Douglas_Knight comments on Beware of WEIRD psychological samples - Less Wrong

38 Post author: ciphergoth 13 September 2009 11:28AM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 16 September 2009 03:04:34AM 0 points [-]

The very title "debunking of scientific fossils and straw persons" makes it sound like it has limited use. Johnicholas asked for positive statements, but a debunking is purely negative. Just because Gould lied about X doesn't make his position wrong.

I suspected from your first comment that all you meant was that people who attempt to prove cultural bias in IQ tests have failed. That is certainly true, with some surprising findings, like that the American black-white gap is larger on questions that are, on the face of them, more culturally neutral. But relying on an opposition you don't trust to do the research is a highly biased search strategy. It is not a great political victory to say that Raven's matrices are culturally biased, so few say it, but that doesn't make it false.