dagblog - Comments for "The Agony of the Tweet "

Olympic Rules: One Bad Tweet

artappraiser — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 06:10:21 +0000

Olympic Rules: One Bad Tweet And You’re Out
By Annie Rose, ABC News, July 20, 2012

A rude tweet insulting athletes from another country has cost a second Olympian a spot at the games.

Michel Morganella, one of the players on Switzerland’s Olympic men’s soccer team, sent out such a tweet following his team’s 2-1 loss to South Korea on Sunday. Morganella’s tweet said that Koreans should “burn themselves” and described them as “retards.”

Despite Morganella’s quick apology posted on his Twitter page, a prompt response from the Swiss team chief resulted in Morganella’s Twitter account deleted from the social networking site and his dismissal from the team.

“He discriminated, insulted and violated the dignity of the South Korean football team and the South Korean people,” Swiss team chief Gian Gilli said to Reuters.

[....]

The International Olympic Committee created “IOC Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines” which clearly states that upon noncompliance of the guidelines an athlete can be stripped of their Olympic Games accreditations.

[....]

Get off high horse and

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 05:04:16 +0000

In reply to There were times in this

Get off high horse and ride.

Here's map of where slaves came from - very focused on West Coast: http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/intro-maps.faces#map7

5% of trade to Americas went to the US - of roughly 12 million over several hundred years, that's about 600,000, from which remaining millions in US would be descended. 2/3 of slaves headed for the Americas were men, likely selected where possible for obvious size & strength where possible.

We don't need pure breeds to describe any of the sports bit - we're talking about say 100,000 athletes overall across 70 years, which is a small population to witness a specific effect.

Jamaican population was only 6000 when the English arrived in 1655, and following British union shortly after, the addition of Africans, Scots, Irish and Welsh was set until slave independence in 1830. The 1 million Africans brought from 5 African ports to the tiny island of Jamaica was more than the total brought to the U.S.

(The Scots' social status was barely above slaves in early years, many of them cast-off prisoners or other unwanteds. )

Similarly, English, Scottish and Irish settlers in the US South dominated the population (German, Scandinavian and Slavic immigrants sticking more to the industrial northern areas and off to the Great Lakes), and Irish dominated new immigration throughout the 1800's.

So there we have two similar populations in Jamaica and the South that could have brought on some new African-British (plus Irish) traits over hundreds of years of co-habitation, which could easily have been change in muscular structure et al.

This doesn't have to result in a homogenous population - simply that these traits pop up frequently enough to be significant - say Olympics selection. The traits don't have to be related to survival - they can be simply dominant/recessive inheritance from the 2 groups that shapes the offspring.

There, you have a hypothesis that's not silly, and considering the "caucasion-negroid" structure of Jesse Owens' muscles (according to 1 doctor), you have 1 data point for the theory. Now someone needs to fund the study - maybe Mr. Bolt as he seems interested.

Note: for genetics tracking on the British Isles, using a new technique with Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial RNA, a very interesting article here, which includes genetics analysis with historical conclusions across the fairly-isolated region, without giving up in despair that the evidence or populations aren't 100% pure and conclusive. (as an aside, the article proposes the accepted Anglo-Saxon & Celtic history of the Isles is full of mistakes)

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/mythsofbritishancestry/

I haven't seen any studies of

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 03:34:09 +0000

In reply to You've got it backwards. East

I haven't seen any studies of significant breeding among slaves, except likely "this guy's big - let's get him some kids" - so I don't know that the gene pool would be significantly changed. And yeah, presumably, "work harder/better" would have been the desired trait, not "run faster/run away". Pulling a plough and sprinting are quite different sports.

You've got it backwards. East

acanuck — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 01:40:31 +0000

In reply to Good post. I concur. The

You've got it backwards. East Africans excel at endurance running, i.e. marathons. The "slave gene" theory is that genes that favor sprinting were predominant in West Africa, from which most slaves were captured. Also that slave-owners deliberately bred their chattel to enhance their natural abilities. Why they would want them to get better at running away is an unanswered question.

Good post. I concur. The

ocean-kat — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 01:38:48 +0000

In reply to The mistake that I will own

Good post. I concur. The difference between your previous post and this one is a fine illustration of the difference between good science and bad science. I would add that beyond general principles, for example the manner in which recessive and dominate genes interact, its unwise to extrapolate too much when comparing the results of an extreme eugenics program, like dog breeding, to a wild population like humans.

To my mind the difference between your 2 posts is metaphorically similar to difference between the next two paragraphs. Note that I'm not implying you said or believe anything that follows. but you asked what I mean by bad science and crap genetics.

There appears to be some statistical evidence that East African runners might have some genetic characteristics that cause them to do better in sprinting and less well in endurance running.

African-American and West Indian track athletes would dominate the London Olympics because of the genes of their slave ancestors. “Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me –- I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us.”

If the statistical evidence exists the first is a good scientific hypothesis, the second, bad science, total crap. If in fact there is statistical evidence of East African genetics favoring sprinters one might hypothesize that Afro-Americans that can trace their line to slaves from East Africa might tend to do better as sprinters. That's all one could hypothesize.

North American slaves came from East and West Africa as well as the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa. There was insufficient time for any possible East African genetic difference to spread throughout the whole American slave population. So talking about some sort of slave gene when slaves came from such widely separated regions in Africa is nonsense. Even worse to talk about black athletic genes or a black basketball gene, which is based on the premise that if people look black, i.e. has genes that produce high melanin, that the rest of their genes are similar.

This is the type of bad science Bass was arguing against in the OP and I agree with her reasoning. "Essentially, Bass attacks the very definition of saying someone is "black" when folk with backgrounds as diverse as golfer Tiger Woods and swimmer Anthony Ervin can be unscientifically presumed to have the same genes because they aren't "white."" I personally believe calling out that bad science is a valuable and very important thing to do.

The mistake that I will own

A Guy Called LULU — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:17:49 +0000

In reply to "Maybe my thinking has been

The mistake that I will own up to is that I did not write in such a way as to make it clear that my anecdote about training a pit bull to herd sheep was a fabrication for the purpose of making a point. I expected the point, though, to be obvious. I have owned a good sheep dog and I have been around a few pit bulls. A pit bull has inherited instincts, inherited presumably through genetics, that make it quit different from a blue heeler which also has inherited instincts, but some importantly different ones. The heeler is quite easy to turn into an efficient herder, the pit bull is quite easy to turn into a killer, often actually quite hard to prevent from becoming one. It may be possible to train the pit bull to herd, but training it away from its instincts as opposed to reinforcing the instincts of the natural herd dog, should be evidence that they have inherited different types of intelligence and different instincts as well as different physical characteristics. I will continue to believe that they have inherited them genetically unless you convince me, with scientific data, differently.

"This is a prime example of garbage science and crap genetics one can find so often on the web."

What genetic "garbage science" and what "Crap genetics" did I offer which is "garbage"? What I said was, "...but animal models suggest to me that very definite characteristics can be locked into a genetic line". I offered a lay-man's opinion, but one that seems completely obvious and which you make no effort to refute along with your ridicule.
Do you think that all dogs are the same mentally and only different in physical appearance? And, is not the difference in appearance obvious evidence of different physical capabilities? Do you think the differences just accidently happened or do you realize that at least parts of the scientific method were used by those who observed and then selectively bred so as to lock in characteristics that they desired.
Try this. Send your six year old running across a field and then turn an untrained border collie loose and say go get em. Good chance it will 'herd' the child back, little chance it will hurt the child. Then do the same thing with a pit bull. [In case you don't understand, I am not really suggesting you do that] I have not seen for myself a pit bull maul a child but I have heard enough anecdotal evidence that I have formed what I believe to be reasonable hypothesis: Pit bulls are far more dangerous to humans because of their inbred instincts than are most other dogs. The point here though is just that they are genetically different in ways that have effects. It is interesting to me to wonder how the same causes, selective breeding, or other cause of variations in genetics, whether deliberately carried out or whether caused by natural selection, might manifest itself in human populations.
While a hypothesis might be formed by a bigot in hopes that science would prove his bigotry to be founded, the asking that a question be studied by science is not proof of bigotry and should not even be considered an indication of bigotry minus other evidence.
I don't know if the various countries which have outlawed pit bulls performed vigorous scientific study before they did so, but I believe that many observations led them to a common sense decision that could be supported by vigorous scientific study.
You imply that you have studied genetics and then call out the "bad science", the "crap science", and the "garbage science' you have seen here [and elsewhere on the net]. How about debating the points and bringing some of your knowledge to the conversation rather than just calling bullshit? While a hypothesis might be formed by a bigot in hopes that science would prove his bigotry to be founded, asking that a scientifically valid question be studied by science and being interested in the answer is not proof of bigotry and should not even be considered an indication of bigotry absent other evidence.

The decades-long embrace of

acanuck — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 20:30:37 +0000

In reply to Bad science has led

The decades-long embrace of eugenics by otherwise respectable scientists shouldn't be the issue today, I agree. I mentioned it because I think it colors the emotions that some people bring to the discussion, such as Dan's preference for "less fretful" fields of inquiry. That's certainly true of Amy Bass's reaction in Salon to the "slave gene" myth.

She summarily rejected it as a repugnant idea, one in a long string of racist stereotypes. Her commenters at least offered reasoned arguments: that there is no documented evidence of intentional slave-breeding, that there was no financial incentive for it, that it takes many generations to develop a desired trait, etc.

Bass also flatly rejects the "muscle-twitch" effect as linked to specific populations (East vs. West African). I have no idea whether such a genetic difference is present, or whether it actually affects running speed. But obviously those are discernable scientific facts. You can't refuse to go there because you fear the implication that we aren't all equal. We're aren't. So what?

As for skin color, I was trying to contrast the framework modern geneticists use to that of the general population, not saying anyone here had said that.

There were times in this

ocean-kat — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:51:05 +0000

In reply to The human gene pool isn't

There were times in this discussion that I thought you might have done some study of modern genetics that I lacked and you might have some scientifically valid information to share. I no longer think that.

The human gene pool is unquestionably vastly more homogenized than the canis lupus familiaris gene pool. The eugenics program we've done with dogs has produced many more breeds of dogs than there are breeds of humans. Through extreme interbreeding we have not only concentrated specialized traits but created heritable congenital weaknesses and defects in most purebred varieties.

Of course one can ask if there's a basketball gene. One can even undertake a scientific study to attempt to determine the veracity of the hypothesis. But if someone begins to speculate without undertaking that study or makes psuedoscientific claims one can also call out the bad science, the often silly and ignorant claims and the crap genetics that speculation is based on.

"Maybe my thinking has been

ocean-kat — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:24:49 +0000

In reply to Turning back to genetics, it

"Maybe my thinking has been distorted by trying to make a sheep herding dog out of a Pit Bull Terrier. My nurture couldn't overcome the dog's nature."

This is a prime example of garbage science and crap genetics one can find so often on the web. In our history there has often been some bigot with a PHD spouting slightly more well written crap genetics which was then used as a prescription for public policy discriminating against minorities. That's the main reason to push back against crap genetics like the slave gene nonsense discussed in the OP.

Your analysis would simply be dismissed out of hand without even wasting time considering the evidence as anecdotal by scientists. But let's critique your "study" and consider the "evidence." There are no controls to test for or eliminate other possible hypothesis. Was it the genetics of pit bull terriers or the genetics of just that one pit bull? Was it the genetics of just that one pit bull or the environment of its early puppyhood, in other words was that particular pit bull in some way stunted? Was it the training method rather than the genetics? Was it the skill of the one trainer used in this "study" rather than the genetics of the pit bull?

It would be just as stupid for me to use this "study" to claim that the breed (race) of the trainer was genetically unable to interact positively with dogs.

I don't think there's been any scientifically rigorous study to determine the capacity of pit bull terriers to learn sheep herding but my hypothesis based on my experience and study of canis lupus familiaris is that one could with proper training and skilled trainers teach them to sheep herd.

I also doubt that your particular race is genetically unable to learn to train dogs.

Bad science has led

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 04:19:14 +0000

In reply to Two comments. Every sport

Bad science has led anti-global warming sentiment, "drill byaby drill", etc. But I doubt that's the issue. But who exactly is talking about broad categories based on skin color, vs. people who came out of a consolidated location?