The Inductivist previewed a new paper from J. Phillipe Rushton, which contained this interesting claim I’ve chosen to excerpt: “Both within human populations (e.g., siblings), and between populations (e.g., races, nations, states), studies find that darker pigmented people average higher levels of aggression and sexual activity (and also lower IQ).” I had never heard the siblings claim before and that would indeed be a big deal. But both Razib Khan and Jason Malloy actually read the paper and found that nowhere inside does Rushton actually support that claim. Searching for mentions of “sibling”, I also found nothing.
For what this has to do with David P. Goldman (the artist formerly known as “Spengler”) see here.
Entitled to an Opinion 
May 7, 2012 at 3:32 am
I was having a look on the Occidental Ascent site earlier in which Chuck links to Jensen’s latest paper on Rushton with “I guess he hasn’t got word of my Hereditarian debunking.”
http://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/new-jensen-paper/#comments
In the table of data on physical anthropology, some of the information is just completely wrong, like
– skeletal maturation rates showing an earlier maturation in Africans than Europeans and East Asians, while the skeletal data (c.f. Eveleth and Tanner 1974) just shows completely the opposite pattern with earlier East Asian skeletal maturation than African and earlier African than European
– prognathism and tooth size being greater in Europeans/Caucasoids than East Asians. that’s false.
– bimaxillary breadth is greater in Africans than Europeans, not less – http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0031918.t013&representation=PNG_S
It’s hard to see how he can be taken that seriously after being wrong on basic known physical anthropology information that he claims supports his theory.
It’s also been a while since I’ve read some of Rushton’s stuff, but one other thing I seem to remember was that he seemed to think that getting a more gracile skull (and I think wrongly believing that cranial gracility showed an Asian>European>African pattern) was necessarily to “allow” brain expansion. But macrocephalics like hydrocephalics show this to be extremely wrong (hydrocephalics have problems because of fluid pressure not so much their cranial size). The braincase expands as a result of feedback pressures from the growing brain. The braincase does not have to first be permitted by evolution to grow and then the brain grow into it, or the two happen simultaneously. If we made some teageegeepea clone with a brain size booster gene swapped in (to the already prodigious brain), you wouldn’t need a neurocranium size booster at the same time – the neurocranium would simply expand to fit.
May 13, 2012 at 9:54 pm
I think of Jensen as a serious scientist. Shame he’s working with Rushton.
May 7, 2012 at 9:58 pm
Wow. It isn’t even clear from the article that Rushton was citing anything — however erroneously — for the “e,g,, siblings” claim. Shame on him, and shame on the reviewers/editors.