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"[The great historian, Arnold Toynbee, author of The Study of History] was [What's [Catalogue] [Winnow] deprived, New] through his father's "[The term ] will be used here solely as a shorthand for madness, of a "consistent individual differences in cognitive competence." I will further stable family limit the term by admitting that consistent can mean consistent over time, background.... If but not necessarily over domains. I, and many other people, can imagine ever the work stockbrokers who are poor mathematicians and vice versa." ethic triumphed E.HUNT, 1994, 'Theoretical models for the study of intelligence.' In D.K. over adversity, Detterman, Current Topics in , Volume 4: Theories of [his] was such a Intelligence. Norwood, NJ : Ablex. triumph. The mere bulk of Toynbee's output is Upstream: Issues: unique. But the achievement The Bell Curve was at a price. What helped 'The attacks ... often Toynbee to read like an carry it off was unintentional a degree of self- centredness confirmation of our which surpasses view of the "cognitive even that of elite" as a new caste, [another great complete with high British priests, dogmas, historian, Sir heresies, and Lewis] Namier. apostates. They have Toynbee early revealed the extent to acquired the which the social conviction that science that deals in he must always public policy has in be right. - What the latter part of the 20th century become self-censored and other occupant of a Chair of riddled with taboos - in a word, corrupt.' (Charles Murray) Greek History financed by Greek donors would have felt This is a collection of materials relating to the book The Bell Curve (Free free in the bitter Press, 1994) by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Several reviews of http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/ (1 of 10)20-04-2005 14:40:33 Upstream: Upstream: Issues: The Bell Curve years 1920-22 the book can be found here, and have been divided into sections depending to espouse the on their degree of balance (in the opinion of the editor - but make up your cause of the own mind). Read the book, since its representation in the media and Turks?" elsewhere is thoroughly misleading. Max BELOFF, 1990, Encounter, iv

See also: IQ, Genetics, Charles Murray, , Edward Miller, J. Phillipe Rushton, Roger Pearson, , Christopher Brand.

"In 1826 an General acute mental crisis caused ● Charles Murray's NLSY data files are now available online. [the philosopher, John Stuart Mill ● Richard Herrnstein, RIP obituary by Charles Murray. (1806-73)] to reconsider his ● The Bell Curve and its own aims and critics by Charles those of the Benthamite Murray in Commentary. ['Utilitarian'] "when the Sturm und School; he Drang has subsided, found a new nothing important in will to live in The Bell Curve will poetry, have been overturned. I particularly in say this not because that of Herrnstein and I were Wordsworth, especially far-sighted, who brought but because our him 'a greatly conclusions are so increased interest in the cautiously phrased and our findings anchored so securely in the common middle of the scientific road." feelings and destiny of ● Replies and Counter Replies in Commentary. human beings'. Heckman, James J.; Kamin, Leon J.; Lane, Charles; Lewis, Lloyd In 1831 he met B.; Loury, Linda Datcher; Nisbett, Richard E.; Rushton, J. Philippe; Harriet Taylor, Ryan, W.H.; van den Haag, Ernest. whom he saw constantly for the next 20 ● Statement by scientists in support years and who "Since the publication of "The Bell Curve," many commentators was, in his have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current view, the chief scientific evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/ (2 of 10)20-04-2005 14:40:33 Upstream: Upstream: Issues: The Bell Curve inspiration of discredited are actually firmly supported." his philosophy; after her husband's death they married in 1851." Interviews Margaret

DRABBLE ● Skeptic Magazine's interview with Charles Murray. (ed.), 1985, "There seems to be a reflexive, almost deep inner panic, in an awful Oxford lot of people to be on the right side of The Bell Curve issue. And the Companion to right side is being perceived publically that you are shocked that English these authors would suggest that intelligence has an important role Literature, 5th edition. Oxford in social problems; shock to think that anyone would still suggest University Press. there are differences among the races in intelligence. I've seen people, who I thought were both smart and honest, lie when it comes to the book."

● Murray Interview on National Public Radio "....in this society, women with IQs of 75 ● Skeptic Magazine's interview with or below rearing " there is definitely some of intelligence in the White children is population. Almost every believes there is some hardly less than heritability of IQ and I agree. But the public may not understand just a personal what that means. If you accept the use of the heritability statistic, tragedy for their about .5 is probably right." offspring, who generally re- enact the ● Interview with Robert Gordon on . pathetic life "the most persuasive data that I've seen shows that after that early history of their stage in a child's life, changing the IQ is almost impossible. The parents." research that I've done on crime suggests that a family with low IQ A.R.JENSEN, levels will certainly contribute to the delinquency of a child. And 1989, 'A review the family's genetic background almost always has a determining of the effect on the child's intelligence and ability". Milwaukee Project'. Developmental ● Thinktank Transcripts - Charles Murray Review 9 "I am afraid, first, of racists taking what we say as a basis for conclusions that Dick Herrnstein and I think are utterly unfounded. I am worried -- we were both worried about all the ways in which people are too inclined to take something like IQ and make it into fate."

● Thinktank Transcripts - Bell Curve Symposium 1

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/ (3 of 10)20-04-2005 14:40:33 Upstream: Upstream: Issues: The Bell Curve Roger Wilkins, , Douglas Besharov, Christopher Winship, Glenn Loury .

● Thinktank Transcripts - Bell Curve Symposium 2 Roger Wilkins, Linda Gottfredson, Douglas Besharov, Christopher Winship, Glenn Loury .

Book Reviews

Balanced

● Common knowledge by Barone

● Methodological fetishism by Berger

● Living with Inequality by Eugene Genovese

● Is intelligence fixed? by Nathan Glazer

● Not Hopeless by Ernest van den Haag

● Paroxysms of denial by Arthur Jensen

● that works by Lomasky

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● Dispirited by Glen Loury

● Neuhaus

● Nielsen

● Sins of the Cognitive Elite by Michael Novak

● Patullo

●

● Trashing the Bell Curve by Dan Seligman

● Legacy of Racism by Pat Shipman

● James Q. Wilson

● Moral Intelligence by Michael Young

● Review by Chester E. Finn in Commentary.

● When facts and orthodoxy collide by Craig L. Frisby.

● Implications for the discipline of school psychology by Thomas Oakland.

● Commentary on some of the empirical and theoretical support for The Bell Curve by John Kranzler.

● Why The Bell Curve is important for school by J. Braden.

● Review by from The American Spectator.

● Flint from The Boston Globe, August 9, 1994. Advance publicity before The Bell Curve was published.

● Review by Jim Powell. http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/ (5 of 10)20-04-2005 14:40:33 Upstream: Upstream: Issues: The Bell Curve

● An attempted summary by J. Laurie Snell, from Chance magazine.

● Is the Bell Curve Statistically Sound? by James Case.

● Review in Contemporary Psychology by Thomas Bouchard "As scholars such as Daniel Moynihan, Arthur Jensen, and E. O. Wilson have learned, the mainstream media and much of the scientific community have little tolerance for those who would question our most cherished beliefs. Herrnstein and Murray have received similar treatment."

● Intelligence and the social scientist by Leon Kass. 'Insufficiently appreciative that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, they seek the same (alleged) benefits that came from breaking the Victorian taboos against public chatter about sex (to which they compare ours about racial differences in IQ). Herrnstein and Murray want to let it all hang out: "Taboos breed not only ignorance but misinformation." A richer social science, seeking wisdom and not just statistical correlations, might understand that taboos - including the Victorian ones - are often the embodiments of reason and goodness. Our taboo about race, genes, and IQ seems to me profoundly wise.'

● Aim Higher by Barbara Lerner.

Hostile

● Three Informal Fallacies in The Bell Curve by John Culbertson.

● Goldberger and Manski

● Bell Curve Bibliography. Various hostile references from the initial reception.

● Wringing the Bell Curve by Devlin, Fienburg, Resnick and Roeder. In postscript!

● Howard Gardner "The Bell Curve is a strange work. Some of the analysis and a good

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/ (6 of 10)20-04-2005 14:40:33 Upstream: Upstream: Issues: The Bell Curve deal of the tone are reasonable. Yet, the science in the book was questionable when it was proposed a century ago, and it has now been completely supplanted by the development of the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. The policy recommendations of the book are also exotic, neither following from the analyses nor justified on their own terms. The book relies heavily on innuendo, some of it quite frightening in its implications."

● Culbertson "The Bell Curve consists of no dependable scientific evidence or consistent argument to suggest that there is a relation between ethnicity and cognitive ability. In fact, the body of data is so immense that, if one were to examine the appendices with no knowledge of the book's premise, a large number of varying inferences could be drawn about both the data and the topic of the book."

● Arnold Barnett 'All things considered, I believe that "The Bell Curve's" statements about race would have been better left unsaid even if they were definitely true.'

● Steven Jay Gould '"The Bell Curve," with its claims and supposed documentation that race and class differences are largely caused by genetic factors and are therefore essentially immutable, contains no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its anachronistic Social Darwinism.'

❍ Gray on Gould "I was disappointed with Gould's math knowledge and his attack, in ignorance of logistic regression, on another's professionalism."

❍ Sarle on Gould Gould's treatment of Jensen is almost as scurrilous as his trashing of H&M. While I have read and enjoyed some of Gould's work in the past, I now consider him thoroughly unreliable

❍ The Harvard Salient on Gould. ", poster child of the cognitive elite, has http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/ (7 of 10)20-04-2005 14:40:33 Upstream: Upstream: Issues: The Bell Curve

not allowed facts to impede his effort to refute Murray and Herrnstein in print."

● Lipschutz "The Bell Curve's conclusion that is distinctly different for the two subpopulations hypothesized, cannot yield a with the one subpopulation squeezed into the lower ten percentile. We are, from a theoretical point of view, not in the domain of the normal distribution."

● Psychologists question findings of Bell Curve This is a highly innacurate piece from the APA Monitor describing its own report on intelligence. Perhaps the predilections of the reporter got in the way here?

Vitriolic

● Professors criticize best seller from Golden Gater Online. 'The panel criticized the authors for not explaining what intelligence is. "(The authors) say they do not need to define it," said black studies Professor Laura Head. During the three-hour discussion, Head called the book "a piece of propaganda clothed in the skirt of science." ... Although Head has only browsed through the book, she has seen this kind of pseudo-science before'.

● Response to The Bell Curve by Douglas Metzler

● Robert Wright on heritablility, from . "Upper-middle-class parents of pre-schoolers lately have been swapping anecdotes about how cd-rom software can help a child's reading and math skills. It's possible that even now technology is creating a new environment for early , in which the i.q./ heritability picture will look appreciably different."

● Rawat's Phlegm This crosses the boundary into libellous territory, accusing Murray of KKK affiliations, and claims both authors are well-known racists. No citations for these claims are given, and my written request to the editors of the "journal" it appears in, for the citations, remains unanswered.

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● Donald Dorfman. Indulges in a fair measure of character assasination and attempted rank-pulling, not to mention repetition of his now discredited charges against Sir Cyril Burt (in an attempt to slur Herrnstein by association and innuendo).

● Newspaper attacks "Herrnstein and Murray's book concludes that genetic differences are largely responsible for the fact that the average white IQ score of 100 is 15 points higher than the African American average." FALSE!

● House and Haug "If there were such a thing as social science malpractice, these authors would be at risk. Not because of the topics they address, but because their analyses are inadequate and their arguments biased, even deceptive at times."

● Lewis "Whites are smarter than Blacks, not because they choose to be it's in their gene pool. This argument is not based on racism it's based on genetics according to Hernstein[sic] and Murray." FALSE!

● FAIR's Attack "For those who have managed to avoid reading about The Bell Curve, it's yet another resurrection of the pseudo-science of eugenics, which applies mock-Darwinian notions of evolution to human beings".

● Cole 'The best analysis of what they see as the statistical sleight of hand in "The Bell Curve," Olkin and other experts said, was done by Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, who has written volumes about attempts to subvert science for the purpose of "proving" that one race, gender or ethnic group is superior.'

● Meanderings

● The Boston Book Review An appallingly bad review by Lucy Horwitz, claiming statistical fallacy while demonstrating none, triumphantly repeating everyone

http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/ (9 of 10)20-04-2005 14:40:33 Upstream: Upstream: Issues: The Bell Curve else's criticisms without checking them (repeats the elementary stats errors made by Gould) and generally showing no balance, no originality and no detachment whatsoever, to the point of self parody.

IQ and Race in General

See the sections on psychology, intelligence and race.

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