For this blog post I finally read two articles in the "the bell curve wars" that support at least some of Hernstein and Murray's conclusions. The first article focused on the positive ways of looking at Hernstein and Murray's comments regarding race. In the author's view one can interpret the Bell Curve's conclusions as follows: Blacks score substantially lower on the IQ test, no racial group can be intellectually superior to another; therefore IQ tests are flawed and/or blacks suffer from environmental disadvantages that pre-date the earliest administered IQ tests (typically around 4 years old). The second article focused on the non-racial aspects of the bell curve and argues that the sections of the book are merely examples of the main point regarding class and intelligence. The article argues that Hernstein and Murray are entirely correct about the eventual outcome of a meritocracy, an opinion echoed in the interview of Murray I read for my last blog post. The second article also argues that Hernstein and Murray erred in including what they knew to be controversial arguments regarding race as the resulting conflict obscured there central point. I agree with the second articles point that the racial arguments in the bell curve detract from what I see as Herrnstein and Murray's insightful thesis about meritocracies. However, I cannot help but speculate that the Bell Curve's authors were aware of the level of publicity (and therefore book sales) that controversial claims regarding race would produce. However, even if one removes the section of racial differences in IQ there remain highly controversial statements in the book. These include a section where (not in so many words) Herrnstein and Murray essentially state that the end result of a stable-long term meritocracy is that poor people will be stupid. This of course is simply a corollary of their earlier statement, rich people are smart but seems highly objectionable nonetheless. To me, the bell curve would have retained a significant portion of its populairty and controversy without the racially charged chapters dealing with racial differences in the IQ scores. As the same time more attentions would have been given to the author's brilliant insights regarding the long-term future of our economic system. Many seem to aspire to an absolute meritocracy but if Herrnstein and Murray at least partially correct (and I think they are) than such a system would need serious refinement to avoid a social structure more rigid and uneven than any seen before.

For this blog post I looked at an interview with Charles Murray, one of the Bell Curve's authors, that was included in "The Bell Curve Wars" Murray begins the interview by attacking the assumption that race was the main point of the Bell Curve and by arguing that he (with the now deceased Hernstein) was looking at wider societal issues of class and intelligence. Murray states that his predictions about the concentration of high IQ individuals in the upper classes have come to pass. He calls the state of the labor market for low-paying, "low-intelligence" jobs "terrible" Murray than argues that the way to counteract this is for the large-scale redistribution of wealth (an interesting position for an avowed conservative). As he believes that intelligence essentially "follows" money this system would serve to "redistribute" IQ points as well as dollars. While it is difficult to quantify I think Murray and Hernstein were at least theoretically right about the concentration of intellectual capacity in the upper class. If IQ is heritable, people are more likely to marry and reproduce with others of the their class and the US is a true meritocracy, as Murray maintains, than he must be right. Many people tend to conflate meritocracy with an egalitarian social system, it is possible that a segment of the population possesses intellectual capabilities far above everyone else and will therefore thrive to an unparalleled extent. However, the current US system is not fully meritocratic, the correlation between SAT scores and IQ (themselves not perfect measures of ability) and measures of success (income, life expectancy etc.) is strong but far from perfect. The US still has a long way to go before achieving a meritocratic economic system. Nonetheless Murray's assertions about the distribution of intelligence are disconcerting. I do not accept that different racial groups have different intellectual capacities. However, I do accept that within the subset of the whole population there exist certain individuals who can process and absorb information and perform other mental tasks at a more efficient and effective level than others. In Hernstein's scenario, which I do not believe to be all that far-fetched, these individuals would dominate the financial and intellectual "resources" of our nation and the world.

As I approach the end of the Bell Curve Wars the articles, citing some of the earlier ones, already accept as fact that the assumptions of the Bell Curve are incorrect (there appear to be only 2 pro-bell curve articles in the whole book). They then begin to provide alternate explanations for phenomena observed in society. The two articles I read for this blog post focus on the effect of environment on IQ. They suggest that short-term environmental changes, such as the Head Start program, have significant positive effects only for a short time and that their long-term effect is negligible. In contrast, long-term environmental changes such as children from a poorer background being adopted by wealthy parents have significant positive and enduring effectives on everything from IQ and income to life expectancy. One of the factors that does not influence long-term outcome is an African-American child being adopted by poor white parents, suggesting that SES is what really matters not race. Both articles question the implications of their findings for public policy. Short term government programs have, according to their studies, had minima long-term impact. This would give credence to arguments against government intervention to rectify inequities in society, however long-term interventions might work. The solution found to have the most equitable effect in studies is that children from low-income backgrounds are adopted by high-income parents, a process that evens out IQ. However, the large-scale implication of this program would require literally taking children away from their parents at birth, a somewhat horrific idea. A more nuanced approach would be see if having high-income, high IQ individuals in one’s community, not necessarily as parents, has a strong positive effect on income, IQ, life expectancy, etc. If it did than programs ensure income diversity (subsidized housing for example) would be useful. As would sending poor children to wealthier schools and bringing teachers from wealthier backgrounds to poorer schools. To me all these steps must be implemented on a larger scale than ever before. Short-term interventions have little effect but a concerted well-funded and nationwide effort to expose poorer children to the environments present in richer areas would enormously beneficial to society and is the only way to lessen and eventually eliminate the achievement gap in this country.

The next three articles in the bell curve wars address the issue of what IQ measures. They attack the Bell Curve’s assumption that IQ measures “G” general intelligence and the assumption that G exists at all. The first article cites mostly anecdotal evidence that different types of intelligence exist. These include spacial reasoning, memory capacity and mathematical facility. The second article looks at the correlation between scores on different parts of the IQ test. It shows that while there is a minimal correlation between most segments of the tests most scholars estimate that this is due more to environmental factors (wealthier parents help both math and reading scores) than to the existence of a “general intelligence” Interestingly, this article also notes that African-Americans consistently perform better on certain elements of the IQ test than whites. The final article in this section addresses Herrnstein and Murray’s assumption that criminality is correlated with low IQ. In argues that while crimes such as shoplifting and assault are indicative of an inability to succeed in society, more nuanced crimes such as fraud may be indicative of particularly high IQs. The article also observes that criminals with high IQ’s are less likely to be caught or observed, thereby skewing data on criminality. I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as a general intelligence, in other words I do not agree that having a higher intellectual capacity for math correlates to reading faster. Nonetheless I tend to agree with the authors of the Bell Curve that IQ measures something concrete, even if it does not measure general intelligence. To me IQ measures the sum of the various “intelligences” as manifested in the sum of the test-takers scores on the various portions of the IQ test. As a result I do not believe that the existence of “G” is necessary for the conclusions of the Bell Curve to be valid (though they have other problems). I am also fascinated by that fact that different ethnicities scores better on different sections of the IQ test. I imagine that has genetic routes and I would be interested to discover why a certain ethnic group would genetically select for certain “intelligences” It would also be interesting to connect these IQ score variations to real-world tasks. For example, did the farming of one crop vs. another 10,000 years ago select for special intelligence vs. some other intelligence. .

For this blog post I read the next three articles in "The Bell Curve Wars" They continued the pattern of attacking the Bell Curve but did so without resorting to personal attacks. Instead they provide alternate research that refutes the claims of Herrnstein and Murray. The three articles site 7 studies from the last 70 years, 6 of which systematically refute the idea that those of African origin have a lower IQ than Europeans. They acknowledge that on IQ tests African-Americans score on average 15-18 points lower than whites. However, the 6 studies cited argue that this impact in environmental and/or contextual. In order to combat this each of the studies looks at situation where those from different ethnic backgrounds are raised in equivalent environments. These situations included government programs to help children “at risk” for low IQ’s (born prematurely, malnourished etc.) and adoptions of African-American children into white families (and vice-versa). The studies also examined the IQ scores of those of mixed-race descent; the theory being that if Europeans have higher IQs than Africans with some European genes would perform better than those of “pure” African descent. This was not the case. All these studies found no appreciable IQ difference between those of African and European descent, which suggests that if you control for environmental factors the IQ gap disappears. (The 7th study was inconclusive) I was surprised just how strong the pre-existing evidence against the ideas of the Bell Curve was. All the studies cited attack the basic assumptions of Hernstein and Murray, that IQ is substantially heritable, that IQ is immutable and that the substantial differences between different groups IQ scores are the result of quantifiable genetic differences. Nonetheless, despite repeated assaults on their work I believe Herrnstein and Murray’s work has significant value because they clearly address the issue of the IQ gap. While it can be explained by environmental factors African-Americans consistently perform significantly worse on IQ tests than whites. It is not known what precisely IQ measures but it does measure something: notably that ability to succeed in today’s society. IQ has a consistent positive correlation with income, high school graduation, life expectancy etc. For whatever reason African Americans (and other marginalized groups, including poor whites) are already at significant disadvantage by the age of 4 (when many IQ tests are administered). This is not because of genetics, but environmental factors, factors which must be equalized from birth if we are to eliminate the achievement gap.

For this blog post I read the first 50 pages of the bell curve wars. This included several articles highly critical of the bell curve. The first two articles I read were highly critical of the book. Articles authors attacked almost every conclusion present in the bell curve, from the basic assumptions (the heritability of IQ, the viability of IQ as measure of intelligence) upon which the book was based to the recommendations in its authors came to. The article’s authors Howard Gardner and Stephen Gould, both respected academics then proceed to launch personal attacks against Hernstein and Murray, the bell curve’s authors. Both articles argue that the data in the bell curve was either falsified or used in intellectually dishonest manner. They claim that Hernstein and especially Murray were advancing racist political agendas instead of focusing on a scientific and impartial reading of the true facts. My reaction to these first two articles was one of shock. Initially I was surprised that academic articles rose to such a level of personal vitriol directed against two fellow academics, especially one who is recently deceased. However, while reading the two articles I believe that there is a lot of marriage in their arguments and while their personal attacks are unwarranted there is substantial evidence to believe that the bell curve’s authors specifically Murray were advancing personal political agendas. Furthermore Gould and Gardner’s arguments about the erroneous use of data in the bell curve were very persuasive. They made the case that first of all, the data sets used by Hernstein and Murray were incomplete, contained too small sample sizes, and/or based upon faulty assumptions. Secondly, they argue that even if you accept the data at face value the assumption that IQ can be accurately used as a measure of heritable intelligence, cannot be changed after birth, and cannot be affected by environmental factors is ridiculous. I tend to agree with them and they are correct in that the failure of any one of these criteria to be true would discount a large part of the bell curve. Nonetheless, Hernstein and Murray repeatedly made a similar point themselves, they presented their work as a theory.