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Snake Oil Still Sells
In the 12 years since Murray and Herrnstein published "The Bell Curve", their work and "race and class in America", several things have become clear. 1) When Murray and Herrnstein talk about IQ scores, they do so by not relying on IQ tests. The Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT) and the National Longitudinal Study Of Youth (NLSY) simply are not IQ tests, but aptitude tests. They look at the degree to which you have benefited from your education. 2) There is no relationship to the degree that something is inherited, and the degree to which it can be changed by environment. Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a recessive gene caused disorder. Persons with it have an inability to break down phenylalanine, because of single missing enzyme. The result is brain damage and retardation, and early death. However, if the patient is simply given diet that is nearly free of phenylalanine, and the entire disease is prevented. Therefore, here you have a disease that is 100% genetic in origin, and as well is 100% preventable through environmental intervention (diet). This means that when Murray and Herrnstein state that IQ scores are (only) 60% genetic and 40% environmental, and therefore Headstart and other social programs won't work because this 60% heritability of iq scores makes it immutable, they're full of it. 3) Dubious sources, and dubious use of sources. When much of your references are to people who regularly publish in Mankind Quarterly, the periodical of the American Eugenics Association... Some of the references are to Ernst Rudin, the Nazi theorist, creator of the 'Society for Racial Hygiene'. Wickliffe Draper, the founder and financier of Mankind Quarterly was a known racist. The Fund was originally dedicated to the propagation of those "descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States and/or from related stocks, or to classes of children, the majority of whom are deemed to be so descended". The Pioneer Fund today is helmed by J. Philippe Rushton. 4) The avoidance of peer review. Instead of publishing in the professional literature, Murray proclaimed that academics would be "too politically correct", and instead launched his book in a well organized media blitz. As someone said - a lie can get halfway across the world before the truth can put its boots on. 5) Basic mistakes that continually favor their argument. The steadfast confusion of causation and correlation, which is unforgivable for a politicologist, which Murray is. At least he should know basic rules in statistics and I suspect he does. 6) Their belief in the biological reality of race. Richard Lewontin pretty much proved that there is not enough genetic variation around and between the classical races of modern people, to be able to speak of races or "sub species". Even more, in the USA, most African Americans for instance also have European ancestry, and almost half have Native American ancestry. So how should "race" be measured in an objective way? Through self-identification?
January 2006 · Books
the product in question
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
4.7★ · 1,636 ratings, as of 2023
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