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Athletics - Running and Jumping and Throwing and stuff!

Corax said:
Didn't see it myself, but what folks on here reported he said was that 80% of European competitors, at an elite level, had that gene as well.

Quite obviously, that's a bit of a different matter.

Actually it's a good thing in some ways, because it means the idea is about a particular gene, originating with a particular people, but which is now shared by people of different ethnicities. It makes it about a genetic heritage, rather than 'black people' or 'white people'.

I understand the disquiet about it. And I didn't see more than the first 5 minutes of the piece myself so I don't know how crassly it was presented - although it sounds pretty shoddy tbh. But I also think that the idea shouldn't be off-limits.

Surely we can't pretend that genetics plays no part in sporting potential? It clearly does. Children inherit characteristics from their ancestral line, we know this. Which bits and how much of them are inherited varies, seemingly by lottery. But if the piece had been about how 90% of champion long-jumpers could trace their line back to the Shetlands, I think the discussion on here would have been very different.

To restate: given the history, I understand the disquiet. But I also think there's a danger of something legitimate being written off purely because it bears painful echos of past atrocities.

I also appreciate the potential danger of the subject, given how it could be continued and cherry-picked results could then be abused to serve a racist agenda. But making the line of enquiry taboo itself is not the answer IMO.

I make no comment on the science in the piece itself. It may well be utter tosh, I don't know.
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I agree that the question shouldn't be off limits, but there needs to be some rigour here.

As a for instance, take the 'slavery selection pressure' theory. It sounds plausible that the high mortality rates on the slave ships could have acted as a selection pressure and that only those with particular qualities could survive. But that is the hypothesis, not the evidence. To test the hypothesis, you then need to find evidence to back it up, and use it to make predictions and see if they are true. For starters, it's far from obvious why those with the qualities needed for sprinting would be selected by such a process. They could be, but you need to show a mechanism for that and to be able to test the idea and see whether that did indeed happen.

In this case, there appears to be no evidence at all that this particular hypothesis is right, and there is no real reason to believe that it is right. You can't point to the success of black athletes from the Americas as evidence for your hypothesis, as it is the success of black athletes from the Americas that you're trying to explain with the hypothesis. That's a circular 'just-so' story. It is internally consistent, but that in itself is no good reason at all to believe that it's true. All kinds of internally consistent stories can be told that are wholly false.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I agree that the question shouldn't be off limits, but there needs to be some rigour here.

As a for instance, take the 'slavery selection pressure' theory. It sounds plausible that the high mortality rates on the slave ships could have acted as a selection pressure and that only those with particular qualities could survive. But that is the hypothesis, not the evidence. To test the hypothesis, you then need to find evidence to back it up, and use it to make predictions and see if they are true. For starters, it's far from obvious why those with the qualities needed for sprinting would be selected by such a process. They could be, but you need to show a mechanism for that and to be able to test the idea and see whether that did indeed happen.

In this case, there appears to be no evidence at all that this particular hypothesis is right, and there is no real reason to believe that it is right. You can't point to the success of black athletes from the Americas as evidence for your hypothesis, as it is the success of black athletes from the Americas that you're trying to explain with the hypothesis. That's a circular 'just-so' story. It is internally consistent, but that in itself is no good reason at all to believe that it's true. All kinds of internally consistent stories can be told that are wholly false.
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I agree with all of that, I just got the feeling that some of the reaction wasn't merely based on the lack of scientific rigour.
 
Corax said:
I agree with all of that, I just got the feeling that some of the reaction wasn't merely based on the lack of scientific rigour.
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I think it was, really. Certainly the reaction of Johnson and Jackson was entirely that of people who were exasperated by the lack of scientific rigour. In fact, John Inverdale in his stupidity kind of summed up what there is here - black athletes are so dominant in sprint races at the moment that there must be something in it, and, um, that's all there is to it. But in the end, there is nothing in it, merely the observation that black athletes have dominated sprinting in recent years, something everyone can see to be the case. Inverdale, and the feature, too, were trying to draw conclusions from this observation, which is wholly illegitimate.
 
Corax said:
I agree with all of that, I just got the feeling that some of the reaction wasn't merely based on the lack of scientific rigour.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, though the premise of the argument was so stupid it was difficult not to react to it without having a specific reason for doing so. For instance there hasnt ever (at least to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong) been a black gold medallist in rowing or sailing, and yet noone is producing short films with dramatic voiceovers set to music from a Michael Bay film suggesting that people of white European origin have a genetic advantage when it comes to making small boats go fast.
 
agricola said:
Perhaps, though the premise of the argument was so stupid it was difficult not to react to it without having a specific reason for doing so. For instance there hasnt ever (at least to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong) been a black gold medallist in rowing or sailing, and yet noone is producing short films with dramatic voiceovers set to music from a Michael Bay film suggesting that people of white European origin have a genetic advantage when it comes to making small boats go fast.
Click to expand...
Maybe. But, for eg, I got the impression people leapt on the 80% European competitors bit, despite the fact that after pause for though it potentially reinforces the idea rather than disproving it.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I think it was, really. Certainly the reaction of Johnson and Jackson was entirely that of people who were exasperated by the lack of scientific rigour. In fact, John Inverdale in his stupidity kind of summed up what there is here - black athletes are so dominant in sprint races at the moment that there must be something in it, and, um, that's all there is to it. But in the end, there is nothing in it, merely the observation that black athletes have dominated sprinting in recent years, something everyone can see to be the case. Inverdale, and the feature, too, were trying to draw conclusions from this observation, which is wholly illegitimate.
Click to expand...
I look forward to seeing him argue for the genetic superiority of British private school kids :D

And the accompanying video, on how boarding schools speed up natural selection :D
 
Corax said:
Maybe. But, for eg, I got the impression people leapt on the 80% European competitors bit, despite the fact that after pause for though it potentially reinforces the idea rather than disproving it.
Click to expand...

Not really - Jackson was pointing to the rate of occurance of that gene, not the strength of it.
 
It helps a litle if your government gives you some money to train.
Otherwise some people have short muscles and others have long.
Continue...
 
The so-called "theory" doesn't stand up to even the most perfunctory of analysis, though. It's data cherry-picking at its most egregious, its supposed mechanism shows a complete misunderstanding of the process it is supposedly using and there is no attempt to scientifically demonstrate anything at all. It's pseudoscience, up there with claiming that sugar pills have a pharmacology just because some people occasionally feel better after having taken sugar pills.
 
S☼I said:
I keep getting silly crushes on athletes. Like, one a day. Laura Trott, Jade Jones yesterday, and Tirunesh Dibaba for the second time this Olympics. She's properly beautiful. I was really sad she had no kick in that 5,000 final.
Click to expand...
Oh me too! David Rudisha, Yohan Blake, the German discus gold medalist Robert Harting (he's probably my favourite!) Chris Hoy,when he was having a blub!! And Jess Ennis is my big girl crush :oops:
 
I used to throw the hammer for my county.

Used to come 2nd loads of competitions, because virtually no other counties had any hammer throwers.

And we (Surrey) always rocked up with two.

I've still got my little yellow hammer throwers t-shirt somewhere :D
Click to expand...

My brother used to throw the hammer too. Mind you, our school had Carlton Johnson (who became the UK hammer coach) as its PE teacher for the boys. Paul Dickenson was at the same school.
 
Corax said:
Didn't see it myself, but what folks on here reported he said was that 80% of European competitors, at an elite level, had that gene as well.

Quite obviously, that's a bit of a different matter.

Actually it's a good thing in some ways, because it means the idea is about a particular gene, originating with a particular people, but which is now shared by people of different ethnicities. It makes it about a genetic heritage, rather than 'black people' or 'white people'.

I understand the disquiet about it. And I didn't see more than the first 5 minutes of the piece myself so I don't know how crassly it was presented - although it sounds pretty shoddy tbh. But I also think that the idea shouldn't be off-limits.

Surely we can't pretend that genetics plays no part in sporting potential? It clearly does. Children inherit characteristics from their ancestral line, we know this. Which bits and how much of them are inherited varies, seemingly by lottery. But if the piece had been about how 90% of champion long-jumpers could trace their line back to the Shetlands, I think the discussion on here would have been very different.

To restate: given the history, I understand the disquiet. But I also think there's a danger of something legitimate being written off purely because it bears painful echos of past atrocities.

I also appreciate the potential danger of the subject, given how it could be continued and cherry-picked results could then be abused to serve a racist agenda. But making the line of enquiry taboo itself is not the answer IMO.

I make no comment on the science in the piece itself. It may well be utter tosh, I don't know.
Click to expand...
I think you need to have watched the piece before posting something like that.

(And Jackson didn't mention competitors at elite level)
 
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