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Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to THE BELL CURVE
 
 
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Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to THE BELL CURVE [Paperback]

Bernie Devlin (Editor), Stephen E. Fienberg (Editor), Daniel P. Resnick (Editor), Kathryn Roeder (Editor)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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A scientific response to the best-selling The Bell Curve which set off a hailstorm of controversy upon its publication in 1994. Much of the public reaction to the book was polemic and failed to analyse the details of the science and validity of the statistical arguments underlying the books conclusion. Here, at last, social scientists and statisticians reply to The Bell Curve and its conclusions about IQ, genetics and social outcomes.

About the Author

Bernie Devlin is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie-Mellon University. He serves on the DNA Advisory Board to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Director regarding standards for forensic DNA testing laboratories, and the National Forensic Review Panel for the National Institute of Justice regarding the performance of proficiency tests.

Stephen E. Fienberg is Maurice Falk Professor of Statistics and Social Science at Carnegie-Mellon University and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Statistical Association.

Daniel P. Resnick is Professor of History at Carnegie-Mellon University. His research deals with the relationship of historical thinking and experience to public policy development.

Kathryn Roeder is Associate Professor of Statistics, Carnegie-Mellon University. She has a strong research interest in applied problems including statistical genetics, DNA forensic inference and criminology.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
Occasionally, very occasionally, big books appear in the social sciences that make scholars and the lay public take notice. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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4.0 out of 5 stars A second reading and a second review., Jan 19 2001
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This review is from: Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to THE BELL CURVE (Paperback)
This book was written as a response to the 1994 book "The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray. But unlike several other books that condemned TBC without any empirical data, this book actually does expand the issue of racial differences intelligence and is well worth reading by any one interested in this ongoing debate. At least in this book, while still motivated by an egalitarian goal to deny racial differences in intelligence, the authors do give TBC credit for being essentially a very sound book empirically, while picking away at some of the issues at its periphery. But as they do this, they also make many fundamental errors and omissions. This is to be expected however because TBC is very hard to refute on empirical grounds alone.

As an example, the authors take TBC to task for using heritability in the broad sense rather in the narrow sense like breeders do, which reduces the heritability between races supposedly by about 20% or so. The problem is, as shown by Jensen in "The g Factor", heritability in the broad sense should be used in comparing group averages, while heritability in the narrow sense should be used in predicting the expected intelligence of one's children. TBC was not a book on how to have smart kids or breeding cows for higher butter fat production. So the argument was a feeble attempt at obfuscation.

Later in the book they admit that Blacks almost make as much money as Whites when wages are adjusted for the average difference in intelligence between the two groups. But they go on to say that "almost" is not good enough. The error here of course, as even they argue in this book, is that earnings are not just a matter of intelligence. It is the most important trait with regards to wages, but other traits are also important. Research has shown that conscientiousness is the second most important behavioral trait after intelligence in occupational success, and one would have to assume that conscientiousness would vary among racial groups as easily as intelligence due to evolutionary forces on selection under different ecological conditions. And Rushton has shown that many behavioral differences exist between Whites and Blacks on average, including conscientiousness.

So this book is a mixed bag on not denying that there are differences in the average intelligence between Blacks and Whites while trying at the same time to ameliorate the damage that recent research has produced showing that the differences are in fact real and persistent. But the funding for this book was such that the authors had no choice but to use some very fancy footwork to dance around the primary issue and try to diffuse its impact with regards to education and equality. Politics always comes into play, depending on who is paying the piper.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A great book diclosing fallacy of race comparison, July 29 2000
This review is from: Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to THE BELL CURVE (Paperback)
This book is fantastic for the layperson that was swayed by the misuse of psychometrics in science. These authors evince clearly that there is no biological concept of race. Any effort to compare races is simply false beacause even anthropolgists and biologists cannot decide the cutoff point in races.So why do psychologists put people in categories that do not even exist? Ideology.The authors of the Bell Curve have no way to define the boundaries of race- even so there is no such thing as racial purity. In America 20% of whites have black ancestry. Unless psychologists can clearly delineate where races end and begin, books like the Bell Curve have no scientific legitimacy.
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2.0 out of 5 stars Methinks the lady doth pretend to protest too much., Aug 26 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to THE BELL CURVE (Paperback)
When The Bell Curve first came out, I predicted that, 200 years from now, university professors would use it, along with the collapse of the iron curtain, to mark the end of "the Socialist Epoch" or "the Egalitarian Age," which I suppose, to make a nice round number, they will have in their textbooks as 1789-1989. Now I'm even more convinced. In fact, nothing could possibly better confirm the essential validity of the Bell Curve's claims than the fact, behind all the self-fueling sound and fury it provoked, and behind the holier-than-thou pretentions to be "debunking," "refuting," and "flattening" the Bell Curve, the careful reader cannot help but notice a striking absence of real, substantive objections to it. Instead, the supposed objections are either opposed to something the Bell Curve never said (and indeed, explicitly denied), or else they tend to try to nit-pick without actually disagreeing. Indeed, with Cafalli-Sforza's lead, we see a new formula emerging. If you are involved in writing up some potentially politically incorrect scientific research, here is what to do. First, write up the research, which, of course, largely confirms the hereditarian heresy (which most people have always known, or secretly suspected, anyway). Then, decorate the outside of the package with a lot of ostentatious window dressing which, ingenuously, implies that your book "flattens" the evil heresy. That ought to keep YOUR head out of the noose! Besides, it makes the reviewers much more likely praise you, and sells more copies too. If your conscience bothers you, you can salve it with the thought that there is surely SOME version of the evil heresy which your arguments really DO oppose, even if this is just a straw man, i.e., some 100% hereditarian determinism which nobody, and certainly not the ("40-60%") Bell Curve authors, has ever actually held. The only thing that surprises me is the fact that the media and publishing world falls for this sham. I guess the relatively moderate Murray and Herrnstein have simply been designated the official targets of popular wrath, if only because they came out FIRST. And perhaps everybody else, from the most heretical hereditarian to the most orthodox Marxist, has an interst in keeping it that way.
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