bambu;5260312 said:
You're quoting from a book that has been highly criticized by (black and white) experts of their fields. I've told you this before.
Rushton has been criticised for his use of r/K selection theory to explain alleged differences between his identified "races". Evolutionary Biologist Joseph L. Graves (2002) notes that the theory had long lacked support and had been invalidated before Rushton's book was written. According to Graves, Rushton's claim (still present in the third edition and without any acknowledgement of counter-evidence), that r- and K-life history theory was 'a basic principle of modern evolutionary theory' "supports my view that Rushton does not understand life history theory. Thus he employs it incorrectly and through this error his work serves racist ideological agendas."[11]
Lieberman (2001), noting that many animal species do not follow the predictions of r/K theory, has criticised Rushton's classification of arctic conditions as more "stable" than tropical ones, and also his selection of very few environments compared to the variety that human beings have occupied.[12] Brace, in a comment to the same piece, writes that Northern mice, foxes, and deer are not better endowed intellectually than their tropical relatives, and the same is true for virtually all other animals with Arctic and tropical representatives.[12]
Rushton's claims that variations in IQ and behaviour can be predicted and found from his application of r/K selection theory has also received criticism. Scott MacEachern (2006) criticised Rushton's assertion that mental deficits are visible in an evolutionary context, with such cognitive differences existing prehistorically as well. According to MacEachern, an examination of the archaeological record does not support this assertion. As such, regional differences in IQ test score results should not be ascribed to variations in human evolutionary development.[13]
Peregrine et al. (2003) argued, even though using "three versions of the ‘race’ variable, each representing one of the apparent definitions that Rushton used", that "Rushton’s predictions do not find much support, regardless of how ‘race’ is operationalized." They used data from the "186-society Standard Cross-Cultural Sample" and found no statistical support for the predicted associations between "race" and behavior.[14]Francisco Gil-White, wrote of Peregrine's work: "The authors are not doing justice to their own findings. It is not true that "Rushton’s predictions do not find much support"; what is true is that Rushton’s predictions are completely contradicted."[15]
Psychologist David P. Barash notes that r- and K-selection may have some validity when considering the so-called demographic transition, whereby economic development characteristically leads to reduced family size and other K traits. "But this is a pan-human phenomenon, a flexible, adaptive response to changed environmental conditions of lowered mortality and greater pay-off attendant upon concentrating parental investment in a smaller number of offspring [...] Rushton wields r- and K-selection as a Procrustean bed, doing what he can to make the available data fit[...]. Bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every page of this despicable book."[16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race,_Evolution,_and_Behavior#r.2FK_theory_as_an_explanation_for_the_data
DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/minorities.shtml
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