Ethnicity and IQ

...It is also an attempt to understand the causes and social implications of IQ differences among ethnic groups...

...To put it another way, on the average, whites today differ from whites, say, two generations ago as much as whites today differ from blacks today...

...The American Spectator February 1995 33 such tests would also be purpose-free in a world where there is no culture-free society...

...Yet the data suggest that the number of questions that blacks answer correctly on IQ tests today is very similar to the number answered correctly by past generations of whites...

...In short, groups outside the cultural mainstream of contemporary Western society tend to do their worst on abstract questions, whatever their race might be...

...Like "race-norming" today, such generation-norming, as it were, produces a wholly fictitious equality concealing very real and very consequential differences...

...So are James Ring Adams's blistering reports on the Whitewater scandal, as well as Brock's "Living With the Clintons," the inside story of Troopergate that the mainstream media didn't want you to know, and Daniel Wattenberg's "Lady Macbeth of Little Rock," a no-holds-barred portrait of the first co-president of the United States...

...If IQ differences of this magnitude can occur with no genetic difference at all, then it is more than mere speculation to say that some unusual environmental effects must be at work among blacks...

...Here it is much more successful in analyzing the social implications where, as the authors say, "it matters little whether the genes are involved at all...

...In another sense the differences between what Herrnstein and Murray said and what others believe is much smaller than the latter seem to think...

...So did Gaelic-speaking children as compared to English-speaking children in the Hebrides Islands...

...Yet the data suggest that the number of questions that blacks answer correctly on IQ tests today is very similar to the number answered correctly by past generations of whites...

...After ignoring this issue for the first 12 chapters, Herrnstein and Murray enter into a discussion of it in Chapter 13 ("Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability"), not as zealots making a case but as researchers laying out the issues and reaching the conclusions that seem to them most consistent with the facts—while also presenting alternative explanations...

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...and a set of proposals as to how public policy should proceed in matters of education and social welfare programs...

...There seems no reason why not—but also no reason to believe that white and Asian means can be made to stand still while the Flynn effect works its magic...

...These groups repeatedly tested below average on the mental tests of the World War I era, both in the army and in civilian life...

...Finally, it is a statement of grave concerns for the future of American society some other studies suggest...

...On this question, Murray and Herrnstein are most clearly and completely correct...

...Long before The Bell Curve was published, the empirical literature showed repeatedly that IQ and other mental tests do not predict a lower subsequent performance for minorities than the performance that in fact emerges...

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...To those committed to such policies, this may be at least as bad as the authors remaining "agnostic" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) on the question as to whether black-white IQ differences are genetic in origin...

...The great danger in this emotional atmosphere is that there will develop a two-tiered set of reactions—violent public outcries against the message of The Bell Curve by some, and uncritical private acceptance of it by many others, who hear no rational arguments being used against it...

...That possibility is not precluded by the evidence, but neither does the evidence point in that direction.2 2 It is widely acknowledged that height is heavily influenced by genes, and it is not controversial that races differ in height because of these genetic differences...

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...It is a characteristic found among low-scoring groups of European as well as African ancestry...

...However, these environmental effects need not be limited to blacks, for other low-IQ groups of European or other ancestries have likewise tended to have females over-represented among their higher scorers, even though the Terman studies of the general population found no such patterns...

...Even where the authors clearly come down on one side of a given issue, they usually present the case for believing otherwise...

...The parallel breaks down when we realize that height can be measured directly, as innate potential cannot be, but is wholly dependent on inferences about what would have happened in the absence of environmental differences...

...Here it is on its most solid ground...

...This is ultimately an empirical question, one for which there is a vast amount of data going back many years...

...An example I liked to use in class when teaching economics involved a study showing 3 Miles D. Storfer, Intelligence and Giftedness: The Contributions of Heredity and Early Environment (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990), p. 13...

...CI 4 Because a postgraduate degree was usually required to be an economist, those economists with only a bachelor's degree tended to have entered the profession before this requirement became common...

...Unfortunately, there are many statistical problems with these particular data, growing out of the conditions under which they were collected...

...But they seem not to see how crucially it undermines the case for a genetic explanation of interracial IQ differences...

...Nor is race a kind of intellectual glass ceiling for individuals...

...Black males and black females are not the only groups to have significant IQ differences without any genetic differences...

...Others who have done studies of high-IQ blacks have found several times as many females as males above the 120 IQ level...

...And if they refuse to recognize this, then we should recognize these critics as demagogues in the business of scavenging for grievances...

...Empirical data from a wide variety of sources establish that even the differing educational backgrounds or socioeco32 The American Spectator February 1995 nomic levels of families in which individuals were raised are not as good predictors of future income, academic success, job performance ratings, or even divorce rates, as IQ scores are...

...Critics who insist on arguing that we are talking about an intellectual glass ceiling should recognize that this is their own straw man, not something from The Bell Curve...

...This is neither a racial nor an ethnic peculiarity...

...When any factor differs as much float Al to A2 as it does from A2 to B2, why should one conclude that this factor is due to the difference between A in general and B in general...

...Herrnstein and Murray do not address this question, but instead shift to a discussion of public policy: Couldn't the mean of blacks move 15 points as well through environmental changes...

...While Herrnstein and Murray do an excellent job of exposing the flaws in the argument that tests are culturally biased by showing that the greatest black-white differences are not on the questions which presuppose middle-class vocabulary or experiences, but on abstract questions such as spatial perceptual ability, their conclusion that this "phenomenon seems peculiarly concentrated in comparisons of ethnic groups" is simply wrong...

...T he Bell Curve is really three books in one...

...T he Bell Curve is a very sober, very thorough, and very honest book[—on a subject where sobriety, thoroughness, and honesty are only likely to provoke cries of outrage...

...Such responses, especially among black intellectuals and "leaders," are only likely to provoke others to conclude that they protesteth too much, lending more credence to the conclusion that genetics determines intelligence...

...So did white mountaineer children in the United States tested back in the early 1930s...

...It is an anomaly that there exists a controversy over the predictive validity of tests...

...It is a study of the general effects of IQ levels on the behavior and performance of people in general in a wide range of endeavors...

...But the issue is not solely one of either predicting or controlling the future...

...mances on these tests were higher than the performances of American soldiers in World War I by the equivalent of about 12 IQ points...

...But they may not have expected quite so many, quite so loudly or venomously, and from such a wide spectrum of people who should know better...

...Even in non-intellectual occupations, pen-and-paper tests of general mental ability produce higher correlations with future job performance than do "practical" tests of the particular skills involved in those jobs...

...It is not that IQ results are infallible, or even that correlations between IQ and these other social phenomena are high...

...One of the first things taught in introductory statistics is that correlation is not causation...

...Within a decade, however, Jews in the United States were scoring above the national average on mental tests, and the data in The Bell Curve indicate that they are now far above the national average in IQ...

...In one sense, the issues are too important to ignore...

...They say: The national averages have in fact changed by amounts that are comparable to the fifteen or so IQ points separating blacks and whites in America...

...But none of this saves them from the wrath of those who promote the more "politically correct" view that the tests are culturally biased and lack predictive validity for non-white minorities...

...Perhaps the most intellectually troubling aspect of The Bell Curve is the authors' uncritical approach to statistical correlations...

...For Jews, it is clear that later tests showed radically different results—during an era when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of American Jews...

...It was neither folklore nor anything as subjective as thoughts...

...r The American Spectator, P.O...

...Yet predictions of a decline in national height over time, because of a greater fertility in groups of shorter stature, were likewise confounded by an increase in the national height...

...In real life, innumerable factors go together...

...One possibility is that females are more resistant to bad environmental conditions, asthat economists with only a bachelor's degree had higher incomes than economists with a master's degree and that these in turn had higher incomes than economists with Ph.D.'s...

...Thomas Sowell's most recent book is Race and Culture (Basic Books...

...In these chapters, Herrnstein and Murray establish their basic case that intelligence test scores are highly correlated with important social phenomena from academic success to infant mortality, which is far higher among babies whose mothers are in the bottom quarter of the IQ distribution...

...Name: Address: City: L. ^1G A remarkable phenomenon commented on in the Moynihan report of thirty years ago goes unnoticed in The Bell Curve—the prevalence of females among blacks who score high on mental tests...

...While this open presentation of evidence against the genetic basis of interracial IQ differences is admirable, the failure to draw the logical inference seems puzzling...

...In such a comprehensive study of IQ scores and their social implications, there is no way to leave out questions of intergroup differences in IQ without the absence of such a discussion being glaring evidence of moral cowardice...

...That intractable reality cannot be circumvented by devising "culture-free" tests, for In short, groups outside the cultural mainstream of contemporary Western society tend to do their worst on abstract questions, whatever their race might be...

...Since black males and black females have the same genetic inheritance, this substantial disparity must have some other roots, especially since it is not found in studies of high-IQ individuals in the general society, such as the famous Terman studies, which followed high-IQ children into adulthood and later life...

...This is what set off the name-calling and mud-slinging with which so many critics of The Bell Curve have responded...

...The results of World War I mental tests conducted among American soldiers born in Russia—the great majority of whom were Jews—showed such low scores as to cause Carl Brigham, creator of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to declare that these results "disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent...

...erhaps the strongest evidence against a genetic basis for P intergroup differences in IQ is that the average level of mental test performance has changed very significantly for whole populations over time and, moreover, particular ethnic groups within the population have changed their relative positions during a period when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of these groups...

...Identical twins with significantly different birth-weights also have IQ differences, with the heavier twin averaging nearly 9 points higher IQ than the lighter one.3 This effect is not found where the lighter twin weighs at least six and a half pounds, suggesting that deprivation of nutrition must reach some threshold level before it has a permanent effect on the brain during its crucial early development...

...just as racially different from whites of two generations ago as they are from whites today...

...So did canal boat children in Britain, and so did rural British children compared to their urban counterparts, at a time before Britain had any significant non-white population...

...F first of all, Herrnstein and Murray make a clear distinction between saying that IQ is genetically inheritable among individuals in general and saying that the differences among particular groups are due to different genetic inheritances...

...In such candor, as well as in the clarity with which technical issues are discussed without needless jargon, this book is a model that others might well emulate...

...Rather, the correlations simply tend to be higher than correlations involving other factors that might seem more relevant on the surface...

...It was based on hard data, as hard as any data in The Bell Curve...

...Given their size and speed, the shifts in time necessarily have been due more to changes in the environment than to changes in the genes...

...This latter claim is indeed logically consistent with the assumption that genetics is a major factor in interracial differences in IQ scores...

...C ontrary to much hysteria in the media, this is not a book about race, nor is it trying to prove that blacks are capable only of being hewers of wood and drawers of water...

...he implications of such rising patterns of mental test T performance is devastating to the central hypothesis of those who have long expressed the same fear as Herrnstein and Murray, that the greater fertility of low-IQ groups would lower the national (and international) IQ over time...

...But ultimately this too is an empirical issue—and empirical evidence has likewise refuted the claim that IQ test performance would decline over time...

...Its authors, Charles Murray and the late Professor Richard J. Herrnstein of Harvard, must have known that writing about differences in intelligence would provoke shrill denunciations from some quarters...

...However, while my data could never be used to compare the IQs of Polish and Italian children, whose IQ scores came from different schools, nevertheless the close similarity of their general patterns of IQ scores rising over time seems indicative—especially since it follows the rising patterns found among Jews and among American soldiers in general between the two world wars, as well as rising IQ scores in other countries around the world...

...The first 12 chapters of the book deal solely with data from all-white samples, so as to be rid of the distracting issue of racial differences in IQ scores...

...Perhaps the most dramatic changes were those in the mental test performances of Jews in the United States...

...36 The American Spectator February 1995...

...Herrnstein and Murray are only summarizing these data when they shoot down the arguments and evasions by which the conventional wisdom says that these tests do not accurately predict future performance...

...Whatever innate potential various groups may have, what they actually do will be done within some particular culture...

...One chance in five of disaster is not to be ignored...

...The statistical term "multicollinearity," dealing with spurious correlations, appears only once in this massive book...

...While The Bell Curve cites the work of James R. Flynn, who found substantial increases in mental test performances from one generation to the next in a number of countries around the world, the authors seem not to acknowledge the devastating implications of that finding for the genetic theory of intergroup differences, or for their own reiteration of longstanding claims that the higher fertility of low-IQ groups implies a declining national IQ level...

...These concerns need voicing, even if they are not always compelling...

...The predictive validity and social implications of intelli1 Editor's note: Our own review of The Bell Curve, by Christopher Caldwell, appeared last month...

...In any event, large sexual disparities in high-IQ individuals where there are no genetic or socioeconomic differences present a challenge to both the Herrnstein-Murray thesis and most of their critics...

...When European immigrant groups in the United States scored below the national average on mental tests, they scored lowest on the abstract parts of those tests...

...Yet critics have largely overlooked these disputable points, while concentrating their attacks on either the unassailable conclusions of the book or the presumed bad intentions of the authors...

...Both reactions are unwarranted, but not unprecedented, in the over-heated environment surrounding so many touchy social issues today...

...gence test results are carefully explored by Herrnstein and Murray in more than 500 pages of text with another 300 pages of appendices, footnotes, and an index...

...In terms of logic and evidence, the predictive validity of mental tests is the issue least open to debate...

...Hermstein and Murray openly acknowledge such rises in IQ and christen them "the Flynn effect," in honor of Professor Flynn who discovered it...

...That is, they tended to be older and have more experience, with this experience being more likely to have been in the more lucrative business world rather than in academia...

...The Bell Curve deserves critical attention, not public smearing or uncritical private acceptance...

...Similarly, rising IQs over time do not refute the belief that races differ in IQ for genetic reasons, though it ought to at least raise a question about that belief...

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...Such a conclusion goes beyond what Herrnstein and Murray say, and much beyond what the facts will support...

...One of the reasons why widespread improvements in results on IQ tests have received such little attention is that these tests have been normed to produce an average IQ of 100, regardless of how many questions are Blacks today are just as racially different from whites of two generations ago as they are from whites today...

...Yet, rightly, no one regards this as a refutation of the belief that height is greatly influenced by genes and differs from race to race for genetic reasons...

...They say further that the whole issue is "still riddled with more questions than answers...

...If a man who scores 100 on an IQ test today is answering more questions correctly than his grandfather with the same IQ answered two-generations ago, then someone else who answers the same number of questions correctly today as this man's grandfather answered two generations ago may have an IQ of 85...

...As the authors write: It should be no surprise to see (as one does every day) blacks functioning at high levels in every intellectually challenging field...

...Even before Professor Flynn's studies, mental test results from American soldiers tested in World War II showed that their perforIQs of both Italian-Americans and Polish-Americans also rose substantially over a period of decades...

...Blacks today are 34 The American Spectator February 1995 American Spectator Investigative Reports Available David Brock's "Strange Lies" reveals the truth behind Jane & Jill's sham attack on Clarence Thomas—and it's now available to TAS readers as a special report...

...They seem to conclude, however tentatively, that the apparent influence of biological inheritance on IQ score differences among members of the general society may also explain IQ differences between different racial and ethnic groups...

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...In this case, when other variables were taken into account, these spurious correlations disappeared.4 In many other cases, however, variables such as cultural influences cannot even be quantified, much less have their effects tested statistically...

...That is, after all, greater than the chance of disaster in playing Russian roulette...

...My own research of twenty years ago showed that theanswered correctly...

...Strangely, Hermstein and Murray refer to "folklore" that "Jews and other immigrant groups were thought to be below average in intelligence...

...The Bell Curve is an education on the whole subject, including the evidence pro and con on a wide variety of controversial issues...

...That non sequitur was destroyed empirically long before Herrnstein and Murray sat down to write The Bell Curve...

...The implication that more education in economics leads to lower incomes would lead me to speculate as to how much money it was costing a student just to be enrolled in my course...

...Multicollinearity refers to the fact that many variables are highly correlated with one another, so that it is very easy to believe that a certain result comes from variable A, when in fact it is due to variable Z, with which A happens to be correlated...

...If race A differs from race B in IQ, and two generations of race A differ from each other by the same amount, where is the logic in suggesting that the IQ differences are even partly racial...

...In thus demolishing the foundation underlying such practices as double-standards in college admissions and "racenorming" of employment tests, The Bell Curve threatens both a whole generation of social policies and the careers of those who promote them...

...They caution against "taking the current ethnic differences as etched in stone...

...On some other issues, however, the arguments and conclusions of The Bell Curve are much more open to dispute...

...It is a question of the validity of the conclusion that differences between genetically different groups are due to those genetic differences, whether in whole or in part...

...The logic of their argument seems so clear and compelling that the opposite empirical result should be considered a refutation of the assumptions behind that logic...

...It is also one of the first things forgotten, and one of the most widely ignored facts in public policy research...

...But to call this cultural "bias" is misleading, particularly if it suggests that these groups' "real" ability will produce better results than their test scores would indicate...

...The notion that "genes are destiny" is one found among some of the more shrill critics, but not in The Bell Curve itself...

...A remarkable phenomenon commented on in the Moynihan report of thirty years ago goes unnoticed in The Bell Curve—the prevalence of females among blacks who score high on mental tests...