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EPIDEMIOLOGY Volume 144 Copyright © 1996 by the Johns Hopkins University American Journal of EPIDEMIOLOGY Volume 144 Copyright © 1996 by The Johns Hopkins University Number 6 School of Hygiene and Public Hearth September 15, 1996 Sponsored by the Society for Epidemiologic Research REVIEWS AND COMMENTARY The Bell Curve: On Race, Social Class, and Epidemiologic Research Caries Muntaner,12 F. Javier Nieto,3 and Patricia d'Campo3'4 In a recently published book entitled The Bell regard to racial differences in intelligence and health Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American outcomes and to establish a parallel between the epis- Life (1, henceforth The Bell Curve), the late Harvard temologic stance of the book regarding race and main- professor of psychology Richard Herrnstein and Her- stream epidemiologic research. Herrnstein and Murray itage Foundation researcher Charles Murray claim that claim that several conclusions regarding racial differ- the position of US citizens in the country's class ences in tests of cognitive ability are "beyond signif- structure is, to a significant extent, the consequence of icant technical dispute" (1, p. 22). Chief among their inherited differences in "g," a general factor of intel- conclusions are that IQ tests are not biased against ligence that is measured by intelligence quotient (IQ) ethnic or racial groups and that racial differences in tests. Furthermore, these differences in "g" are respon- cognitive ability are substantially heritable. The main sible for racial differences in class position (i.e., some but unstated assumption behind these conclusions is racial groups inherently have more or less "g"). Using that the variable "race," as operationalized in social a series of regression analyses of data from the Na- science and epidemiologic studies (i.e., "black," tional Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which include a "white"), has a fundamentally biologic interpretation. proxy for IQ as an independent variable, Herrnstein and Murray suggest that inherited differences in "g" are responsible for black/white differences in behav- CURRENT CONTEXT OF BIOLOGICAL iors such as crime and having children out of wedlock. DETERMINISM" The explanations put forward by Herrnstein and The debate regarding the inheritance of racial dif- Murray regarding the fact that poverty disproportion- ferences in IQ is a long-standing academic battle that ately affects blacks in the United States (i.e., reflecting has sporadically surfaced in the broader public domain inherited differences in "g") has made race the center over the past several decades. In the late 1960s and of the controversies surrounding the book (2). early 1970s, similar arguments as those advanced by The aim of the present commentary is to briefly The Bell Curve were advanced by Jensen (3), Eysenck review the limitations of The Bell Curve claims with (4), and Herrnstein (5) himself. Efforts at debunking the claims of hereditarian explanations for racial dif- Received for publication March 20, 1995, and accepted for pub- ferences in IQ measures (6-10) were not successful lication January 5, 1996. enough to thwart this research program altogether. Abbreviation: IQ, intelligence quotient. 1 National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Thus, although The Bell Curve has been launched to Bethesda, MD. reach a nonacademic readership (2, 11), its assump- 2 Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health, West Vir- tions regarding the operationalization and interpreta- ginia School of Medicine, 3313 Robert C. Byrd Hearth Sciences Center, P.O. Box 9190, Morgarrtown, WV 26506-9190 (Reprint re- tion of the variable race are frequently found in the quests to Dr. Muntaner at this address.) academic world (12, 13), including public health (14). 3 Department of Epidemiology, The Johns Hopkins University The Bell Curve represents an effort to reach large School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, MD. 4 Department of Maternal and Child Health, The Johns Hopkins audiences, but its views are in many cases shared by University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, MD. standard research publications working in the "biolog- 531 532 Muntaner et al. ical determinist" paradigm. For example, The Bell RELEVANCE TO EPIDEMIOLOGIC RESEARCH Curve defends research in developmental psychology Significance of causal assumptions underlying that includes the extension of inherited racial differ- the use of the variable race ences in cognitive ability to brain size, rate of sexual Race is widely used in biomedical research, often maturation, length of the menstrual cycle, penis size, without any explicit indication of the theoretical con- infant mortality, and mental health (15). struct that its use implies (20). Even basic pathophys- The research program on biological determinism is iologic mechanisms shared by different animal species also represented in the recent history of epidemiology are systematically studied in humans separately by and public health. An extreme and rare instance is the race without a clear rationale. The underlying and enduring opposition to considering smoking as a major often unstated assumption, however, is that racial dif- risk factor for lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, ferences are mainly genetically determined, which in coupled with the attempt to explain away the risk turn can lead to conclusions that could have profound attributed to cigarette smoking in terms of inherited public health implications, as in the following exam- personality traits differentially distributed among ra- ples. cial groups (16). A more prevalent case of biological determinism are studies on the inheritance of cognitive abilities as an explanation for the different location of Race-specific standards for hematologic minorities in the social structure as well as their un- parameters dermining of welfare policies aimed at improving the Without any evidence from genetic studies, the ob- health of African-Americans (17). servation that blacks tend to have lower leukocyte Given the increasing skepticism among biologists count than whites, for example, led scientists to the and anthropologists surrounding the use of race as a conclusion that "neutropenia is probably a normal biologic category (18, 19), its use in epidemiology and genetically determined characteristic" in people of public health as an implicit biologic category should African descent (31, p. 1023). Similarly, African- be reexamined (20, 21). In biology and anthropology, Americans have been reported to have lower hemo- the resiliency of the biological determinist research globin values than whites even after "controlling for program has been explained by the influence of the socioeconomic differences" (32). However, this study, broader social environment in defining what consti- as well as many other epidemiologic studies, do not in tutes worthwhile research (7, 19, 22). In contrast, in fact adequately control for socioeconomic confound- epidemiology and public health, the "falsifiability cri- ers. If racial differences persist after stratification or terion" toward scientific knowledge prevails (23, 24). adjustment by surrogates of socioeconomic position Consequently, in epidemiology, cautious calls for ad- and other risk factors, no matter how imperfect or ditional studies allow the perpetuation of hypotheses partial these surrogates are, investigators often con- of race as a biologic category predisposing to illness in clude that a genetic factor must be playing a role. A major biomedical forums, even when more realistic basic methodological principle, i.e., that adjusting for alternative mechanisms have been suggested (18-21) an imperfect surrogate of a suspected confounder leads and even tested (25, 26). to imperfect adjustment (residual confounding), is un- fortunately rarely invoked. Our attempt is not to censor the authors' version of biological determinism. One of the ethical principles Clearly, despite criticism of the genetic hypothesis of scientific conduct is tolerance for the test of hy- to explain racial differences in hematologic parameters potheses and the use of methods that one dislikes (27). (33), the majority of scientists take at face value the Nevertheless, as the sociology and history of science "normality" of lower hemoglobin and neutrophil val- have shown, decisions about basic assumptions guid- ues in blacks. Moreover, some researchers recommend ing research are social phenomena not understandable separate hematologic reference values for blacks (34) by simply monitoring the empirical progress of a given without concern for the biologic plausibility of the field (22). The scientific community determines in part mechanisms linking skin color to hematologic param- the acceptability of hypotheses for inquiry, publica- eters (i.e., the philosophy of pragmatism). tion, and continued funding through a social process in which certain assumptions are uncritically accepted Race-specific birth weight distributions even in the face of empirical refutation (28). In the A second example of implicit genetic determinism biomedical fields including epidemiology, one such involves arguments regarding the potential genetic assumption is that racial labels such as "black" and origins of low birth weight in infants from different "white" classify human beings into groups with ge- racial/ethnic groups. Since the 1940s, recommenda- netic homogeneity for health outcomes (20, 29, 30). tions for race-specific standards of black and white Am J Epidemiol Vol. 144, No. 6, 1996 The Bell Curve and Epidemiologic Research 533 infants
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