in sub-Saharan Africa when many of these studies were conducted.

 

[Resume]

The next few minutes of the video are random clips from TV shows, a Crash Course video, and God knows how many other random sources, but little in the way of hard science. The bits and pieces of science hidden in this part include Hank Green saying that IQ is a real and measurable phenomenon, and J. Philippe Rushton saying African 16-year-olds are as smart as European 11-year-olds. I think I should point out that the concept of “mental age” is now considered outdated, and I will quote Wicherts et al. as to why: “…mental-age IQs often do not have the same standard deviation as standardized IQs, which may result in inaccurate estimates of average IQ of samples that show a lower mean than the mean in the standardization sample”. But not only that, claims by Rushton and others that Africa has low IQs because of evolutionary adaptations to the environment there don’t stand up to scrutiny. If they did, given how slow evolution occurs, one would expect these regional differences in IQ and development to be apparent in prehistoric times as well. But in a study of archaeological data, Scott MacEachern found that such claims are not supported by the actual historical record.

 

[Resume at 4:08]

Here we see someone interviewing Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan, and showing him the same sub-Saharan African IQ estimate from Lynn’s work I discussed earlier. I was able to locate the source of the original clip as being a Norwegian documentary called “Brainwash: Race”, despite it not being included in the video description.

 

Soon afterward we hear Nisbett’s response to this point, which is that there are problems with Lynn’s convenience samples on which his IQ-of-70 estimate is based. Nisbett also says that if this estimate were valid, Africans would not be able to perform many basic agricultural tasks, and their society would not function.  

[Resume at 4:42]

[Pause at 5:28]

Notice that he did not address the issues with Lynn’s sampling on which his estimate is based. He just says that Nisbett’s only argument is that if the estimate were accurate, then African society would be in shambles. Then we see him demonstrate the dysfunctional nature of African society as a whole compared to Western standards. But the fact remains, there are concepts that are present in African societies, as Nisbett pointed out, that could not be comprehended if the average IQ of each member of that society was in the neighborhood of 70.

 

There is little doubt that African countries are not generally as developed as Western countries now, but the state of African development is comparable to that of Western countries 100 years ago.

 

As mentioned previously, the best estimate of the average IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa is actually 82. This seems pretty low compared to the average of 100, but not when you consider that the average IQ of the Netherlands was only 80 as recently as the 1950s. It is well-known that average IQs have been rising very fast in developed countries in recent decades, which is known as the Flynn effect, and environmental factors like nutrition, urbanization, and health care may be the reason for this trend. Given that these factors haven’t improved nearly as much in sub-Saharan Africa, it is no surprise that their IQs are much lower than those of Western countries. But this doesn’t mean that this discrepancy must be mostly/entirely genetic in origin.

[Pause at 10:15]

OK, there’s a lot to unpack here, so I’ll start with the claim about the racial gap in the US not having narrowed since the 1970s. This is simply not true: A study published in 2006 found that the gap between blacks and whites had decreased in size by between 4 and 7 points from 1972 to 2002—which seems to count as being “since the 1970s”, wouldn’t you say?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOnQPXuU81Q

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.1400/full

http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-17194-003

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018395229872

https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289609000634

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00438240500509918

Black-white IQ gap has narrowed from 1972 to 2002: http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/dickens2006a.pdf

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2015.1121474?scroll=top&needAccess=true

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289615000082

Literacy:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.106.3.643-664

 

Sources cited in original video:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2678851?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html

Why hereditarians are wrong

Argument 1) TEH brain size!
This argument rests on all five of these assumptions:

1. Racial differences in brain size exist
2. Racial differences in brain size are entirely or mostly due to genetics
3. Such differences are large enough to explain group differences in IQ
4. The relationship between brain size and IQ is causal
5. Between-group comparisons show a consistent relationship between brain size and IQ

The first of these assumptions may be true, as Rushton has reported in many studies (e.g. Rushton & Ankney 1996; Rushton 1992, 1994), though there is reason to believe that these studies, and others with similar conclusions, are seriously flawed (Cain & Vanderwolf 1990; Kamin & Omari 1998). Moreover, Rushton's work on this topic has been criticized for using data from museum collections of skulls. These samples are obviously not representative, given that they were often compiled in the 19th century, when the belief in a link between brain size and racial differences in personality traits was widespread (Weizmann et al. 1991, p. 46). It has also been criticized for lumping together data on skulls from disparate populations ("aggregational errors", as Cernovsky (1993) has called them) and for "adjusting" for body size without a clear reason (Winston 1996). Even if it is, though, it doesn't matter, as I explain below in discussing the four other assumptions.

The second of these assumptions may also be false. As Nisbett et al. (2012, p. 146) noted, "Brain size of full-term Black and White infants is the same at birth, and several postnatal factors known to reduce brain size are more common for Blacks than for Whites."

What about the third?
Kamin & Omari (1998, later K&O) maintain that this assumption is false, writing: "Possible relations between head size and measured IQ are so small that they cannot possibly explain black-white differences in IQ." Rushton & Ankney (2000) responded by criticizing this review for four detailed reasons, as they outline in their paper's abstract. They go into a lot of detail arguing that K&O ignored "...the relation between brain size and IQ established by magnetic resonance imaging and the race differences in brain size established by MRI, autopsies, and endocranial volume". However, they do not seem AFAICT to address the "they're too small point" K&O made.

More recently, Wicherts, Borsboom, & Dolan (later WBD) went into more detail on this point, writing, "Given the correlation between cranial capacity as measured externally and intelligence of around .20 (Rushton & Ankney, 2009), the Black-White gap in brain size cannot explain much of the IQ gap. Even if cranial capacity had a causal effect on g, then the Black-White gap in brain size cannot explain more than: .6*.2*15 = 1.8 IQ points. If we were to believe that the IQ gap between Africans and European Whites is 33 IQ points (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2006), then the brain size gap could explain a staggering 1.8/33 = 5% of the IQ gap. Thus, even under these terms, 95% of the IQ gap is left unexplained by brain size. With a correlation of .33 between brain volume and IQ as based on modern techniques (McDaniel, 2005), the gap in brain size can explain only 2.98 IQ points or 9% of the IQ gap."

The fourth assumption may be false as well. "It is not clear, however, that the relation between brain size and IQ is causal. There is conflicting evidence as to whether there is a correlation between siblings’ brain size and IQ" (Nisbett et al. 2012, p. 142).

So this leaves us at the fifth and last assumption. "Brain size differences between men and women are much greater than the race differences in brain size, yet men and women have the same average IQ" (Nisbett et al. 2012, p. 146). This point is also made by WBD, who note that "Another problem with the brain size hypothesis lies with the fact that sex differences in brain size are larger than race differences, yet studies involving representative samples, broad cognitive test batteries, and sound statistical methods consistently fail to show a clear sex difference in g."

Argument 2) Forensic anthropologists can identify race, therefore race is biologically real!
This argument is not uncommon, including from actual scientists, such as Sesardic (2010, p. 55), who wrote that "forensic anthropologists are quite successful in correctly inferring a person’s race from the skeletal characteristics of human remains". There are many situations in which race identification is used regularly in modern American society, such as to determine the race of a deceased individual in searching for their potential killer (Slate 2011). It has also been used to determine whether Kennewick Man was Caucasian, Asian, or something else entirely. (ABC News 2000). Given that this can be done pretty accurately, doesn't this prove that race exists? 

No, partly because classifying people into groups from which individuals can be reliably identified leads to ridiculous categories--wayyyy more than just a couple "races" that are traditionally defined (Ousley et al. 2009). As Sauer (1992, p. 107) noted, "the successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed ‘racial’ category". Ultimately, accurate assessment of race comes down to the information that the researcher has before making the assessment--without it the results can be ridiculously wrong (Konigsberg et al. 2009).

The traits used to identify remains of people from geographic regions (East Asia/Africa/Europe) aren't adaptive, they're totally random, as C. Loring Brace pointed out in 1995, when he wrote: "The significant identifying features of a given region then are stochastically determined and are not the products of natural selection. If they are valuable for purposes of identification, they have no coherent adaptive, that is, biological, significance."

Argument 3) It's always been this way!
Differential k theory, as defined by Rushton (1988), holds that not only can humans (yes, all of them) be classified into one of three races (namely, Mongoloids, Caucasoids, and Negroids), but also that these races consistently differ in multiple important respects, differences which cannot be explained by non-evolutionary/non-genetic factors. Problem is, the parameters being claimed to be due to evolution have changed WAAAY too fast to be due mostly, much less completely, to genetics. This is a problem because in order for these sorts of theories to be true, these parameters (fertility, IQ, infant mortality, etc.) should be pretty stable over enough time (at least many millennia for sure) for humans to evolve separately into distinct "races". Perhaps the best summary of evidence showing that it hasn't always been this way was provided by Weizmann et al. (1990), who noted in their paper's abstract that "Changes in human life-history traits are so rapid that there is no need to posit genetic selection to explain intergroup variation."

For instance, Rushton (1988, p. 11) wrote this of his theory's predictions: "...the more K the family the greater the spacing between births, the fewer the total number of offspring, the lower the rate of infant mortality, and the better developed the parental care." He goes on to claim that these predictions have been validated with the human species, and that the patterns just described are seen consistently when comparing Negroids (Africans), Caucasoids (Europeans), and Mongoloids (East Asians). As Wicherts et al. (2010) note, however, "In much of the twentieth century, fertility and infant mortality rates have been much higher in China than in European countries. This is inconsistent with Rushton’s assertion that East-Asians are more K-prone than Europeans." This is a similar conclusion to that reached in 1988 by Zuckerman and Brody, who noted that in Rushton's work, "Everything is assumed to be on a primarily genetic basis although sexual mores have shown remarkable changes in a single generation." Besides this, more recent evidence suggests that gestation time is longer, and maturation earlier, among whites than among Blacks or Asians (Patel et al. 2004). Recall that Rushton's theory claims that the order of gestation time is shortest in Blacks, longest in Asians, and intermediate in whites. Either his sources are outdated or they were never representative in the first place. Hmm...

Looking at IQ makes the problem of short-term change especially duh-obvious, given that the Flynn effect has been known to psychologists for over 30 years, and it has occurred on a huge scale (5 to 25 points/generation) (Flynn 1987). Wicherts et al. (2010) note that: "Knowing that national IQs can fluctuate by more than a standard deviation over 50 years, we may question the relevance of contemporary national IQs to peoples that lived thousands of years ago." 

The best quote to close out this section came from Zuckerman (2003), who wrote that "To suggest that the behavior of modern descendents of these ancient regional ethnic groups is a function of evolved genetic mechanisms which are specific to their ancestry is not a plausible hypothesis. The more recent history of ethnic populations is much more relevant."

4. "The environment has nothing to do with it!"
The differences in gestation period discussed above are probably due to environmental factors, like disadvantage and discrimination (Sorbye et al. 2016). In any case, they don't seem to be due to genetic or normal sociodemographic factors (Migone et al. 1991).With regard to maturity, Mendle et al. (2007) noted that "Implicit in any discussion of racial differences in pubertal timing in American girls is the dangerous conflation of race with socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic status, and not race, affects known predictors of pubertal timing such as nutrition, environmental stress, and family composition. In fact, Obeidallah et al. (2000) established that documented differences in age of pubertal onset between Caucasian and Latina girls disappeared after controlling for socioeconomic status." Similar results for sexual behavior have been reported by Cunningham & Barbee (1991), who found that "...differences in black versus white birth rates were strongly associated with differences in infant mortality rates. As black infant mortality rates declined, black birth rates also declined at rates parallel to that of whites." 

And this isn't even getting into the fact that the differences claimed to exist by hereditarians haven't been found in all studies on the subject, as Lynn (1989, p. 5) pointed out: "...a recent report to the National Academy of Sciences (Hayes, 1987) cites two sources reporting that sexually experienced blacks had intercourse slightly less often than whites (i.e., Zabin & Clark, 1981; Zelnick, Kantner, & Ford, 1981). In addition, there are apparently data inconsistent with Rushton and Bogaert’s (1987) claimed race differences in age at menarche. Gregerson (1982) reports that Cuban and Hong Kong girls have the earliest average age of menarche- just over 12 years-while the Greenland Eskimo. South African Bantu, and New Guinea Bundi have an average age at menarche of over 15 years. While these counterexamples and failures to replicate do not disprove Rushton and Bogaert’s (1987) claims, they do challenge the apparent unanimity of the findings reviewed by these authors and raise questions about the validity of the reported race differences." 

Sources:
ABC News 2000: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98485&page=1
Brace 1995: https://www.astm.org/DIGITAL_LIBRARY/JOURNALS/FORENSIC/PAGES/JFS15336J.htm
Cain & Vanderwolf 1990: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/019188699090185T
Cernovsky 1993: http://philipperushton.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/iq-race-brain-size-rushton-cernovsky-j-of-black-psychology-1993.pdf
Cunningham & Barbee 1991: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009265669190016J
Flynn 1987: http://www.jugendsozialarbeit.de/media/raw/flynn1987_What_IQ_tests_really_measure.pdf
Kamin & Omari 1998: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124639802800301
Konigsberg et al. 2009: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.20934/abstract
Lynn 1989: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.876.8834&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Mendle et al. 2007: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273229706000773
Migone et al. 1991: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3016.1991.tb00724.x/abstract
Nisbett et al. 2012: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-67-2-130.pdf
Ousley et al. 2009: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21006/full
Patel et al. 2004: https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/33/1/107/668109
Rushton 1988: http://philipperushton.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/iq-race-brain-size-r-k-theory-sex-rushton-personality-individual-differences-1988.pdf
Rushton 1992: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016028969290017L
Rushton 1994: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0160289694900027
Rushton & Ankney, 1996: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03210739
Rushton & Ankney, 2000: http://atavisionary.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Size-matters-Rushton.pdf
Sesardic 2010: http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race.pdf
Slate 2011: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/01/alas_poor_yorick_or_is_it_othello.html
Sorbye et al. 2016: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1521693415001613
Weizmann et al. 1990: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-07104-001
Weizmann et al.,1991: http://philipperushton.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/race-r-k-theory-rushton-weizmann-canadian-psychology-1-1991.pdf
Wicherts, Borsboom, & Dolan 2010: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909003675
Winston 1996: http://philipperushton.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/iq-race-brain-size-rushton-winston-j-of-social-distress-the-homeless-4-1996.pdf
Zuckerman & Brody 1988: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0191886988901365
Zuckerman 2003: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886902003628

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3016.1991.tb00724.x/abstract
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c6545.pdf
http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/forensic-anthropology-and-race

Anatomy of a scam

This kinda story is right up my alley (as my parents often like to say) because it involves 1) Calvin and Hobbes (of which I have been a huge fan for almost my entire life), 2) something fishy that has received almost no attention in the media (mainstream or otherwise), and 3) something that is fishy in a way that irritates me, as it already has numerous other fans of the original strip.

First, some background: this story concerns the fictional book "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie", which is referenced in a decent number of C&H strips as a children's bedtime story that Calvin loves, but his dad hates (at least in later strips). We never learn anything about what happens in this nonexistent book, because though it is clear that Calvin's dad does read it to him in multiple strips, the scenes where he reads the actual book are always omitted. (C&H originally ran from 1985 to 1995, which is important to this post, as will become clear soon.)

So there was never a real book by this title--at least not until December 1, 2004, when "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie" was published by Hamster Huey Press. According to the Calvin and Hobbes Wiki, this press never published anything besides this book. More concerning, this "publishing company" is not affiliated with Universal Press Syndicate, or with the author of Calvin and Hobbes itself (Bill Watterson), so they clearly have no right to use any content from C&H. However, Joe Mason, in an email to the website Museum of Hoaxes in 2005, said that "I don't think titles are copyrightable, so this may even be legal". A quick Google search turns up an article on The Balance which also says that book titles aren't usually copyrighted (at least in the US). So it's likely that this "book" isn't violating any copyright laws.

The now-offline website for Hamster Huey Press says that it "...is owned and operated by Paul Spadoni." A commenter at Museum of Hoaxes named Ian has noted that: "The vast majority of the positive reviews seem to be from people who live in Gig Harbor or Port Orchard, Wash. (somehow, this isn't surprising in the least). As has been noted, http://www.hamsterhuey.com , http://www.hamsterhueypress.com are both registered to Paul Spadoni of Gig Harbor. And http://www.calvinandhobbesfanclub.com ? Lindsey Noelle (supposedly the webmistress) also apparently hails from Gig Harbor (as indicated by her glowing review of "Hamster" on Amazon.com), but not surprisingly, a WHOIS search reveals that the site is registered to (tada!) Paul Spadoni. I guess that explains why most of the "content" on the site revolves around promoting "Hamster Huey" - any actual Calvin & Hobbes content is just to set up the association - to falsely establish that this is indeed THE "Hamster Huey" of C&H fame. 

What is now the firt [sic] (earliest) review on Amazon.com is written by a "Randall Spadoni" (hmm, think maybe he's related to Paul Spadoni?), in which he writes "FOR A STORY WRITTEN AROUND A TITLE, this one's pretty good." [my emphasis]. There you have it, folks!" The book's author and illustrator are listed as Mabel Barr and Nick Goettling, respectively." 

The part of this story that really seems to get my goat, however, is that the vanity publisher of this "book" (which may not even exist, as Mason suggested) stretched their "biography" of Barr (who herself may not even exist) on their website ridiculously thin when it is obvious that she is either a nobody with no literary experience or accomplishments or does not exist at all, e.g. saying she has been "a storyteller nearly all her life". What this all reeks of is vagueness to explain the inability of anyone to verify anything about the "author".

New blog about gun-related issues

Just a heads-up to my readers: I have just started a new blog dedicated to debunking bogus arguments against gun control, in the vein of TalkOrigins (about evolution) and Skeptical Science (about global warming). You can visit this blog here. (Note I have also moved all my existing "evaluating gun arguments" posts there, and I will post all of them there, not here, from now on.)

What is a "Dunning-Kruger conservative"?

As I define it here, a "Dunning-Kruger conservative" (abbreviated "DKC") is a right-wing commentator/blogger/troll/whatever who acts like they know almost everything about an issue, and their position is unassailable, when in fact they barely know anything about that issue, and it is not difficult for most people to demonstrate why they are wrong. The term is named after the well-known Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people who are bad at something tend to think they are much better at it than they really are (Dunning & Kruger 1999).

Examples of DKCs are prevalent online, and are easily identified by people who speak loudly and confidently while embarrassing themselves by being wrong about almost everything they say. For example, Ben Shapiro, Tomi Lahren, and Paul Joseph Watson all fit the definition very well.

Their arguments can take many forms, one of which is easily identified by the word "basic" or other synonyms--e.g. "Ben Shapiro DEBUNKS 'White Privilege' myths using basic statistics", claiming that liberals ignore or deny "basic biology", Milo Yiannopoulos ostensibly debunking BLM with basic statistics, etc. What these arguments purport to say is that not only are SJWs wrong, but also their wrongness can be understood very easily by anyone who knows even the most basic aspects of the issue under discussion. What they actually reveal, however, is that those who understand only very superficial aspects of an issue (e.g. the existence of XX and XY sex chromosome pairs) tend not to understand other, more complex aspects of it (e.g. the evidence that gender identity has a biological basis).

All the reasons Rushton was wrong, in one post

Some people have claimed that critics of the work of infamous race scientist J. Philippe Rushton can't point to any methodological issues in his work, and instead must attack it simply for being "politically incorrect", "racist", etc. These arguments have even been made by people who really ought to know better. When you see someone make this claim, point them to this post, which compiles all peer-reviewed critiques of his methodology.

Racial differences in things like criminality and maturation rates may not even exist as Rushton claimed:
Gorey & Cryns 1995

Rushton misused r/k selection theory:
Anderson 1991
Weizmann et al. 1990
See esp. this quote from Weizmann et al. (1990) on page 3: "...it is precisely this extended and oversimplified version of the r/K model, with its rigid specification of traits, that has been embodied in Differential K theory." This comes after them noting that the more sweeping and extended versions of the r/k selection model have been criticized extensively by some researchers.
Graves 2002
Zuckerman 1990 (full text available for free at this link) See p. 60 (of the book): "...Rushton's theory is contrary to the evolutionary theory on which he bases his conclusions..."
Also, there are inherent issues in using the r/k model, which is supposed to apply to between-species differences, to explain within-species differences:
Fairchild 1991

Rushton is wrong about crime:
Gabor & Roberts 1990
Cernovsky & Litman 1993
Neapolitan 1998
Lynch 2000

Rushton is wrong about brain size:
Cernovsky 1990
Cernovsky 1991
Cain & Vanderwolf 1990
Willerman 1991

And also about sexual behavior:
Lynn 1989a
Lynn 1989b
Zuckerman & Brody 1988 
Cunningham & Barbee 1991
Note this quote from Zuckerman & Brody's abstract: "Data on sexual behavior is based on small and unrepresentative samples of blacks. Sizes of heads and genitals are compared with no obvious connection to the primary issue of biological fertility strategies. Everything is assumed to be on a primarily genetic basis although sexual mores have shown remarkable changes in a single generation."

LOL, he's even wrong about being censored by the "politically correct" establishment in academia!


He's also been caught misrepresenting and selectively citing sources: 
Weizmann et al. 1989
Cernovsky 1995: See p. 673: "...Rushton (1990a, 1990b, 1990c) also repeatedly misrepresented findings by Beals, Smith, and Dodd (1984) on cranial capacity." And at the bottom of the same page: "Rushton (1990a, 1990c, 1991) also misrepresents the evidence for racial differences in brain/body size ratio."
See also Fairchild 1991, p. 106, where he notes that Rushton is guilty of "repeated misrepresentations" of his cited sources.

Examples of Rushton misrepresenting sources include him citing the work of Tobias (1970) without mentioning his caveats regarding the validity of his own data (Fairchild 1991, p. 106-7; Weizmann et al. 1990, p. 9). These caveats include "...equating subjects on age, sex, body size, cause of death, time since death, method of preservation, temperature, and the methods employed in removing and preparing the brain. In addition, brain development is plastic, and brain size may be affected by early environmental factors. Because of all these difficulties, Tobias (1970) concluded that no adequate racial comparative studies had actually been conducted" (Weizmann et al. 1990, p. 9).

He also falsely claimed that papers by Ho et al. supported his claims of genetically determined race differences in brain size--they do not. In fact, Ho et al.'s reviews of their own research concluded that environmental factors best explained race differences in adult brain size (Fairchild 1991, p. 107).

He also inappropriately aggregated data on disparate populations:
Lieberman 2001
Cernovsky 1993

He also used unreliable sources:
Here, for instance, is what Weizmann et al. (1990, p. 8) write about a paper Rushton co-authored in 1987 (Rushton & Bogaert 1987): "One of the major sources for their conclusions is an alleged report of an anonymous French Army surgeon (1896), a curious source for reliable data." Weizmann et al. continue by writing that: "While Rushton and Bogaert (1987; Rushton, 1988a) describe the work as an example of the "ethnographic record," it might more accurately be described as an example of nineteenth century "anthroporn."...This work is filled with internal contradictions." And later on the same page: "It should be noted that the French Army surgeon (1896) is not an unimportant source. It is Rushton's (Rushton, 1988a; Rushton & Bogaert, 1987) only source for the "data" on racial differences in clitoral size and on the placement of female genitalia. It is also the only source which contains comparative "data" on male genitalia from all three racial groups, and the only source (e.g., Rushton, 1988a) at all for data on erectile "angle and texture" ("Orientals parallel to body and stiff, blacks at right angles and flexible." p. 1015)."
Weizmann et al. 1991 (p. 7) also make this point about another one of the sources cited in the same paper: "This is an article by P. Nobile (1982) which is identified in their bibliography as an article which appeared in Forum: International Journal of Human Relations. Professor Vidmar's colleague, Michael Atkinson, could find no library listing of this journal (nor could we), but he finally tracked it down. As Professor Vidmar writes: "it is more commonly known as the Penthouse Forum, and can be purchased from the covered display rack at your neighborhood Mac's Milk Store (Vidmar, 1990).""
Cernovsky 1994 criticizes Rushton's theory for being based on "weak trends in excessively suspect data sets", and also claims Rushton's work is based on "weak, biased, and unrepresentative data".
General failure to replicate results:
Peregrine, Ember & Ember 2003 
See also Neapolitan 1998 and Cernovsky & Litman 1993

And he defined his 3 main "races" inconsistently in different parts OF HIS OWN BOOK- I don't think people realize how big a deal this. It doesn't get much more dishonest than internal inconsistency in a blatant, desperate attempt to create the illusion of support for your theory. Specifically, Peregrine, Ember & Ember (2003) note that "...in Race, Evolution and Behavior, he says that Filipinos and Malays are “Mongoloid” and includes Malaysia along with the Philippines and Indonesia in comparing crime statistics but excludes all three from his analysis of cranial capacity; that the Indian subcontinent is “Caucasoid” but excludes 26 Indian samples from his analysis of cranial capacity; that Amerindians are “Mongoloid” but excludes 20 Latin American populations (especially Bolivian and Peruvian) on measures of cranial capacity; and includes the Caribbean in crime statistics but excludes Caribbean island states as “European/Negroid” mixtures for the purpose of comparing cranial capacity."

He is also wrong about twinning.

And about penis size:
Weizmann et al. 1990, p. 8: "Much of Rushton's other data (Rushton, 1988a; Rushton & Bogaert, 1987) on penis size relies heavily on studies based on Kinsey's data, which, as Zuckerman and Brody (1988) point out, can hardly be considered representative."

Environmental explanations make more sense than genetic ones:
Mealey 1990: "I concur with Rushton in the belief that different human groups utilize different strategies, but find the differential use of species-wide, environmentally contingent tactics a more parsimonious explanation than genetic differences."