12. The Bell Curve: what’s it all about and why is it back?

1 Sam Harris in ‘Forbidden Knowledge (with Charles Murray): Waking up with Sam Harris #73’, YouTube, 23 April 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1lEPQYQk8s

2 Ibid., Charles Murray.

3 The others being Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett; all wrote books advocating atheism at around the same time.

4 Ezra Klein in ‘The Sam Harris Debate’, The Ezra Klein Show, Vox, 9 April 2018 https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17210248/sam-harris-ezra-klein-charles-murray-transcript-podcast

5 A. R. Jensen, ‘How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement?’, Harvard Educational Review 39, 1969, pp. 1–123.

6 Ibid.

7 Margalit Fox, ‘Arthur R. Jensen Dies at 89, Set Off Debate About IQ’, New York Times, 1 November 2012.

8 Bill Blakemore, Peter Jennings and Beth Nissen, ‘The Bell Curve and the Pioneer Fund’, ABC World News Tonight, ABC News, 22 November 1994.

9 H. J. Eysenck, Race, Intelligence and Education, Temple Smith, London, 1971, p. 130.

10 Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, Penguin, 1997, p. 159 and pp. 186–7.

11 Richard E. Nisbett, ‘Heredity, environment and race differences in IQ: a commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005)’, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 11 (2), 2005, p. 309.

12 William Shockley, quoted in ‘Shockley’s race view called “senile, Fascist”’, St Petersburg Times, 8 September 1971.

13 J. P. Rushton, quoted in Devin Burghard, ‘Stateside: inside the Preserving Western Civilization conference’, Searchlight, April 2009.

14 See Charles Lane, ‘Response to Daniel R. Vining, Jr’, New York Review of Books, 42 (5), 23 March 1995.

15 Zack Cernovsky, ‘On the similarities of American blacks and whites: a reply to J. P. Rushton’, Journal of Black Studies 25, 1 July 1995, p. 672.

16 J. P. Rushton, ‘Race differences in behaviour: a review and evolutionary analysis’, Personality and Individual Differences 9 (6), 1988, pp. 1009–24.

17 J. P. Rushton, ‘The evolution of racial differences: a reply to M. Lynn’, Journal of Research in Personality 23, 1989, pp. 7–20.

18 See Marek Kohn, The Race Gallery, Jonathan Cape, London, 1995, pp. 142–3.

19 E. O. Wilson, quoted in P. Knudson, A Mirror to Nature: Reflections on Science, Scientists and Society, Stoddard Publishing, Toronto, 1991, p. 190.

20 Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Free Press, New York, 1994.

21 J. L. Graves, ‘What a tangled web he weaves: race, reproductive strategies and Rushton’s life history theory’, Anthropological Theory 2 (2), 2002, pp. 131–54.

22 D. P. Barash, ‘Book review: “Race, Evolution and Behavior”’, Animal Behaviour 49, 1995, pp. 1131–3.

23 Blakemore, et al., op. cit.

24 Ibid., p. 113.

25 Ibid., p. 92.

26 Ibid., p. 118.

27 Ibid., p. 315.

28 Ibid., p. 311.

29 Ibid., p. 314.

30 Ibid., p. 340.

31 Bob Herbert, ‘In America; throwing a curve’, New York Times, 26 October 1994.

32 Ibid., p. 413.

33 Ibid., p. 546.

34 Stephen Jay Gould, op. cit., p. 368.

35 Ibid., p. 367.

36 Ibid., p. 369.

37 Ibid., p. 378.

38 For a summary of the critiques of sources see Charles Lane, ‘The Tainted Sources of “The Bell Curve”’, New York Review, 1 December 2004.

39 Leon Kamin, ‘Behind the curve’, Scientific American 272 (2), February 1995, p. 99.

40 Joseph L. Graves, The Emperor’s New Clothes, Rutgers University Press, NJ, 2001, p. 8.

41 See for example Claude S. Fischer, et al., Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth, Princeton University Press, NJ, 1996.

42 See Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas, ‘The intergenerational transmission of “intelligence” down the slippery slopes of “The Bell Curve”’, Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 38 (3), July 1999.

43 Claude S. Fischer, et al., 1996, op. cit. p. 55.

44 Sanders Korenman and Christopher Winship, ‘A reanalysis of “The Bell Curve”’, NBER Working Paper Series, Vol. w5230, August 1995.

45 James Heckman, ‘Lessons from “The Bell Curve”’, Journal of Political Economy 103 (5), 1995, pp. 1091–120.

46 R. M. Hauser and M. H. Huang, ‘Verbal ability and socioeconomic success: a trend analysis’, Social Science Research 26 (3), September 1997, pp. 331–76.

47 See for example Charles Tittle and Thomas Rotolo, ‘IQ and stratification: an empirical evaluation of Herrnstein and Murray’s social change argument’, Social Forces 79 (1), September 2000, pp. 1–28.

48 Charles Murray, back-cover review for James Flynn, What Is Intelligence?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.

49 James Flynn, op. cit., p. 36.

50 Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980, Basic Books, New York, 1984.

51 Nathaniel Weyl, quoted in Jeet Heer, ‘Charles Murray is a Marketing Genius’, New Republic, 11 April 2018.

52 Charles Murray, quoted in Jason DeParle, ‘Daring Research or Social Science Pornography?: Charles Murray’, New York Times Magazine, 9 October 1994.

53 American Psychological Association, ‘Intelligence: knowns and unknowns’, American Psychologist 51 (2), 1996, pp. 77–101.

54 Stephen Jay Gould, op. cit., p. 31.

55 Ibid., pp. 31–4.

56 Andrew Sullivan, ‘The study of intelligence, ctd.’, The Dish, 29 November 2011.

57 Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 26 August 2005.

58 Andrew Sullivan, quoted in Johann Hari, ‘Andrew Sullivan: Thinking. Out. Loud.’, Intelligent Life, Spring 2009.

59 Alan Wolfe, ‘From PC to PR (race, IQ and genetics in the Charles Murray/Richard Herrnstein book The Bell Curve)’, New Republic, 31 October 1994.

60 Andrew Sullivan, 2005, op. cit.

61 Andrew Sullivan, ‘The study of intelligence, ctd.’, The Dish, 29 November 2011.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Andrew Sullivan, ‘Race and IQ. Again’, The Dish, 14 May 2013.

66 Andrew Sullivan, ‘Denying Genetics Isn’t Shutting Down Racism, It’s Fueling It’, Daily Intelligencer, New York, 30 March 2018.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 Dominic Cummings, quoted in ‘Genetics outweighs teaching, Gove advisor tells his boss’, Guardian, 11 October 2013.

70 Boris Johnson, quoted in Nicholas Watt, ‘Boris Johnson invokes Thatcher spirit with greed is good speech’, Guardian, 27 November 2013.

71 Rod Liddle, quoted in Simon Hattenstone, ‘Rod Liddle Interview: “I’m not a bigot”, Guardian, 13 June 2014.

72 ‘Exposed: London’s eugenics conference and its neo-Nazi links’, London Student, 8 January 2018.

73 Kevin Rawlinson and Richard Adams, ‘UCL to investigate eugenics conference secretly held on campus’, Guardian, 8 January 2018.

74 ‘UCL were paid thousands by eugenics conference with neo-Nazi connections’, London Student, 5 February 2018.

75 Toby Young, ‘The Fall of the Meritocracy’, Quadrant online, 7 September 2015.

76 Toby Young, quoted in Rawlinson and Adams, op. cit.

77 Claire Phipps, Kevin Rawlinson and Rowena Mason, ‘Toby Young resigns from the Office for Students after backlash’, Guardian, 9 January 2018.

78 ‘Open Letter: No Place for Racist Pseudoscience at Cambridge’, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqiHicJXPCWPZVXKdhyPTO9jHFgdXV08WdA6nPf0_k2j5Xvw/closedform

79 Toby Young, ‘Will Noah Carl get a fair hearing?’, Spectator, 14 December 2018.