CharonY

That is a good question, and might depend on jurisdiction. In Europe Monsanto's GM maize was first approved but was then banned in Germany later on, in part (IIRC) because of the possibility that it could spread. In believe in the EU or maybe UK there were lawsuits back in the 2000s, regarding unauthorized release of GM crops (but I think it involved Bayer). The high level lawsuits that I remember that Monsanto won was (again, IIRC) based on the fact that the farmer deliberately harvested and replanted seeds, after discovering resistant plants on his field, which was then deemed patent infringement. But perhaps a more important reason could be that Monsanto is not a grower and it is more likely that the invading crops would originate from another farm. So if there was a lawsuit, it would more likely against that farm rather than Monsanto. Another issue is that unless there is something that visually makes the GM crop stand out, many farmers simply wouldn't know as they generally do not test them.

I think it is now more important than ever to wait for official verification. Even without AI, internet rumors had a way to spread misinformation and it is only getting worse.

Moderator NoteThere is so much misinformation including claims of violating basic thermodynamics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell). Fundamentally, this post appears an attempt to spread disinformation, especially with regard to vaccinations, thus endangering public health. Don't bring this up again.

And even that is problematic and at best inconsistent. For example, Type I is characterized by accessibility, i.e. starch to which enzymes cannot get to. Type II otoh is based on origin (e.g. raw starch from plant species), forming resistant granules. Type III are generally spontaneously generated precipitated starches with some some-crystalline structres and then IV are or modified starches. This classification might make sense in food sciences, but in a microbial context it is pretty much meaningless. Within each of these groups you have different chemical compositions, which will be utilized and processed differently by bacteria, for example.

I don't think you are wrong (especially regarding Monsanto, the legal trap is pretty famous and has made its way into textbooks), but links to cancer are notoriously difficult to establish. Fundamentally, pretty much all herbicides are toxic, but those with acute toxicity are just easier to spot. For residential use there is a discussion to be had what would be wise to use close to where you live. However, a bigger issue is the often massive exposure in agricultural use. The controversy here (and my reading might be a bit outdated) is mostly whether Roundup has a higher risk than other herbicides, and there the evidence is somewhat sketchy. There is also a (IMO) much bigger issue is that as a whole there are massive testing gaps in toxicity testing. For example, often only the active ingredient are tested and regulated, yet the overall health impact can vary massively depending on what else is in the formulation.

I think that this is a good point and also a reminder that most food studies are association studies with very limited understanding of underlying mechanisms. There are also trials, which are better controlled but are generally also only limited to measurement of clinical endpoints, without mechanistic insights. This issue also extends to our understanding of the role of the gut microbiota in human health. As such, these types of studies are frequently are associated with limited reproducibility, which, I assume, will amplify if we look at more diverse populations. Moreover, extrapolation of such data will more likely than not result in predictions that do not turn out to be true.

I am not sure whether that alone would be infringement. It could frame ordinary requests as infringement of freedom. OTOH, I can see how folks might think about such requests in terms of infringement (in either direction) and could be insufferably self-righteous about it. I think infringement really starts once there are (by)laws that would penalize certain actions or lack thereof. I.e. closer to what is described in the first couple of posts in this thread. I think in terms of liability there it is a reasonable assumption that if something is indeed harmful, its use would be restricted for private to some degree (there is also a whole issue regarding the evidence for glyphosates). .

Also, there are different compositions of RS. The lit seems a bit of a mess to me and less resolved compared to even the complex situation you find in environmental communities.

So, fundamentally yes, but things are (as usual) quite a bit more complicated. There are different types of resistant starches that are associated with different shifts in the microbiota, as well as SCFA being produced. I will also note that while there are plenty of associations between SCFA and gut health, they are predominantly derived from animal models and the mechanistic understanding is still lacking. I.e. there is good reason to believe that this might yield health benefits, we have only limited human data and we don't really understand how it might happen.

The media remind me as some addict chasing the next high- except that influences have flooded the landscape with synthetics that keep everyone so oversaturated and sedated, folks wouldn't react to anything, anymore.

I think they should have been- I have seen that in the news and certainly it was in the pile of papers for me to read. There were at least two papers of relevance. One earlier published in Science with Worobey and Anderson as corresponding authors back in 2022 and a later one which had a different methodology and from what I remember had a stronger evidence base published in Cell (where they tried to reconstruct and associate genotypes from genetic fragments). I suspect that by 2024 most SARS-CoV-2 related news were not elevated that much anymore, unless you are paying active/professional attention (apropos fragmented information systems..).

Maybe a comment here, the genome itself would provided only limited information on the source. It is more important to see where they were found. Near-perfect evidence would be the detection of the precise genotype in a sample recovered from an animal during or prior the outbreak, for example. The most direct evidence was a re-analysis of Huanan market samples and swabs (published last year). These analyses strengthened the argument of a wet-market zoonotic spillover. I find the evidence compelling and would put that as the most likely scenario, however the level of evidence is insufficient to entirely rule out other scenarios. Elevating that to the level of "truth" as outlined in OP is highly problematic. In fact, elevating these conclusions to "truths" are IMO one of the reason why trust in public health and science is declining. As researchers, we need to be clear about levels of uncertainty and understand the limits of our conclusion and communicate with nuance. I think the old adage of keeping things simple is not working in the modern, fragmented information (and disinformation) system.

Also the immune response goes down with age, without any external input. I think some posters should familiarize themselves with the concept of senescence. The only way to avoid it is to die young.

It is weird to frame it as an admittance, as the discussion is about strong linkage of IQ to race, and it was never about whether there is any genetic basis. For a while the discussion has been heavily moving goalposts around, as the issue of building racial groups has not been addressed, nor whether the measures between groups are useful. Except of course, lifestyles like the San people have likely been part of our evolutionary history, whereas the ability to strive just by performing well in abstract tests is a new dev development. The former is more likely to leave signatures in our genome, rather than the recent events. But sure, if we declare everything that does not fit our narrative as beside the point, then the argument is iron clad. But it is also not worthy of discussion.

In a way yes, but I will acknowledge that in the past that has been basically seen as a fact. The book/paper from Rushton and other had been highly influential in the 90s, and I recall some lectures that had those ideas baked in. As a biologist I was quit a fair bit dismayed and it was a minor reason why I switched from my initial interests towards genetics and related subjects.

Again, you are missing the key point. There is genetic influence, for sure, but the brain has high plasticity and we do not know how interactions between genetics, environment and development interacts. The idea that some set of genes sets the gold bar for everything is simply not in line with how we understand physiology anymore. Moreover, it is possible that even in utero exposure is more critical than the genetic basis but the two would be almost impossible to disentangle (as you cannot test fetuses). And yet folks have found that certain elements like literacy, vocabulary testing and so on have a huge impact on a wide range of IQ tests. They are not uniform nor as universal. They are stable in scoring withing a given population, but comparing between has been a long-standing debate. There are folks claiming universality, but it is by no measure the consensus. And as more studies were coming up, the more it has been questioned. In other words, the certainty you express is only shared by a smaller group of researchers and the evidence has been mounting against them for decades. At this point, it looks more like ignoring than considering. After all, it has been mentioned a few times.

We don't know that. As these things might co-develop it is difficult to figure out how one might put a boundary on the other. Again, no one claimed it was purely determined by the environment and you have ignored some of the early factors that can contribute to the further development. For example a telling study would be (as mentioned) a twin study with children form an affluent, highly developed household, split at some point after birth and one played into a developing country. That is not how IQ measurements were designed. Originally it was used to determine cognitive deficiencies. The g factor is a theoretical construct formulated by Spearman, as an assumed totality of general abilities. Essentially it was found that a lot of different tests would correlate with other, and the model was then, that there might be a common underlying factor (that might be connected to all of them). Pretty much from then on, there were discussion of which and how performance measures would correlate with g and why. Newer studies also found particular weaknesses as these models were built in a particular context and especially extremely different backgrounds (studies on San people were these measures just do not fit reality, as mentioned above- if they were so mentally deficient, why would they survive in such hostile environments for so long? ). There were a few tests that were eventually developed to circle around the concept of the g factor, such as Raven's assessment which is often used as part of IQ tests. But again, for each there is a large body of lit discussing where and how they are applicable. As a whole there is not clear unified method that assesses g, but a lot of different tests that are somehow associated and in contrast to a true biological trait like e.g. height, the g factor is a composite model that is in itself defined by test methods rather than a material basis. There are there fore no clear mechanistic principles or even an objective or biological concept of g. That as a whole is in part why this area of research often is put under the soft sciences umbrella as we are dealing with correlates of concepts, rather something that we can isolate and measure directly (such as DNA sequences). I would go further and reiterate that definitions of g are much vaguer than what we would typically see in biology, where we look at physiological and phenotypic traits (and those associations can already be tricky- the height example you provided is a good one). One of the issues with Rushton is that in order to link IQ test measures to biology, he tried to pull in concepts like r and k selection strategy and apply to human populations. The issue here, of course is that with technical advances it became clear very rapidly that racial boundaries as set by him were not biologically verifiable and almost by definition differential selection in those groups would make even less sense. Good example, and there are more such as how heritability increases with socioeconomic status (I believe the author was Turkheimer and others, around 2000ish). The hypothesis was that at lower socioeconomic status environmental variability has a higher impact on the measures, but once a certain threshold is reached (where basically living standards become normalized) the measured variation is then more likely based on residual biology. From an experimental standpoint that makes a lot of sense, but also of course questions the ability of the tests to measure the "pure" biological basis. But I think it is suffice to say that the field has enough uncertainty that strong assumptions are more likely than not to fall flat.

I disagree, not fully but some extent. The pendulum is moving and the issue is that it is a bit unclear if we know where to stop it. There are some isolated papers who are excessive, but they pale in contrast to the existing body of lit of strong narratives. But the egalitarian spin is not the claim that everything is socially constructed, especially if you read the papers carefully. Rather, the claim is that the social overlay is so strong, that you need extraordinary amount of data from several disciplines (and not just a simple measure as per Rushton, Jensen, Lynn and others, who are all psychologists but try to make biological arguments). I.e. the former assumption was basically everything is pre-ordained by evolution and dominated by genetics. However, biologists have moved away from that quite a bit quicker than some areas of social sciences, after realizing the complex interplay between genetics and the environment, even on the cellular level. Regarding SNPs, you wouldn't need to know which are associated with intelligence if you use GWAS methodologies. If the basis is some hidden genetic pattern, you should be able to delineate high-intelligent from low-intelligent folk across all socioeconomic and racial groups. That attempt has failed. Regarding twin studies, in order to separate out environmental factors you would need to separate twins and e.g. have one placed in a developing country and another in a, say rich household in a developed country. Those studies have small cohorts and almost always have children originated from poor countries (adopted into a developed one), that is already being under potential harmful influences and I don't recall studies with the reverse setup. There are studies however, that have shown that heritability in twins can vary which indicates that development is not fixed. But again, there hasn't been really an argument that IQ has no heritability (which is a slightly different argument whether certain genes are associated with higher IQ, as it measures generational transmission and cannot really make a functional association), but rather the relative role between genetics and environment. You forget the single most important element: the plasticity of the brain. Even if if we found a genetic pattern that is directly and clearly responsible for high IQ, take this child and rear it in the dark with no social input. It would not only do badly but utterly fail an IQ test. The point is that there is still discussion an what the psychometric measures really measure. The good thing is that some seem to measure something stable but there is a broad discussion about what they mean. And we are not even touching the biological aspects of it. And then there are the limits of natural experiments where you always slice and dice cohorts. And finally, looking at genetic traits that can bring advantages the big questions is how and how they are distributed. Assume that there is a set of genes that make you very good at reading (say some sort of pattern recognition and recall). In a setting where reading and writing is common, that person might excel in written tests. However, the same trait in a hunter society may also be of benefit, such as for hunting. Yet, if illiteracy is the norm it might never translate to written tests. And even if folks apply a culturally appropriate test (which in itself if problematic) they might do it verbally, a test for which those genetic traits suddenly do not provide a benefit anymore. From a biological point of view, the issue is fairly obvious, traits only manifest themselves by interaction of the molecular machinery (which adds flexibility to the genetic underlining) with the environment. It is always both and there are scenarios one or the other contributes more. These shifts tend to be dynamic and require a lot of work to untangle, even if we just use cells. To me it was always baffling that folks think that they can make strong theories and assumptions on the vastly more complicated, much vaguer and much less well understood concept of intelligence (and not to mention the issue with defining racial boundaries on top).

And work from the same authors will dominant in the first couple of your searches (e.g., Rushton, Lynn, Jensen). And there is a reason for that. It is also important that these resurgences of eugenics line of thinking happened when the "big narrative" type research saw an upswing, which includes the rise (and eventual fall) of disciplines such as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Lack of reproducibility and inability to resolve cofounding factors ultimately challenged the disciplines wholesale. I would suggest to follow up your reading with folks like Nisbett, Wicherts and I think Litman for very extensive critiques to issues ranging from methodology to poor reproducibility. There have been quite a few on GWAS and IQ, but the one that I was thinking of, specifically looked at that in a racial context. Other studies have found SNPs that are associated (if frequently weakly) with educational attainment. If the genetic link is strong, techniques like polygenic techniques should be able to estimate heritability of such a trait. Estimates from those GWAS found that maybe around 10ish% of the variation in certain intellectual measures could be explained by genetic differences. There are similar studies looking similar and different sibling groups, trying to account for the environment (published by Lee et al In Nature Genetics, I think maybe around 2018). The follow-up I am thinking about used similar techniques to specifically look at black white divide and found an even smaller impact. I think it is suffice to say that the stated premises are very much mired in the findings of some influential groups around the 90s and still have some proponents, but the cumulative work of many more folks have failed to validate those claims.

There is something I think called the Nobel syndrome, where Nobel price winners go off on the deep end once they get it. Curie was a notable exception (as she went on to win a second price, instead). But I also meant that hi grew up in a different time, where gender and racial differences were just accepted as facts and are therefore less inclined to review information that counters it, as a good scientist should. The issue is often that scientists might inadvertently provide credibility to such notions, though they are way outside of their expertise. As I mentioned before, Rushton (whom you seem to cite here) has been pretty much outdated and he created a body of literature who tried to link IQ with race. It was fairly prominent in the 90s I would say. A key issue even then was that he was a psychologist and tried to invoke biological concepts (such as reproductive strategies) which he clearly only poorly understood. His contemporaries already questioned some of the results based on their own studies (there has been a quite some exchange with Nisbett, for example). And in the later works Rushton increasingly seemed to slice and dice his data to accommodate his view while dismissing other studies, which created some bad blood with his colleagues. There is a huge spinoff, many questioning suitability of standardized IQ tests in various contexts (there was a paper from Wicherts discussing it in the Sub-Saharan context). The long and short of it is that certain psychometric measures considered to be universal, are not. Only once certain environmental components are fulfilled (e.g. nutrition, basic schooling, stable environment) do this measures become comparable. One especially strong correlated was also found in vocabulary development (which in turn is associated with education). In multiple studies using IQ test without vocabulary tests the IQ gap pretty much vanished (studies from the 2000s). But even some of the basic assumptions you have mentioned are not quite correct. For example: I believe that is what Jensen and/or Rushton have repeated in their papers. Yet in Flynn's work back dating back to the 90s have already talked about the diminishing gap, which Rushton later tried to argue away (which in turn lead to a whole slew of related discussions). The point is that Rushton's work keeps cementing a hard delineation, something that is not found by most other researchers and, importantly, makes little biological sense, from our understanding of population genetics. Even if disregarding ongoing gene flow, Rushton's hypothesis was delineated among black as the lowest racial IQ group, whites in-between and Asians the highest. Yet, studies have shown that folks closer related to the Asian's, such as Indigenous Americans, as well as Asians with low socioeconomic status, have similar scores as black folks. So from first principles, the biological argument was already weak, but there was a fairly recent work (I forgot the author, but could dig it out) using genome wide associated studies based on the 1000 genomes using a range of cognitive tests have failed to find any genetic links. Ultimately there is a huge body of lit that disputes this rather old claim, bolstered by improvements in our understanding of genetics. On the other side, we have Rushton and a few other researchers who not only claim a racial element, but even a hard racial delineation, essentially re-using their own arguments they came up with, when we knew less. Reviewing the full body of literature, this hard delineation is simply not supported and should at this point (or really, since around 2000) should not be taken as fact. It goes a fair bit into old men's pet theory territory (and I know a fair bit about old men and their scientific theories).

The critical bit is the second half, where he adds that all testing suggests otherwise. And he added that people who deal with black employees would agree. He also reiterated in various other places that IQ differences between black and white folks is genetic. Watson has at various points endorsed the book by Rushton and Murphy (which suggests strong genetic differences between white and black folks, in a range of parameters ranging from reproduction, physical strength and IQ, all of which have been refuted by broader studies). I think part of OP is that Watson had strong beliefs regarding racial differences, which ultimately are not sufficiently supported by science but has detrimental effects if assumed to be true regardless. For many, this is at least one element of why Watson was considered controversial (plus a host of other elements). I think much can be attributed to being an old man, and whether one considers that as an excuse or not is a different issue (there are other old men who have been much better at following the science and treating their folks better).

Well that hypothesis is easy to test and the latest analysis on Neanderthal DNA has shown a gradient from west to east. I.e. while east Asians do have higher levels of Neanderthal DNA than Sub-Saharan Africans (on average), they are also lower than in Europe (on average). So if that was a driver for IQ scores, you would expect highest levels in Europe (and likely lower in white populations elsewhere due to increased intermixing).

What when did that happen? Last thing I heard he was Harvard's president and only resigned recently from that position (not sure if he is teaching), because of his association with Epstein. Nothing about that the story says "poor man" to me. And I do find it highly controversial for suggesting that someone with a certain skin color is destined to be an underachiever plus a long history of abusing female postdocs who he did not consider first tier, yet not doing so with male postdocs of the same caliber. As someone with power over other's careers, this is highly problematic. The key factor here being genes isolated from gene flow. Most studies have shown that populations found in a geographic location, regardless of superficial features such as skin color are highly mixed. This is why data suggests higher diversity within such groupings than between. Geography and gene flow are determining factors, and the correlation of such groups using such high-level features such as skin color just doesn't work. Except they arent' in isolation. In the US life outcomes are not only correlated with skin color, but even more so zip code. I.e. the social and socioeconmic background is the biggest factor for many elements that we can measure (including biological parameters, such as life expectancy). It just so happen that these are also co-correlated with skin color. Yet if one were only to look at the genetic level, and fully ignore things like socieconomic status and skin color you won't find markers that are associated with high intelligence which are enriched in white or Asian populations. That is not to say that there is no genetic component, but the issues range from the measurement itself (either IQ or g, which have different methodologies) to identifying potential genetic markers and then the assumption that they are not only correlated with certain populations, but somehow these populations also correlate what we superficially consider to be "races". The latter being historically coded by a weird mix of skin color, but also some moral/social determination (e.g. Obama considered being black, which obviously does not fit his actual heritage). Fundamentally one can make it easier, most human populations, especially in modern times are mixed so patterns should are really expected to emerge in highly isolated groups which tend to have low genetic diversity (say, Amish, or uncontacted Indigenous group). In virtually all other groups the idea that skin color or similar features are genetically deterministic of things fails to yield reproducible results. Anyone working on genetics should know that by now (though to be fair, Watson was a biochemist and not a biologist). More importantly, it is not a good indicator of genetic composition, virtually all populations are patchwork of sorts. Black folks in Brazil are for the most part closer to white folks in Brazil than black folks in the US, for example.

It depends really, we have had multiple discussions on this forum regarding IQ. There are multiple issues ranging from what IQ really measures, which is not entirely clear, given that it was initially developed to detect deficiencies and not as much as a scoring something on a hierarchy. An associated with that, we have seen first a rise of IQ over the years (Flynn effect) but more recently the reverse was observed, especially in developed countries. Given these and many more issues, population-wide averaging of such psychometric measures and drawing conclusions from them are hugely problematic. They depend a lot on how a given test cohort was formed and there are many cultural elements regarding formats. Folks like Rushton and Murphy largely overlooked such details to spin out there big narratives and this where the controversy (and bad science) resides. In a way it is another story of a big leap of ideas, only one that turns out not be substantiated independently.

Except they didn't. Their paper really did not add any data. It was explicitly written as a model proposal and as far as I recall they only vaguely indicate that their model is based on some data, while acknowledging that independent verification is needed (or something to that extent). There have been different narratives on how that paper came to pass, but in one of them both basically fiddled around with models to try to see what fits the existing information. At that point however, both A and B forms were likely and some of Franklin's data pointed more towards A, which makes sense, as it is more ordered and more likely to occur during the crystallization process. I think Watson at some point also commented that he was luck not to seen Franklin's full data set as it would have undermined his model a fair bit. And that is what Franklin was doing- proposing multiple models in alignment with her data. Watson pushed one more but not based on existing evidence or further confirmation. Jumping the line, so to speak. Or ego. After all, people tend to forget all the times you were wrong and if your ego can take it, more power to you. I don't really think so. In some ways yes, but only in fairly recent times. That statement likely was based on the horrible book "The Bell Curve" a rather controversial book that tries to make a quasi biological argument for race. In most serious areas of genetic and related research it has been severely discredited (and serves as a cautionary tale if folks like e.g. psychologists extrapolate things in other disciplines based on their own).