The truth as I’ve experienced it? Brad DeLong deletes comments willy nilly.

I’m actually shocked though that Brad, who does appear to be a polymath, would be so disingenuous or ignorant as to think that “deniers” refers to anything other than the Holocaust.

I’m a little offended by the book’s laziness. Had they wanted, they could’ve recruited some clever deniers to feed them material for the climate chapter. People like Chris Horner and Anthony Watts and Roger Pielke are dishonest and wrong, but they’re not stupid or ignorant people—they engage in some high-level sophistry and deceit. But Dubner and Levitt didn’t even know enough about the subject to seek out the A-list bullshit artists.

As JHA knows full well, it actually states that Pielke is “dishonest and wrong” and merely implies that he is a “clever denier”. Pielke challenged DeLong to ‘please do tell what you find here that is evidence of being a “denier” or “stupid and wrong.”‘

Providing evidence that Pielke is dishonest and wrong, as indeed he is, is relevant to this challenge.

[Tim -- I'm glad to see you agree that DeLong never provided any evidence that Pielke is a "denier" as the e-mail DeLong posted initially charged. JHA]

A flat out lie. He prunes lots of comments that no one could possibly think are “actively misleading.”

A. Zarkov: Housing prices before 2008 had fallen in the past

Thank you.

Cheers,

A. Zarkov: I’m still not sure what your complaint about Wade is. Give me an example where he goes wrong.

My three initial questions. He didn’t address them. He should have. His comment: “[W]hat other policies founded on consensus wisdom could be waiting to come unraveled?” in unseemly in an erstwhile science reporter, and more the stuff of Popular Mechanics pipedream articles (or even Analog).

Cheers,

zuch:
I seem to remember Condomania back in the ‘80s … and some rather sad cases when that whole bubble imploded late that decade.Housing prices have unarguably fallen in the past.Cherry-picking your data points (assuming arguendo the accuracy of your statistic) doesn’t change that.And I think my complaint about Wade should have been obvious from my prior comment.Cheers,

Housing prices before 2008 had fallen in the past in some regions, but never for the country as a whole. I’m still not sure what your complaint about Wade is. Give me an example where he goes wrong.

A. Zarkov: The idea that “housing prices never fall” had a basis in fact. The country-wide median residential housing price actually never did fall before 2008.

I seem to remember Condomania back in the ’80s … and some rather sad cases when that whole bubble imploded late that decade. Housing prices have unarguably fallen in the past. Cherry-picking your data points (assuming arguendo the accuracy of your statistic) doesn’t change that.

And I think my complaint about Wade should have been obvious from my prior comment.

Cheers,

To repeat what I wrote in the comment you replied to: Pielke had challenged him to provide evidence that Pielke was “dishonest and wrong”.

That post provides evidence of this, which was what Pielke was called in the email that DeLong posted.

And Pielke’s personal attack on me that you linked in your post is also dishonest and wrong.

How about we all agree that Pielke is not a denier but that he is dishonest and wrong?

[Tim -- The e-mail DeLong posted referred to Pielke as, among other things, a "clever denier." Subsequently, Pielke and others challenged DeLong to substantiate labeling Pielke a "denier" -- something DeLong utterly failed to do. As for the other name-calling, I'll let the various posts and comments -- here and in the links -- speak for themselves. JHA]

No new mutation is required to cause an avg difference of 1 SD in intelligence between two groups that have had little gene flow between them in 50k years.

As evidenced even within particular families, there is enough *existing* genetic variation to cause IQ differences of several SD. That is, someone with IQ of +2 SD or -1 SD is NOT that way due to a specific mutation — they just have more or fewer of the particular alleles that slightly favor or do not favor intelligence. All that is required to cause group differences is that different selection pressures in the different groups made the favorable alleles more common in one group than in another. Your colleague Greg Clark has shown that, plausibly, such selection effects were operative in England over a few hundred year span over which he has data on wills and inheritances (wealthy families out reproduced poor ones, and perhaps wealth had some correlation with having the good alleles for intelligence). Whether that was the case over longer periods of time (e.g., due to adoption of agriculture) is not clear, and it is not clear the selection strengths varied among different groups. But it is not a hypothesis you can reject (as much as you might like to) by your trivial argument.

You can see some more detailed discussion and estimates at the link below — 1 SD change in 10k years is not at all implausible given selection pressures weaker than what Clark identified.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/12/recent-natural-selection-in-humans.html

Note this is NOT the lactose tolerance story. It’s existing variation due to many alleles and selection on those alleles, perhaps leading to group differences.

Change the word “intelligence” to “height” and for some reason this discussion becomes uncontroversial. Height and intelligence are both likely controlled by many alleles and exhibit significant variation within families and therefore groups. There seem to be group differences in average height…

“Against Climate McCarthyism: Jonathan H. Adler • November 8, 2009 9:56 pm: Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus have had enough of efforts to stifle debate over climate change policy, particularly by those who solicit quotes to “trash” those who don’t toe the party line. Roger Pielke, Jr. would add those who selectively edit their comment threads…”

Now he says that what he actually meant to write is:

Against Climate McCarthyism: The charge ‘climate McCarthyism’ refers to the tactic of labeling those who question climate policy orthodoxy as ‘deniers’ — a term meant to draw a moral equivalence between climate skeptics and holocaust deniers and chill dissenting views…”

A very different thing indeed.

I suggest that he edit his post up at the top of this thread, so that it reflects what he meant to write rather than what he did write.

Me, I always thought the original reference in “deniers” was to St. Peter in the courtyard by the fire, thrice before the cock crowed–with the subtext that repentance is very possible…

[Brad-- I haven't recanted or withdrawn a thing, merely clarified the intent of the original post. And you're a bit late. That update to the post was made within a few hours of the original post -- long before you posted anything in response. And the link -- from which the phrase "Climate McCarthyism" was drawn -- was in the original post. As for the phrase "denier," if that was the origin of the term in the climate context, it would be far less objectionable. JHA]

* Leave comments you don’t like in a moderation queue, suggesting to commenters that their submissions will eventually be approved. Approve others in the meantime.

I was reminded of this tactic when I saw Hans Bader comment in another thread.

Tim Lambert: And you are hardly in a position to complain, given your taking a swat at me with your linking of Pielke’s dishonest personal attack on me.

How about we all stop with the personal attacks? Is that too much to ask? I know that might be an insurmountable barrier for DeLong who for some reason needs to constantly insult people, but the rest of us can act like grown ups.

And you are hardly in a position to complain, given your taking a swat at me with your linking of Pielke’s dishonest personal attack on me.

[My comment was not about DeLong's repost of something by you, but a six-month old post by Joseph Romm. The original post was from March. It topped DeLong's list of links for the day on October 20. Whatever else this post, and your posts, may show, they do not support labeling Pielke a "denier." JHA]

zuch: Did they? If so, was it due to “group-think”? If so, ought we be looking into conspiracy and/or anti-trust prosecutions?

It’s possible to have group think without conspiracy. The idea that “housing prices never fall” had a basis in fact. The country-wide median residential housing price actually never did fall before 2008. Wall Street was applying, or should I say misapplying, inductive logic in thinking this would keep up into the indefinite future. Thus many in Wall Street believed that a geographically diversified Mortgage portfolio would not suffer a decline. As this notion reinforced their lust for profit, they bought into it in a big way– that’s where the group-think comes in.

BTW group-think about housing prices also applies to most economists including DeLong. Readers of his blog in 2005-2007 were given little notice as to what was in store for housing in 2008, apart from the occasional commenter lucky enough not to have been deleted. But readers of the blog Calculated Risk were much more fortunate. I sold my house in 2005 (very near the peak) and didn’t re-purchase. Of course the two blog hosts at CR were not professors, and that helped.

As for Nicholas Wade, what’s your problem with him? How has he sold his soul?

If the brightest minds on Wall Street got suckered by group-think into believing house prices would never fall, what other policies founded on consensus wisdom could be waiting to come unraveled?

Did they? If so, was it due to “group-think”? If so, ought we be looking into conspiracy and/or anti-trust prosecutions?

And then there’s the question of how to define “brightest minds”. If we’re using an operational definition, that might cull the herd a bit.

Nicholas Wade was a better writer when he wrote for Science. I suspect he’s sold his soul to the de’el here.

Cheers,

I’ve responded in his comments as follows:

Brad –

The charge “climate McCarthyism” in my post refers to the tactic of labeling those who question climate policy orthodoxy as “deniers” — a term meant to draw a moral equivalence between climate skeptics and holocaust deniers and chill dissenting views. The impetus for the post [http://volokh.com/2009/11/08/against-climate-mccarthyism/] was the use of the “denier” epithet against individuals who readily believe that human activity is warming the planet, but either challenge apocalyptic projections or specific policy measures. So, for instance, Joe Romm attacks as a “denier” anyone who deviates from what he deems to be the acceptable climate orthodoxy.

I linked to your post because you posted the charge that Roger Pielke Jr. is a “denier” on your blog, even though he believes human activity is warming the planet and that action should be taken to reduce emissions. I highlighted your selective editing of comments because, after making this inflammatory charge, you selectively edited comments that, among other things, respectfully asked you to substantiate the charge. [Screencaps of some of these comments are available in the comment thread to my post.] Your behavior was particularly objectionable as it was designed to mute criticism of your initial decision to endorse an intemperate and unjustified ad hominem, specifically the use of the McCarthyite “denier” label.

You have claimed in the past to only delete those comments that are “actively misleading.” I do not believe this is an accurate characterization of your approach to comments in the relevant threads. I would suggest that readers consult the screen caps of deleted comments and judge for themselves.

Note: I’ll cross-post this comment in the Volokh thread too, just in case you decide it’s actively misleading. Finally, I’ll note that it was not too long ago that you though I was “speaking sense” on global warming and that “It would be a much better world we would live in if the right thought like Jonathan Adler.” [ http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/04/tyler_cowen_spe.html

Regards,

JHA

As for my comment above that Brad deleted from his blog's comment thread but reposts above. After being criticized on Roger Pielke Jr's blog, Brad posted a six-month old attack on Pielke as the lead item in his round-up of purportedly recent blog posts. As the attack did not substantiate any of DeLong's prior attacks on Pielke, I determined that link served no other purpose than to swat at Pielke again, and commented accordingly on his blog. Apparently, Brad likes to dish, but is a bit sensitive when people come to his sandbox to respond. As I said in that post, I would have expected more from an academic of his stature, particularly one who is so willing to attack others in strong terms.

JHA

[UPDATE: When I originally posted my comment on DeLong's blog this morning, it appeared right away. Now, however, it has been replaced with a comment from DeLong that edits my comment, as well as my post, and accuses me of lying and being "actively misleading." I'll let readers judge for themselves -- and won't delete comments that disagree with my view.]

If the brightest minds on Wall Street got suckered by group-think into believing house prices would never fall, what other policies founded on consensus wisdom could be waiting to come unraveled? Global warming, you say? You mean it might be harder to model climate change 20 years ahead than house prices 5 years ahead? Surely not – how could so many climatologists be wrong?

What’s wrong with consensuses is not the establishment of a majority view, which is necessary and legitimate, but the silencing of skeptics. “We still have whole domains we can’t talk about,” Dr. Bouchard said, referring to the psychology of differences between races and sexes.

The silencing of skeptics is what climate McCarthyism is all about. The kind of drive-by snark that DeLong engages in is a perfect example.

Abstract
Current methods for inferring population structure from genetic data do not provide formal significance tests for population differentiation. We discuss an approach to studying population structure (principal components analysis) that was first applied to genetic data by Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues. We place the method on a solid statistical footing, using results from modern statistics to develop formal significance tests. We also uncover a general “phase change” phenomenon about the ability to detect structure in genetic data, which emerges from the statistical theory we use, and has an important implication for the ability to discover structure in genetic data: for a fixed but large dataset size, divergence between two populations (as measured, for example, by a statistic like FST) below a threshold is essentially undetectable, but a little above threshold, detection will be easy. This means that we can predict the dataset size needed to detect structure.

How well can you do with two principal components? Well enough to resolve Europen genetic substructure as shown here.

Genetics has been made into an inflammatory subject when it relates to individual differences. The recently retired expert in twin and adoption studies Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr. reminisces on group think and political correctness in a farewell interview to Science. He describes the anti-intellectual atmosphere at UC Berkeley he encountered as graduate student:

Q: What were attitudes toward behavioral genetics in the early years of your career?

TB: In graduate school at UC [the University of California] Berkeley, I was reading a book edited by psychiatrist D. D. Jackson on the etiology of schizophrenia. The first chapter, by a geneticist, was on twin studies. Then Jackson refuted it all with just the kind of crap you hear now against twin studies. He said families are the cause of schizophrenia. I remember saying in a graduate seminar, “Most of this stuff [in Jackson's argument] is junk”—I crawled out of the seminar room a bloody pulp. The reaction [from seminar members] was my first absolutely clear-cut demonstration that psychologists believed correlation is causation, … and many still do.

In the ’70s, when I was teaching research by [IQ researcher Arthur] Jensen and [twin researcher Francis] Galton, people picketed me, called me a racist, tried to get me fired. The progressive student association sent members in to ask hostile questions. … So I put a tape recorder on the podium and said: “I’m going to tape my lectures.” I never heard from them again. They knew what they were saying was nonsense and I would be able to prove it.

…

TB: Within the university—at least at U. Minnesota—the cumulative impact of behavioral genetics findings has had a lot of effect. There’s a lot more tolerance for the idea of genetic influences in individual differences.

But we still have whole domains we can’t talk about. One of the great dangers in the psychology of individual differences is self-censorship. For example, when I was a student, it was widely accepted that black self-esteem was much lower than white self-esteem, and that was a cause of differences in achievement between the two groups. Now that’s been completely overturned—there is virtually no racial difference in self-esteem. But people had enormous amounts of data [showing this] that they didn’t publish because it did not fit the prevailing belief system. How much wasted effort was generated by the flawed self-esteem work as an explanation of the black-white IQ difference? Now a days, I’m sure there are people who are not publishing stuff on sex differences. Look what happened to Larry Summers [who resigned as president of Harvard University after suggesting that discrimina tion alone doesn't account for women's lower representation in math-based disciplines]. I talk about those things in my class all the time—that males and females have different interests; … in a sense, females have a broader and richer view of life. There are a lot of people who simply won’t talk about those things. Academics, like teenagers, sometimes don’t have any sense regarding the degree to which they are conformists.

Credit for putting all this together goes to Steve Hsu. BTW Hsu is an Obama fan– I guess no one is perfect.

Grover Gardner: But for four years? Your genes must have gotten crossed with those of an elephant–or my mother-in-law. ;-)

Some people have good memories, others just make stuff up.

Prior studies have generally been performed on a relatively small number of individuals and/or markers. A recent study (Rosenberg et al. 2002) examined 377 autosomal micro-satellite markers in 1,056 individuals from a global sample of 52 populations and found significant evidence of genetic clustering, largely along geographic (continental) lines. Consistent with prior studies, the major genetic clusters consisted of Europeans/West Asians (whites), sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. ethnic groups living in the United States, with a discrepancy rate of only 0.14%.

Wow. “[M[arkers", eh? So if you look at what's different, you find what's different. Who's looking at what is not different? And who's explaining why the supposed differences [as opposed to what's the same] make a “race”?

OT, I know, but I can’t let this kind of folderol go unanswered….

Cheers,

Ha, DeLong keeps digging.
Let’s look at this thread http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/20050912_popula.html#comment-9503254
In response to a still not deleted post beginning “Defined as genetically distinct groups, races don’t exist. That’s what I learned, anyway, and nothing anyone has written here suggests I wasn’t paying attention to the teacher.” DeLong deletes

As for your teacher, and the other people who said this kind of thing — well, mistakes were made. The key is that a given allele that is especially common in Swedes is correlated with _other_ alleles that are especially common in Swedes. Do principal component analysis on the covariance matrix for many loci (or cluster analysis) and !presto! — Bob’s your uncle.

First I’d heard that Swedes were a race. That explains the Sven and Ole jokes us Norskis tell, eh?

Cheers,

If you tried that with your thesis committee, I’m quite sure you would have been set straight. But the choice is clearly yours … present your evidence, and make your case … or say in a condescending fashion, “why don’t you look it up yourself [even though I haven't given you the foggiest as to where to find it]?”, and make yourself out to be an unconvincing and seemingly ignerrent blowhard. Choice is yours, as I said.

Cheers,

In response to a still not deleted post beginning “Defined as genetically distinct groups, races don’t exist. That’s what I learned, anyway, and nothing anyone has written here suggests I wasn’t paying attention to the teacher.” DeLong deletes…

I understand saving that comment to some corner of your hard drive in the hope that someday you could throw it in Brad’s face. But for four years? Your genes must have gotten crossed with those of an elephant–or my mother-in-law. ;-)

So let’s figure a really advantageous mutation–one that spreads out so that its share in the gene pool rises by one percent every generation–hits some lucky sod in the human population some 25K years–1000 generations–ago. And suppose that lucky sod was part of an interbreeding human population of 10M back then…

Then today the share of the population who are advantageous mutants would be… 0.2%. Our generations are so long that we have not had enough *time* since the initial radiation to develop into proper subspecies. You need much more selection pressure to produce that…

Now there are features of humanity that have been under such selection pressure: no-melanin is very good in Sweden, while melanin is very good in Congo; sensitivity to wool is very bad in wet climates far from the equator after the domestication of sheep; lactose tolerance as an adult is very good after the domestication of the cow.

But the possibility that there was some big intelligence-boosting mutation somewhere along the radiative way that makes all the Aryans genetically smart and all the Africans genetically dumb? Very, very low. It’s something that you bet on and believe in and that makes you think that it is really important who belongs to the Aryan race and who does not… only if you already believe it for… some other reason…

edit: as much of the evidence as you could, anyway

The knuckle-draggers who have no clue–absolutely no clue–about the magnitude of gene flow across subparts of the human population have arrived!

His comment was, I think (this may be the wrong one), the drive-by:

“That’s real mature, dredging up a six-month-old post From Joe Romm to top your links of the day in order to take a swat at Pielke without ever addressing any of his arguments yourself. I would have expected more from an academic of your statute. Jonathan H. Adler”

For that comment to have stayed, IIRC, it would have had to contain an argument that what Joe Romm said was wrong–an argument that brought some information to the table.

It didn’t.

Let’s look at this thread http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/20050912_popula.html#comment-9503254

In response to a still not deleted post beginning “Defined as genetically distinct groups, races don’t exist. That’s what I learned, anyway, and nothing anyone has written here suggests I wasn’t paying attention to the teacher.” DeLong deletes

As for your teacher, and the other people who said this kind of thing – well, mistakes were made. The key is that a given allele that is especially common in Swedes is correlated with _other_ alleles that are especially common in Swedes. Do principal component analysis on the covariance matrix for many loci (or cluster analysis) and !presto! – Bob’s your uncle.

and then

This gets right to the point (see an earlier post by gcochran for a less terse explanation). Too bad that very few readers here will understand (or even try to understand) what it means. Bambi vs Godzilla had the insight to ask the question properly. Will he or she make the effort to understand the answer?

Imagine each individual’s genetic code as a point in a space of *very high* dimension. Then look at clusters of points. (Define a cluster as a group of points whose distance from each other is less than some radius; distinct clusters are separated by distances larger than this radius.) These clusters map directly onto traditional groupings of ethnicity. In fact, a recent study by Neil Risch at UCSF showed that self-reported “race” correlates very well with the clustering results. (Mixed race people are obviously an exception, but as discussed they are a small fraction of the total population, and will continue to be for some time.)

People (especially professors of social science) who confidently state to their students that “there is no genetic basis for race” should think through the analysis described above and look at the data carefully if they want to retain their credentials as scientists.

From the conclusions of the Risch paper (Am. J. Hum. Genet. 76:268–275, 2005):

Attention has recently focused on genetic structure in the human population. Some have argued that the amount of genetic variation within populations dwarfs the variation between populations, suggesting that discrete genetic categories are not useful (Lewontin 1972; Cooper et al. 2003; Haga and Venter 2003). On the other hand, several studies have shown that individuals tend to cluster genetically with others of the same ancestral geographic origins (Mountain and Cavalli-Sforza 1997; Stephens et al. 2001; Bamshad et al. 2003). Prior studies have generally been performed on a relatively small number of individuals and/or markers. A recent study (Rosenberg et al. 2002) examined 377 autosomal micro-satellite markers in 1,056 individuals from a global sample of 52 populations and found significant evidence of genetic clustering, largely along geographic (continental) lines. Consistent with prior studies, the major genetic clusters consisted of Europeans/West Asians (whites), sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. ethnic groups living in the United States, with a discrepancy rate of only 0.14%.

Nothing but garbage his readers shouldn’t have to wade through there, I guess.

It doesn’t take long googling DeLong results on Marginal Revolution to find people writing about things he doesn’t want his readers to know about.

Oh. So I gotta go do your research for you, eh?

No, ya gotta do YOUR research. I already know about that paper… apparently you don’t.

As for “worked in da bidness” – yeah, I have too.

John Moore: There was a paper (you can dig up the cite) that proclaimed that the debate was over, because zero skeptic papers had been published in a significant set of peer reviewed journals over some time period.

Oh. So I gotta go do your research for you, eh?

John Moore: Of course, if you understand science, you recognize that this paper was almost a proof of the proposition that censorship of skeptical papers is common. If you know how the grant process works, and how the peer culture works, you know that it is dangerous to go up against AGW.

Really? I worked in the bidness; I know the bidness. That doesn’t comport with my take on it … but that would just be ‘argument from personal experience”, so I won’t bother. I’ll just ignore your unsubstantiated claims. M’kay?

John Moore: No, I’m not gonna provide cites. Who the hell that you would believe is going to admit to the censorship (and, more importantly, intimidation) that is happening? Science? (read their biased editorials) BAMA? Read their biased editorials. Even more than the climatologists, the writers are deeply in the bag for AGW.

Once again, argumentum ad bald assertion. My, how compelling.

Cheers,

The one from Roger Pielke–the one in which he claimed “since you do not delete comments…”–went as actively misleading.

the one from Dylan Williams went as a drive-by.

[No, Brad, there are others too, including those by Michael Shellenberger, "Ron," and yours truly. I'm sure they were all "actively misleading" as well. JHA]

Of course, the readers (or posters, if that option is selected) have to be judicious but I believe VC readers (and posters– except Professor Volokh, who is as indecent a holy terror as you can find–) are.

I only “thumbs down” comments that start with “Um…”