Your biggest problem is that you’re ignorant. “The DNA mix is muddled”. That’s your theory as to why there’s no genetic basis for “race”? That’s just stupid.

The domination of the NBA by black athletes is entirely, 100%, completely, totally, with no exception, absolutely cultural.

(Seriously, rollo, if you can’t even point to a genetic marker for being black, its a little difficult to argue that white people have genes that prevent them from jumping)

See whether your argument works when you substitute “basketball” with equestrian sports, swimming, golf or lacrosse rollo. I suppose the racial composition of those activities must be genetically based, too.

See also hockey, snowboarding, downhill skiing, surfing, fencing, handball, polo, squash, etc etc.

Much as I’d love to embrace any assertions re: the genetic superiority of us ‘brothas’ (at least, when it comes to non-intellectual pursuits, of course), using organized sport as an irrefutable example of the innate phsyical superiority of negros is ridiculous and easily rebutted.

Speaking anecdotally, I suck at both hoops (am barely 5’10) and football (am luck if I tip the scales at 135lbs.)

We’ll leave the dimensions of my penis to the imagination…

Let’s get back the the “Lysenkoist” charge against Myers, which was the original topic of the thread. Let’s even allow for the sake of argument that “Lysenkoist” simply means “someone who allows politics to influence his scientific thinking” rather than the more exact “someone who wants to ignore established scientific findings and who uses the secret police to enforce his decision” (or more exactly still, “someone who supports Lamarckeanism, against all scientific evidence”.)

Adams, a non-biologist, was attacked by Myers, another non-scientist, because of number of know-nothing statements Adams made, one of which was a refusal to grant credibility to any professional biologist regarding evolution, since they all have a conflict of interest.

Zywicki, another non-biologist, commiserates with poor Adams, who had been attacked by an evil Lysenkoist.

But even if Myers were in fact a Lysenkoist, it would be irrelevant here, because Myers vs. Adams was a fight between a scientists supporting science and a non-nothing.

Furthermore, Zywicki is political and not scientific, as is out friend Albert E. here. Myers is both political and a scientist. It looks like the political non-scientists injecting politics into science are Albert and Zywicki.

The Summers issue is a political issue and Summers’ supporters, such as Albert here and Zywicki, are politicos. Summers is an administrator, not a scientist, who was speculating off the top of his head about using some untested science to develop new educational strategies and admissions policies. He got the normal opposition that administrators get when they propose new politicies. He kept his job and still is a powerful man. No lynch mob, no gulag.

It’s quite normal, and in fact necessary, for scientists to oppose new, unproven scientific theories. It’s quite a different thing than trying to ditch established scientific for no good reason, which is what Lysenko did.

And if politics entered into it, so what? Summers was in an educational-policy position, not a scientific-research position, and he was defended by a noisy claque of political operatives and ideologues, few of whom were working scientists.

I think that it’s time for Albert to declare victory, put his tail between his legs, and scurry home.

Sex, however, is abundantly biological and so there is very good reason to suspect that innate differences are in play, and thus investigate this matter. It may prove very difficult. In contrast, there is no point in investigating racial differences because we’ve been unable to find a biologically meaningful definition of “race” that would make such an investigation possible. On the other hand, if you want to search for innate differences between two or more independent groups of biologically related people, be my guest.

ID is creationism with a lab coat thrown over it. As such, its status as orthodoxy precedes that of evolution. Therefore, on that basis alone, ID is the Lysenkoist orthodoxy resisting evolution. It’s just that evolution has won the war but there are still some stragglers fighting battles.

But there’s another way to neutrally measure Lysenkoism. Of the following two statements, which is more likely to be a product of an ideology?Human beings are mammals and are unexceptionally part of the natural universe.Human beings are unique and essentially independent from the natural universe.The second statement stinks of ideology.
There is a strong ideologically based opposition to evolutionary psychology, that’s true. But that opposition is tiny relative to the social and even scientific orthodoxy regarding sex and even race. The orthodoxy on these matters isn’t that nurture rules, it’s that nature rules. As is the case with ID and evolution, the notion that “nurture is all” (with regard to the most hotly contested matters of sex and race) is a modern notion and the unquestioned assumption of nature as primary preceded it. The orthodoxy is biological determinism. It is Lysenkoism, if one of these competing ideologies could be said to be such.

Religious conservatives see oppression everywhere they look because of confirmation bias. And in the case of Christians, also because martyrdom is essential to their worldview.

How about genetically different?
Then the values hierarchy is what’s suspect.
Because that’s where the problem lies.
What you guys want is to keep the values hierarchy and throw out the evidence of difference.
So that dissing Bush as a chimp is okay because we all know that simians are inferior to humans.
Calling people “’tards” is okay because we all know being retarded is being inferior to “normals”.
It’s not okay to talk about the NBA’s preponderance of genetically different individuals because that will lead to other, less embraceable observations.