Darwin’s unexploded bomb

‘This book is an attempt to understand the world as it is, not as it ought to be.’ So writes Nicholas Wade, the British-born science editor of The New York Times, in his new book A Troublesome Inheritance.

For some time the post-War view of human nature as being largely culturally-formed has been under attack just as surely as the biblical explanation of mankind’s creation began to face pressure in the early 19th century. What Steven Pinker called the blank slate view of our species, whereby humans are products of social conditions and therefore possible to mould and to perfect through reform, has been undermined by scientific discoveries in various areas.

But the most sensitive, and potentially troubling to the modern psyche, is the difference between human population groups that have evolved over the past 50,000 years. As Wade writes: ‘The fact that human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional is not widely recognized, even though it has now been reported by many articles in the literature of genetics. The reason is in part that the knowledge is so new and in part because it raises awkward challenges to deeply held conventional wisdom.’

The political objections are a reaction to the horrific things done in the name of race in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in the Final Solution, after which the UN’s Ashley Montagu made the influential declaration that race was to all intents and purposes a fiction. Before that, anthropologist Franz Boas had popularised the idea that we are entirely products of culture.

This has remained the conventional view, indeed the only one that academics could safely hold; yet a number of inconsistencies have begun to crack away at this noble idea.

Among them is the recent knowledge that evolution can take place far quicker than people once thought. Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending, in their book The 10,000 Year Explosion, argued that human evolution had sped up since the advent of the first cities. The drastic changes in our ancestors’ environment created new evolutionary pressures; among them were selection for qualities that were beneficial in our larger communities, such as lower levels of aggression, deferred gratification (vital for farmers), a greater willingness to trust people outside of close kin group, and the qualities required for craftsmanship, finance and various other complex skills. Thus civilisation had increased the rate of evolution, and was continuing to do so.

Their research was solid, yet as Wade says, ‘Scientific enquiry thus runs into potential conflict with the public policy interest of not generating possibly invidious comparisons that might foment racism’.

Among the areas explored by Cochran and Harpending, along with another academic, Jason Hardy, has been Ashkenazi intelligence, and yet a previous paper, despite being considered ‘fascinating’ by editors, could not be published in the United States.

It is obviously understandable why Jewish intelligence and success, the subject of extreme and violent jealousies through the ages, makes people nervous. But the outsized contribution of Jews to almost all fields must surely interest all but the dullest of minds: just 0.2 per cent of the world population, Jews accounted for 29 per cent of Nobel Prizes in the late 20th century, and 32 per cent so far in 21st century. That tiny, remarkable country Israel recently won its fifth Chemistry Prize in a decade.

One can admire Jewish culture and the Jewish work ethic, but the idea that this enormous level of achievement is purely cultural, while possible, certainly does not pass the Occam’s razor test. As Wade says, ‘People are highly imitative, and if the Jewish advantage were purely cultural, such as hectoring mothers or a special devotion to education, there would be little to prevent others from copying it.’ They haven’t.

The same is true of the Chinese, who across Asia and now the rest of the world have formed highly successful business communities and, like the Jews, have suffered attacks from jealous neighbours: ‘If Chinese business success were purely cultural, everyone should find it easy to adopt the same methods. This is not the case because social behaviour, of Chinese and others, is genetically shaped.’

As he says: ‘New evidence strongly suggests that the very different kinds of society seen in the various races and in the world’s great civilizations differ not just because of their received culture – in other words, in what is learned from birth – but also because of variations in the social behaviour of their members, carried down in their genes.’

The implications of this will trouble many people, seeing as it suggests that certain traits differ on average among population groups. He cites the MAO-A enzyme; people with only 2 copies (rather than 3, 4 or 5) have a much higher level of delinquency. And ‘if individuals can differ in the genetic structure of their MAO-A gene and its controls, is the same also true of races and ethnicities? The answer is yes.’ A team in Haifa looked at people from seven ethnicities and found 41 variations in the portions of the genes they decoded, with ‘substantial differentiation between populations’.

So why do so many people confidently argue that there is no such thing as race, because there are ‘no clear distinct racial boundaries’. This he calls ‘verbal subterfuge’, arguing: ‘When a distinct boundary develops between races, they are no longer races but separate species. So to say there are no precise boundaries between races is like saying there are no square circles.’

Wade is critical of leading biologists, economists and psychologists who have simply dismissed possible non-cultural explanations as racist, or who pin their hopes in geographic determinism, or shy away from recent evolution because of the political implications. This, he says, has nothing to do with its scientific validity but the ‘political dangers’ that researchers face in ‘pursuing the truth too far’.

The political dangers are very real; various academics have lost their jobs or faced quite extreme harassment for voicing the belief that differences in group IQ scores are partly hereditary, despite there being solid evidence that intelligence is under genetic control.

And yet these ‘accusations of racism against anyone who suggests that cognitive capacities might differ between human populations groups… are shaped by leftist and Marxist political dogma, not by science.’ He says: ‘The common sense conclusion – that race is both a biological reality and a politically fraught idea with sometimes pernicious consequences – has also eluded’ much of academia.

This book’s ideas are indeed fraught but beyond carefully explaining the dangers of misusing science, the consequences are not for scientists to ponder, but rather lawmakers and others of influence; they can choose either to consider the evidence and make things work as best as they can, using what knowledge we have, or they can continue to ignore the ticking of Darwin’s unexploded bomb, punishing anyone who raises the subject.

This hostility faced by those with troublesome ideas is, of course, itself explained by evolution. As Wade mentions earlier on, we are social creatures, and we have evolved behaviours to live as such: ‘One is a tendency to criticise, and if necessary punish, those who do not follow the agreed norms.’ That is partly why, as a species, we find it easier to talk about how the world should be, rather than how it is.

“If you start learning about world genetics you find that we are far more mixed then most people could believe. Genes from around the world are found around the world. We travel, we trade and we have lots of sex.”

Heredity does not function that way, and it reflects poorly on your understanding of basic biology when you claim that it does, to say nothing of your knowledge of history. Place a drop of milk into a gallon of ink, and see what happens. That is what happens when someone from the Bell-Beaker culture washes up on the coast of sub-Saharan Africa.

Your potential misuse of the word “genes” tells me that you may also misunderstand genetics. Do you know the difference between a gene and an allele? Between nuclear DNA and the mtDNA or Y-chromosomal DNA used as useful yardsticks in population genetics?

Limited trading contacts and limited geneflow or introgression events are not sufficient on their own to significantly change the genotype of the whole population, whether we are talking fruit flies or humans - after each generation any small introduction of new genetic material would be halved, halved again the next generation, and so on. The dominant communal genotype would remain dominant, period. Over centuries beneficial alleles derived from an introgression event which happen to convey a reproductive advantage may begin to proliferate, but that in no way implies genetic replacement of the dominant genotype or significant admixture. Quite the contrary, most alleles introduced by limited introgression events are quickly lost even if they are beneficial and convey a significant reproductive advantage, simple probability governs the equation. There’s a reason we don’t look like Neanderthals and Denisovans.

It requires mass displacement of a population and, usually, total military conquest in order to significantly shift the overall percentages of measurable traits or allele frequency in a given human population, and historically those types of events have tended to replace native populations on the whole rather than create a significantly admixed population; on average merely amounting to picking up a few sex chromosomes here and there from the conquered to let future geneticists know that some tribe was subsumed. Even prolonged border-sharing isn’t usually sufficient to significantly alter the dominant features of a community, especially when administrative, cultural, economic, geographic or linguistic barriers discourage complete freeflow of genetic material. Picking up a little mtDNA from a slave or two isn’t enough to shift a group’s clustering on a haplotype map.

There are VERY few significantly admixed populations in the world today, a few notable examples being African-Americans and some (but certainly nowhere near all) Latin American populations. Fascinatingly enough some Indian ethnic groups have maintained a high degree of differentiation despite numerous conquests and centuries of cohabitation, cultural barriers can be surprisingly effective at stopping gene flow.

The vast physical differences you see when looking at people from different areas of the world is a consequence of the biological differences between populations of human beings that have been breeding in significant isolation from one another. You can even tell many of the larger clusters of human populations apart based on something as simple as visually examining a hair or a bit of ear wax.

“Well, you see that is just the problem. You can’t.” Well that’s the problem, you can. You are quite wrong. If your assumption were correct, then there are a whole lot of forensic scientists out there helping to convict people with false science. Significant physical differences exist between the main ancestral groups of human beings, and even when dealing with a mixed community of many different ancestral populations cohabiting (the American continent would be a good example) we can still identify significantly different traits existing between different communities living in the same small place.

You don’t get epicanthic folds, powdery ear wax and shovel teeth by practicing Confucianism; they are hereditary traits, not cultural ones.

Here’s the crux of the disagreement. You would like to ignore every possible cause of human difference other than culture. I on the other hand admit that human beings are a product of both nature AND nurture, and further I believe that it’s important to understand which force is responsible for what effect, rather than simply assuming that half or more of the equation doesn’t exist.

You appear to have some emotional and political motivations for your viewpoint, and that is understandable most people do. For example, your introduction of the concept of “breeding” better human beings, when I mentioned no such thing and when I took pains to point out that understanding human biology does NOT by definition lead to eugenics. You simply assume that anyone who claims nature has a role must, by definition, be a eugenicist advocating nature above all other causes.

Compare and contrast my comments, I took pains to point out an example in modern medicine where we identified a behavioral problem that was highly heritable, schizophrenia, and I took great pains to point out that the response was NOT “Breed better humans!”, the response was to use cultural and scientific achievements to ameliorate the effects of biological shortcomings. Enhanced medical screening, therapy and medication targeted specifically at highly risk-prone individuals and families - not eugenics.

This is key, we must not ignore biology. Nature and nurture together can build a better society, and if we understand where nature falls a little short we can use a bit of nurture (or a handful of nutritional supplements or anti-psychotics) to smooth out the difference. You CANNOT DO THAT if you refuse to admit that nature has a significant influence. You end up creating more human suffering and compounding humanity’s failures if you refuse to accurately identify the source of a problem.

To reiterate my final point from the last post - ignoring biological differences, refusing to discuss them, does not serve any useful purpose; it compounds human suffering and retards real progress. Further, ignoring biological differences DELAYS or PREVENTS the formation and adoption of rational, reasonable, moral principles to guide medical intervention. We CAN address biological differences between individuals and populations in a moral and rational manner without resorting to eugenics and extermination camps, as I pointed out with the example of schizophrenia, and it is very important that we adopt guiding frameworks that encourage this rational and moral approach before medical technology advances beyond the point where we can shape its widespread use and acceptance.

By delaying a moral discussion about the biological forces underlying human behavior, and how those forces may differ between populations, you are paradoxically encouraging a resurgence of eugenicist thought. Better to address uncomfortable truths now before they get too loud for the majority to ignore, and better yet to establish a moral framework for medical intervention BEFORE genetic screening and manipulation become common enough and cheap enough for individual customers and medicos to develop their own beliefs about how such performance enhancing technology should be used.

i see, survival of the smallest. So, according to evolution, people today find small brains more attractive, and hence tend to have more small-brained offspring with attractive small-brained mates. That's interesting. Or is it that having a smaller brain gives you an advantage in, say, Wall street, or the advertising industry, or maybe plumbing or accounting? Indeed a small brain would be of great advantage to the lucky ones who have it... though at the moment I can't think of why... perhaps my brain isn't small enough and I'm due for extinction. But it doesn't really have to be an advantage, does it? We can just say that it is, and that's good enough for evolution. Or we can say that it isn't even an advantage, and that's good enough for evolution.

What I said was that a smaller brain is not a disadvantage for survival in a society where most survival functions are performed at a level above the individual. This has nothing to do with selection of mates or anything else. For example, consider a group of nomadic tribesmen who need to devote 80% of their cognitive resources to survival (hunting, avoiding predators, finding shelter, making warm clothing, etc.), and their group is small enough that everyone must contribute to survival. In that group, children with smaller brains--for whom the 80% of the brain dedicated to survival is only equivalent to someone else's 40%--would not survive.

As humans have become more socialized, those survival functions became specialized to certain members of the group. For example, I don't raise and kill my own meat; I go to a butcher who kills the animals which, in turn, are raised by ranchers. Same thing with clothes: even if someone learns how to make clothes, she doesn't start the process by growing the cotton in her backyard--she buys the fabric already made. And so on. Since survival functions are now performed by specialized members of society, and each of those specialized members is responsible for only a tiny part of a survival function, it is no longer necessary for each person to maintain the brain power to survive individually or in small groups. Hence, average individual brain size has become smaller with no effect on species survival.

The other side of this coin is that larger brains have somewhat of a survival disadvantage. An infant with a large brain might have trouble exiting the birth canal--not a problem with today's medicine, but as little as a century or so ago was a death sentence for both mother and child. It takes more energy to maintain a larger brain, which can be a problem when food is scarce. With selective pressures to maintain a large brain eased because of relegation of survival functions to a large group rather than a handful of individuals, those with slightly smaller brains have a survival advantage.

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