Note: There has been discussion on both of these lists on the questions
of genetics and behavior. I found these two posts on an e-mail list and
thought they would be of interest to some readers ---- Alan Spector
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....-- there has been a refreshing new (non-chomskist) set of research
arrticles
on the aquisition of language, some of them reported in science in hte
past year. pinker is not among them. it is too easy in these days
of the human genome project for people not actually in molecular
biology/
genetics to geneticize everything. it is particularly popular among
psychologists, many of whom now invoke genes for all kinds of
psychological
traits. one of the few scientists trying to find genes for behavior
that
has any idea what he is doing is hammer, but his work is clouded by his
own adgenda (homosexuality). in any case, little has changed in the
last
30 years, and lewontin's objections still hold. all bouchard's studies
really show is some insight (for those willing to look) at the way the
human (and scientist's) mind works -- we see patterns, we connect what
we
see to what we already know. this is the reason "fortune telling" and
astrology work. bouchard didn't notice all the things that were
different
among twins, he noticed the things that were the same, and when you look
at enough of them, there are going to be some interesting similarities.
if he looked at the same number of non twins, he would find the same
kinds of "similarities"....................
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(other posting)
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The Bouchard group's twin studies, heavily funded by the Pioneer
Fund, is their big attempt to repair the damage done to the scientific
racist project by Leon Kamin's exposure of Sir Cyril Burt fraudalent
twin
studies. For years, racists like Jensen and Eysenck relied on Burt's
fabricated data to support their assertion that intelligence was largely
inherited and that whites were more intelligent than blacks. If you get
past
the amusing anecdotes about twins reared apart who like to drink the
same
beer, it becomes clear that Bouchard is mostly interested in proving
that
intelligence is primarily due to genetic factors and not environment.
(The
Bouchard groups estimates the heritability of intelligence at 70
percent.)
Secondarily, they also want to show that personality traits such as
aggressiveness and impulsiveness are also mostly inherited. Discover
magazine (September 1987)reported:
"The Minnesota researchers ... stress, however, that if the
environment does influence intellectual talents, the effect is subtle.
Time
after time in the Minnesota study, twins with very different schooling
opportunities came out only a few points apart in intelligence."
Leon Kamin, at one point, was talking about writing a book about
the
Minnesota twin studies research. It might be worthwhile trying to
contact
him about this. Bouchard has studied only about 50 pairs of identical
twins
reared apart, and his methods have already been criticized:
*"Other twin researchers say the significance of these
coincidences
has been greatly exaggerated. Richard J. Rose of Indiana univerity, who
is
collaborating on a study of 16,000 pairs of twins in Finland, points out
that 'if you bring together strangers who were born on the same day in
the
same country and ask them to find similarities between them, you may
find a
lot of seemingly astounding coincidences.
"Rose's collaborator, Jaakko Kaprio of the University of
Helsinki,
notes that that Minnesota twin studies may also be biased by their
selection
method. Whereas he and Rose gather data by combing birth registries and
sending questionnaires to those identified as twins, the Minnesota group
relies heavily on media coverage to recruit new twins. The twins then
come
to Minnesota for a week of study -- and, often, further publicity. Twins
who
are 'interested in publicity and willing to support it,' Karprio says,
may
be atypical. This self-selection effect, he adds, may explain why the
Bouchard group's estimates of heritability tend to be higher than those
of
other studies." (Scientific American, June 1993)
* "In his investigation of other twin studies, Kamin has shown
that
identical twins supposedly raised apart are often raised by members of
their
family or by unrelated families in the same neighborhood; some twins had
extensive contact with each other while growing up. Kamin suspects the
same
may be true of some Minnesota twins. He notes, for example, that some
news
accounts suggested Oskar and Jack (the Nazi and the Jew) and the two
British
women wearing seven rigns were reunited for the first time when they
arrived
in Minnesota to be studied by Bouchard. Actually, both pairs of twins
had
met previously. Kamin has repeatedly asked the Minnesota group for
detailed
case histories of its twins to determine whether it has underestimated
contact and similarities in upbringing. 'They've never responded.' he
says.
"Kamin proposes that the Minnesota twins have particularly
strong
motives to downplay previous contacts and to exaggerate their
similarities.
They might want to please researchers, to attract more attention from
the
media or even to make money. In fact, some twins acquired agents and
were
paid for appearances on television. Jack and Oskar recently sold their
life
story to a film producer in Lost Angeles (who says Robert Duvall is
interested in the roles)." (ibid)
* "Raymond Fancher's excellent book The Intelligence Men details
much of this history, including studies of identical twins reared apart.
These began in the early 1930's when Ed and Fred discovered one another
in
Chicago. Ed and Fred had been separated at the age of six months. They
became the first of 19 such pairs examined by three Chicago scientists,
Horatio Newman, Frank Freeman, and Karl Holzinger. Newman, Freeman, and
Holzinger recognized serious problems when they tried to determine how
much
genetics influenced intelligence. Among the difficulties were that
adoption
agencies tried to place twins in similar homes, so environments often
were
not so different. Also, some of the twin had more contact with one
another
before they were tested than others. Those who had communicated more
tended
to overemphasize the coincidences in their lives to make their story
more
interesting. For those and other reasons Newman, Freeman and Holzinger
concluded in 1937 that the most they could say was that both genetics
and
environment contributed to intelligence." (The New Republic, 12/21/87)
Bouchard likes to pretend that his research is not politically
motivated and that his conclusions have no political effects. Others
don't
quite see it that way (including, of course, the Pioneer Fund). When Lee
Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore, delivered a 1983 speech in favor
of
his eugenics program, in which middle class parents are giving tax
incentives to have more children, while low-income parents are
discouraged,
he cited the work "by Professor Thomas Bouchard of the University of
Minnesota."
Roger Pearson, the neo-Nazi who edits Mankind Quarterly with
Pioneer
Fund largesse, praises the Minnesota twin studies project in his book,
Race,
Intelligence, and Bias in Academe. I've noticed some uncanny
coincidences
between Pearson and Bouchard. They are both willing to accept money from
a
white supremecist outfit, they both believe that intelligence and other
personality traits are mostly determined by heredity, and they both
claim to
have been harassed by anti-racists. Could they be identical racists
reared
apart! ...
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