Also
11-26-2013, 12:24 PM
East Asians and Testosterone I
Hays (2011) states:
North Asians have lower levels of muscle-building testosterone than Europeans. Some Asian athletes have taken testosterone-like steroids as “a way of leveling the playing field.”
He provides no source for either claim. Mail sent to Mr. Hays on March 15, 2013 remain unanswered. Not to be outdone, Kelsey (2008) further states:
The reason basically for Asian men being more feminine in physical appearance is because of they produce more estrogen than men of other racial groups. Asian women are more feminine in appearance because they produce more estrogen than other women. This estrogen also influences personality and emotions this makes Asian men display characteristics that often are associated with women.
Some of the characteristics are they keep emotions hidden well meaning it can be difficult to tell when an Asian man is angry. The more testosterone a man produce the more he will show his emotions of anger, joy, sadness, happiness, etc. The less testosterone a man produces the more he is able to keep his emotions hidden.
But when he has kept these emotions hidden for a long time and bottled up whether these emotions are positive or negative when they come out they will manifest very strongly. The estrogen allows Asian men and women to look younger for many years example a 40 year old Asian man who looks 27 years old.
The claim of lower East Asian testosterone (T) levels is now a race realist marker of “race” or race difference. The European race realist asserts three main ethnic androgen hypotheses with some corollary hypotheses.
Main hypotheses:
African males have the highest testosterone level
European males have an intermediate testosterone level
East Asian males have the lowest testosterone level
Corollary hypotheses:
Indo-Aryan or South Asian males have low testosterone levels but higher than East Asians [despite not following from the main hypotheses]
Middle Eastern males have high testosterone levels but not as high as Africans
Indigenous American males have lower testosterone levels but higher than Indo-Aryans
Latin American males have levels commensurate with their respective Asiatic-American and African admixture (for most instances, higher than Americans)
Data is available for each of these groups though lacking for Americans, Indo-Aryans and Latin Americans. The (general) race realist T-ranking from highest to lowest:
1. Africa
2. Middle Easterner
3. European
4. Latino
5. Native American
6. Indo-Aryan
7. East Asian
BACKGROUND
To race realists, when East Asian males are passive, it is because they have the lowest testosterone levels which cause their genitals to be deformed such that they have the smallest lengths, girths, testicular weight and sperm production. When East Asian males are aggressive, it is because they are annoyed that they have low testosterone which causes their genitals to be deformed such that they have the smallest lengths, girths, testicular weight and sperm production. It is a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ stereotype.
Trying to hide this behind a scientific veneer, Jean Philippe Rushton uses the incidence of prostate cancer to assert that since it is high in Americans of African descent, lower in Americans of European descent and lowest in East Asians, it is mainly due to testosterone differences. The problem is that he conveniently focuses on only three groups which he also conveniently defines. His “Caucasoid” grouping does not include Semites and Aryans. His “Mongoloid” group does not include Euro-Americans (Latinos) and indigenous Americans. His “Negroid” group includes US Afropeans but not Dravidians (South Asians) and those with Negrito ancestry such as Malays, which he includes in his “Mongoloid” group.
If he were to have found a race realist revolutionary update to Darwinian evolution as he asserts, then he would have found that Arabs (Saudis, Omanis and Kuwaitis) also have very low prostate cancer rates and that Afro-Zimbabweans have lower levels of prostate cancer than Euro-Zimbabweans, Germans, Australians and US Europeans and a bit lower rate than the Welsh (Kehinde et al. 2005). Contra Eurocentric race realism, Strahm et al. (2009) states in referring to Satner et al. (1998) that:
Comparative studies of Caucasian and Chinese subjects living either in the USA or in China provided strong evidence that environmental/dietary, but not genetic, factors influence androgen production.
Miller et al. (1985) found that “[t]estosterone did not differ with ethnic group” when studying Trinidadian men of African and Indo-Aryan descent. Even among rapists and child molesters, most had normal T levels except for those who were the most violent. Rada, Laws and Kellner (1976) further states that:
There was no correlation between age, race, or length of incarceration and plasma testosterone level.
Rushton had previously proposed the ‘principle of aggregation’ where he would aggregate data to minimize bias. He is correct that data aggregation can minimize bias. He is incorrect in his poor choice of data in the first place (but I digress). Applying his own principle of aggregation, what follow is a meta-analysis of over 150 peer-reviewed articles on hormone levels in diffident ethnic groups to see if his hypothesis is correct (at least according to the available data).
RESULTS
T-results
http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/t-results.jpg?w=584
Data sources available HERE http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ethnic-testosterone1.pdf.
CONCLUSION
http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/t-diff.jpg
http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/t-diff.jpg
From the above tables, it is clear that the race realist assertion is incorrect, whether one looks at the 7 so-called micro ‘races’ or the 3 so-called macro ‘races’. East Asians were found to have the highest average total plasma testosterone (5,673 ρg/mL) followed by Africans (5,442 ρg/mL) and then Europeans (4,992 ρg/mL). Given that the sample size for Africans is smaller (N < 10,000), their relative position may change with more data. Nonetheless, the claim that East Asians have the least testosterone is not supported by scientific data.
So ladies, if you want a high T male, go to the Philippines (8100 ρg/mL) and find yourself a malnourished, sexually active, 22 year old Filipino; 5 feet 4 inches, 123 lbs, poorly educated and making slightly less than $9 US monthly [Gettler, McDade & Kuzawa (2011)]. Even better, find an Egyptian.
[N.B. Values are liable to be updated if errors detected, self-analysis of data highly recommended before using this hypothesis]
SOURCES:
Gettler, L., McDade, T., and C. Kuzawa. 2011. Cortisol and testosterone in Filipino young adult men: evidence for co-regulation of both hormones by fatherhood and relationship status. American Journal of Human Biology 23(5): 609-620.
Hays, Jeffreys. 2011. Chinese People, Asian Physical Characteristics, Genetics and DNA. http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=118&catid=4&subcatid=18 [accessed: 2013-04-06].
Kehinde, E., Akanji, A., Mojiminiyi, O., et al. 2005. Putative role of serum insulin-like growth factor–1 (IGF-1) and IGF binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) levels in the development of prostate cancer in Arab men. Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases 8: 84–90.
Kelsey, Chance. 2008. Why Do Many White Women Not Date Asian Men? Chancellorfiles blog. http://chancellorfiles.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/why-do-many-white-women-not-date-asian-men [accessed: 2013-04-15].
Miller, G., Wheeler, M., Price, S., et al. 1985. Serum high density lipoprotein subclasses, testosterone and sex-hormone-binding globulin in Trinidadian men of African and Indian descent. Atherosclerosis 55(3): 251-258.
Rada, R., Laws, D., and R. Kellner. 1976. Plasma testosterone levels in the rapist. Psychosomatic Medicine 38(4): 257-268.
Santner, S., Albertson, B., Zhang, G-Y., et al. 1998. Comparative rates of androgen production and metabolism in Caucasian and Chinese subjects. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 83: 2104–2109.
Strahm, E., Sottas, P-E., Schweizer, C., et al. 2009. Steroid profiles of professional soccer players: an international comparative study. British Journal of Sports Medicine 43: 1126-1130.
UPDATE 2013-05-08: A blogger on the race realist AnthroScape blog states:
This PDF file is not to be taken 100% seriously. It obviously lacks measurements of free testosterone, which is arguably more important than total testosterone. Furthermore, extrapolating a table ranking ethnic groups based on testosterone levels is not the best idea, especially when there are different age brackets and methodologies of each of the studies to consider.
Comments:
There is no way of accurately determining free testosterone. Even if there was, this would also be irrelevant since bio-availability is prime. Since race realists use total serum testosterone, why is this an issue?
One cannot and should not compare different testosterone studies with different measurement methods. However, for the race-realist purpose of aggregating data, there is nothing inherently wrong with what the PDF file lists. If JP Rushton can use a few studies and make wild claims which are then used by the Internet-o-sphere, using 150 independent peer-reviewed sources with large samples is much more scientific than anything similar from the race realist community.
The PDF contains all of the above and has a long list of why testosterone measurements can be fickle.
Age differences will affect the results but healthy males should have negligible decreases. Assuming a 0.4% annual decline from 5000 pg/ml after age 40, a man at 80 should have 4275 pg/mL, less than a 15% difference if my spreadsheet math is correct. It would have been better to normalize for age. So while the tabled rankings is flawed, the point is that the entire issue is flawed as there is no standard measuring method in the first place. That race realists routinely use flawed data should be the issue but …
Do feel free to wade through the tables and references and normalize the data for methodology and age. Good luck on that though.
He further states:
I find it slightly odd that Indians have the highest testosterone levels, although it’s understandable because of the conditions they are living in. …… Social aggression, dominance and high cognition among men, especially visuo-spatial cognition, is correlated with moderate to high testosterone levels. Stress and depression are correlated with lower testosterone levels, as are personality traits such as submission and less aggression.
What conditions are Indians living in that make for higher T?
Western defined and rated social aggression and dominance will obviously down relegate Easterners. That is simple bias: stacking the definitional deck and insisting that everyone play by said deck.
What level of correlation is there? There will always be correlations but only if it is significant can such data be used.
He continues:
…. beard growth, penile size and body hair are indicative of the presence of testosterone (along with the genes which code for such phenotypes) but do not tell whether an individual has high or low testosterone.
I’ve studied human physiology and biochemistry for years so I know what I’m talking about. Genetics play a huge role in determining whether an individual has a beard, has a large or small penis and body hair.
Genetically, penis size seems to be determined by in-utero hormone exposure and concentration.
However, penile measurements I would say make a flaw in only measuring the outer penile length by multiple methods which differ considerably. If the inner penis is roughly the same length of the outer penis (Saladin & Miller 2004: 1029), then a porn star may simply be an average guy with more outer penis and perhaps, less fat pad and/or weaker suspensory ligaments (i.e. all current measurements do not factor in erection angle).
Until there are standardized ultrasound measurements of different ethnic groups, race realists are not being scientific in claiming that there are differences in penile lengths. At best, one may claim differences in perceived lengths, which is obviously unscientific and irrelevant.
Reference: Saladin, K., and L. Miller. 2004. Anatomy & Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function. 3rd ed. New York, USA: McGraw Hill.
http://ethnicmuse.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/east-asian-testosterone-i/
Hays (2011) states:
North Asians have lower levels of muscle-building testosterone than Europeans. Some Asian athletes have taken testosterone-like steroids as “a way of leveling the playing field.”
He provides no source for either claim. Mail sent to Mr. Hays on March 15, 2013 remain unanswered. Not to be outdone, Kelsey (2008) further states:
The reason basically for Asian men being more feminine in physical appearance is because of they produce more estrogen than men of other racial groups. Asian women are more feminine in appearance because they produce more estrogen than other women. This estrogen also influences personality and emotions this makes Asian men display characteristics that often are associated with women.
Some of the characteristics are they keep emotions hidden well meaning it can be difficult to tell when an Asian man is angry. The more testosterone a man produce the more he will show his emotions of anger, joy, sadness, happiness, etc. The less testosterone a man produces the more he is able to keep his emotions hidden.
But when he has kept these emotions hidden for a long time and bottled up whether these emotions are positive or negative when they come out they will manifest very strongly. The estrogen allows Asian men and women to look younger for many years example a 40 year old Asian man who looks 27 years old.
The claim of lower East Asian testosterone (T) levels is now a race realist marker of “race” or race difference. The European race realist asserts three main ethnic androgen hypotheses with some corollary hypotheses.
Main hypotheses:
African males have the highest testosterone level
European males have an intermediate testosterone level
East Asian males have the lowest testosterone level
Corollary hypotheses:
Indo-Aryan or South Asian males have low testosterone levels but higher than East Asians [despite not following from the main hypotheses]
Middle Eastern males have high testosterone levels but not as high as Africans
Indigenous American males have lower testosterone levels but higher than Indo-Aryans
Latin American males have levels commensurate with their respective Asiatic-American and African admixture (for most instances, higher than Americans)
Data is available for each of these groups though lacking for Americans, Indo-Aryans and Latin Americans. The (general) race realist T-ranking from highest to lowest:
1. Africa
2. Middle Easterner
3. European
4. Latino
5. Native American
6. Indo-Aryan
7. East Asian
BACKGROUND
To race realists, when East Asian males are passive, it is because they have the lowest testosterone levels which cause their genitals to be deformed such that they have the smallest lengths, girths, testicular weight and sperm production. When East Asian males are aggressive, it is because they are annoyed that they have low testosterone which causes their genitals to be deformed such that they have the smallest lengths, girths, testicular weight and sperm production. It is a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ stereotype.
Trying to hide this behind a scientific veneer, Jean Philippe Rushton uses the incidence of prostate cancer to assert that since it is high in Americans of African descent, lower in Americans of European descent and lowest in East Asians, it is mainly due to testosterone differences. The problem is that he conveniently focuses on only three groups which he also conveniently defines. His “Caucasoid” grouping does not include Semites and Aryans. His “Mongoloid” group does not include Euro-Americans (Latinos) and indigenous Americans. His “Negroid” group includes US Afropeans but not Dravidians (South Asians) and those with Negrito ancestry such as Malays, which he includes in his “Mongoloid” group.
If he were to have found a race realist revolutionary update to Darwinian evolution as he asserts, then he would have found that Arabs (Saudis, Omanis and Kuwaitis) also have very low prostate cancer rates and that Afro-Zimbabweans have lower levels of prostate cancer than Euro-Zimbabweans, Germans, Australians and US Europeans and a bit lower rate than the Welsh (Kehinde et al. 2005). Contra Eurocentric race realism, Strahm et al. (2009) states in referring to Satner et al. (1998) that:
Comparative studies of Caucasian and Chinese subjects living either in the USA or in China provided strong evidence that environmental/dietary, but not genetic, factors influence androgen production.
Miller et al. (1985) found that “[t]estosterone did not differ with ethnic group” when studying Trinidadian men of African and Indo-Aryan descent. Even among rapists and child molesters, most had normal T levels except for those who were the most violent. Rada, Laws and Kellner (1976) further states that:
There was no correlation between age, race, or length of incarceration and plasma testosterone level.
Rushton had previously proposed the ‘principle of aggregation’ where he would aggregate data to minimize bias. He is correct that data aggregation can minimize bias. He is incorrect in his poor choice of data in the first place (but I digress). Applying his own principle of aggregation, what follow is a meta-analysis of over 150 peer-reviewed articles on hormone levels in diffident ethnic groups to see if his hypothesis is correct (at least according to the available data).
RESULTS
T-results
http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/t-results.jpg?w=584
Data sources available HERE http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ethnic-testosterone1.pdf.
CONCLUSION
http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/t-diff.jpg
http://ethnicmuse.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/t-diff.jpg
From the above tables, it is clear that the race realist assertion is incorrect, whether one looks at the 7 so-called micro ‘races’ or the 3 so-called macro ‘races’. East Asians were found to have the highest average total plasma testosterone (5,673 ρg/mL) followed by Africans (5,442 ρg/mL) and then Europeans (4,992 ρg/mL). Given that the sample size for Africans is smaller (N < 10,000), their relative position may change with more data. Nonetheless, the claim that East Asians have the least testosterone is not supported by scientific data.
So ladies, if you want a high T male, go to the Philippines (8100 ρg/mL) and find yourself a malnourished, sexually active, 22 year old Filipino; 5 feet 4 inches, 123 lbs, poorly educated and making slightly less than $9 US monthly [Gettler, McDade & Kuzawa (2011)]. Even better, find an Egyptian.
[N.B. Values are liable to be updated if errors detected, self-analysis of data highly recommended before using this hypothesis]
SOURCES:
Gettler, L., McDade, T., and C. Kuzawa. 2011. Cortisol and testosterone in Filipino young adult men: evidence for co-regulation of both hormones by fatherhood and relationship status. American Journal of Human Biology 23(5): 609-620.
Hays, Jeffreys. 2011. Chinese People, Asian Physical Characteristics, Genetics and DNA. http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=118&catid=4&subcatid=18 [accessed: 2013-04-06].
Kehinde, E., Akanji, A., Mojiminiyi, O., et al. 2005. Putative role of serum insulin-like growth factor–1 (IGF-1) and IGF binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) levels in the development of prostate cancer in Arab men. Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases 8: 84–90.
Kelsey, Chance. 2008. Why Do Many White Women Not Date Asian Men? Chancellorfiles blog. http://chancellorfiles.wordpress.com/2008/02/24/why-do-many-white-women-not-date-asian-men [accessed: 2013-04-15].
Miller, G., Wheeler, M., Price, S., et al. 1985. Serum high density lipoprotein subclasses, testosterone and sex-hormone-binding globulin in Trinidadian men of African and Indian descent. Atherosclerosis 55(3): 251-258.
Rada, R., Laws, D., and R. Kellner. 1976. Plasma testosterone levels in the rapist. Psychosomatic Medicine 38(4): 257-268.
Santner, S., Albertson, B., Zhang, G-Y., et al. 1998. Comparative rates of androgen production and metabolism in Caucasian and Chinese subjects. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 83: 2104–2109.
Strahm, E., Sottas, P-E., Schweizer, C., et al. 2009. Steroid profiles of professional soccer players: an international comparative study. British Journal of Sports Medicine 43: 1126-1130.
UPDATE 2013-05-08: A blogger on the race realist AnthroScape blog states:
This PDF file is not to be taken 100% seriously. It obviously lacks measurements of free testosterone, which is arguably more important than total testosterone. Furthermore, extrapolating a table ranking ethnic groups based on testosterone levels is not the best idea, especially when there are different age brackets and methodologies of each of the studies to consider.
Comments:
There is no way of accurately determining free testosterone. Even if there was, this would also be irrelevant since bio-availability is prime. Since race realists use total serum testosterone, why is this an issue?
One cannot and should not compare different testosterone studies with different measurement methods. However, for the race-realist purpose of aggregating data, there is nothing inherently wrong with what the PDF file lists. If JP Rushton can use a few studies and make wild claims which are then used by the Internet-o-sphere, using 150 independent peer-reviewed sources with large samples is much more scientific than anything similar from the race realist community.
The PDF contains all of the above and has a long list of why testosterone measurements can be fickle.
Age differences will affect the results but healthy males should have negligible decreases. Assuming a 0.4% annual decline from 5000 pg/ml after age 40, a man at 80 should have 4275 pg/mL, less than a 15% difference if my spreadsheet math is correct. It would have been better to normalize for age. So while the tabled rankings is flawed, the point is that the entire issue is flawed as there is no standard measuring method in the first place. That race realists routinely use flawed data should be the issue but …
Do feel free to wade through the tables and references and normalize the data for methodology and age. Good luck on that though.
He further states:
I find it slightly odd that Indians have the highest testosterone levels, although it’s understandable because of the conditions they are living in. …… Social aggression, dominance and high cognition among men, especially visuo-spatial cognition, is correlated with moderate to high testosterone levels. Stress and depression are correlated with lower testosterone levels, as are personality traits such as submission and less aggression.
What conditions are Indians living in that make for higher T?
Western defined and rated social aggression and dominance will obviously down relegate Easterners. That is simple bias: stacking the definitional deck and insisting that everyone play by said deck.
What level of correlation is there? There will always be correlations but only if it is significant can such data be used.
He continues:
…. beard growth, penile size and body hair are indicative of the presence of testosterone (along with the genes which code for such phenotypes) but do not tell whether an individual has high or low testosterone.
I’ve studied human physiology and biochemistry for years so I know what I’m talking about. Genetics play a huge role in determining whether an individual has a beard, has a large or small penis and body hair.
Genetically, penis size seems to be determined by in-utero hormone exposure and concentration.
However, penile measurements I would say make a flaw in only measuring the outer penile length by multiple methods which differ considerably. If the inner penis is roughly the same length of the outer penis (Saladin & Miller 2004: 1029), then a porn star may simply be an average guy with more outer penis and perhaps, less fat pad and/or weaker suspensory ligaments (i.e. all current measurements do not factor in erection angle).
Until there are standardized ultrasound measurements of different ethnic groups, race realists are not being scientific in claiming that there are differences in penile lengths. At best, one may claim differences in perceived lengths, which is obviously unscientific and irrelevant.
Reference: Saladin, K., and L. Miller. 2004. Anatomy & Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function. 3rd ed. New York, USA: McGraw Hill.
http://ethnicmuse.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/east-asian-testosterone-i/