Robert Weisberg writes: Now, compare what ordinary people can observe regarding global warming with the in-your-face facts regarding hard-wired genetically determined group differences. Even the most PC environment-is-everything egalitarian cannot avoid this reality. For example, outside of genetic predispositions how can one explain the readily visible evidence regarding the sizable and enduring differences in academic achievement between whites and blacks or between these two groups and Asians? And that nothing, even billion dollar panaceas have closed these gaps over a half century of trying? Similar enduring, well-known disparities exist in violent crime, welfare dependency, illegitimacy and poverty. Why are predominantly white cities such as San Francisco far more livable than black-dominated Detroit or East St. Louis? Can anything but innate differences in cognitive ability explain why sub-Sahara Africa remains forever economically under-developed despite hundreds of billions in foreign aid while Germany and Japan quickly returned to prosperity following WW II devastation?
These only begin the cataloguing of highly visible group-related differences suggesting a strong genetic element. Complicated contentious statistical models are unnecessary to show that schools populated by under-class African Americans are disasters compared to those with enrolling immigrant Chinese and Vietnamese and that these varied outcomes span generations. Any sports fan can see on TV that racial groups differ sharply in athletic performance.
As in the case of global warming, there are substantial financial benefits associated with upholding the environmental determinist orthodoxy. Why lavish billions on social engineering if group differences are largely intractable? The blank slate vision of human nature is a bonanza to all those who labor to close racial gaps in education, work on eliminating inner-city poverty and for those NGO’s trying to transform Rwanda into Switzerland.
The irony we have depicted bodes poorly for the future informed public discussion on these two issues. As the doomsday predicted by global warming believers fails to appear for all to see, its champions can only double down on suppressing disbelievers (it is hardly accidental that “global warming” has morphed into the scientifically nebulous “climate change”). Perhaps a parallel exists with the reaction of cultists who alleged that the end of the world was imminent and when that fateful day arrived and life continued, they became even more fervent in their obviously wrong beliefs. All those feeding at the climate catastrophe trough will not go without a fight, even if these means wasting billions, stalling economic growth and unemploying millions whose livelihood depends on fossil fuels.
A similar uptick in heresy prosecution will afflict those who argue that some group differences are sufficiently hard-wired that not even mighty Washington can force the incoming MIT freshman class resemble a cross-section of America. At best, a few heretics may gain their 15 minutes of notoriety but such voices are barely heard in public before being censored as “hate.” So, get ready for more inquisitions to stamp out “racism,” more mandatory sensitivity training, and more mainstream media dishonesty. Remember the travails of James Watson, the Nobel Prize winning co-discoverer of DNA, when he merely suggested that the lack of economic progress in Africa might be a result of low IQ’s though there is compelling evidence for his case. Alas, the repeated failures of social engineering projects will only further motivate lying and suppression.
We are not suggesting that modern science should rest exclusively on verification by personal experience. That would be a disaster–I for one have never observed an electron let alone an infinitesimally small vibrating string and I suspect that 99% of science is beyond what most people can readily grasp let alone observe. Rather, while we have come a long way from when scholars took pains to avoid offending the prevailing religious faith, we still have a way to go.
