Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve has re-emerged and is stirring up controversy. However, instead of claiming that blacks as a group are less intelligent than whites as a group because of genetic endowment, he is now pushing the idea that women generally don't have the genetic prerequisites for mathematics and science. He wrote a piece which appeared in the September issue of Commentary magazine. The Australian has a nice article about Murray's reemergence.
Opinion is widely divided on how encompassing a role genetics plays in intelligence. But Murray -- who believes intelligence is the most important attribute if society is to become a true meritocracy -- is convinced that new breakthroughs will reveal that biology plays an overwhelming role in intelligence quotient, which in turn helps predict societal success. In examining the differences between the sexes, he cites as proof the fact that, among mathematically gifted students, seven times as many boys as girls scored in the top percentile of the standardised American SAT mathematics test.
"It has been known for years that, even after adjusting for body size, men have larger brains than women. Yet most psychometricians conclude that men and women have the same mean [average] IQ (although debate on this issue is growing). One hypothesis for explaining this paradox is that three-dimensional processing absorbs the extra male capacity. In the [past] few years, magnetic-resonance imaging has refined the evidence for this hypothesis, revealing that parts of the brain's parietal cortex associated with space perception are proportionally bigger in men than in women.
The article also points out something I didn't know, namely, that Murray "is bankrolled by the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation -- the most influential financial supporter of right-wing ideas in the US…" Being a Wisconsonian, I find this Bradley Foundation highly disconcerting.
Earlier this week, Slate published a piece by Stephen Metcalf called "Moral Courage: Is defending The Bell Curve an example of intellectual honesty?". Metcalf quotes a a post by Andrew Sullivan praising Murray and his co-author, Richard Herrnstein:
One of my proudest moments in journalism was publishing an expanded extract of a chapter from "The Bell Curve" in the New Republic before anyone else dared touch it. I published it along with multiple critiques (hey, I believed magazines were supposed to open rather than close debates) - but the book held up, and still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade. The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human - gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian - is a subject worth exploring, period. Liberalism's commitment to political and moral equality for all citizens and human beings is not and should not be threatened by empirical research into human difference and varied inequality. And the fact that so many liberals are determined instead to prevent and stigmatize free research and debate on this subject is evidence ... well, that they have ceased to be liberals in the classic sense. I'm still proud to claim that label - classical liberal. And I'm proud of those with the courage to speak truth to power, as Murray and Herrnstein so painstakingly did.
Metcalf then questions Murray's "truth" by looking at the sources of much of Murray's data for The Bell Curve - the work of J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen.
Rushton and Jensen came to my attention when Murray fingered them, along with Lawrence Summers, as the impetus for his new Commentary article. The two published a "comprehensive survey" of evidence supporting The Bell Curve this past June in the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. Murray—who leans heavily on Rushton and Jensen's work both here and in The Bell Curve—identifies this survey as being the "strongest argument" yet made by race realists. Rushton has been retailing the idea of black inferiority for decades, though in two distinct styles: In pseudo-legitimate journal articles, he sounds a very Murray-like note of scholarly disinterest; at avowedly racist conventions, in front of the likes of David Duke, he argues that white women's birth canals are larger than black women's, allowing white women to give birth to larger-brained babies. In his 1995 book Race, Evolution and Behavior—now a race-realist classic—Rushton argued that "Negroids" are underevolved in comparison with "Caucosoids," because Caucosoids, having abandoned Africa for colder climates 110,000 years ago, were forced to develop their "intelligence, forward planning, sexual and personal restraint." Negroids, meanwhile, are characterized by smaller brains, larger genitals, sexual license, and lower IQs.
Charles Murray and his ilk aside, the question of whether the cognitive abilities of women vs. men and one race vs. another is an empirical one. That a particular part of the brain is larger in men than in women is true enough but there is no consensus as to what this means. At the very least, the jury is still out and, from other things I've read, it has no bearing on innate intelligence. While I agree with Sullivan's contention that "Liberalism's commitment to political and moral equality for all citizens and human beings is not and should not be threatened by empirical research into human difference and varied inequality", he also maintains that, "the book held up, and still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade." Yet it hasn’t' really, has it? Metcalf points to Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man and its critique of The Bell Curve's data. Indeed, Murray's conclusion came under constant attack since it emerged and there is nothing approaching a consensus in the scientific community in support of his ideas. In fact, I'd say that the scientific community has basically rejected them while the only people to embrace them are racists. The one truth of Murray's is "Universities are supposed to be places where we talk about these things, not run from them," he says. "These are, in the end, questions of data, not my opinion." Unfortunately, his embrace of evolutionary psychology for seemingly racist and malicious ends will probably only serve to taint the field as a line of inquiry. It is also unfortunate that Gould is dead because I haven't found anything written by scientists who write for the layman that stands up to Murray's new cause. Indeed, it seems that people are backing away lest they be tainted.
Lisa Randall, an eminent Harvard theoretical physicist and cosmologist, had agreed to dissect Murray's work, which appeared in the September issue of Commentary magazine in the US, for Inquirer but on reflection declined to respond. "The reason is that this just isn't news and it's not worthy of being covered," she says. "If it really gets to the point where people accept it, I can explain the many logical fallacies in his piece."
I find her decision frustrating because taking Murray to task is exactly what we need. I feel the same way about biologists who refuse to stand up and shout down proponents of Intelligent Design. Many folks in the science community refuse to address ID because they feel it lends an air of credibility to it in the public's eye. If ID is ignored, they reason, people will see it has no scientific merit and it'll just magically disappear and Darwin will triumph. The problem with this is that, as a group, Americans don't know fuck about science whether it be biology or physics or chemistry or whatever. I think that, if ID gets all the press, then the public at large will just give it credence. "Well, if schools want to teach it and it's on the news, then it must be legit." Americans cannot distinguish science from bullshit. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. Biologists must stand up for biology and scientists everywhere must stand up for their field. Whatever you may think about ID, it is not science!! Scientists need to stand up and shout this. The public needs to know this. Richard Thompson is defending the Dover School District in Pennsylvania in a lawsuit over their introduction of ID into school curricula. Here's an exchange with him:
"So you want to change the definition of science to include the supernatural?"
"Yes," he says, "we need a total paradigm shift in science."
He wants to destroy science and the scientific community cannot sit around in their labs while he and people like him run roughshod over centuries of work and, more importantly, the truth.
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