Rufo described Jonatan Pallesen as “a Danish data scientist who has raised new questions about Claudine Gay’s use – and potential misuse – of data in her PhD thesis” in an interview published in his newsletter and on the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal website last Friday.

He did not tell readers that a paper featuring Pallesen’s own statistical work in collaboration with the eugenicist researchers has been subject to scathing expert criticism for its faulty methods, and characterized as white nationalism by another academic critic.

The revelations once again raise questions about the willingness of Rufo – a major ally of Ron DeSantis and powerful culture warrior in Republican politics – to cultivate extremists in the course of his political crusades.

The Guardian emailed Rufo to ask about his repeated platforming of extremists, and asked both Rufo and the Manhattan Institute’s communications office whether they had vetted Pallesen before publishing the interview. Neither responded.

  • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    It’s controversial to say that different groups have different average IQ’s now?

    If it has anything to do with race or ethnicity. Uh yes.

    • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      Groups don’t stop having different average IQs simply because they are defined as racial or ethnic, intelligence is 57-80% heritable after all. What should be controversial is discrimination based on average test scores of other people, not acknowledgement of reality regarding differences between groups.

        • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          I acknowledged this in my first post:

          [to criticize categorizing groups by IQ scores] cite the cultural bias of most IQ tests and how IQ tests may not be accurately measuring G

          I’m not sure what made you assume I thought IQ testing was perfectly accurate and unbiased. Lots of people here are arguing against positions they imagine I hold rather than what I actually wrote.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            What units does G have or it is a fundamental constant? How does G interact with the physical brain, midi-chlorian perhaps? What particles make up G? Please show me the property table handbook that matches up G with other physical testable measurable units.

            Prove to me that it is as real as gravity and temperature or volts. Because if you can’t I am throwing it in the basket of horoscopes.

            • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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              10 months ago

              It is a construct. One can argue that G / general intelligence factor does not exist, I believe it does since mental ability seems to correlate with general competence across many domains. I believe it’s a better argument that IQ tests may not be an effective method of deriving it.

              The g factor (also known as general intelligence, general mental ability or general intelligence factor) is a construct developed in psychometric investigations of cognitive abilities and human intelligence. It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that an individual’s performance on one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to that person’s performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks.
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                I see. So you have faith that it is there, not evidence. And if your test is not good at finding it, it must be the test that is wrong not that you are trying to detect the undectable. The same logic can be applied to horoscopes, prayer, god, and Bigfoot. Did we make a detection? No? Oh well we must have been looking wrong. We have faith that it exists so any type of failure can be safely disregarded with our preconceived notions intact.

                Your Midi-chlorianians don’t operate like anything else in science. In science we find out things exist by following the evidence, in Midi-chlorianians we assume something exists and find “evidence”. I wonder why they don’t give you hard evidence of their existence. Why does your god… sorry G spirit hate you so much?

                  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                    10 months ago

                    Answer my questions. What units does G have? How does spiritual G interact with the physical human brain? What is the G particle? Is G quantized or fully analog? Why can’t you produce a property handbook with G as it “correlates” with other physical measurable testable things? Does G act like a point charge? Is there a counter-G and if so what equation models how they repeal? How much does it weight per units G? Does it move in waves or as particles?

                    You are using the rhythms of science without the actual science. You name the physical thing I can show you as much as you wanted to know about it and then some. But not your Midi-chlorianians. I have more evidence that ghosts, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness are real than G is because I can at least point out to eyewitnesses. No one even claims to have even seen G.

                    Now admit the father of eugenics is the person responsible for its invention as a concept.

      • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Groups don’t stop having different average IQs simply because they are defined as racial or ethnic,

        But race and ethnicity themselves are not determinative.

        intelligence is 85% heritable after all.

        Citation needed. Most citations I could find said genetics may account or anywhere from 30 to 50% of a person’s intelligence. But they have no idea what genes would possibly be contributing to that and how. So basically it’s a hypothesis with zero proof. Either you are operating on junk science or straight up eugenicist.

        While it is true that random groups of people may have different average IQs. It has more to do with what they eat, how often they eat and their exposure to different ideas than it does their genetics, etc. Even then, IQ is not actually a useful measure of intelligence.

        • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          I stand corrected! According to wikipedia:

          Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%, with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

          Thanks, I’ll edit my comments to reflect this. Intelligence remains heritable, just not as heritable as I thought.

          It has more to do with what they eat, how often they eat and their exposure to different ideas than it does their genetics, etc.

          One cannot discount the role of nature in the nature vs. nurture debate. Some twin studies are quite remarkable in illustrating the significant role it plays.