Freethought & Rationalism Archive

echidna · 10-09-2002, 01:40 AM

I know it�s an old debate from many years ago, but essentially the Bell Curve reports worse than a lie, it reports a half-truth. Its omissions make it as scientifically erroneous as much of its data. And yet it still gets regularly raised.

Yes, the authors �simply point to the current stratification of measured cognitive ability along racial lines.�

But more, Hernstein and Murray go to great lengths to specifically link IQ as 60% attributable to racial genetics, therefore limiting any true educational or socio-economic possibility of improvement. Contentious stuff and one which I realise has crackpots and pseudoscience on both sides.

Heh MBR, you are correct (I really am quite transparent), I haven�t read the Bell Curve itself. Along with Mao�s Little Red Book, Mein Kampf, and the Bible I�ll consider the standing criticism quite sufficient. Nonetheless, the criticism of the Bell Curve is extensive and it has been solidly debunked from many directions. Feel free to discuss these following common criticisms of the Bell Curve.

I�ll find more when I have the time, the discussion is really very lengthy. I�m intrigued what other opinions there might be amongst those more familiar with the debate.

[ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: echidna ]

echidna · 10-09-2002, 01:43 AM

On the subject of objective measures of intelligence, Murray and Herrnstein are initially contradicted by the fact that the points gap in recent years has narrowed. Then by the fact that IQ results have improved on average by 15 points since WWII. Is that the 40% environment or the 60% racial genetic improvement ? Or is it that objective IQ tests aren't ?

Murray and Herrnstein�s 40% estimate is laughably lame and self-contradictory. From : <a href="http://www.fair.org/extra/9501/bell.html" target="_blank">http://www.fair.org/extra/9501/bell.html</a>

Quote:

As for the "consistency of the gaps," even The Bell Curve acknowledges that more recent tests have shown a narrower black/white difference, ranging from seven to 10 points. SAT tests have shown a similar convergence. But Murray and Herrnstein warn that "at some point convergence may be expected to stop, and the gap could even begin to widen again"--because "black fertility is loaded more heavily than white fertility toward low-IQ segments of the population." In other words, the bad genes will triumph, no matter what the evidence says.

That sort of circular argument abounds in The Bell Curve. Although sociologist Jane Mercer has shown that supposed racial differences in IQ vanish if one controls for a variety of socio-economic variables, the authors reject her method because their theories assume that low IQ causes people to be poor, rather than poverty causing low IQs. Similarly, even though IQ tests show that average scores are rising--by as much as 15 points since World War II--"real" IQs must be falling, since low IQ women are having more babies.

While we�re at it, let�s toss in a measure of demonisation.

Quote:

Nearly all the research that Murray and Herrnstein relied on for their central claims about race and IQ was funded by the Pioneer Fund, described by the London Sunday Telegraph (3/12/89) as a "neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics." The fund's mission is to promote eugenics, a philosophy that maintains that "genetically unfit" individuals or races are a threat to society.

The Pioneer Fund was set up in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a millionaire who advocated sending blacks back to Africa. The foundation's charter set forth the group's missions as "racial betterment" and aid for people "deemed to be descended primarily from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States." (In 1985, after Pioneer Fund grant recipients began receiving political heat, the charter was slightly amended to play down the race angle--GQ, 11/94.)

The fund's first president, Harry Laughlin, was an influential advocate of sterilization for those he considered genetically unfit. In successfully advocating laws that would restrict immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, Laughlin testified before Congress that 83 percent of Jewish immigrants were innately feeble-minded (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94). Another founder, Frederick Osborn, described Nazi Germany's sterilization law as "a most exciting experiment." (Discovery Journal, 7/9/94)

The fund's current president, Harry Weyher, denounces the Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools, saying, "All Brown did was wreck the school system." (GQ, 11/94) The fund's treasurer, John Trevor, formerly served as treasurer for the crypto-fascist Coalition of Patriotic Societies, when it called in 1962 for the release of Nazi war criminals and praised South Africa's "well-reasoned racial policies." (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94)

One of the Pioneer Fund's largest current grantees is Roger Pearson, an activist and publisher who has been associated with international fascist currents. Pearson has written: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide."

On the controversial section dealing with the 15 point lag between whites and blacks, Richard Lynn, R. Travis Osborne, Frank C.J. McGurk, and Audrey Shuey are all cited by H & M and are all recipients of Pioneer Fund grants.

Little wonder at the popularity of the Bell Curve with eugenicists and white supremacists.

For more debunking of sources,

Quote:

Murray and Herrnstein also rely heavily on Thomas Bouchard, whose study of separated-at-birth twins has "proved" that not only is intelligence largely genetically determined, but so are religiosity, political orientation and leisure-time interests. The Bell Curve uses Bouchard to rehabilitate Sir Cyril Burt, whose twin-based evidence for inherited intelligence is now believed to be fraudulent. Their logic is that Burt's research must have been sound, because Burt's findings closely resemble Bouchard's, and Bouchard's research is "accepted by most scholars as a model of its kind."

That illustrates the sort of scholars Murray and Herrnstein associate with. More reputable researchers have raised many questions about Bouchard's work: While other twin researchers estimate that 50 percent of the average variation in intelligence can be attributed to heredity, Bouchard comes up with 70 percent. Even the twin studies that came up with more conservative estimates of intelligence's "heritability" (itself a highly dubious concept) are flawed because the supposedly "separated-at-birth" twins usually turn out to have been raised in close proximity; Bouchard refuses to let skeptics examine the case histories of the twins he studied, essentially rendering his research into so many "Believe It or Not!" anecdotes (Scientific American, 6/93; The Nation, 11/28/94).

Bouchard, of course, is also a major recipient of Pioneer money-- "We couldn't have done this project without the Pioneer Fund," he told GQ (11/94). And he's a colleague and mentor of (and has some peculiar views in common with) perhaps the crankiest of all of Pioneer's beneficiaries, J. Philippe Rushton.

echidna · 10-09-2002, 01:46 AM

As for �other factors� possibly influencing IQ test performance,

<a href="http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/featured/bellcurv.htm" target="_blank">http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/featured/bellcurv.htm</a>

Quote:

Many analysts have reported estimates of models relating behavior to measured IQ, SES, and other attributes (e.g., Christopher Jencks et al., 1979; Manski and David Wise, 1983). Most analysts have considered education to be an intervening variable in the chain that runs from child background to adult outcomes. But HM deliberately omit any measure of education as a conditioning variable in their basic analysis. On pages 124-25, they write that "the role of education versus IQ as calculated by a regression equation is tricky to interpret, for four reasons": education is in part caused by IQ and by SES; education may have a discontinuous effect on outcomes; education and IQ may be collinear; and education and IQ may have an interactive effect on outcomes.

Amen-Moses · 10-09-2002, 02:25 AM

Why is it that "poor" asians score higher than "rich" whites?

Amen-Moses

Amen-Moses · 10-09-2002, 02:52 AM

Personally I've never understood what all the fuss is about, the probable cause of the tiny percentage differences picked up by the studies and presented in the bell curve is most likely gestation times. Africans typically gestate for the least time, Europeans next and Asians last, the difference is only an average of three days each way and is well know to midwives in ethnically diverse areas (Bradford for example) and with the mixing of "races" (although even the term race is a bit of a misnomer as nearly all racial groupings are subjective) will eventually disappear altogether (especially with doctors inducing "late" pregnancies and prolonging "premature" ones with drugs).

An extra few days of gestation could easily account for a few percent one way or the other in any form of testing you might like to choose.

People are different, some groupings of specific skills or talents will show "racial" bias as long as specific genetic traits remain within reasonably isolated populations. Get over it! It isn't the end of the world and regardless of which curve is highest or lowest when it comes to knuckle-headed bigots they register well below the median of all the apes combined!

Personally I don't get all bent out of shape because on average west indians can outsprint my "racial type", nor does it bother me that much that the average Bangladeshi is better at math than the average European nor that some other group can get drunk easier or that some other can swim better or etc etc.

IQ is a meaningless measure and should present no comfort to the knuckle-heads whatsoever as most of them probably couldn't finish an IQ test if their lives depended on it!

Amen-Moses

Corey Hammer · 10-09-2002, 04:27 AM

The criticism I recall from a class a few years was that when the data is split between traditional northern states and tradition southern states, blacks in the North did better than whites in the South (though still worse than whites in the North).

MBR · 10-09-2002, 06:59 AM

Echidna, please tell me what The Bell Curve has to do with eugenics?

Until you actually look at the data presented in the book and the conclusions drawn from it, you don't know what you are talking about. This cut and paste of other peoples criticisms and the exclusion of responses is quite one-sided and disingenuous.

You can find the standard responses to the stuff you posted here. I have no desire to regurgitate all of it on this board.

<a href="http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/index.html</a>

[ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: MBR ]

Rusting Car Bumper · 10-09-2002, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by echidna:
I know it’s an old debate from many years ago, but essentially the Bell Curve reports worse than a lie, it reports a half-truth.

Where is the connection to eugenics?

The Bell Curve is not entirely about race and IQ. That's one small part of it. It also reports a relation to poor whites and IQ also and that's one tiny part of it as well.

Now of course the book is problematic to put it lightly. However, the old "its about race and oh how horrible is that" is really a form of a straw man.

Many of these webpages that critisize it don't do that great a job.

Caveat emptor. Simply because you think you are on the right side of the fence doesn't mean that the chosen path to that side of the fence is valid or sound.

DC

[ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: DigitalChicken ]

ps418 · 10-09-2002, 12:56 PM

I saw Murray (or was it Hernstein?) on Cspan book TV a few weeks ago. He discussed the critics of the Bell Curve, what they had said about the book, and how wide a gap there was between what the book said and what the critics said it said. He also pointed out that essentially none of the negative reviews actually quoted the book, and that many of the critics admitted when asked that they had not even read the book. I'm not an expert in these matters by any means, but I came away with the impression that the critics were very often offering nothing but vitriol, emotional ad hominems, and out-and-out misrepresentations.

Incidentally, Steven Pinker has a new book out called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670031518/qid=1034196831/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-2061020-1292729?v=glance&n=507846" target="_blank">The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature,</a> which touches on some of the same issues, in a broader way. I'm about a fifth of the way through, and its been good so far.

leonarde · 10-09-2002, 01:09 PM

An interesting interview with one of the co-authors (Charles Murray)from 1995 is here:
<a href="http://www.skeptic.com/03.2.miele-murray-interview.html" target="_blank">http://www.skeptic.com/03.2.miele-murray-interview.html</a>

10-09-2002, 01:40 AM	#1
echidna Veteran Member Join Date: May 2001 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,832	The Bell Curve and eugenics I know it�s an old debate from many years ago, but essentially the Bell Curve reports worse than a lie, it reports a half-truth. Its omissions make it as scientifically erroneous as much of its data. And yet it still gets regularly raised. Yes, the authors �simply point to the current stratification of measured cognitive ability along racial lines.� But more, Hernstein and Murray go to great lengths to specifically link IQ as 60% attributable to racial genetics, therefore limiting any true educational or socio-economic possibility of improvement. Contentious stuff and one which I realise has crackpots and pseudoscience on both sides. Heh MBR, you are correct (I really am quite transparent), I haven�t read the Bell Curve itself. Along with Mao�s Little Red Book, Mein Kampf, and the Bible I�ll consider the standing criticism quite sufficient. Nonetheless, the criticism of the Bell Curve is extensive and it has been solidly debunked from many directions. Feel free to discuss these following common criticisms of the Bell Curve. I�ll find more when I have the time, the discussion is really very lengthy. I�m intrigued what other opinions there might be amongst those more familiar with the debate. [ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: echidna ]</p>

10-09-2002, 06:59 AM	#7
MBR Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Trailhead Posts: 56	Echidna, please tell me what The Bell Curve has to do with eugenics? Until you actually look at the data presented in the book and the conclusions drawn from it, you don't know what you are talking about. This cut and paste of other peoples criticisms and the exclusion of responses is quite one-sided and disingenuous. You can find the standard responses to the stuff you posted here. I have no desire to regurgitate all of it on this board. <a href="http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/index.html</a> [ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: MBR ]</p>

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

10-09-2002, 02:25 AM	#4
Amen-Moses Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Portsmouth, England Posts: 4,652	Why is it that "poor" asians score higher than "rich" whites? Amen-Moses

10-09-2002, 02:52 AM	#5
Amen-Moses Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Portsmouth, England Posts: 4,652	Personally I've never understood what all the fuss is about, the probable cause of the tiny percentage differences picked up by the studies and presented in the bell curve is most likely gestation times. Africans typically gestate for the least time, Europeans next and Asians last, the difference is only an average of three days each way and is well know to midwives in ethnically diverse areas (Bradford for example) and with the mixing of "races" (although even the term race is a bit of a misnomer as nearly all racial groupings are subjective) will eventually disappear altogether (especially with doctors inducing "late" pregnancies and prolonging "premature" ones with drugs). An extra few days of gestation could easily account for a few percent one way or the other in any form of testing you might like to choose. People are different, some groupings of specific skills or talents will show "racial" bias as long as specific genetic traits remain within reasonably isolated populations. Get over it! It isn't the end of the world and regardless of which curve is highest or lowest when it comes to knuckle-headed bigots they register well below the median of all the apes combined! Personally I don't get all bent out of shape because on average west indians can outsprint my "racial type", nor does it bother me that much that the average Bangladeshi is better at math than the average European nor that some other group can get drunk easier or that some other can swim better or etc etc. IQ is a meaningless measure and should present no comfort to the knuckle-heads whatsoever as most of them probably couldn't finish an IQ test if their lives depended on it! Amen-Moses

10-09-2002, 04:27 AM	#6
Corey Hammer Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Chicago Posts: 368	The criticism I recall from a class a few years was that when the data is split between traditional northern states and tradition southern states, blacks in the North did better than whites in the South (though still worse than whites in the North).

10-09-2002, 12:56 PM	#9
ps418 Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Louisville, KY, USA Posts: 1,840	I saw Murray (or was it Hernstein?) on Cspan book TV a few weeks ago. He discussed the critics of the Bell Curve, what they had said about the book, and how wide a gap there was between what the book said and what the critics said it said. He also pointed out that essentially none of the negative reviews actually quoted the book, and that many of the critics admitted when asked that they had not even read the book. I'm not an expert in these matters by any means, but I came away with the impression that the critics were very often offering nothing but vitriol, emotional ad hominems, and out-and-out misrepresentations. Incidentally, Steven Pinker has a new book out called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670031518/qid=1034196831/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-2061020-1292729?v=glance&n=507846" target="_blank">The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature,</a> which touches on some of the same issues, in a broader way. I'm about a fifth of the way through, and its been good so far.

10-09-2002, 01:09 PM	#10
leonarde Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: North America Posts: 1,603	An interesting interview with one of the co-authors (Charles Murray)from 1995 is here: <a href="http://www.skeptic.com/03.2.miele-murray-interview.html" target="_blank">http://www.skeptic.com/03.2.miele-murray-interview.html</a>

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.