# Interesting podcast conversation between Sam Harris and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 23, 2017, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052 "2017-04-23T09:21:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 26
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/501 "2017-05-01T23:28:09Z")
> [@obeast](#): > > Err, the heritability was most certainly the issue in the sentence of mine you quoted. :rolleyes: Yes, and the point was that you think that that is what we are complaining, you are not even wrong. We already pointed many times before that you spectacularly miss the point, just like many others that thin Murray should be listened to. As explained in post #212, to someone moaning also that it “is heritable, so there!” **iiandyiiii** replied that: > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > That says nothing about comparisons between groups, especially when there are so many environmental/cultural/societal differences between these groups. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > QFT, in fact the biggest point the scientific racists always have a propensity to miss… > > Must be the genes… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/502 "2017-05-01T23:38:59Z")
And just so it is clear that you understand what “not even wrong” means: > **[Not even wrong](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong)** > > Not even wrong refers to any statement, argument, or explanation that can be neither correct nor incorrect, because it fails to meet the criteria by which correctness and incorrectness are determined. As a more formal fallacy, it refers to the fine... > [@](#): > > Not even wrong > > “”That statement’s not even ignorant. That statement is like ignorance resin. Like, if you just take all of the stupid and just cook it down, and then scrape just the pure ignorance. Like crystal “duh.” It’s like crystal “duh.” > [sub]—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, referring to one such insane statement[1][/sub] > > Not even wrong refers to any statement, argument or explanation that can be neither correct nor incorrect, because it fails to meet the criteria by which correctness and incorrectness are determined. As a more formal fallacy, it refers to the fine art of generating an ostensibly “correct” conclusion, but from premises known to be wrong or inapplicable. > > The phrase implies that not only is someone not making a valid point in a discussion, but they don’t even understand the nature of the discussion itself, or the things that need to be understood in order to participate. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/503 "2017-05-01T23:57:06Z")
> [@obeast](#): > > No, no - I’m saying the implication is that Murray isn’t qualified to do this kind of research, But you agree that it’s accurate, right? Murray in fact is not qualified to do this kind of research, right? > [@](#): > > but whether or not that’s true he wrote the book with someone who evidently was. The fact that Herrnstein died just before The Bell Curve was published doesn’t mean that Murray authored it alone. This at least warrants a mention in any honest sentence about the qualifications of the book’s authors. But what’s being discussed isn’t in fact the qualifications of Herrnstein, is it? It’s the qualifications of Murray, right? And the criticism is accurate, right? Also, why are you bringing up Herrnstein? > [@](#): > > The sentence in question is clearly crafted to suggest that Murray was a racist know-nothing from another field who embarrassed himself by stepping into the deep end of the pool when he couldn’t swim. Here it is in full: No, that’s not the quote in full. In fact, it seems to be missing a pretty important piece. Here’s the quote in actual full: In [Murray’s] book proposal for Losing Ground, he explained to potential publishers that his work would be welcomed by people who secretly believed themselves to be racists. “Why can a publisher sell it?” he asked. “Because a huge number of well-meaning whites fear that they are closet racists, and this book tells them they are not. It’s going to make them feel better about things they already think but do not know how to say.” Trained as a Ph.D. in political science but without any formal credentials in economics or psychometrics – the two fields in which his work managed to incite national debates – Murray’s work has met with little but vituperation and disgust among those experts competent to judge its scientific merits. Pop quiz: in the second paragraph that you quoted, to what book is the phrase “Murray’s work” relating? > [@](#): > > Don’t you think Hernnstein warrants a mention here? It’s not just “Murray’s work,” after all, and it seems likely that the real psychologist did the heaving lifting re: interpreting the relevant literature. Be specific, what role did Hernnstein play in the book Losing Ground? > [@](#): > > Again, I am not an expert in this field, but I am pretty sure that the heritability is simply established science: > > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability\_of\_IQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ) And what specifically does this have to do with average IQ among the various “races”? ---
**Author:** ![obeast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/278dde/32.png) [@obeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obeast)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2017, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/504 "2017-05-01T23:59:00Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > :rolleyes: > > Yes, and the point was that you think that that is what we are complaining, you are not even wrong. We already pointed many times before that you spectacularly miss the point, just like many others that thin Murray should be listened to. > > As explained in post #212, to someone moaning also that it “is heritable, so there!” **iiandyiiii** replied that: From the very post you quoted (emphasis added): > [@obeast](#): > > Those gaps may or may not be genetic in nature - that’s the question, right? I don’t see much of a chance that there aren’t some environmental contributions (**my money would be on “most to all environmental,” but my money is worthless because I don’t know enough)**, but I also don’t see the point of publicly destroying anyone who tries to study the issue if we don’t like their conclusions. Is that not the point I “missed”? Don’t I essentially agree with you? If I am misunderstanding you, I am sincerely sorry, but in that case can you clarify? My intention here is not to argue that racial IQ gaps have primarily genetic roots, which is a claim that the profane text in question doesn’t even make. I simply haven’t reviewed enough of the science to have an educated opinion, and I haven’t even read The Bell Curve. What I am arguing, and have been arguing, is that Murray’s multi-decade public burning seems to be unjustified, and not infrequently supported by shoddy arguments that start from the assumption that he is wrong, racist, or both, and then find the nearest route to those goals. Let’s say he’s wrong, and that the gap is entirely environmental, contrary to the Bell Curve’s “agnosticism” and qualified support for a genes-plus-environment explanation. This could well be true. Does Murray deserve to be shunned for getting it wrong, in a book that’s mostly about a separate issue? Are we so certain that we can read his mind and deduce his racist motives, even as he himself insists he does not possess them? (Are rhetorical questions an obnoxious style of argument?) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/505 "2017-05-02T00:05:42Z")
> [@obeast](#): > > From the very post you quoted (emphasis added): > > Is that not the point I “missed”? Don’t I essentially agree with you? If I am misunderstanding you, I am sincerely sorry, but in that case can you clarify? uh, you did then mentioned that inheritance malarkey. If you keep that in mind we are ok there. > [@obeast](#): > > My intention here is not to argue that racial IQ gaps have primarily genetic roots, which is a claim that the profane text in question doesn’t even make. I simply haven’t reviewed enough of the science to have an educated opinion, and I haven’t even read The Bell Curve. What I am arguing, and have been arguing, is that Murray’s multi-decade public burning seems to be unjustified, and not infrequently supported by shoddy arguments that start from the assumption that he is wrong, racist, or both, and then find the nearest route to those goals. And again, you are not reading what I posted, there is plenty of evidence on why Murray deserves that burn. ---
**Author:** ![obeast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/278dde/32.png) [@obeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obeast)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/506 "2017-05-02T00:09:50Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Be specific, what role did Hernnstein play in the book Losing Ground? Absolutely none - mea culpa. That particular objection of mine was meritless (needless to say, I have not read that massive block of text, although it’s on my list). Different book, different decade. > [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > And what specifically does this have to do with average IQ among the various “races”? Absolutely nothing, directly. My purpose was to argue that the various assassinations of Murray (and the passage you quoted in particular) frequently misstate scientific consensus on inconvenient issues (as the passage did) for the noble purpose of dismantling Murray. I don’t even mean “noble” in a sarcastic sense, really - I think that this sort of thing is very much well-intentioned, perhaps even subconscious. ---
**Author:** ![obeast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/278dde/32.png) [@obeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obeast)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/507 "2017-05-02T00:44:43Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > Lots of people, especially on this board, think to hide behind the science-ish fig leaf. This thing looks like racism, but it’s totally science! If you disagree, you are totally against science! > > If it’s science, completely legit science, the methodology is the absolutely most important thing. Not the results, not the hypothesis, the methodology. And that’s the part Murray’s supporters are so quick to handwave away. > > Any bozo can come up with a hypothesis. Any demagogue can find “solutions.” Any nitwit can leap to conclusions. The scientist uses appropriate methodology and then invites other scientists to poke at that methodology with a sharp stick. > > Last year, I spent weeks shepherding peer review for research grants. Teams of ten experts went into every single grant proposal for hours. The poked and argued and questioned and then wrote extensively on every single aspect of every single proposal. That is rigor. Hiding from that is not a circumstance. Hiding from that is disqualifying. > > So, if you want to spend time thoughtfully contemplating an opinion piece you acknowledge you don’t have the science chops to actually review, be my guest. I’m sure it will be very valuable to the OP. He needs friends. Yes, science is good. Peer review is good, if rather lax (source: me, who published two pretty shitty papers during my ignominious stint in graduate school). That doesn’t mean that I have to disqualify any argument that doesn’t come from a peer-reviewed source, or assume that The Bell Curve’s authors were acting in bad faith by publishing directly. Keep in mind that my main concern here is the method of attack on Murray, not the contentions of his book. There is a cottage industry of unreviewed book-length publication by serious academics, some with novel scholarship; they are taken seriously by everyone, and “peer reviewed” after the fact. I suspect you take some of them seriously. The Bell Curve is unique only in its notoriety (edit - arguably deserved, of course), and much of the “disputed” science therein (like IQ heredity, the existence of “g,” and IQ testing validity) appear to be mainstream beliefs, supported by peer-reviewed articles. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/508 "2017-05-02T00:57:36Z")
> [@obeast](#): > > Yes, science is good. Peer review is good, if rather lax (source: me, who published two pretty shitty papers during my ignominious stint in graduate school). You are also then going for the argument that ignores that it also depends on what the journals are were you publish. And then there is the issue of that the job of your peers does not stop with a paper being published, there is still replication, criticism and even other papers to see if the premise made remains valid. Of course Murray has not done the first step, but anyhow, others still can use science to verify or topple down a dubious book. **That already took place**. [snip] > [@obeast](#): > > The Bell Curve is unique only in its notoriety (edit - arguably deserved, of course), and much of the “disputed” science therein (like IQ heredity, the existence of “g,” and IQ testing validity) appear to be mainstream beliefs, supported by peer-reviewed articles. I can see that you are now willfully ignoring what the Noble laureate economist did to the book. You are wrong about the mainstream thinking that Murray is the one to look at. And since you are still thinking that saying “But Heredity!” makes you sound smart, no, it does not because it remains a straw man. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/509 "2017-05-02T02:22:05Z")
> [@obeast](#): > > Absolutely none - mea culpa. No worries. And for my part my tone was overly aggressive–I’m used to arguing with a different class of person on this topic. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/510 "2017-05-02T03:24:40Z")
My, y’all have been busy. > [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Oh, I fucking called it. You “called it” that I might say something approving about a post that dovetailed with the things I’ve been saying? That’s genius of you! :rolleyes: > [@nate](#): > > So, I listened to the first 2/3rds of the podcast before making my post above and it’s still accurate. Unless he is being dishonest and actually introduced known bias while selecting his data, his results fall out from the statistics of this data. This is something a machine could do, right? But, listening to the later 1/3rd, I realized he goes from looking at his results to supporting social change based on them, to “quit treating people as groups and start treating them as individuals”, and that policies such as Affirmative Action are actually causing more problems than solving. I think once he moves past his study’s results into the field of social policy, he goes off the rails and I can see why people tend to denounce this. I agree with you about denialism, and I’m very glad someone is actually discussing the podcast. I think I disagree with you (depending on specifics) about his going “off the rails” concerning social policy though. I thought he made a good point, in advocating for a mincome, that if everyone gets it, a hypothetical woman who’s got a deadbeat Andy Capp type laying about would be able to insist that he turn over a few hundred a month to help with rent and expenses or get lost (whereas as things stand now, it would turn into a more nebulous argument over whether he’s worked hard enough to try to find a job or whatever). I also agree about affirmative action. I think I’m probably one of the only people in America who strongly supports reparations for slavery (and Jim Crow!) but opposes affirmative action. I think Murray is absolutely right, that once you have those kinds of preferences in place, every black face becomes suspect, no matter how talented they might actually be. It’s not fair to the POC who could get into Harvard on a race-blind basis, to have everyone assume otherwise. That said, if we end affirmative action we should also end legacy admissions (and I say that as someone who could have gotten into Stanford on that basis if I hadn’t slacked off so ridiculously in high school). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/511 "2017-05-02T04:08:24Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > To me it’s not an end, it’s just a temporary setback and inequality, one we can hopefully fix soon. But to others, focused on the here and now, this is an absolute terror, and dark visions of what they think would follow must haunt them. So well said! Your thought experiment on adoption is interesting. A French adoption study by Capron and Dyme is often cited by those arguing for environment as the primary factor in IQ. Here is a sentence from a contemporaneous [Washington Post article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/08/21/biology-and-upbringing-affect-iq-study-says/59ed01e3-2489-4600-b405-18ba4dd71919/?utm_term=.0411faf9ba1b) about the findings, that would understandably be appealing to that camp: > [@](#): > > The researchers found that children adopted by high-status families had an average IQ more than 15 points higher than children adopted by low-status parents – regardless of the status of their birth parents. Wow, look at that: 15 points. That’s a lot! But hold on, there’s another aspect to that study that this crowd seems to forget to mention. From earlier in the same paragraph in the article: > [@](#): > > Capron and Duyme found that adopted children who had been born to high-status parents had an average IQ nearly 12 points higher than children born to low-status parents, regardless of the status of the adoptive parents. You don’t say? Interesting. 🆒 A 2006 NY Times piece, titled “After the Bell Curve”, discusses the Capron and Duyme study in a little more detail. Overall, the thrust of the author’s argument leans toward focusing more toward stressing the amount of difference environment makes, and arguing for intervention (the piece concludes by expressing the hope that we will move “toward a society in which not only the most fortunate children will be able to ‘max out’ their potential”). But although it is played down overall, the inclusion of actual numbers paints an unmistakable picture for the numerate reader: > [@](#): > > The average I.Q. of children from well-to-do parents who were placed with families from the same social stratum was 119.6. But when such infants were adopted by poor families, their average I.Q. was 107.5 — 12 points lower. The same holds true for children born into impoverished families: youngsters adopted by parents of similarly modest means had average I.Q.’s of 92.4, while the I.Q.’s of those placed with well-off parents averaged 103.6. These studies confirm that environment matters — the only, and crucial, difference between these children is the lives they have led. Leaving aside the rah-rahing of that last sentence, what do these numbers teach us? That when you take kids born to rich parents and “drag them down” by having them be raised in a poor household, and meanwhile take kids given up for adoption by poor parents and have \*them \*raised with all the advantages of an affluent upbringing, you still can’t quite bring the kids born with “poor genes” up to the IQ level of the kids with “rich genes” but a poor upbringing. That is actually very strong evidence for the hereditarian hypothesis, if you ask me! (And we’re not even delving into race here, notice…but it does suggest that “extended families” with different genetic capacity for IQ exist even among people who are seemingly all white, and even all French.) ETA: A great example of what \*\*Salvor \*\*was talking about–intelligent people using their intellect to kind of massage the data–is shown in another [NYT piece](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/opinion/16kristof.html), this time by their resident columnist Nicholas Kristof. Look at how selective he is in citing that same French study (look for yourself: the effect in the other direction is never even hinted at): > [@](#): > > [W]hen poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study. For example, a French study showed that children from poor households adopted into upper-middle-class homes averaged an I.Q. of 107 by one test and 111 by another. Their siblings who were not adopted averaged 95 on both tests. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/512 "2017-05-02T04:12:02Z")
As noted before, it does not matter much if the was dishonest, when others looked it becomes clear that a lot was missed. [https://mediamatters.org/research/2007/04/04/youve-got-to-be-taught-to-hate-and-fear/138489](https://mediamatters.org/research/2007/04/04/youve-got-to-be-taught-to-hate-and-fear/138489) > [@](#): > > The mistakes grow even graver. Herrnstein and Murray actually seek to quantify the degree to which such intelligence is heritable. “Half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies,” they write, “permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. … For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability.” They appear to the unsuspecting reader to be the soul of caution in this regard. Alas, as Nicholas Lemann reported in Slate, another study by three scientists at Carnegie Mellon University employing exactly the same data base, suggested “a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent,” a far cry from the figures employed by Murray and Hernstein. > > In perhaps the key test of the honesty of the underlying science of the book, trained experts in the field found they could not reproduce its results. For instance, one chart in The Bell Curve purports to show that people with IQs above 120 have become “rapidly more concentrated” in high-IQ occupations since 1940. But Robert Hauser and his colleague Min-Hsiung Huang retested the data and came up with estimates that fell “well below those of Herrnstein and Murray.” They added that the data, properly used, “do not tell us anything except that selected, highly educated occupation groups have grown rapidly since 1940.” Hence the point that Murray and others reach for conclusions and solutions that do not actually follow. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/513 "2017-05-02T04:21:08Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Leaving aside the rah-rahing of that last sentence, what do these numbers teach us? That when you take kids born to rich parents and “drag them down” by having them be raised in a poor household, and meanwhile take kids given up for adoption by poor parents and have \*them \*raised with all the advantages of an affluent upbringing, you still can’t quite bring the kids born with “poor genes” up to the IQ level of the kids with “rich genes” but a poor upbringing. That is actually very strong evidence for the hereditarian hypothesis, if you ask me! As there is no mention of race there, it does not counter anything of the criticism made to Murray and others that want to see genetic differences among races regarding intelligence. As the point gets missed so many times: “That says nothing about comparisons between groups, especially when there are so many environmental/cultural/societal differences between these groups.” ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/514 "2017-05-02T10:34:39Z")
Let’s stop pretending peer review is the gold standard so many of you are making it out to be. Or if you really believe that, maybe you should read [this Vox article](https://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9865086/peer-review-science-problems) (and follow some of the many links therein). And that article doesn’t even get into bias on the part of editors, which is I’m sure what Murray would see as particularly hostile to any attempt he might make to operate within that system. As Wikipedia describes the problem: > [@](#): > > The interposition of editors and reviewers between authors and readers may enable the intermediators to act as gatekeepers.[84] Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy.[85][86] The peer review process may suppress dissent against “mainstream” theories[87][88][89] and may be biased against novelty.[90] Reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views,[91][92] and lenient towards those that match them. At the same time, established scientists are more likely than others to be sought out as referees, particularly by high-prestige journals/publishers. As a result, ideas that harmonize with the established experts’ are more likely to see print and to appear in premier journals than are iconoclastic or revolutionary ones. This accords with Thomas Kuhn’s well-known observations regarding scientific revolutions.[93] A theoretical model has been established whose simulations imply that peer review and over-competitive research funding foster mainstream opinion to monopoly.[94] > [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Show me one study that shows that all differences in IQ between races (as they are popularly understood) are due entirely to genetic characteristics of those races. Oh, good grief. This is really so much the Gish Gallop. “Show me an example of life coming out of nothing”, etc. Besides which, no one here, that I’ve seen has argued that these differences are entirely due to heredity, much less to “genetic characteristics of those races”. A ridiculous straw man. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > As there is no mention of race there, it does not counter anything of the criticism made to Murray and others that want to see genetic differences among races regarding intelligence. If you’ll look at the thread title, it does not say anything about “race and intelligence”. It refers to an “interesting podcast episode”. And guess what? Those few of us in the thread who listened to it know that they talked about other stuff! Including an increasing sorting of American society into high and low IQ groups, irrespective of race. The smart people move to Silicon Valley and breed with other smarties. Back in the holler or the inner city, the low IQ folks breed with each other. And so this very much makes that French study relevant. What seems increasingly clear to me is that there are “streams” that are effectively extended families, not even on the “race” level, but narrower than that, on a class level within what are regarded as races. And sure, there are tributaries that flow between these streams, but they tend more often to stay with their own. It’s just easier to see when there are dramatic external differences in skin color or the shape of hair, noses, or lips; but I think there are more subtle signs within so-called races as well. I would love to be able to commission a study that gave IQ tests to large numbers of people (to take the race element out, have them all be northern European whites), took mugshots of them, and also asked them to look at photos of other people’s faces (with any hair styling digitally removed) and guess their IQs. I suspect people would do better than you’d expect by chance. There are certain noses and chins and eyebrows that are being passed down with the high IQ genes, I’d bet anything. So my working hypothesis is that some of these high-IQ “streams” or “families” ended up predominating among the populations that settled northern Europe. Such families would also be present among the far more genetically diverse dark-skinned peoples of sub-Saharan Africa; but they are simply more outnumbered, and they are not recognized by the (as you guys have said) social-not-biological norm of “blackness” as being distinct. From the anthropologist **GIGObuster** quoted: > [@](#): > > This is, obviously, something of a political landscape—or more precisely, a landscape of bio-politics, in which biology (or at least arguments that sound like biology) can be brandished for or against the welfare of certain classes of citizens. In times past—and not too far past, if you remember The Bell Curve (1994)—the argument went that social stratification in America was caused by innate intellectual differences, and consequently that government programs designed to assist the socially disadvantaged and to ameliorate economic inequality were useless and doomed to failure. > It’s an old theme. Why aren’t you the Pharaoh? Because the Pharaoh is a better kind of being than you, with better ancestors and better innards. So Wade’s book is of a piece with a long tradition of disreputable attempts to rationalize visible class distinctions by recourse to invisible natural properties. The author repeatedly avows that his ideas are politically neutral, unlike those of the scientists he is busy repudiating. Yet the sources for many of his ideas about the history of society come from the political scientists Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington, and frankly, if you can’t tell that they have an ideological axe to grind, then you probably shouldn’t be writing books. Hoo boy. There’s so much to mine here, so much to react to. To start with the last thing, it’s hilarious that this anthropologist doesn’t see himself as having any ideological axe to grind. Just a dispassionate scientific observer, yes sir. Working my way backwards, and keeping that ideology notion in mind, there’s this: > [@](#): > > It’s an old theme. Why aren’t you the Pharaoh? Because the Pharaoh is a better kind of being than you, with better ancestors and better innards. So Wade’s book is of a piece with a long tradition of disreputable attempts to rationalize visible class distinctions by recourse to invisible natural properties. It may be that these kinds of people are so ideologically blinkered they can’t even detect their own ideological bias–it may just seem like background noise, or basic rationality. But this is basically begging the question, as I’ve been railing against throughout this thread. It starts with the conclusion “all people are equal, no matter what non-visible stuff they are made up of”, treats that as axiomatic, and then uses the axiom to bludgeon any exploration of whether that might not be so much true. It’s just dismissed, or more accurately shouted down, as “disreputable” to explore that territory. But rewinding again to just before that, we wouldn’t want to miss the chance for a little straw man: > [@](#): > > \*f you remember The Bell Curve (1994)—the argument went that social stratification in America was caused by innate intellectual differences, and consequently that government programs designed to assist the socially disadvantaged and to ameliorate economic inequality were useless and doomed to failure. Here’s another axiomatic belief that gets constantly snuck in–by the people arguing so fervidly against Murray in this thread, but even moreso by the writers they cite, as here, to support that jihad. There are various versions of it, but in its boiled-down form, it goes something like this: “Asserting that only some people are born with the intellectual toolkit to become highly successful (with a good, nurturing environment also being a necessary but sufficient condition) is inherently saying that only those people are good/deserving; and that we should just abandon (or maybe exterminate?) all the others.” **Richard Parker** asserted a version of this axiomatic assumption: > [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > “I’m not a racist, I just think that hypothetical differences in average gene frequencies between two billion-plus member populations justify treating particular black kids differently in calculus class.” > This stupidity wouldn’t even be accepted at the level of _immediate family_. Imagine a math teacher telling you that she isn’t going to waste time on Johnny because his Dad was a dolt. But somehow, as if by magic, when you align it with white supremacy, it makes perfect sense to some people. But they’re totally not racists. And that is quite the leap. It’s certainly not what I would argue, and I don’t get the sense it’s what Murray would argue for either. He did after all call for a mincome in the podcast. But I suppose this anthropologist and \*\*Richard \*\*and others might object that even if it simply became a widespread belief that this kind of social Darwinism had some basis in fact, it would be a natural human tendency for people to want to just cut loose anyone who was born with a putative IQ “ceiling” that is below average. Really? Why then do we have special education? Why did the Supreme Court recently, in a startling 9-0 decision, rule that districts have to spend whatever it takes to optimally educate kids who have autism? This, when ([according to the NEA](http://www.nea.org/home/19029.htm)) in 2004, “The current average per student cost is $7,552 and the average cost per special education student is an additional $9,369 per student, or $16,921.” (I have to assume that disparity has not narrowed in the 13 year interval since then.) If it were really the natural tendency to just not bother wasting time and resources on kids who don’t have the potential to be academic shooting stars, why are they spending more than twice as much per student on special ed kids? Obviously no one is under any illusion that this extra time and money spent on them is going to lead to their developing the next cure for cancer. Yet we do it anyway, and few even complain about it. So maybe identifying some population groups as not having superstar genes for IQ wouldn’t lead to their being abandoned after all. Ya think? The profound intellectual and moral confusion this set of inconvenient facts engenders among the usual suspects is something to see. [First](http://people.terry.uga.edu/dawndba/4500FailingBlkBoys.html), you get handwringing over the “systematic shunting of African American boys into remedial or special education classes.” This piece, from the University of Georgia website, goes on, in a section titled “The New Segregation”, to show a complete misunderstanding of special education, or “SpEd”, as its practitioners call it for short: > [@](#): > > In many instances, a black boy referred to special education simply has a different learning style, says James. “He may be more of an auditory or a tactile learner,” she explains. “Or he may have some problems at home that are hampering him.” But this is precisely what SpEd is _for_. :smack: If you have a different learning style from the typical kid, or you have problems at home that are causing you to be what is termed “emotionally disturbed”, that’s SpEd! Some of my wife’s students aren’t even below average in IQ. But all of them get lots of extra attention that “reg ed” kids do not. And certainly calling this “the new segregation” is not only offensive and unfair, it’s just stupid. The old segregation was a way to technically fulfill the state’s obligation to educate all children (including black kids), while spending far less on their schools and materials than they did on white kids. SpEd, as noted above, spends far more per student than “reg ed” does! So, yeah, it’s basically the same…except the opposite. :dubious: But these kinds of things coming out of academia are influential. So the next step is a glossy publication like [this one](http://www.dcsig.org/files/AddressingOverrepresentationAfricanAmericanguide.pdf) from the National Association of Black School Educators (NABSE), titled _Addressing Over-Representation of African American Students in Special Education: The Prereferral Intervention Process_. Its mission statement, laid out clearly in the introductory pages: “The focus of this guide is on preventive strategies—specifically how administrators may use the prereferral intervention process, school climate, family involvement, and professional development to prevent and/or help reduce the over-representation of African American students in special education”. So basically, keep the marginal cases in a reg ed classroom with 20 or 30 other kids, instead of sending them for part of the day to a room where they will get intensive, one-on-one help to try to get them caught up to grade level. Meanwhile, of course, the white kids who are similarly marginal will still get sent to the SpEd room, because otherwise the overrepresentation would still exist at the same ratio but an overall lower level, with the school district simply laughing all the way to the bank as they get to lay off some SpEd teachers. But even as is, this is going to save the school money, and mean a reduction of the money and other resources dedicated to African American kids. This is the great civil rights cause in education for the 21st century? Jesus fucking Christ. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > “And that is how I won the Iron cross…” Grandpa Simpson. 🙂 > On a less humorous retort, that is why there were people that voted for Trump. What’s clear to many is that historians know how stupid are the ones that expected that things would be re-made after the revolution as the misleading new leader promised it to his deluded followers. Straw man or non sequitur? Or just a scurrilous smear? Sam Harris will [take a backseat to no one](https://youtu.be/NYNN87txLWQ?t=2838) in his utter revulsion and contempt for Trump. Charles Murray wrote a [scathing op-ed for National Review](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435805/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-why-hillary-even-worse-doesnt-cut-it) in which he acknowledged having previously been a “closet #NeverTrump” voter, but declared that he was outing himself in no uncertain terms: > [@](#): > > In my view, Donald Trump is unfit to be president in ways that apply to no other candidate of the two major political parties throughout American history.[…] > I am told that it is unfair to speak in such harsh terms of a person I don’t know personally: Look how nice his kids seem to be. Look at all his friends who say that he’s really a pleasant fellow in private. Sorry. I don’t need any secondary sources. Donald Trump makes the case for David Brooks’s assessment in every public appearance. When a man deliberately inflames the antagonism of one American ethnic group toward another, takes pleasure in labeling people “losers,” and openly promises to use the powers of the presidency to punish people who get in his way, there is nothing that person can do or say in private that should alter my opinion of whether he is fit to be the president of the United States. > I know that I am unlikely to persuade any of my fellow Establishmentarians to change their minds. But I cannot end without urging you to resist that sin to which people with high IQs (which most of you have) are unusually prone: Using your intellectual powers to convince yourself of something despite the evidence plainly before you. Just watch and listen to the man. Don’t concoct elaborate rationalizations. Just watch and listen. And of course, my personal antipathy for Trump was demonstrated countless times in the Elections forum during the campaign season (and then again by the fact that I stopped posting there shortly after the election, so disgusted was I by the elevation of this absurdity to the highest office in the land). So that is some serious bullshit you are peddling there, when the OP and both participants in the podcast are as hardcore anti-Trump as all three of us are. > [@BigT](#): > > The fact that some people are more intelligent than others is not in dispute. The fact that intelligence is a heritable trait is not in dispute. The dispute is that this factor lies along racial lines. > And, yes, that is what you are arguing. Because, otherwise, there is no objection from liberals. I don’t believe that’s true. My Bernie-voting, sociology professor emeritus mother has always dismissed IQ as “meaningless” and clearly believes in a “blank slate” for all people–not just as concerns different races. And I feel certain that the social Darwinist class implications of what I was talking about above, in terms of the French adoption study and the tendency for the wealthy to be more intelligent and vice versa, would be horrifying to most liberals. Which, again, I don’t understand. Liberals already acknowledge that being born rich is a stroke of luck, not something that makes you worthy. Why would the same not obviously be true about being born with a rich person’s high-IQ genes? > [@obeast](#): > > It’s not like Murray denies the role of environment. In this very podcast, and I believe in the book as well, Murray uses the analogy of corn planted in Iowa vs. corn planted in the desert (white Americans’ environment is Iowa; black Americans’ is the desert). Later, he describes meeting black students at Harvard as an undergraduate, and assuming that they’re innately smarter than he is, given his environmental advantages (I assume this predated affirmative action, which he does not care for). These do not strike me as the musings of a raving racist. Yes, great examples. Yet what we see over and over is people on the other side cherrypicking examples of corn planted in the desert and pointing to it with glee: “A lot of good your precious genes do you NOW! I guess environment counts for something after all–in your face!” :rolleyes: > [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > \*\*Salvor \*\*is ignorant and verbose, a bad combination. There are actual intelligent people commenting on this thread–you should read what they say and skip over \*\*Salvor’s \*\*posts. \*\*Salvor \*\* is verbose and far from ignorant, a creditable combination. As for that last suggestion of yours, it boils down to “just read the people I agree with”. :dubious: > [@obeast](#): > > But see, this is where I have a hard time seeing this as anything but an unusually well-intentioned defamation campaign. Perfectly put. I love this! > [@obeast](#): > > But it sure seems to me that much of the ire directed Murray’s way is entirely unfair, bordering on deliberately malicious. Kudos for coming in and weathering the storm as they try to shout you down and bum-rush you out, same as they try to do with Murray, Harris, etc. Very impressive. But I think you got it right in the first sentence, and then went too far in those last couple words. Since it was, as you so beautifully put it, an “unusually well-intentioned” campaign, I think that precludes it from being even on the border of “deliberately malicious”. These people deeply believe they are fighting for Good against Evil Racism, and I’d characterize their mental state as something more like alarm, panic even, than malice. > [@Ambivalid](#): > > Anytime I see a post or thread from our esteemed OP, I usually just skip right over it. He’s just a contrarian. Every single thing he posts is an argument against something that is overwhelmingly already established. He posts simply to be a contrarian, he is not genuine. That’s an interesting accusation. I can assure you (and, of course, you can disbelieve my assurances) that everything I argue for, I sincerely believe. However, that does not mean I argue for everything I believe, or that don’t enjoy it more when I’m making an argument that happens to be a tad on the iconoclastic side of the ledger. So what’s really happening is that I just skip by threads in which the consensus is likely to be one I agree with. Take for instance the thread neighboring ours, about Maine’s new minimum wage law. The basic thesis of the OP: > [@](#): > > Fuck employers who think they shouldn’t have to pay a decent wage. And fuck any member of the legislature who thinks it’s okay to override the citizen’s initiative. Yup, I agree wholeheartedly. Now what? Oh, I suppose there’s some debate going on there, but I’d mainly be arguing with libertarians, and I tired of that long ago. > [@obeast](#): > > There is a cottage industry of unreviewed book-length publication by serious academics, some with novel scholarship; they are taken seriously by everyone, and “peer reviewed” after the fact. Yes indeed. Why do I suspect no one here has a beef with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s longform piece for the _Atlantic_, “The Case for Reparations” (which, again, I agree with)? He is an academic (visiting professor at MIT), he worked on that piece for two years, and it was hugely influential. But certainly not peer-reviewed AFAIK. This objection is entirely ideological, masquerading as procedural. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/515 "2017-05-02T10:47:34Z")
Peer review isn’t the “gold standard”, it’s merely the first entirely reasonable and necessary hurdle. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/516 "2017-05-02T10:50:20Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > So my working hypothesis is that some of these high-IQ “streams” or “families” ended up predominating among the populations that settled northern Europe. Such families would also be present among the far more genetically diverse dark-skinned peoples of sub-Saharan Africa; but they are simply more outnumbered, and they are not recognized by the (as you guys have said) social-not-biological norm of “blackness” as being distinct. Great. This is a hypothesis, nothing more – like Murray’s hypothesis that genetics are a factor in the differences between test scores by black people and white people. And there’s a way to test this hypothesis, while plausibly accounting for effects of racism – gather together American children identified and raised as “black” (this would work for kids identified and raised as “white” to), give them intelligence tests, and test them for sub-Saharan African ancestry, since SSA ancestry varies very widely among black people in America (and white people, for that matter). If your hypothesis (and Murray’s) are correct, then higher African ancestry levels will correlate with higher test scores. Such an experiment has been done, and referenced multiple times in this thread (it’s the Scarr study I’ve linked to). It’s from the 70s, so it doesn’t use the most modern methods, but it could rather easily and cheaply be recreated with modern methods. It found no correlation at all between African ancestry and test scores among black children. For some reason, Murray would rather spend his time bloviating (and ignoring this study) with people like Harris who make false claims like “race is primarily biological in nature”, then actually do some science and recreate this study to test his hypothesis. I wonder why this is. I wonder why Harris didn’t challenge him on this (I did finish the podcast, finally, and he never mentioned it). Do you think it’s possible that Harris has some blind spots of his own? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/517 "2017-05-02T11:16:43Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Great. This is a hypothesis, nothing more – like Murray’s hypothesis that genetics are a factor in the differences between test scores by black people and white people. And there’s a way to test this hypothesis, while plausibly accounting for effects of racism – gather together American children identified and raised as “black” (this would work for kids identified and raised as “white” to), give them intelligence tests, and test them for sub-Saharan African ancestry, since SSA ancestry varies very widely among black people in America (and white people, for that matter). If your hypothesis (and Murray’s) are correct, then higher African ancestry levels will correlate with higher test scores. No, this is not the obvious way to test my hypothesis. I’m fully granting that sub-Saharan African ancestry is too heterogeneous to be used this way (and BTW I’m assuming you meant to write “correlate with \*lower \*test scores”?). Furthermore, my hypothesis also posits that what is being seen as “white people higher IQ, black people lower” is a gross oversimplification. That most of humanity has ancestry that is from one of the lower-IQ “families” or “streams”, but there are certain distinct streams of high-IQ ancestry that tend to attract other high-IQ members to contribute their genes to the “family”. These are actually what have boundaries that, while still fuzzy, are more distinct than those between races. Therefore, your 1970s experiment wouldn’t work, because the interbreeding between those with European and those with African ancestry wouldn’t be random. You of course had cases like Thomas Jefferson back in the day; but over the years I doubt it is high-status white folks who were most likely to have kids with POC. So, again: the study I would love to do is to see if people can pick out facial features and face shapes that correlate with intelligence within what almost everyone would agree is unambiguously the same race. How do \*you \*explain that French adoption study, that Kristof so disingenuously cited (or perhaps, to be fair to him, he didn’t know the effect went both ways)? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/518 "2017-05-02T11:34:38Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > No, this is not the obvious way to test my hypothesis. I’m fully granting that sub-Saharan African ancestry is too heterogeneous to be used this way (and BTW I’m assuming you meant to write “correlate with \*lower \*test scores”?). Yep. Oops, thanks for the correction. This is the obvious way to test Murray’s hypothesis, though, and I think it’s telling that he never discusses it, and Harris never challenged him on it. > [@](#): > > Furthermore, my hypothesis also posits that what is being seen as “white people higher IQ, black people lower” is a gross oversimplification. That most of humanity has ancestry that is from one of the lower-IQ “families” or “streams”, but there are certain distinct streams of high-IQ ancestry that tend to attract other high-IQ members to contribute their genes to the “family”. These are actually what have boundaries that, while still fuzzy, are more distinct than those between races. Therefore, your 1970s experiment wouldn’t work, because the interbreeding between those with European and those with African ancestry wouldn’t be random. You of course had cases like Thomas Jefferson back in the day; but over the years I doubt it is high-status white folks who were most likely to have kids with POC. Slave owners were generally “high-status”. You really doubt that slave owners fathered a lot of children on their slaves? If so, on what basis? > [@](#): > > So, again: the study I would love to do is to see if people can pick out facial features and face shapes that correlate with intelligence within what almost everyone would agree is unambiguously the same race. This would be an interesting study, but I’m not sure if it would support your hypothesis, or even if the results went the other way if it would disprove your hypothesis. It would suggest that people do or do not (depending on results) have an ability to sense intelligence tied to facial features, but it wouldn’t say anything about why this is so. > [@](#): > > How do \*you \*explain that French adoption study, that Kristof so disingenuously cited (or perhaps, to be fair to him, he didn’t know the effect went both ways)? If I understood it correctly, the difference was very small. That could be explained by randomness. If I understand incorrectly and it was larger, then it could be explained by different parenting, treatment by society (based on appearance or some other cue), or genetics. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/519 "2017-05-02T11:46:14Z")
I remember reading Bell Curve when I was in college, which was a long time ago now. I don’t mind the fact that Murray and Hernstein explored the sensitive topic of race and intelligence, but they did so in a way that was incredibly irresponsible, purporting to have scientific and empirical evidence when there were clearly problems with the validity of their premise. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/520 "2017-05-02T11:51:29Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Let’s stop pretending peer review is the gold standard so many of you are making it out to be. it is not the gold standard, but given the extreme lengths to which Murray and Herrnstein went to avoid anything resembling a professional review of their work, it says a lot about just how much they knew how bad their work was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=25) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=27)