Charles Murray Rouses Atrios and The PC Police
Charles Murray has a new essay, The Inequality Taboo, in Commentary magazine. The blogosphere is abuzz with posts about it (examples: Instapundit, LGM, Atrios, Parapundit, AndrewSullivan, SteveSailer, BradDelong, MattYglesias, GeneExpression, KevinDrum).
Murray, who wrote the 1994 bestselling book, The Bell Curve, gives an update of his views on the status of research into IQ differences among the races and sexes. He also discusses the unavoidable question of whether genes play a partial role. Obviously this is a sensitive subject, and I am not going to go into a detailed discussion about that here.
One point that Murray always makes in some form, he repeats in his essay:
The differences I discuss involve means and distributions. In all cases, the variation within groups is greater than the variation between groups. On psychological and cognitive dimensions, some members of both sexes and all races fall everywhere along the range. One implication of this is that genius does not come in one color or sex, and neither does any other human ability. Another is that a few minutes of conversation with individuals you meet will tell you much more about them than their group membership does.
If average IQ differences among different groups of people are real, it would seem that sensible people would embrace Murray’s points above. But a larger question here is whether this topic of IQ differences among groups should be allowed to be researched or discussed in respectable society. Personally, I think it should be - free people should be unfettered in their quest for new knowledge and understanding. To block investigations into some areas strikes me as, well, pre-modern and undemocratic. It is like the church leaders who arrested Galileo to block his heretical statements about the earth orbiting around the sun. Astronomer Bruno was burned at the stake for similar claims.
When in doubt on an opinion about a political issue, I always choose the path that allows more freedom. Freedom is the best policy. So researchers should be allowed to investigate group differences in IQs, as well as other talents and abilities among races and sexes - and they should not be condemned for doing so. Whatever the results of this research, free Americans can handle them.
The ferocity that Murray was attacked when he came out with the Bell Curve was amazing to behold. Discussions of differences in IQs among groups, for example races, is strictly taboo - and he violated that taboo. Actually, research in this area has progressed steadily (Kevin Drum links to this summary) for nearly a century, but it has always been limited to academic journals or obscure books. So one of Murray’s crimes is that he brought this discussion before the eyes of mainsteet, USA.
The attack lines at Murray, for breaking this taboo on public discussion, are straightforward. The method is to label him a racist in as many creative ways as possible. Tell people that they should not even read his work. Or if they do read it, remind them that discussion is only permitted of the “my, what racism” variety.
For example, here is Duncan Black (alias Atrios), the #1 for traffic liberal blogger on the internet:
Atrios’s blogsite is full of this kind of stuff. In general, he has a hard time completing a sentence without name calling. Regarding Murray’s new essay, Atrios wasted no time in quickly reminding his readers that Murray’s book was a “racist polemic”.
Duncan Black is an angry, walking intolerance machine. Sadly, he represents much of the angry, intolerant left that has laid down the rigid PC lines of dogma which you aren’t permitted to cross. If you disagree with Atrios, or his ilk, then you are either racist, sexist, immoral, a scumbag - or any of a long list of names that he calls those that he politically disagrees with. (Here is a quick sampler of namecalling for today.)
On the other hand, Black’s site is useful. His writings are those of a foolish, intolerant man on display for all to see. It may play well with like-minded PC advocates, but most people reading it will quickly note that the guy has some major ideological axes to grind. Something amusing to watch is how the other liberal bloggers tiptoe around him, being sure not to cross him. How many of the more sensible ones (Drum, Klein, Yglesias, …) have called him on his behavior? And if not, why? I suppose, if you are a liberal blogger, it is better not to get on the bad side of the venom-spewing Duncan Black. But isn’t that supposed to be one of the advantages of the blogosphere - that this kind of gate keeper crap can be avoided?
One point that the PC-crowd asserts, that is also fashionable among leftist academics, is astonishingly stupid. Their claim is that race in the U.S. does not really exist. This is an odd anti-diversity view of race, everyone is the same. That is, black people aren’t really black, white people aren’t really white, and so on. After all these years, genes are so intermixed that you can’t tell the difference among people (in other words, the emperor is fully clothed).
Well, okay, people that hold this view will acknowledge that some groups of people have different skin colors, along with different body shapes - but besides that, it is totally obvious that we are all completely alike. This is self-evident they say, it needs no proof. It is the Intelligent Design argument of the left. Skip the scientific research on the topic, forget all those pesky academic journal articles and debates - just declare it as a new scientific truth.
The argument goes that 99.9% of the 20,000 human genes are the same among all human races groups. There is just no way that last .1% could mean anything besides skin color and body shape.
Well, it ends up that humans share 98% of genes with chimpanzees. Who would have thought that 2% of genes would make such a difference? Most people I know don’t feel too chimp-like. Hey, but besides a little extra body hair, maybe we are all alike too.
So to unconditionally declare that .1% or 2% - or whatever amount - of genes are of no scientific interest, and that we are all identical except for skin color, is downright reactionary. Just a handful of genes can potentially make for noticeable differences between individuals or groups. And if IQ differences among races due to genes end up being proven someday, Americans will figure out how to comprehend these in positive ways, not in destructive ways.
In summary, you dear reader, if you are left-of-center, are forbidden to publicly ponder the range of possibilities about the topics that Murray raises. These topics are strictly off limits. Don’t believe me? Then try it.
If you are right-of-center, or libertarian, you may ponder them - but then you are a racist.
Someday this bubble will burst, and history will laugh at the leftist-reactionaries who demanded PC conformity in thought up into the early 21st century. And the relentless political bigotry of people like Duncan Black will be well documented (in their own words!) to make the laugh long and hard.
August 29th, 2005 at 10:43 am
I think everything ought to be on the table for discussion - and I think Murray is wrong on the facts. (For example, the greater difficulties Black people supposedly have with reciting numbers backwards may - despite his argument - have other causes besides inherent inferiority.) But I’m not writing to offer a point by point refutation, but to ask a simple question - one I challenge you to answer: Assuming that every tittle and jot of Murray’s analysis is correct, what practical application could it possibly have? In other words, can you name a single law or policy you would change as a direct result of Murray’s conclusions - even if they were holy writ?
August 29th, 2005 at 10:55 am
“can you name a single law or policy you would change as a direct result of Murray’s conclusions – even if they were holy writ?”
The notion that discrimination can be proved with evidence of statistical distributions (e.g., so and so many whites in certain kinds of jobs, versus the percentage of blacks in those jobs), in the absence of explicit discriminatory conduct, is shown to be wrongheaded by Murray’s work.
August 29th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Sheldon:
His implication is that many of the ‘corrective action’ techniques taken over the last few decades - pushing un-qualified people into top-flight universities, outcome-based results in education and corporate affirmative action, etc. etc. - because “we are all exactly equal” may be wrong-headed and counter-productive.
August 29th, 2005 at 12:50 pm
Sigh. THAT’S the conclusion? If Murray is right, different racial outcomes may reflect actual capabilities, and affirmative action doesn’t work? A few, obvious points:
1) The arguments against affirmative action do not require an assumption of differences in innate intelligence; they stand on their own. Which is one of the points I had in mind. That said, what Murray argues is that affirmative action CAN’T work - a conclusion totally unjustified by historical experience. Historically, minorities (including Jewish immigrants - in the 1920’s widely considered to have below-average IQs) were well UNDERrepresented in jobs by any standard. You can argue that we’ve now reached the limit of the benefits of affirmative action - that NOW, unlike the past, the differences are not due to discrimination, but are perfectly appropriate based on real capabilities and attributes - but our country is a long way from having the moral standing OR the full data to reach such a conclusion.
2) Explicit discriminatory conduct is extremely difficult to prove, absent some statistical measures. Yet every study ever undertaken of the phenomenon demonstrates ongoing, active screening based on race - for example, responses to job applications with identical resumes vary dramatically depending on subtle race identifications, such as traditional black vs. white names. We’re a long way from signs saying “blacks not welcome here,” but there are countless ways to screen without obvious and explicit discrimination.
3) The assumption of racial inferiority refers, as Murray states, to the group as a whole, not to the individual. But absent some continuing pressure toward fairness, Murray’s conclusions - though he can jump up and down all day long screaming “that’s not what I mean” - inevitably color (forgive me) the way individual members of the group will be perceived.
4) A smaller point, but legally, job discrimination is measured not simply by, say, color distribution in the job, but by the percentage of minorities in the job compared to those in a qualified pool - e.g., if the job requires an MBA, what percentage of the workforce is black, compared to the number of black MBAs available. Still a crude and problematic measure, but not quite as simplistic as one that’s purely color-based.
Bottom line, I fully understand that Murray is pointing to the policy changes you’ve both mentioned. My point is simply that, as a practical matter, those changes can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t be undertaken even if everything he says is true. The fact that, in my judgement, he’s a long way from making his case is, in this sense, besides the point.
August 29th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
“the greater difficulties Black people supposedly have with reciting numbers backwards may – despite his argument – have other causes besides inherent inferiority.”
such as what?
August 29th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
Sheldon, you say: “The assumption of racial inferiority refers, as Murray states, to the group as a whole, not to the individual. But absent some continuing pressure toward fairness, Murray’s conclusions – though he can jump up and down all day long screaming “that’s not what I mean” – inevitably color (forgive me) the way individual members of the group will be perceived.”
You are looking at “fairness” from only one direction. If Murray is correct, then statistical distributions may not be “equal” absent interference in the form of affirmative action. And if that’s true, then it is “unfair” to the natural high performers to punish them on account of race. In zero sum games, such as university admissions, favoring one group is always to the detriment of another group. So “continuing pressure towards fairness”, as you’ve used it, means “fairness” only for the underperforming group, to the detriment of the higher-achieving group. That’s, ahem, not fair.
August 29th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Sheldon, you also say: “The arguments against affirmative action do not require an assumption of differences in innate intelligence; they stand on their own…..our country is a long way from having the moral standing OR the full data to reach such a conclusion [to end affirmative action].”
Well, that’s a different question. The issue whether affirmative action should be undertaken as a form of compensation for past injustices is certainly tied to the origin of the policy. However, it does not make sense that way unless it is limited to the offspring of traditionally oppressed groups. In other words, recent immigrants who are black or Latino, and their children, would not be entitled to affirmative action under the “historical remedy” approach. However, affirmative action morphed into “diversity” several decades ago, and that’s what it is today. The link to past oppression is now, by and large, no longer a strongly presented rationale for the policy.
August 29th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Well, I think we’re started moving to “more heat than light” territory. All the arguments here re affirmative action are precisely to my point - they have been made for decades and are being made and would have been made if Murray had never written a word. (In other words, his data, even if one accepts them, don’t really move the argument forward; they just suggest that current group differences, which are both the basis for affirmative action and the arguments against them, are intractable. So what? Let’s eliminate affirmative action not because we think it’s unfair, but because black people, in the end, are stupider than white people? This is a real world argument?) Also, I have all kinds of problems with affirmative action (though I think the resistance to it is wildly disproportional to its effects - the number of people hired or admitted under these programs and who wouldn’t otherwise me is, believe it or not, quite small in the society as a whole), but its main utility has less to do with past discrimination - though that was its proximate cause - than the current need to prevent ongoing discrimination, which in my opinion is still very much a current phenomenon and threat. As for counting backwards (on this we’re supposed to base policy?) internalized inferiority feelings; poor prenatal nutrition; cultural differences; early childhood environment - disagree with every one, but please don’t tell me an ironclad case has been made.
August 29th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Sheldon says: “Let’s eliminate affirmative action not because we think it’s unfair, but because black people, in the end, are stupider than white people? This is a real world argument?”
I think the argument is that Murray’s work shows that affirmative action _is_ unfair.
August 29th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
Quite well written, almost covers up the fact that you are a racist, almost but not quite.
August 29th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
John Simpson writes: “Quite well written, almost covers up the fact that you are a racist, almost but not quite.”
Wow. What a powerful argument. Very impressive.
August 29th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
John, with respect, I don’t think you can read. Try again.
August 29th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Sheldon, I have two points:
1) What was compelling about the remembering-numbers-backwards study was not that the blacks were worse at remembering-numbers-backwards than whites, but that they were JUST AS GOOD as whites at remembering numbers forwards while worse at remembering them backwards. If the black participants were feeling inferior or malnourished in the womb etc., they would have underperformed on the rote-memorization half of the test instead of only the half that required more involved thought.
2) A larger point, it seems somewhat perverse to criticize the merits and veracity of an idea on the grounds that it may have no real-world repercussions, or that you may not like those repercussions. The truth is the truth, and so far at least in human history, the spreading of it has tended to improve things. It was not a valid criticism of the idea that the world is round to say, well so what?
August 29th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Murray’s clear implication is that backwards remembering is HARDER. Hence, I believe other factors could have affected response, besides genetic inferiority. Also, it’s not that I dislike the repercussions (though I think they would indeed be severe and negative if we actually took concrete action based on the conclusions Murray reaches); I just think as a practical matter his conclusions are NOT actionable. I don’t want to keep writing on this, though I appreciate your comments and civility, but think about it: Assume that, on average, you as a white person (if you are white) are less intelligent than an Asian. Now what? Incidentally, an overly long and perhaps a bit dense (in the positive meaning of the word) but fair-minded critique of The Bell Curve can be found at http://reason.com/9503/dept.bk.HECKMAN.text.shtml. Very much worth reading.
August 29th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
I’ll check it out, thanks. As for the “actionability” of Murray’s conclusions, I say again that that’s a funny charge to level against a factual proposition. I am indeed white. I appreciate your speedy response so I won’t berate you for mischaracterizing Murray’s argument as: therefore I am less intelligent than an Asian. I know what you mean. And now what? Well, I don’t know. I guess if I were an investor I might pick a mutual fund of Japanese software companies over a fund of Icelandic software companies…but the feebleness of that response in no way undercuts the value of Murray’s work, assuming he’s right, an assumption I know you don’t share. The job of a scientist is to find out the truth. What the world does with that truth is up to the world. What Murray said in his piece was less “Let’s scrap affirmative action” than “Let’s not be afraid to admit that there are innate differences between groups of different race, gender, etc.” And surely you can’t disagree with that.
But it is certainly hard not to see that his findings, if true, have at least a place in the affirmative-action debate. Would you disagree with the following statement:
“If whites, as a group, are innately more intelligent than blacks as a group, then to the extent that the concept of affirmative action relies on the proposition that the two groups are of equal innate intelligence, the concept of affirmative action is discredited.”
?
I’ll check in later. I’m off to see Wedding Crashers, which will surely only enhance my powers of analytical reasoning.
August 29th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
I’ve never argued that the basic research questions asked should be off the table. I’ve never said it was taboo. Certai
I’ve never suggested that race is non-existent, though cultural views of race certainly have little to do with the concept of population which is what is relevant when discussing genetics.
You can build your men of straw and happily knock them down, but none of that is a defense of the very shoddy “scientific” work of Murray and Hernstein, and none of that provides a defense of the racist political content of the book.
The Bell Curve is not, as many seem to think, a blank slate onto which you can project whatever your personal iconoclastic beliefs about race and genetics. It is a specific book which engaged in very poor econometrics to come to some very unsupportable conclusions which led to unsupported and racist policy conclusions. It is hard to conclude that much of what is bad in the book wasn’t deliberately bad, though I am not a mindreader. In any case, the continued support of shoddy work in support of racist propaganda and conclusions is in fact the action of someone who is a fool, a bigot, or both.
I say I steer people away from it as a public service because I have the education and training to understand why the book is bad, something most casual readers don’t.
August 29th, 2005 at 4:50 pm
Sheldon,
If racial differences in IQ are substantial then the following things are true:
- Lawsuits against companies for racially discriminating based on the fact that some racial groups are underrepresenting in workforces for cognitively demanding jobs are lawsuits without merit and the companies are being made to pay for doing nothing wrong.
- Companies are operating less efficiently because they must employ less qualified people in jobs they can not do well.
- Companies are operating less efficiently because work groups have to put up with slacker members from priviliged races who can’t get fired because they can sue charging racial discrimination.
- Doctors from lower IQ groups are committing malpractice at much greater rates and hence racial preferences for admitting them to medical school is hurting patients.
- Our Open Borders immigration policy is dumbing down the country and creating a permanent larger lower class of disconteded, resentful people who commit crimes at higher rates and require taxes to support them with medical care, education, and other services they do not pay enough taxes to support for themselves.
- Educational policies aimed at getting low IQ people into colleges are wasting the time of the low IQ people who’d be better off getting taught manual trades that they could understand. Better to learn to work with ceramics, wood, brick, and other basics of construction for example.
I could go on. But to claim that racial differences have no policy implications requires putting on blinders.
Now, I think the people who deny the obvious truth (yourself for example) are promoting big injustices against people who are sued and forced to hire unqualified people. I think you are promoting malpractice by expecting that doctors should come equally from all racial and subracial groups. Ditto for all sorts of other things. Your wrong mythical beliefs unfounded in empirical evidence and in fact at odds with empirical evidence are going great harm.
August 29th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
“Atrios’s blogsite is full of this kind of stuff. In general, he has a hard time completing a sentence without name calling.”
“Duncan Black is an angry, walking intolerance machine. Sadly, he represents much of the angry, intolerant left that has laid down the rigid PC lines of dogma which you aren’t permitted to cross.”
Pot, meet kettle.
August 29th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
This will be my last reply. Randall, look at the article Murray wrote in Commentary - suggesting (incorrectly in my view, but never mind that) a measurable but narrowly defined and hardly apples-to-oranges difference in cognitive ability - then look at the massive policy conclusions you have drawn from it. You probably don’t see the problem; most objective observers would. Finis.
August 29th, 2005 at 6:11 pm
The Bell Curve has been refuted because it’s methodology was shoddy, at best, and pure crap at worst. It presented itself as a scholarly work yet was not peer reviewed — with good reason, because statistically literate people can see pretty clearly its conclusions do not follow from its empirical evidence. Thus it would have been torn apart.
The racism charge comes from the fact that the authors should have known better than to draw their conclusions based on their shoddy research. The fact remains, if you’re going to defend the book, you’re going to first need to address the charges that Murray’s data and methodologies do not lead to the conclusions he claims. His detractors claim that the instrumentation he used for his measurements was flawed, the timing of his measurements was poor, and he conveniently left out data that didn’t support his conclusions. If you can’t do that, don’t hide behind the very name-calling of which you’re accusing detractors.
August 29th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
Gelcap asks about the following statement:
But it is certainly hard not to see that his findings, if true, have at least a place in the affirmative-action debate. Would you disagree with the following statement:
“If whites, as a group, are innately more intelligent than blacks as a group, then to the extent that the concept of affirmative action relies on the proposition that the two groups are of equal innate intelligence, the concept of affirmative action is discredited.”
As stated (”to the extent that …”) it’s a tautology, so, no, I wouldn’t disagree with it.
I will say two things:
First, even if this is true, it doesn’t justify discrimination, nor discredit remedies for discrimination. That is, to pull numbers out of the air, if a population is 10% Ruritanian, but due to innate differences, only 7% of Ruritanians can be expected to qualify for college entrance, but the state college has only 2% Ruritanian among entering freshemen, this number cannot be attributed to innate differencs, and studying remedies for his discrepancy is indicated.
Second, given the variety of groups that have been accused of low intelligence in the past (the Irish, eastern Europens, southern Europeans, Asians of various stripes, Jews, etc.), which we now consider equals if not superior to “regular people”, asserting with any confidence that blacks are innately inferior is just plain foolish.
August 29th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
I recommend “Why So Slow” by Virginia Valian as an indirect counterbalance to the Bell Curve (which I have not read). While it is about women, it clearly and scientifically shows the myriad ways in which men get little boosts that women do not get, and whites get little boosts that non-whites do not. These molehills cumulatively turn into mountains over time. You can call this white male affirmative action–a good illustration is the phenomenon that when identical resumes are submitted with either Anglo male names, female names, or Black names at the top, the white men are affirmatively and systematically over-judged. Then they get better jobs, of course, by which they are then judged! Another relevant point is that people conform themselves to stereotypes, even negative ones, but there are no negative stereotypes for white males. All in all, research (which I am trying to point out IS being done, and simply is refuting the Bell Curve’s thesis as I understand it) has shown that social influences swamp any other genetic ones.
Sorry for the long comment! All in all a pretty good post.
August 29th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
I mean really, who’s idiot blog is this anyway? What an uneducated idiot you have shown yourself to be.
Now go back to your right-wing corner of the world.
And Atrios, if you’re still reading this inane thread, stop linking this POS. It’s a waste of our collective time.
August 29th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
Some might say that because there is a genetic inequality between individual people (greater lung capacity or predisposition to heart disease), then why not between the races? Well, what the Bell Curve suggests is that there is an enormous EQUALITY between members of a single race, enough to be individually classified and held as the standard for that race.
August 29th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
I was thinking…. Wouldn’t this be great material for a dystopic vision in which people are granted or dismissed the right to greater education and jobs, based on tests at childbirth that predict intelligence? Wait… didn’t I read that already?
August 30th, 2005 at 1:42 am
how funny that you (’nospeedbumps’) would criticize Atrios with nothing more than your own name calling. Address his points, if you dare. i doubt you are up to the challenge.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:55 am
Man, that response (linked above) is such a burn to “Atrios”. If “Atrios” and/or his followers refuse to respond (and by respond I mean something other than reckless name-calling), they will have revealed the real scope of their ignorance on this topic.
“Atrios”, the gauntlet has been tossed at your feet. Do you dare pick it up? Do you dare disturb the PC universe?
August 30th, 2005 at 9:38 am
Student:
I’m having a hard time matching your critique to the book I read. A part of your comment was:
“His detractors claim that the instrumentation he used for his measurements was flawed, the timing of his measurements was poor, and he conveniently left out data that didn’t support his conclusions.”
Now, the problem is that Hernstein and Murray didn’t do any measurements for this book. They mostly analyzed data from the NLSY which they had nothing to do with collecting, along with discussing other publications from the field. The NLSY data is publically available, so they presumably didn’t manage to leave out any of it. Also, you seem to be discussing the Bell Curve as though it was mostly about average IQ differences between members of different races. Most of the book isn’t about that at all.
It’s really helpful to read a book before you critique it.
–Albatross
August 30th, 2005 at 11:43 am
Murray and Hernstein also rely heavily onthework of Richard Lynn, who is notorious for fudging the facts; for example reaching conclusions about IQ based on Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which John Raven himself cautions cannot be convered to IQ scores. Lynn also relies on (and badly distorts) Owen’s South Africanstudies
Crap is too kind a word forthis sort of nonsense.
August 30th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Right on, man!
Stupid morons like Atrios can’t put together an arguement without resorting to childish name calling. If only his idiot, mongoloid followers weren’t such incredible doofuses, we could finally have a polite, rational discussion about why black people are so dumb!
August 30th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
I’m very impressed with your blinking lights! It really gets across your message about “PC police.” Good work!
I’m a bit less impressed with strawmen like this:
But a larger question here is whether this topic of IQ differences among groups should be allowed to be researched or discussed in respectable society.
The IQ differential has been discussed for decades. Perhaps you’re too young to remember Jensen’s famous paper on Head Start in 1969? I can assure you it made quite a splash, and that its methodological problems were covered ably by Scientific American.
An IQ differential exists, no doubt about it. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be discussed, and no reason possible explanations shouldn’t be offered. However, those explanations ought to be scientifically justifiable, and they ought to be subjected to peer review. Murray has no expertise in genetics or psychometrics, and it shows. He was accused of misusing and misrepresenting data by the Human Genome Project, and of jumping to premature conclusions by the American Psychological Association. To anyone who cares about scientific accuracy, that’s pretty disturbing.
The professional victims on the Right love to complain that Murray’s being “suppressed” because he’s challenging liberal orthodoxy by discussing IQ, but the real problem is not the discussion itself; the problem is Murray’s early recourse to the hypothesis of innate inferiority, which both overstates the IQ gap and ignores the fact that it’s shrinking.
You might also consider the remarkable attention that Murray - an uncredentialed layman in a highly speculative field - has gotten. Many actual scientists don’t have the access to media that Murray has, but folks on the Right seem to feel that you can be “suppressed” simply by having people question your credentials or assertions, no matter how big a bully pulpit you enjoy.
If IQ and race is truly an important question, it should be investigated by real scientists. The problem with Murray’s work isn’t that it’s “challenging”; it’s that it’s been torn to shreds on methodological grounds by reputable scientists who have precisely the expertise that Murray lacks, and that it relies heavily on shoddy research conducted by unabashed racists. It’s perfectly natural that the persistent refusal of Murray’s champions to face these facts would lead some people to assume that they have ulterior motives.
But lest all this sound too harsh, let me just say once again: Great blinking lights you’ve got there…way better than Drudge!
August 30th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
If IQ and race is truly an important question, it should be investigated by real scientists.
Hahahah. Yeah right, and have the PC minions flail the innocent sap. All they need do is look to the furor that befell Dr. Summers, and more importantly, the dishonest tactics that followed his comment, such as purposely misconstruing his statement to make it look ill-informed and egregious. Just watch, someone will pop up here and make the same claim that Dr. Summers wasn’t properly qualified to state such a hypothesis and that he did so in a room full of experts who knew better. Whether this future commenter knows they’re lying or just picked up these talking points innocently is really immaterial - the point is that they are so offended by the mere suggestion of biology that they’ll smear a man’s reputation and call for him to be dismissed from his office. We covered, and wrote extensively, on the whole Summers’ fracas, here.
Or consider the hoops Dr. Cochran had to go through to get his paper published. After an editor wanted to publish it and administrator threatened to shut down the Journal. The editor passed. Or this tale of how Zorba the Greek was instrumental in getting the paper rejected at a major journal. Finally, the brave souls at Cambridge University published the paper.
Or consider how Leftist Academics and their activist counterparts shut down and killed the successor to the Human Genome Project. Dead, dead, dead. Why? Well the researchers had the temerity to want study how allelic frequencies differed between populations. The scientists associated with The Human Genome Diversity Project sure learned a lesson from that experience - the power of the Savonarolas.
Or consider the issue of squid ink - what scientists have to say publicly in order to avoid being hounded and persecuted. Consider Dr. Francis Collin, lead researcher of the Human Genome Project - who in my opinion deserves an award for the most bold use of Squid Ink I’ve ever been witness to:
Or Dr. Charles Murtaugh, a geneticist:
Or how about the most beloved of the anti-racists, Jared Diamond, who knew which way the wind was blowing and dropped his inquiries into studying the Ethnic Differences in Testicle Size in favor of writing “Just So” stories about how people from Papua New Guinea are the most intelligent in the world.
And let’s not forget Stanford’s Dr. David Botstein:
Phila, you’re spouting nonsense divorced from reality. Researchers have been burned on this issue before and don’t relish the thought of academic zeolots harassing them and destroying their careers.
Many are fully cognizant of the Creationism rampant on the Left. For more info, read my essay which highlights the obscurantism of Stephen Jay Gould and the other marxists from the Gang of Four
August 30th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
I should also add that it is unconscionable that professors are being investigated by police for the research they conduct or what they publish. Cases in point: Rushton investigated by the RCMP for hate crimes for investigating and writing about human bio-diversity.
Tatu Vanhanen, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of
Tampere and father of the Finnish Prime Minister, was investigated for hate crimes because he published a book entitled IQ and the Wealth of Nations.
Researchers today hide behind squid ink and do research on bio-diversity that has sufficient plausible deniability for they want to avoid the grief that the close minded ideologues rain down upon the synthesizers like Murray and Vanhanen.
August 30th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
the problem is Murray’s early recourse to the hypothesis of innate inferiority, which both overstates the IQ gap and ignores the fact that it’s shrinking.
This immediately discredits you. Murray explicitly states in his piece that the IQ gap appears to have shrunk by 0.1-0.2 std dev over the last few decades, he thinks this is because of the vastly improved treatment of black Americans, and he applauds this.
You may want to try actually carefully reading what he wrote.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
Sheldon,
You asked for policy implications should Murray’s argument be correct. . I provided policy implications. I could easly provide a dozen more policy implications.
Racial preferences are currently justified on the grounds that racial differences in educational and career outcomes must be the result of racism. But if the difference are due to group average differences in cognitive ability then all the policies justified on the grounds of supposed racism can no longer be justified on those grounds. So those policies ought to be repealed.
Do you think that even if large group average differences in IQ are real that we should have doctors from each ethnic group in proportion to the size of their ethnic group in the entire population? Or do you think we should select who gets to become a doctor based on intellectual ability to do the job?
Do you think employers should not get sued if they do not hire lots of people from lower average ability groups for cognitively demanding tasks? Or do you favor forcing employers to hire people who will do poorly at the intellectually tougher jobs?
August 30th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
Hey! Is my 3:03 pm comment going to be released from moderation?
August 30th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
The Inequality Taboo
If you don’t know who Charles Murray is, the author of Losing Ground, The Bell Curve and (more recently) Human Accomplishment, it’s your own business. But if you don’t read his last essay published on Commentary, you’re just nuts. Analysis, comment…
August 30th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
TangoMan,
My sincerest apologies for having your comment locked up for so long. You have some word that my moderation software picked up on and I have been busy today.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
Dan, I suspected it was something like that - hence my little note to get your attention.
BTW, I won’t be offended if you houseclean and delete these comments
August 30th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
[...] king of the PC Police - Watch Out for the REAL Police In the comment section of this post about intolerance and the PC police, regarding allowing researchers to investigate IQ differences among [...]
August 31st, 2005 at 6:12 am
Proof positive that Murray was wrong. Right here on display for all to see, another stupid white man.
August 31st, 2005 at 9:46 am
I think one aspect of this discussion that’s facinating to watch is the confirmation bias. I don’t ever seem to have noticed anyone who criticizes Murray and Hernstein for publishing The Bell Curve when neither were specialists in psychometrics also criticizing Gould for publishing The Mismeasure of Man, even though he surely had no more formal background in the subject than Hernstein (who was a researcher in psychology at Harvard). When someone says something you either agree with or want to hear, it’s natural to be a little less critical of his qualifications to say it, of any possible complications he glosses over, etc.
–Albatross
August 31st, 2005 at 9:54 am
Randal Parker and Sheldon are discussing what the policy implications are of research into IQ differences between races. I can think of one obvious one, which essentially everyone seems to miss. If the race/IQ differences are based partly on genetic factors, it may be possible to do something about them in some simple way. It may not, too, but we’ll never know if we don’t look. Specifically, what if some part of the difference were explained by slightly different prenatal nutritional requirements? We’d end up able to get rid of the difference by changing the makeup of prenatal vitamins and getting more black moms to take them.
Now, it’s probably not this simple. But we’ll never find out if any part of the difference could be fixed in some simple way like this unless we look at it.
–Albatross
August 31st, 2005 at 5:31 pm
Randal Parker and Sheldon are discussing what the policy implications are of research into IQ differences between races. I can think of one obvious one, which essentially everyone seems to miss. If the race/IQ differences are based partly on genetic factors, it may be possible to do something about them in some simple way. It may not, too, but we’ll never know if we don’t look. Specifically, what if some part of the difference were explained by slightly different prenatal nutritional requirements? We’d end up able to get rid of the difference by changing the makeup of prenatal vitamins and getting more black moms to take them.
Now, it’s probably not this simple. But we’ll never find out if any part of the difference could be fixed in some simple way like this unless we look at it.
Or, more to the point, within a few decades we should have the genetic engineering capability to eliminate the entire gap and destroy the correlation between skin color and IQ! Seems better to focus on actually solving the problem than to continue denying that it exists…
August 31st, 2005 at 5:32 pm
The culture of experts is a little obscene to me. Firstly that you must have a PhD in something to be able to provide insight is not really accurate in my opinion. This extends beyond just research into a lot of professions, for example:
Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, etc.
A lot of this is just the establishment creating barriers of entry. It does a couple things, it drives up the cost of service, it reduces the available talent, and it generally stagnates the profession, (all the professions become dominated by people who teach the advanced level, which I would argue tends to be a small homogeneous group.)
Beyond that it legitamizes assinine arguments, such as Atrios’ “I’m trained to see the fallacy.” Well I’m sorry, but I have had an extremely strong grasp on the basic fundamentals of thought since 9th grade. These are in my opinion:
Logical Reasoing (Philosophy and Math)
Scientific Method (Science and Engineering)
Statistical Analysis (Social Science and Economics)
This is not to say I understood enough about stats to run complex regressions, etc, or enough about the various sciences to design complex experiments, or enough about logic to come up with Godel’s proof on my own, nontheless I already possed the understanding that these were the established and tested methods that form the basis of thoughts in our world. (BTW I have them listed in the order I find them most important.)
Once one understands these things one can address almost any argument in a top down manner. What assumptions does the argument make? What conclusions does it reach? How are these conclusions made (logic, stats, expirmentation)?
If the logic sound? Where did the stats come from? Are they being used consistently? If I rewaord the problem do the stats hold up? Were the experiments biased? How were they setup? Is there enough data to verify them?
Now the more complex the topic the harder these things are to uncover, and the more and more you are forced to rely on an expert, but you know what questions to ask the expert and you may even be able to present only analogous problems so as to remove their bias.
I don’t know Mr. Black’s education background, but I think anyone with the literary skill to injest writing and knowledge of the above skills can jump into any topic. I aslo believe these skills are transferable, i.e. expertise in a specific subject will require these skills to some extent and the practice of leveraging these skills to become an expert in a subject matter, makes it easier to become an expert in the next subject matter, because these skills are honed.
Finally literary and oratory skills are neccessary purely for using these skills within the group, and in fact hinder their effectiveness since perfect communication is not possible. Nontheless you cannot play in the group with out communication skills. The invers remains untrue, great communicators need not be right or have used any valid argument, e.g. “Sophists”. This why one who wishes to convince others should have both the analytical and communication skills.
Sorry if I got too far off topic.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:42 pm
Mr. Sullivan:
You are screaming about people on the far left ‘not waking up to the truth’, but what is your truth? That blacks are less intelligent because of genetic differences, and because Charles Murray said so? Despite the fact that scientists with far more scientific and rational credibility than you or Mr. Murray will ever be have discredited this dumb, one-sided paleolithic, racial theorizing book sponsored by groups and organizations that have a long history of being at bottom line deeply racist in their view and understanding of the natural and economic world, and despite that there are likely to be millions of Africans and African-origin dispora in the Americas and the world that can prove higher intelligence than yourself (whether educated or not) and even many of the folks who choose to believe otherwise, the right wing persists in their backward beliefs and bringing up the poorly derived theories of this book, mostly because it is comforting to them and preserves their social and economic belief systems. You only need look to other countries where being non-white and poor has been no barrier to pursuit of individual dreams to show that there is little difference in ethnic groups striving or degree of success. And you need to ask yourself why are you calling people left-wing just because they dispute these theories, and why has right wing, ignorant theorizing and Limbaughish demonizing of the ‘left wing,’ reached such high demand these days?
P.M.
November 15th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
[...] actually believe this race is just a social construct? For more on this taboo topic, see here and here. This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 at 8 [...]
May 15th, 2006 at 11:00 am
[...] sate for average low IQs in many countries. Strange such a major problem exists, but it is taboo to even bring it up. In fact, the IQ gap may be the most important problem that the world faces today. Yet [...]
December 17th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
[...] On this blog you may have noticed that I often bring up the topic of IQ. The politically-correct Western world generally avoids mention of IQs because it tends to raise questions of IQ differences between races and between countries. Discussing IQ differences is so charged politically that journalists, academics, and politicians carefully avoid the whole subject of IQ. Otherwise, you may get vilified, like Charles Murray did when he wrote The Bell Curve. [...]
June 12th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
[...] Some topics are off limits for academics to study - at least if you arrive at the wrong conclusions. For example, if you do a scientific study about IQs, guns, or the death penalty - but you reach any of the following conclusions - prepare yourself from some nasty personal attacks: [...]