If we’re looking to find out if humans vary significantly in their psychological phenotypes, why not compare these phenotypes directly rather than appealing to highly shaky evolutionary speculations about genotypes?
(Sure, environmental variation also contributes to phenotypic variation, but we have no reason to believe that the current level of human psychological variation is masked by environmental factors—especially since right now environmental variation is probably at its peak in human history)
I’m sure the NIH would love to fund research comparing cognitive phenotypes of different races! Just remember to budget for nails and a cross in your proposal.
From Science, March 12 2010, p. 1316:
‘Elsevier told Charlton [editor of a controversial Elsevier non-peer-reviewed journal that published AIDS denial articles] on 22 January that Medical Hypothesis would have to become a peer-reviewed journal. Potentially controversial papers should receive careful
scrutiny, the publisher said, and some topics—including “hypotheses that could be interpreted as supporting racism”—should be off-limits.’
Did I see the word “race” in the comment you’re replying to? No I did not.
To be clear, you made an excellent point, I just think it could be worked around by simply not basing it on race—by location, say, or grandparents location, or surveying a bunch of pheotypes—some physical, some psychological—and identifying clusters (could seems either racist or anti-racist depending on wording.)
If we’re looking to find out if humans vary significantly in their psychological phenotypes, why not compare these phenotypes directly rather than appealing to highly shaky evolutionary speculations about genotypes?
(Sure, environmental variation also contributes to phenotypic variation, but we have no reason to believe that the current level of human psychological variation is masked by environmental factors—especially since right now environmental variation is probably at its peak in human history)
I’m sure the NIH would love to fund research comparing cognitive phenotypes of different races! Just remember to budget for nails and a cross in your proposal.
From Science, March 12 2010, p. 1316:
‘Elsevier told Charlton [editor of a controversial Elsevier non-peer-reviewed journal that published AIDS denial articles] on 22 January that Medical Hypothesis would have to become a peer-reviewed journal. Potentially controversial papers should receive careful scrutiny, the publisher said, and some topics—including “hypotheses that could be interpreted as supporting racism”—should be off-limits.’
Did I see the word “race” in the comment you’re replying to? No I did not.
To be clear, you made an excellent point, I just think it could be worked around by simply not basing it on race—by location, say, or grandparents location, or surveying a bunch of pheotypes—some physical, some psychological—and identifying clusters (could seems either racist or anti-racist depending on wording.)