Could someone please steelman the position of people who disagree strongly with this book? Which parts of the book are considered factually or logically incorrect, which parts do people object to so strongly on moral grounds, etc.?
There are a coupleofbooks pointing out mistakes and methodological problems with the Bell Curve. Maybe we will get their reviews as well in the future.
If you are not alergic to long youtube videos you may be interested in this fairly reasonable and thorough approach to critique of the Bell Curve from the left.
In a nutshell, Murray bases his conclusions on a bunch of very epistemically poor research, often uses shady methodology, contradicts himself in a way that hints at writing the book in a bad faith and despite all his neutral tone, smuggles harmful political agenda.
Probably the most obvious example of bad research is Richard Lynn’s review, which Murray uses as a countrol group for Afro-Americans. Data for this review was cherry-picked, ironicaly didn’t produce Bell Curve and wasn’t supposed to be translated into IQ score, and was mainly collected in South Africans during apartheid.
Murray’s impressive claim that IQ score is a better predictor of success than parents social economic status, becomes much less impressive if we know that while computing SES Murray omits lots of possible factors and as soon as we include them in the calculation, social status becomes a better predictor of success than IQ.
As for contradictions, the Bell Curves goes from stating that even if intelligence is 100% genetically determined it doesn’t change anything in our society to claims that due to 60% heritability of intelligence we are to implement specific policies or else we are in trouble. In between Murray mixes heritability of a trait in a population with a degree to which a trait is genetically determined in a an individual, despite the fact that he mentions that these are different things. In general he is ready to aknowledge possible counterarguments but they doesn’t seem to affect his conclusion in any way. This creates the impression that he has already written the bottom line, and just creates himself some plausible deniability.
Could someone please steelman the position of people who disagree strongly with this book? Which parts of the book are considered factually or logically incorrect, which parts do people object to so strongly on moral grounds, etc.?
There are a couple of books pointing out mistakes and methodological problems with the Bell Curve. Maybe we will get their reviews as well in the future.
If you are not alergic to long youtube videos you may be interested in this fairly reasonable and thorough approach to critique of the Bell Curve from the left.
In a nutshell, Murray bases his conclusions on a bunch of very epistemically poor research, often uses shady methodology, contradicts himself in a way that hints at writing the book in a bad faith and despite all his neutral tone, smuggles harmful political agenda.
Probably the most obvious example of bad research is Richard Lynn’s review, which Murray uses as a countrol group for Afro-Americans. Data for this review was cherry-picked, ironicaly didn’t produce Bell Curve and wasn’t supposed to be translated into IQ score, and was mainly collected in South Africans during apartheid.
Murray’s impressive claim that IQ score is a better predictor of success than parents social economic status, becomes much less impressive if we know that while computing SES Murray omits lots of possible factors and as soon as we include them in the calculation, social status becomes a better predictor of success than IQ.
As for contradictions, the Bell Curves goes from stating that even if intelligence is 100% genetically determined it doesn’t change anything in our society to claims that due to 60% heritability of intelligence we are to implement specific policies or else we are in trouble. In between Murray mixes heritability of a trait in a population with a degree to which a trait is genetically determined in a an individual, despite the fact that he mentions that these are different things. In general he is ready to aknowledge possible counterarguments but they doesn’t seem to affect his conclusion in any way. This creates the impression that he has already written the bottom line, and just creates himself some plausible deniability.