Reply #55: Thanks, Wilms! Remember "The Bell Curve"? That was some neo-NAZI stuff. [View All]

[Octafish]

The Bell Curve and Eugenics (© 1995)
By Michael Swanson <[e-mail]>
20 October, 1995

EXCERPT...

Now a new and controversial book, titled The Bell Curve, is challenging these fundamental beliefs. The authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, claim that inherited intelligence and not environment or class is the main determiner of what a person can make out of their life. They say that "success or failure in the American economy, and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit." The poor are poor not because they are unlucky to be born poor, but because they were not lucky enough to have inherited good genes. They also assert that IQ scores are the most reliable way of measuring intelligence or cognitive ability and that IQ cannot be improved. They argue that America is separating itself into a class of high a IQ "cognitive elite" and an inferior class with low IQ. A low IQ is a predictor of crime, poverty, unemployment, and government dependency while a high IQ is a predictor of wealth and stability. The Bell Curve uses data to justify an overhauling of social policy and says that great cutbacks in social programs are needed because they subsidize the growth of the lower intelligence population. "The ranks of the cognitively inferior, they assert, are disproportionately filled with blacks, Latinos, and today's immigrants. And that's a serious disadvantage because low IQ- not education or opportunity- is the key factor underlying problems ranging from poverty and criminal behavior to out of wedlock births and being a bad parent." Because of the book's controversial ideas it has received a large amount of press attention. Bill Clinton denounced it and said that he was "outraged by the thrust of the book." Over 100 magazine and newspaper articles have been written about it, most of them being unfavorable. The New Republic and National Review both devoted entire issues to the book. Although most commentary on it has been negative, Forbes and the National Review reviewed it favorably. According to a lead editorial in the National Review: "A howling mob of liberal commentators not knowing what in hell they are talking about is a dispiriting spectacle, and media reaction to the Herrnstein-Murray book has been infinitely depressing." Is the media attacking the book because of a liberal bias as the National Review suggests or is it really flawed? Only by examining The Bell Curve's data and arguments can one make an independent determination.

The basis of their arguments rely on their beliefs on intelligence and IQ.

According to The Bell Curve:

* "IQ scores match, to a first degree, whatever it is that people mean when they use the word intelligent or smart in ordinary language."

* "Properly administered IQ tests are not demonstrably biased against social, economic, ethnic, or racial groups."

* "The cognitive ability is substantially heritable, apparently no less than 40 percent and no more than 80 percent."

The authors assert that these beliefs are "beyond technical dispute" and give the impression that they are readily accepted in academics and science, but this really isn't so. Is IQ really an accurate measure of intelligence or is it just an attempt to define intelligence, perhaps inadequately? The authors skip this question. Stephen Gould asks, "How can the authors base an 800 page book on a claim for the reality of IQ as measuring a genuine, largely, genetic, general cognitive ability - and then hardly discuss either pro or con, the theoretical basis for their certainty?"

SNIP...

Herrnstein and Murray labor for over eight chapters to prove that low IQ is the cause of poverty and low status. They do so by taking the unbiased government study titled National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth (NLSY) and the Armed Forces Aptitude test as the major sources for their data. "The NLSY survey included more than 12,000 youngsters, who were aged 14 to 22 when the continuing study began in 1979. At the time the respondents or their parents gave information about their educations, occupations, incomes, answered those questions themselves. . . As they have grown older the respondents have provided more information about their own schooling, unemployment, poverty, marital status, childbearing, welfare dependency, criminality, parenting behavior, and so on." However, The Bell Curve gives the false impression that the Armed Forces Aptitude Test can be used to tie IQ with job and school performance. "Pentagon scientists who administer it say the test isn't even an IQ test. Scores rise with the amount of schooling test-takers have, notes Barnard M. Baruch College's June O'Neill, who uses the test to study such issues as workplace discrimination. So it's no surprise that test scores predict school performance."

CONTINUED...

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