Sense and Nonsense about the Jensenist Heresy

...Jensen's second major argument concerns the cause of the IQ differences between members of different social groups...

...10) Jencks, C., op...

...A few technical objections to these studies have recently been raised (1), which make it desirable for these kinds of inquiries to be replicated by other researchers, including, of course, those who would disputethis conclusion...

...A particularly important implication of finding a high h2 in a given surrounding is that making the best existing environmental variation available to every member of the population could notresult in a large reduction in the trait differences between individuals...

...25, (1974), pp...

...This is because it entails a milieu that has never existed before, whilst Jensen's (and also Jencks' [4]) position is that no environment now in existence and which affects a significant portion of the population, will, when made available to all, cause much reduction in IQ differences...

...Heritability can be inferred from many types of kinship relations but the independent contributions of genetic and environmental influences are most clearly manifested in the case of identical twins (who by definition have zero genetic variation) that have been separated at birth...

...11) Jensen, A.R., Genetics and Education, p. 203...

...In this way research endeavors would be concentrated on lowering the correlation between IQ and learning success, which may well be more responsive to environmental handling that changing IQ itself...

...6) Ibid., p. 74...

...20) Urbach, P., "Progress and Degeneration in the 'IQ Debate'," Brit...

...Brace, G.R...

...18) Jencks, C., op...

...But the fact is that Jensen's research, correctly understood, refutes rather than sustains racism...

...14) Lewontin, R., "Race and Intelligence," Bull...

...One widely heard opinion, for example, is that Jensen's conclusions, if right, would justify the reinstitution of racial segregation...

...Phenylketonuria, a disease which causes progressive mental retardation, results from a genetic defect that prevents the metabolism of phenylalanine, an amino acid occurring normally in food...

...Sci., May 1970, p. 17...

...A fuller discussion of these matters will appear elsewhere, but these suggestions are sufficient to make the point here that it is risky indeed to argue that all groups "ought" a priori to be equal in all ways and at all levels and that we "should" treat individuals in whatever way will bring about this presumedly felicitous result...

...evolved within an upper-class segment of the European population, and thus were naturally shaped by the capacities, culture, and needs of those children whom the schools were primarily intended to serve...

...The goal of equality in public education thus would be interpreted to mean equal opportunity of choice among alternative paths...

...III, esp...

...Gamble, and J.T...

...Atom...

...What it rather brings into question is a matter of far more mundane and de-tumescent character (though, to be sure, an item of pietistic, if unexamined, faith for many), namely, whether the common observation of differences among groups is indeed a reliable indicator of the operation of bias at the level of individuals...

...These statements may seem startling to those who have followed the controversy only in the popular press, and I shall commence their justification by first reviewing Jensen's technical arguments...

...5) Jensen, A.R., Genetics and Education, Harper & Row, 1972, p. 135...

...And Jensen concurs completely: "If diversity of mental abilities, as of most other human characteristics, is a basic fact of nature, as the evidence indicates, and if the ideal of universal education is to be successfully pursued, it seems a reasonable conclusion that schools and society must provide a range and diversity of educational methods, programs and goals, and of occupational opportunities, just as wide as the range of human abilities" (11...

...Jencks advises the same: "Indeed, we can even say that diversity should be an explicit objective of schools and school systems...

...This lotion clearly underlies compulsory inegration and the attempts to make a 'middle-class" cultural milieu equally vailable to everyone through Sesame ;weer, Head Start, Follow Through, and he like...

...Why, then, does Jensen, this notwithstanding, still advance seriously the argument that differences in the environments experienced by blacks and whites cannot account for the IQ differences between white and black individuals...

...merely that one must look elsewhere than among already existing, common situational variations for factors that could beneficially affect this trait...

...that a high initial estimate did not prevent the absolute size of the phenotypic differences between normal and afflicted persons from being strongly reduced by the appropriate environmental modifications...

...What can we now say about the allegation of racism that is so frequently hurled at his work...

...in Race and Intelligence, C.L...

...It is not a universal constant, since it depends on how much genetic variation, and how much environmental variation, there happens to be in the situation of interest, and either or both of these components could be different in different circumstances...

...Clearly, therefore, the widespread apprehension that the "jensenist heresy," if scientifically confirmed, would force us to soften our opposition to racist public policies is simply unwarranted...

...And too, any group average characteristic represents an accumulation of influences over past history, and hence tells us nothing about whether or not discrimination is ongoing and currently needful of political remedy...

...99-135 and 235-259...

...it would actually be hard to devise a better way to generate an elite than by requiring every child to learn in uniform conditions where only the pupils who are especially well suited to them to begin with are likely to learn at all...

...This unanticipated concinnity of two very different experimental avenues gives this conclusion great force...

...13) Jencks, C., op...

...cit., p. 256...

...The consequent policy implication, herefore, has been that reducing existng situational variations, particularly hose resulting from discrimination, class lisparity, and other inequalities in educaional and cultural opportunity, should .trongly reduce differences in intellectual ibility and school achievement...

...First, Jensen's constant methodological focus on determining the mental qualities of individuals and his advocacy of forming educational policy around the distinctive configuration of abilities of separate persons are the very antithesis of a racist approach, and are in perfect accord with liberal principles...

...Since these variations can be quite large (on the order of several years), children might better be grouped for instructional purposes on the basis of mental, rather thanchronological, age, so that each could be taught more nearly in terms of his own schedule of development...

...53, 86, 94, 106, 109, and 255...

...This is, that the educational policies predicated on the opposite premise—that inter-race differences in IQ were largely artifacts of environmental inequality—and which hence took aim at equalizing the educational milieu of whites and blacks have had precious little success...

...The heritability, or h2, of a trait refers to the relative proportion of the total variation in that trait that, for a given population in a given environmental range, can be attributed to genetic (as opposed to environmental) variation...

...When Jensen estimates that IQ is 80% heritable, he does not mean that IQ is necessarily fixed, but only that existing environmental variations cannot account for differences it IQ, 10 The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1976 differences between normal and defective persons would be strongly reduced...

...These IQ distributions thus reinforce in a graphic manner the familiar liberal principle that classification and treatment of persons on the ground of race (or, by extension, of any group character at all) must necessarily result in severe inequity at the level of individuals...

...Or in other words, an estimate of heritability obtained for the environmental range faced by whites cannot be assumed to account also for the differencesthat arise in the putatively much greater environmental range that is experienced by members of different races...

...When afflicted persons eat normal diets, the amino acid builds up in their blood to toxic levels, but doctors discovered that the harm could be greatly reduced by supplying a special diet not containing this substance...

...One virtue of Jensen's work, then, is precisely .that it points research efforts at IQ enhancement into fresh directions such as Heber' s. The second suggested avenue of research focuses not on changing IQ but on making better use of the IQ that already exists, for example, by looking for teaching methods which do not require the preexistence of high IQ on the part of students...

...If finally heritability were estimated after every afflicted person had been receiving proper treatment, then the estimate would again be high (twins would once more correlate), since the new diet would be available to all those needing it, but the absolute size of the *The term heritability is usually applied to continuously varying polygenic traits such as height or intelligence rather than to discontinuous single-gene defects such as phenylketonuria...

...In view of these express statements, and considering that Jensen's argumentation as here summarized is completely consistent with them, it is impossible to sustain the charge of racism against him, not as long as this term is used with accuracy and precision, namely, to mean judging persons in terms of their group identity instead of their own unique talents...

...This belief has been, to state it in its simplest form, that children are basically similar in their mental abilities, and that their apparent differences in in:elligence have been brought about primarily by inequalities in their upbringng...

...These numerous trials, then, oft..r no evidence justifying a conclusionthat reducing situational variation by making one "normal" milieu accessible to everybody will substantially reduce IQ differences...

...As Jensen shows, this is not a bad description of the present situation: "The instructional methods of the traditional classroom were...

...that this diminution in inequality was accomplished only by first recognizing genetic diversity in response to a common situation as the root cause, then providing different environments for normal and afflicted persons...

...The take-home lessons from this simple case are: that the "heritability" of the trait varied with the milieu in which it was measured even though the same genes were always present...

...Jensen's purpose is by no means to abandon low-IQ children as a lost cause...

...12) Friedman, M., "The Voucher Idea," New York Times Magazine, September 23, 1973, p. 22...

...21) Jensen, A.R., "Heritability and Teachability," in Emerging Issues in Education, J.E...

...Heath, 1972, p. 82...

...Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty Of all the social issues that have enkindled public debate in recent years, few have generated so much heat and so little light as the controversy surrounding Arthur Jensen's theories on race, IQ, and heredity...

...Nothing that I know of conclusively rules out this formal possibility...

...therefore, estimates of IQ heritability obtained for one group cannot prove that the differences between groups are genetically determined...

...A school system that provides only one variety of schooling, no matter how good, must almost invariably seem unsatisfactory to many parents and children...

...Simply abandoning hard-to-teach children as a lost cause, i.e., therapeutic nihilism...

...D.C...

...This might be assured by a plan based on voluntary self-selection, as advocated both by Milton Friedman in his voucher plan (12), and by Jencks (13...

...and an educational system that puts inordinate emphasis on only one mode or style of learning will obtain meager results from the children who do not fit this pattern" (7...

...They argue, correctly, that the circumstances faced by some minorities are sufficiently different from those of whites that environmental factors can never decisively be ruled out as the true cause of these differences...

...How is it measured...

...Research into methods of imparting to low-IQ pupils the same basic skills which presently are taught mainly by techniques that are efficient only with high-IQ students has generally been neglected because of the prevailing bias towards infinite mental plasticity, but may now, as a consequence of the discussion stimulated by Jensen, receive more serious attention...

...And thus the explanation already advanced to account for just this type of refractoriness among whites, which, you remember, was strongly supported by applicable genetic evidence—namely, that the existing range of environmental situations does not critically determine these IQ differences—probably is true for everyone, not only whites...

...It seems to make no difference, in other words, how individuals may be distributed among racial and/or ethnic groups as far as attempts at narrowing IQ differences via milieu equalization is concerned...

...This is surely a cogent point, but Jensen does not disagree: he says explicitly that "heritability coefficients obtained within populations, no matter how high, cannot prove the existence of a genetic difference between populations" (16), and again, that "It is axiomatic in quantitative genetics that within group heritability cannot prove between group heritability" (17, emphasis in original...

...And other geneticists agree with Jensen, e.g...

...Atom...

...22) Jensen, A.R., "Can We and Should We Study Race Differences...

...The argument properly runs just the other way around: "group justice" follows from treating the component persons fairly, and thus the group average "ought" to fall wherever it happens to fall as the dependent result of individually fair treatment...

...If we do accept, on the other hand, that existing environmental variations are not the prime generators of IQ differences among individuals regardless of ethnic identity, then the prescription for future research, exactly the same for minority group members as for whites, is, as before, to seek to identify new types of environmental interventions that could improve IQ, and also to develop new techniques in teaching that make better use of that student IQ that already exists...

...The ideal system is one that provides as many varieties of schooling as its children and parents want and finds ways of matching children to schools that suit them" (10...

...not all twins would correlate with each other in their manifestation of the disease...

...He has been severely reproached (14, 15) for, as his critics see it, improperly using heritability data collected exclusively from whites to suggest that black/white differences are mostly genetic in origin...

...Anthropological Studies No...

...But even if new trials should sustain Jensen's estimate of about 80% heritability for IQ, this still would not mean that IQ is necessarily fixed, nor that IQ differences are forever immutable...

...Let it be noted in closing that Jensen subscribes fully to the liberal moral position: "...we can and must insist upon considering only persons' individual characteristics rather than their group membership as a basis for educational treatment and in social relations in general" (21), and "All persons should be treated as individuals in terms of their own merits...

...The result of a large number of such studies carried out over the last few decades by many investigators in several countries, covering a wide range of social class and other kinds of environmental conditions, is that, on the average, no more than 20 to 30% of the variance in IQ can be attributed to non-genetic factors...

...We can say furthermore that if this interpretation ever is to yield insights useful for improving educational policy it will finally have to be advanced in a sufficiently specific form that it could be rendered false by some feasible test...

...The Third Press—Joseph Okpaku Publisher, 1973, p. 150...

...Bond (eds...

...Otherwise, it must be judged, by Popper's "falsifiability" criterion, to be without empirical content (19, 20...

...1972, chap...

...F.A...

...8, American Anthropological Association, 1971, p. 23...

...Recall that a wide variety of educational reforms now in effect have been designed in accordance with the "environmentalist" interpretation of IQ differnaces...

...Now, what sorts of educational changes does this result argue for...

...in fact, no more than such equienvironmentalist policies have had in reducing intrarace IQ differences among whites...

...Thus Dobzhansky recommends: "Ideally, every child should receive the environment most conducive to the development of his own particular abilities" (9...

...Evidently it is not, for a multitude of factors are implicated in the phenomenon of group disparity aside from both discrimination and genetics, e.g., variations in the selective effects of emigration and immigration, and differences between groups in the relative recency of group entry and acculturation...

...One reason for determining the heritability of a trait is that it provides a clue as to what kinds of milieu factors may influence the trait in question...

...3) Strickland, S.P., "Can Slum Children Learn...

...His well-known contention that IQ is highly heritable within social groups is based on a review of IQ correlations obtained for whites of varying degrees of kinship, ranging from identical twins to completely unrelated persons...

...By determining the extent to which persons of known genetic kinship resemble each other with regard to the trait in question...

...These, then, are the right kinds of educational implications that logically proceed from Jensen's inquiry into the genetic control of IQ...

...In fact, the improvement of teaching for just those pupils now benefiting little from their education is the explicit purpose of his work...

...It is not difficult to see the connection between this finding and educational policy...

...rather, it is to direct research toward new kinds of schooling which will suit them better...

...For this reason "separated-twin" studies are the method of choice (although such twin pairs are not easy to find...

...makes it inevitable that there will be unequal representation of the parent populations in any subgroup that might be selected whenever there are average differences between populations" (22...

...J. Phil...

...Such a finding, you remember, does not necessarily mean that IQ could not be improved by some environmental change...

...A noble notion, and an intrigurig one, yet, according to Jensen (and encks as well [2]), no reform of this type et devised (and many have been tried), Las, when applied on a large scale, reealed a significant, lasting effect upon ubsequent IQ or school achievement ompared with the achievement of control roups...

...These methods of schooling have remained essentially unchanged for many generations" (6...

...this, not crucifixion, is obviously the proper scientific response...

...12 The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1976 manifestly do not exist...

...16) Jensen, A.R., "Race and the Genetics of Intelligence: A Reply to Lewontin," Bull...

...7) Ibid., p. 201...

...4) Jencks, C., op...

...Most readers are probably less familiar with this critical point than with relativity, so a brief excursus on the geneticist's concept of heritability is in order...

...cit., pp...

...36-37...

...To quote Jensen: "...there is potentially much more we can do to improve school performance through environmental means than we can do to change intelligence per se" (5, emphasis added...

...For the reason that an entirely independent line of evidence also points to this conclusion...

...In addition, more attention might well be paid to individual variations in the schedule of mental development...

...but it is worth a moment's reflection to ask if this is really a valid—and reliable—inference...

...Now an estimate of the "heritability"' of phenylketonuria (obtained, let us say, by correlating separated identical twins) would be high if it were made before the disease's causation and treatment were known, because everyone would have been eating a similar diet with respect to this amino acid, and the seriousness of the disease would thus depend only upon gene differences...

...This would be too platitudinous to be worth saying were it not for the common observation that when individuals are ranked according to objective criteria, substantial differences in the representation of various ethnic and racial groups at different levels sometimes result...

...If instead the estimate were made when the dietary treatment was new and just gradually becoming available, such that for some separated twin pairs only one twin received the proper care, then it would be much lower, because the severity of the illness now would additionally depend on the new environmental variable of whether or not the special diet was in use...

...Returning now to IQ, it should be clear that a high h 2 among contemporary American whites implies only that IQ differences among them are not mainly a consequence of prevailing situational differences (including those of income or cultural milieu) and hence that merely reallocating persons within the present environmental range (say, by giving everyone "middle-class" cultural surroundings) will not result in much reduction of differences in IQ...

...No single home-away-from-home can be ideal for all children...

...only by introducing new kinds, or amounts, of milieu changes may it perhaps be possible to achieve this...

...2) Jencks, C., et al., Inequality, Harper & Row (paperback ed...

...it is only by treating persons in terms of their own distinct abilities and achievements that a just social order can be fashioned...

...Probably the most important policy consequence of the recognition of genetically caused differences in mental ability lies in the realization that any plan that actually succeeds in "equalizing" the educational milieu would virtually assure an unequal outcome...

...and that the key environmental factor was not one which varied significantly in the original situation where the "heritability" had at first been found to be high...

...for footnotes, see page 39) HAVENDER FOOTNOTES (continued from page 13) (1) Kamin, L., "Heredity, Intelligence, Politics and Psychology," speech before the Eastern Psychological Association Convention, May 5, 1973...

...The kind of decisive genetic study that would in principle resolve this question—correlating the IQ's of genetically identical individuals across the environments corresponding to whites and blacks—cannot for obvious reasons be carried out...

...There is, after all, a fundamental distinction between taking the multiformity of individuals as the basis for educational policy—methodological individualism—and treating people in terms of their group identities, regardless of their individual characteristics (which methodological collectivism is the sine qua non of racism...

...yet probably no other issue in the national discussion has been more thoroughly obscured by dense clouds of ignorance and misrepresentation...

...he Alternative: An American Spectator April 1976 11 Instead of uniformity, then, the goal of educational policy should be to provide, in close analogy to the phenylketonuria example, diversified paths geared to the individual strengths of each child...

...But the result of individual selection...

...This is false, for Jensen advances innovative suggestions aimed specifically at increasing the effectiveness of education for these very children...

...Why this essential yet transparently simple distinction, the very core of the difference between liberal and racist policies, seems to elude, in a curious sort of purblindness, the analytical capacities of Jensen's angrier critics, shall have to remain a matter for discussion elsewhere...

...First, new or now-rare kinds of environmental situations should be tested for their possible influence on intellectual growth...

...Another erroneous belief is that he advocates an end to compensatory education and other attempts to impart knowledge to low-IQ children on the ground that their intelligence is "fixed" by their genes, so that these efforts must inevitably be futile...

...Sci., March 1970, p. 3. (15) Dobzhansky, T., "Differences Are Not Deficits," Psychology Today, December 1973, p. 97...

...cit., p. 97...

...Bruno (ed...

...A successful outcome to this program would, of course, be thoroughly consistent with Jensen's genetic arguments, not a refutation of them as some commentators have thought (3...

...And the prescription for policy is also the same, namely, that a diversity of learning situations geared to individual needs based on a common set of judgmental standards for whites and minorities will probably turn out to be the best way to reduce achievement differentials...

...Both the lay public and the academic world have been engrossed in the controversy...

...An example from medicine will illuminate these points...

...for it is perfectly possible that all efforts so far to achieve environmental equality have simply not succeeded in specifying and eliminating the baleful environmental factor(s) postulated to act selectively on certain minorities and thus to generate group differences in average IQ...

...Used in conjunction with such methods, IQ tests would find their main use as a diagnostic tool to indicate which kind of learning situation would suit a student best...

...they "...put great emphasis on cognitive learning rather than associative learning...

...in The Fallacy of IQ, Senna, C. (ed...

...At least implicit in the system as it originally developed was the expectation that not all children would succeed...

...19) Popper, K.R., The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Harper & Row, 1959, p. 41 and throughout...

...But many attempts to identify such factors have already been made by sympathetic and idealistic people without success, so that we can safely say that these hypothesized factors are not among those commonly associated with gross differences in socioeconomic status or school facilities (18...

...sharp racial boundaries in mental ability So long as the term is used precisely, i.e...

...If we found h2 to be low, for instance, then we would search within the existing range of environmental situations for the factor(s) causing the trait differences...

...There are two key research implications...

...From purely genetic evidence, then, empirical conclusiveness is precluded by the nature of the problem, and this conclusion must remain tentative...

...But an adaptation to the single gene case can be made for the restricted purposes of this illustration by viewing it as the limiting condition of a polygenic situation, as one goes to systems with fewer and fewer operative genes...

...Nor, to the extent that skin color itself causes a difference in environment (by evoking or alternatively inhibiting discriminatory actions) is it possible to construct even hypothetically an environment that could confidently be presumed to be "identical" for blacks and whites...

...Now there are those who conclude solely from this fact that the judgmental criteria used must therefore be biased...

...This fact instantly renders it impossible to justify racial segregation by reference to fundamental mental "differences" between the races...

...17) Jensen, A.R., Genetics and Education, p. 29...

...Not at all...

...to mean judging persons by their group identities rather than by their unique talents, it is impossible to convict Jensen of racism...

...Note, however, that this is just the result that was to be expected from the heritability studies, which had separately shown that IQ was not strongly affected by common differences in the environmental surroundings...

...Rick Heber's famous experiment, where the children of retarded mothers from Milwaukee's worst slum were placed in an artificially constructed environment that supplied the most mentally stimulating conditions these experimenters were able to provide, is an important move in this direction, and it may be significant that preliminary scuttlebutt indicates there have been impressive gains in IQ...

...But if h2 turned out to be high, that is, if differences in the trait could not be attributed to the main existing sources of environmental variation, then we would have to direct our search for influential factors to new types of environmental variation not already commonly present in the tested milieu...

...cit., chap...

...9) Id...

...and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming...

...Dobzhansky: "...when everybody is put through the same educational machine, the abilities of many people will be grievously misjudged" (8...

...William R. Havender Sense and Nonsense about the Jensenist Heresy • • "To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assertion that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequality would justify unequal treatment...

...8) Dobzhansky, T., Genetic Diversity and Human Equality, Basic Books, 1973, p. 38...

...It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different...

...In this regard, it might be useful to vary the rate at which information is presented, the number and size of conceptual steps into which it is broken down, and the number of times it is repeated...

...And second, a glance at Jensen's IQ distributions clearly shows that racial groups overlap greatly in intelligence...

...Even this argument is not totally convincing...