Readers Want To Know: What The Hell Is The Bell Curve Doing On My Bookshelf?

My old sparring partner and current NYU colleague Mark Dery and I have been having an interesting exchange in the comments thread about the presence of The Bell Curve in my personal "canon." This morning, I started typing out a longer response, and thought I'd bump it up to the front door, since others may be interested. Briefly, the conversation involved this exchange:

Me: The Bell Curve is there because I've been dealing with IQ a lot in the past few years, and it's the most influential book about IQ -- though completely wrongheaded on almost every front -- published in the last few decades, maybe ever.

Mark: I'm surprised to hear it, since in the (admittedly closed) circles I travel in, it's viewed as a strain of intellectual leprosy, trapped between two covers. Who has it influenced, I wonder? Are there that many unreconstructed social Darwinists out there?

Now, to the extent that Mark's and my circles don't entirely overlap, I'm sure they're united in agreement that The Bell Curve was an evil, racist book. But that's precisely why it's on my shelf. The Bell Curve was influential in three senses. On the most basic level, it had a reach that no other book about IQ -- as far as I know -- has ever had. It made the Times bestseller list, and had whole issues of magazines and journals devoted to critiques of its argument. (Granted, "emotional IQ" has had even more of an impact in the form of the book Emotional Intelligence, but that's a different IQ.)

Now, that huge response had two polarizing effects. A bunch of largely conservative folks embraced the argument, and particularly embraced the premise that IQ was rigidly determined by genes, which is the basis for the entire book. On the left -- in Mark's and my circles -- the book was not only denounced on its own terms, but it became the poster child for the dangers of talking about IQ seriously in any context. There's a whole crowd out there who -- thanks to the attack on The Bell Curve -- think that IQ is just a completely made-up number, or worse, a racist made-up number.

I happen to consider both those positions to be wrong, for reasons that I spell out in the second half of Everything Bad. The whole point of the Flynn Effect is that it demonstrates convincingly that IQ can be shaped by environmental conditions, and is not purely genetic in nature. That's why I think Flynn is a much more interesting figure in this than Gould, because he's every bit as progressive in his politics, but instead of trying to unravel the entire category of IQ, he instead uses it as a kind of wedge for progressive ends. And so in publicly arguing for the relevance of the Flynn Effect, I knew I would have to battle both sides of the Bell Curve legacy, which made me think that I probably should actually read the book. And in fact, it turned out to be incredibly helpful on a number of fronts. I can't tell you how many radio call in shows and interviews and lectures I did where someone would listen to me talk about the Flynn Effect, and then angrily denounce my biological determinism in invoking IQ in the first place. And I'd have to say: did you just hear what I said? The Flynn Effect is an argument against biological determinism! What's more, it's the one fact in The Bell Curve that causes Murray and Herrnstein to admit that IQ may also be influenced by social factors.

Comments

[Stuart]

hi there. great books. great blog.

i thought this might be of interest, a recent story here in the UK;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4785574.stm

[Captoe]

I've gotten incredible heat from visitors for having a book called The Bell Curve Debate http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812925874 on my bookshelf at home.

Leprosy indeed.

[Bruce Hutchinson]

While I'm not going to defend The Bell Curve in any way (I've never read it), I do think it's a terrible mistake to link genetics with biological determinism. Stephen Pinker does an excellent job discussing this in The Blank Slate.

[Mark Dery]

Who's linking _The Bell Curve_ and genetics? The latter is science, *the* flagship science of our age; the former, racism in a lab coat instead of a white sheet.

[Mark Dery]

I can't resist asking, Steven: Have you ever had an IQ test? The unexamined aspect of such tests is the psychological fallout they have on those who take them, then learn the results.

[evil cat]

Thanks for pointing this out. I've read "Everything Bad" and "Mind Wide Open" and occasionally read your blog. I too was, um, surprised to see "The Bell Curve" on your bookshelf, but I now completely understand (and agree with) your logic. To Mark Dery: Johnson mentions in Mind Wide Open (I think, I don't have passages on me that I can quote) that he knows he has a very well-organized brain (I believe a measure of good intelligence), but no particular region stands out like it would with an Einstein or Mozart. I think in reality, the level of success somebody achieves depends more on their personality than their I.Q. after a certain point, i.e. a very ambitious and determined person with a score of 100 could very well do "better" than a lazier personality with a score of 125. Of course, this won't work in extreme cases (say below 90 and above 150 or so).

[Bill Dauphin]

"The unexamined aspect of [IQ] tests is the psychological fallout they have on those who take them, then learn the results."

Hmmm... there's fallout and then there's fallout. When my daughter was preparing to enter grade school, we had her tested for the purpose of placing her in a gifted class. Years later she was diagnosed with brain cancer. When her oncologist told her mother and me that the combination of surgery, chemo, and radiation it would take to save her life might take 5 or 6 points off her IQ, imagine the "psychological fallout" of knowing that, having tested in the high 150s, she had plenty of "margin."

(She's cancer-free and doing fine now, BTW.)

[san]

Isn't IQ only of abstract interest? My IQ was tested in my late teens; Wechsler would put me in his highest classification. I know my life, and I know my IQ score, so I have to know that my intelligence has greatly enriched my life -- the one I lead inside my head -- but I doubt anyone else can see that. My IQ score isn't a made-up number, but I can't see what practical significance it has; it's tantamount to a made-up number.

[Steven Johnson]

To Mark's question, I took a few IQ-like tests as a kid, though I don't remember a specific score associated with them. And then I took a few informal ones on the computer when I was writing Mind Wide Open.

But let me be clear: I don't think that IQ tests are terribly helpful in their assessment of individual people, particularly when you're using them to figure out if they'd be a good employee. There are obviously plenty of other kinds of intelligence that are relevant to professional (or personal) success. But I do think they're interesting and relevant in measuring social and cultural change in a society. So if you're trying to figure out whether to accept kid x or kid y for college, I wouldn't emphasize IQ scores, though perhaps they could play a role. But if you're trying to track the changes between generation x and generation y, IQ's a very interested metric, though again, not the only one.

[James Fletcher Baxter]

Consider:
The missing element in every human 'solution' is
an accurate definition of the creature.

Human knowledge is a fraction of the whole universe.
The balance is a vast void of human ignorance. Human
reason cannot fully function in such a void; thus, the
intellect can rise no higher than the criteria by which it
perceives and measures values.

Humanism makes man his own standard of measure.
However, as with all measuring systems, a standard
must be greater than the value measured. Based on
preponderant ignorance and an egocentric carnal
nature, humanism demotes reason to the simpleton
task of excuse-making in behalf of the rule of appe-
tites, desires, feelings, emotions, and glands.

Because man, hobbled in an ego-centric predicament,
cannot invent criteria greater than himself, the humanist
lacks a predictive capability. Without instinct or trans-
cendent criteria, humanism cannot evaluate options with
foresight and vision for progression and survival. Lack-
ing foresight, man is blind to potential consequence and
is unwittingly committed to mediocrity, collectivism,
averages, and regression - and worse. Humanism is an
unworthy worship.

The void of human ignorance can easily be filled with
a functional faith while not-so-patiently awaiting the
foot-dragging growth of human knowledge and behav-
ior. Faith, initiated by the Creator and revealed and
validated in His Word, the Bible, brings a transcend-
ent standard to man the choice-maker. Other philo-
sophies and religions are man-made, humanism, and
thereby lack what only the Bible has:

1.Transcendent Criteria and
2.Fulfilled Prophetic Validation.

The vision of faith in God and His Word is survival
equipment for today and the future.

Human is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by
nature and nature's God a creature of Choice - and of
Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive
characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and re-
spectful relations to his fellow-man. Thus, he is orien-
ted to a Freedom whose roots are in the Order of the
universe.

- from The HUMAN PARADIGM

[Orli]

To Captoe:

"I do think it's a terrible mistake to link genetics with biological determinism."

How can you separate genetics from the concept of biological determinism? I'm not sure I understand your point and I'm curious to hear more.

Some say that biological determinism is laregly a myth. (See Dr. Nancy Andreasen's excellent book "Brave New Brain.") But this doesn't seem to me to be the point that Pinker is making in "Blank Slate" (though I haven't finished the book).

[Anono]

"A bunch of largely conservative folks embraced the argument, and particularly embraced the premise that IQ was rigidly determined by genes, which is the basis for the entire book."

That's quite an oversimplification. Murray and Herrnstein do argue that genes play some role in IQ (just do nearly all mainstream scientists), but they admit that environment plays a large role as well. Not only do they admit it, they say in one place that if the reader thinks IQ is completely genetically determined, then the authors haven't done a good enough job presenting all the evidence for environmental influence.