My interest in posting about the Bell Curve wasn't really motivated by the original post on intelligence by CalPundit, but rather the comments section over in this post at Matthew Yglesias's site where I was asked repeatedly to explain my criticisms of the book (For example, Charles Murtaughs says "By the way, I see that Atrios et al. have still not bothered to back up their attack on "The Bell Curve." I still haven't made up my mind on that, but I do know that I distrust the mob instinct, and so far most of what I've seen in the left's reaction to Murray and Herrnstein qualifies as such.")
Well, now I have. I hope the criticisms of Noble Prize winning economists from the U. of Chicago have some weight, even if mine don't. I don't plan on bothering to do it again, as I think it should be well understood by any sane intelligent person that H&M's book is a racist polemic, using fraudulent pseudo-science and shoddy reasoning to advance an unexcusable racist agenda. Anyone who questions this is, in my mind, either unaware (excusable perhaps) or as I said previously, equivalent to someone defending the "truth" of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It had an impact on thinking and policy in this country, which was the point of its being written in the first place, and the fact that "reasonable" people years later still find the need to defend it speaks volumes about its influence and them. The book was not written as a contribution to science, but rather to enable and encourage racist thinking and promote policy goals motivated by such thinking. While the "rightness" of those policy initiatives is not necessarily nullified by the use of racism to advance them, the fact is that the book did help contribute to the perceptions that outcome differences are not evidence of inequitable policies or ongoing racism, but rather the outcome of a meritocratic society, and that blacks and immigrants were "bringing our country down," and used to justify said policies.
UPDATE: Okay, I can't resist. In the link to Yglesias's site posted above Jane Galt says:
I can't resist throwing my two cents in on the Bell Curve, since I am the only person I know who has read it, and also the only person who doesn't have an opinion on its correctness -- I'm in Charles Murtaugh's camp. What I can say is that right after I read it, I read Stephen Jay Gould's review of it in the New Yorker, and I was horrified. I'm afraid I can't find the review, but it was, to my recollection, a pack of lies. Or I should say, half-truths, sly implications, weaselly omissions, brazen misquotations, and absent science. The only way he could possibly have written such a review is to be secure in the knowlege that no one who read it would ever read the book -- and in my experience, that has indeed been the case. Everyone I know who rails against hte book has not read it. They present its critics as being triumphantly correct without having examined the source material. That's not science, that's religion. I don't deny that many of the people obsessed with proving racial differences seem unpleasantly glad about the differences they allege, but I haven't found that to be the case at GNXP, and given the number of highly complex traits that are highly hereditary,the dismissal of the possibility by the left seems exceedingly peremptory. The inescapable conclusion that most of Murray's critics had written the lede on the way to the game taints the convincingness of their argument.
Well, I've read it Jane. And as for Gould's review - here's the pack of lies. I'm happy to believe there are some, but perhaps you could tell us what they are, so as to avoid making sly implications.
P.S. Don't send Jane any emails over this, please. And, no that isn't reverse psychology. Don't.
Update 2: Just wanted to add that defending the Bell Curve by claiming that "liberals" who attack it do so because they're denying that any aspect of intelligence could be hereditary is like defending the Protocols on the grounds that its detractors are denying the existence of rich Jewish bankers.
