Of course it's evidence. If you consider what my original claim was- that it is LIKELY that there is a genetic component for top-end sprinting that's found overwhelmingly in sub-saharan descended blacks- then anything that makes that conclusion more likely is evidence in favor of that conclusion. Showing that all the things I've quoted arise completely independently of innate top-end sprinting ability would be evidence to the contrary. All you've done is say that it's POSSIBLE there are confounding reasons. Of course it's POSSIBLE. But you haven't quoted anything that actually supports your theory of global confounds.

Top ten all-time performances €” Men's 100 Meters


Updated 31 May 2008

Rank Time Wind
Athlete Nation Date Location
1 9.72 +1.7 Usain Bolt Jamaica 31 May 2008 New York City
2 9.74 +1.7 Asafa Powell Jamaica 9 September 2007 Rieti
3 9.79 +0.1 Maurice Greene United States 16 June 1999 Athens
4-6 9.84 +0.7 Donovan Bailey Canada 27 July 1996 Atlanta
+0.2 Bruny Surin Canada 22 August 1999 Seville
+1.0 Tyson Gay† United States 18 August 2006 Zürich
7-9 9.85 +1.2 Leroy Burrell United States 6 July 1994 Lausanne
+0.6 Justin Gatlin United States 22 August 2004 Athens
+1.7 Olusoji Fasuba Nigeria 12 May 2006 Doha
10 9.86 +1.2 Carl Lewis United States 25 August 1991 Tokyo
−0.4 Frankie Fredericks Namibia 3 July 1996 Lausanne
+1.8 Ato Boldon Trinidad and Tobago 19 April 1998 Walnut
+0.6 Francis Obikwelu Portugal 22 August 2004 Athens


All black as of 2008.

It's not evidence if it's the result of non-genetic reasons such as sociological causes.

Again, you want to make the claims so the burden is on you. I've taken a sociology of sport course and some of the papers were specifically on this topic. Evidence was given to the contrary of your position...I'm not going to do your research for you. You want to claim that 63/64 WR's in the NFL is evidence of a genetic top-end speed disposition in blacks? Then YOU find if there's evidence to the contrary. Do your own intellectual due diligence. For ****'s sake.

http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm

Call it whatever you like, my motivation is that I want to see a world more like Norway than, say, Zimbabwe. The demographic trends seem to be going radically in the other direction, and I fear that as a species we may be headed back to the Olduvai gorge that we left a hundred thousand years ago. It's very doubtful that nations with an average IQ of 75 can maintain a modern technological civilization; they will forever be dependent upon outside brainpower and a drain on more advanced nations.

With the enormous problems we face on this planet, we need all the intelligence we can get, but it seems that the people who statistically possess the most of that most precious resource are choosing to commit genetic suicide, which I find bizarre and disappointing.

And why does everyone want bring this discussion back to sports? I think there are much more important areas of genetic difference to consider than running speed, don't you? Be fearless, think bigger, and liberate yourself from your PC conditioning!

lol at the dressing up of your emotional problems as some deep concern about the planet.

Not only that, but they are also all of them most likely of specifically West African (and sub-Saharan) origin.

4 of the 13 seems obviously to be from there; the two Nigerians, the Portugese guy (who immigrated from Nigeria), and the Namibian. As for the rest (2 Jamaicans, the remaining 7 are from the US or Canada), they are likely descendents of slaves, and basically only West Africans were brought over to the American continents.

Assuming these were sociology papers (as it was a sociology course), I highly doubt they presented evidence contrary to his position. Evidence of societal bias has little to nothing to do with the truth or falsity of claims regarding genetic differences. Unless, of course, if these papers presented and statistically proved models for explaining the entirety of racial discrepancies across positions in sports. If they attempted to do so, I'd love to read them.

lol at you dismissing facts that don't fit your worldview as "emotional problems". Human beings are obviously the most important species on this planet, and the only known conscious beings in the universe, so it is natural that we should be concerned about our collective intelligence. The one development that does make me hopeful is transhumanist technology, which I expect will make current racial differences seem trivial and will lead to an evolutionary bifurcation which will render **** sapiens of every race obsolete. The question is will we get there, or will our civilization collapse under the strain of maintaining a population of 7 billion plus, the vast majority of whom have absolutely nothing to contribute and are simply along for the ride.

Head asplode.

Create an empirically testable prediction. Attempt to falsify it.

"There is a genetic predisposition for black people to have a higher top end speed than white people."

This can be tested. In fact, it HAS been tested. It's FALSE.

Nice genetic fallacy in your post.

And top marathoners are always african. Clearly africans are GENETICALLY predisposed to be distance runners too!

OR they tend to live in high altitude (which is optimal for long distance aerobic fitness) AND they have the best coaches in the world and best training programs AND they fund their runners AND there's an incentive to be a runner (economic reasons).

These factors aren't present in european or north american countries. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with genetics!

This is the sort of ******** that just infuriates me. It's just so comfortable to posit genetic differences instead of looking for alternate explanations.

Why is Canada always (almost always) the best at hockey? We have the best development program in the world...that's the only reason. We fund the hell out of junior (and senior) hockey; proximity to the best coaches and professional league in the world; it's culturally the most popular sport for kids to play; etc etc. Nothing to do with genetics!

In sports, follow the money. Countries that fund athletes and have a strong junior development program will produce the best athletes. Absolutely NOTHING to do with genetics. ****!

next you will be the man who has to step up to save the world from itself.

dear lord

Yawn. This thread was not created to discuss trivial things like athletic performance! Can we get back on topic please?

In a vacuum, the evidence I've presented (multiple things in each of multiple sports spanning multiple continents), combined with your complete lack of evidence (anything anywhere where top-end nonblack sprinters are remotely as common as top-end black sprinters), is evidence in favor of my conclusion. It's not CONCLUSIVE evidence, of course, but I never claimed that it was.

You are the one arguing that what we can measure (top-end sprinting ability in many forms) is not an inherent difference. Demonstrate how this is so with ANY empirical evidence. Even the youth records for the US, down to age 10 which were the earliest I can find, are blacks.

That paper is completely ****ing horrible btw. It doesn't present a coherent argument for your point, to say the least. Also, can't anybody just say that something that leads to hypertension- retaining extra salt and fluid- might be good for surviving a trip on a slave ship where 15-30% died on the way? That's kind of an important selection pressure to ignore.

Nice straw man.

I doubt that you read the whole article, then.

It argues that the prevalence of sprinters shouldn't be attributed to genetics; there are alternate explanations for the observations.

No one disputes your claim about the prevalence of blacks in certain events like distance running or sprinting; what's being disputed is that the explanation is genetic rather than sociological.

Also, the 300years or so of slavery is not enough time to produce the sorts of adaptations you're suggesting.

I don't even know what this sentence means. But we were discussing whether genetic differences come to play regarding the racial discrepancies in sprinting/fast NFL positions, not whatever it was you just said. And if someone did say that and I missed it, lets get rid of such a vague statement anyways, it has no use to us.

Wow, I'm out of the loop apparently. But I guess now something (I'm not sure what, and I damn well have no idea how) has been proven false!

As far as your cited paper goes, it was pretty terrible.

"The likelihood is that these results reflect Africa's status as the homeland of **** sapiens: since every human population outside Africa is essentially a subset of the original African population, it makes sense that everyone in such a population would be a genetic subset of Africans, too. So you can expect groups of Africans to be more variable in respect to almost anything that has a genetic component. If, for example, your genes control how you react to aspirin, you'd expect to see more Africans than whites for whom one aspirin stops a bad headache, more for whom no amount of aspirin works, more who are allergic to aspirin, and more who need to take, say, four aspirin at a time to get any benefit-but far fewer Africans for whom the standard two-aspirin dose would work well. And to the extent that running is influenced by genetic factors you would expect to see more really fast blacks-and more really slow blacks-than whites but far fewer Africans of merely average speed. Blacks are like boys. Whites are like girls."

This isn't a valid argument. One has to prove greater phenotypical variability exists, you simply can't assume it exists due to greater genetic variability (measured simply through brute statistics). If the mass of variation if held in junk DNA, its totally irrelevent. And applying such statistical data to specific phenotypical claims is absurd. He is correct that males have greater variance in many areas (easily predictable by an understanding of the foundations of sexual dimorphism). He has absolutely no justification for this claim regarding race. Also, note that the term black isn't defined. If I'm discussing, say, white americans vs. black americans in regards to sports, I'm talking about something much different than the population of Africa vs. the population of Europe.

Of course, even if your cited article proved greater genetic variability in terms of athletic performance between the races...that wouldn't much help your claim now, would it?

"Now it appears that African heritage is important as an initial determinant of sprinting ability, but also that the most important advantage of all is some kind of cultural or environmental factor associated with the Caribbean."

Or there is something genetically different to that Jamaican subrace. Wonder what that could be? http://www.slate.com/id/2197721/

As far as I know, no one knows everything about human genetic diversity, and nothing has been PROVEN like you think it has. It's all quite up in the air, and it's all quite exciting to find out about. Open your mind and jump along for the ride. If you are interested in doing so, I'd suggest www.gnxp.com

Preserving intelligence which seems to be your new argument...is quite laughable.......Preserving intelligence is about archiving and cataloging knowledge to be passed to the next generation. So they can pick up where the last generation left off and move forward. On top of that people already discredited this argument by pointing out social, economic and environmental factors that i guess you are choosing to ignore.

Edit: The sports is the only interesting thing in this thread. Sorry no one is siding with you on your master race ideas....

I hope you aren't trying to suggest that the explanation can't have some of both? I fully agree that you aren't going to become a world-class sprinter without excellent training and facilities. That doesn't mean that genetics don't play a role.

Why would it have to?

Actually, that doesn't seem unlikely -- your sarcastic statement above seems pretty dumb when it's well known that the top (male) long distance runners are all East African, not West African.

Haven't followed this all that closely, but I believe I've read that this is a bit of a myth. Many of the top long distance runners are supposedly low-landers, and also weren't running large distances daily to get to school or whatnot.

Yeah, sure -- impoverished East African nations have the best coaches and training programs and funding in the world.

You are really stretching it now.

Hardly any blacks are playing hockey, lots of whites are doing track and field sports. Your comparison seems completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Wow. 100% nurture, 0% nature -- that is an extremist position to hold, one that is very rarely seen these days. That you are holding such a radical position versus what seems to be the emerging scientific consensus (most abilities are likely to be a mixture of genes/talents and environment) should have given you pause to think, and do some research on your own. It however looks like you have completely ignored doing that.

Anyway, let's see what an actual PhD in genomics Daniel MacArthur, says about that matter:

"I'm certainly not arguing here that genetics doesn't play any role in Bolt's success - or in the remarkable over-representation of West African descendents in Olympic short-distance track events, or the similarly impressive skew towards East Africans among marathon runners. In fact I think most geneticists would be staggered if this was the case, even though direct evidence for underlying genes is currently very thin on the ground."

(In a critique he wrote of the media misprepresenting the findings about the ACTN3 gene alleles' influence on muscle fibers. And by "thin on the ground", he's alluding to the fact that we don't know the exact reason why some have dispositions to be fast runners, after it was found that the ACTN3 gene is common enough that it can't be more than just part of the reason.)

I love how it's "my paper"...it's Malcolm Gladwell...geebus.

East Africa tends to have more stable governments. So, we'd expect more East African athletes...DUCY?

I'm done. I'm not going to try to convince stupid people that their methodology is garbage. Just-so stories are fun, but a waste of time.

See if you still think so after reading the following:

Gwen Torrence (b. 1965)


Gwen Torrence
Considered one of the world's fastest women, track star and Decatur native Gwen Torrence spent the first few days of her life in an incubator, a time her mother described as "the only slow part of Gwen's life." The youngest of five children, Torrence was born on June 12, 1965, with her umbilical cord around her neck. She suffered no ill effects from her precarious start in life and went on to become one of the most decorated runners in history.

Torrence's running ability first attracted attention when she was a student at Columbia High School in DeKalb County. Her physical education teacher, Ray Bonner, noticed her speed and decided to time Torrence in the 220-yard dash; she broke the state record wearing street clothes and low-heeled shoes. Bonner coaxed Torrence into joining the track team. At first Torrence was too shy to practice with the team. She won three consecutive state 100- and 200-meter dash championships, earning All-American honors her senior year, 1982-83. That summer she also won two gold medals at the Junior Olympics.

Sorry, fixed my post.

I never said anything about being a state-class sprinter

http://run-down.com/guests/je_black_athletes_p2.php

Just the first link I opened, but I've saw this data repeating. The number of these fibers are pretty much the ones who you are born with.