# 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:** 27
**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, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/521 "2017-05-02T12:22:10Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > 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. Or just that they knew all that stuff described in Wikipedia about how hostile peer review is to iconoclastic research findings. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > 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? I’m not doubting that (although I doubt it was anywhere close to a universal practice). I’m saying that I don’t necessarily think the lion’s share of non-African ancestry in black students today would come from plantation owners. What about field overseers (poor white workers)? What about interracial pairings of more recent vintage? I think in modern times, it’s a lot more likely to be a white woman having a black guy’s kids than the other way around. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > If I understood it correctly, the difference was very small. You either did not understand it correctly, or you have an odd definition of “small”. Here again are the relevant numbers: > [@](#): > > 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. So adopting wealthy-to-wealthy gets you at the 90th percentile of IQ. Poor-to-poor is the 30th percentile. If your wealthy mother (probably a teenager, I’m guessing) gave you up for adoption and you were raised by a poor family, you are (on average, in all cases obv.) at the 70th percentile. Born to a poor mom and adopted by a rich one: 60th percentile. So you may see that 70th-60th span and say that’s small. But that’s not really the appropriate one to compare (except that it’s kind of interesting how going both directions balances out fairly closely in different ways). There are clear environmental effects shown here, which Kristof delighted in pointing out. But the heritable ones are just so dramatic, and those would actually show up as (average) differences between siblings raised together. If a wealthy family adopted two kids, one from a wealthy family and one from a poor one, the average expectation will be something like a 1940 on the SAT (enough for a pretty selective college, although not an Ivy) for the one with “rich genes”, and a 1570 for the one with “poor genes” (not getting into the semi-elite college your sibling did, but still sufficient to get into a regional public university in most cases). In the poor family that adopted two kids, the one that came from another poor family is looking at a 1310 SAT. Community college is an option, but it won’t be easy sledding. The other adopted kid, with the “wealthy genes”, is scoring about a 1670. That might well be enough to become the first person in the family to get into the state’s flagship university, depending on the state. ---
**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, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/522 "2017-05-02T12:28:36Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > 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. That, and SlackerInc skipped post #508 so as to reply with his true Gish gallop. A lot of tap dancing too for in the end to only show that he has no reply for what Nicholas Lehman and others did to show how off Murray was with the numbers and the failures of others to replicate what Murray and others claimed to find. ---
**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, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/523 "2017-05-02T12:32:35Z")
“True Gish gallop”. There ya go: accuse your opponent of doing what you are guilty of. Classic. :rolleyes: ---
**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, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/524 "2017-05-02T12:45:42Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > “True Gish gallop”. There ya go: accuse your opponent of doing what you are guilty of. Classic. :rolleyes: Of course you skip explaining why even a Nobel laureate was wrong. Much easier to dismiss what was already explained by skipping it, like with the very start of your reply to me in your last post. Peer review is only one step and Murray and you only have as an answer an attempt at discrediting even that. ---
**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, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/525 "2017-05-02T13:05:08Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Of course you skip explaining why even a Nobel laureate was wrong. It’s beyond bizarre that you would make this specific appeal to authority. :dubious: I can only conclude that you must be completely unaware of the 2007 controversy over a book published by one of the most famous Nobel laureates in history, James Watson (who, with Francis Crick, discovered the double-helix structure of DNA). Said book included the following passage: > [@](#): > > There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so. I’m sure \*you \*won’t skip explaining why even a Nobel laureate was wrong. 😛 ---
**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, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/526 "2017-05-02T14:01:32Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > 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. No worries as well - that was a pretty embarrassing mistake on my part, and I don’t blame you for leaping on it. I’ve kinda said my piece of this topic, I think, but I would encourage anyone who has some time to give the podcast a listen, and not because I think it’ll convince the average listener of the most incendiary aspects of The Bell Curve’s argument. I think Murray comes off reasonably well (I entered the podcast thinking that he was probably a scumbag, and left it thinking he was probably unfairly treated), but opinions may vary. If nothing else, I found it interesting as a discussion of IQ’s validity. ---
**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, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/527 "2017-05-02T14:14:25Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > It’s beyond bizarre that you would make this specific appeal to authority. :dubious: I can only conclude that you must be completely unaware of the 2007 controversy over a book published by one of the most famous Nobel laureates in history, James Watson (who, with Francis Crick, discovered the double-helix structure of DNA). Said book included the following passage: And he was cut down to size for being wrong. [https://www.wired.com/2007/10/is-james-watson/](https://www.wired.com/2007/10/is-james-watson/) > [@](#): > > The science, however, does make him wrong. As neurobiologist Steven Rose told the Daily Telegraph, “No evidence that claimed to find people of African descent were less intelligent than Europeans or other racial groups had stood up to scientific scrutiny.” Arguments in favor of race-based cognitive differences rely on IQ tests — but those are only one metric, and not necessarily a good one. My old bioethics watchdog employers, the Council for Responsible Genetics, explained some of the problems with IQ last year in a race-and-intelligence primer: > [@](#): > > In other words, James Watson was actually surprised to find that black kids who grew up in Harlem weren’t qualified to work at a DNA lab. (One does wonder how hard he tried — a lot of Harlem kids end up going to prestigious high schools and colleges.) Apparently it doesn’t even occur to him that black inner city kids might have a harder time attaining the formal training and institutional recognition needed to advance in science. For Watson, intelligence is all about genes. Nothing else matters. > > Maybe someday we will figure out what intelligence is and how it develops — and when that happens, Watson isn’t going to be recognized as a pioneer of the genetic age, but as a false prophet. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > I’m sure \*you \*won’t skip explaining why even a Nobel laureate was wrong. 😛 Unlike you I do post what I think are the important points on what you claim are Gish gallops, something that you are only continuing to show how incompetent you are regarding the podcast that you claim it to be the bees knees. As it turns out it is mostly about trying to professionally bat their eyes and pretend innocence about what and how is that he is in a position of influence in the first place. BTW you are indeed still skipping what the Nobel laureate in economics said, not impressed at all about what Murray and others did. ---
**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, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/528 "2017-05-02T14:33:56Z")
> [@obeast](#): > > No worries as well - that was a pretty embarrassing mistake on my part, and I don’t blame you for leaping on it. > > I’ve kinda said my piece of this topic, I think, but I would encourage anyone who has some time to give the podcast a listen, and not because I think it’ll convince the average listener of the most incendiary aspects of The Bell Curve’s argument. I think Murray comes off reasonably well (I entered the podcast thinking that he was probably a scumbag, and left it thinking he was probably unfairly treated), but opinions may vary. If nothing else, I found it interesting as a discussion of IQ’s validity. What I got from the podcast was the very telling moment when Sam asked him about why not coming forward and declare that he has regrets about writing the Bell Curve book, not at all, and he actually thought that he was rehabilitated in academia. As I commented earlier such naivete is also one important factor on why he still deserves to be reminded (and no, I’m not talking about likely outsiders that used violence against him) that most experts are not impressed and that several \*\*do \*\*think that The Bell Curve, in particular, was trash. ---
**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, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/529 "2017-05-02T14:40:56Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I’m not doubting that (although I doubt it was anywhere close to a universal practice). Why would you doubt it was anywhere close to a universal practice? The vast majority of slave owners very obviously saw their slaves as slaves. Do you really believe that most slave owners weren’t attracted to one of their slaves at one point? If so, what would have stopped them from having sex with their slaves? Certainly not the social mores of the era, in which sex with attractive young slaves was considered acceptable even if it wasn’t discussed in polite company. > [@](#): > > I’m saying that I don’t necessarily think the lion’s share of non-African ancestry in black students today would come from plantation owners. What about field overseers (poor white workers)? What about interracial pairings of more recent vintage? I think in modern times, it’s a lot more likely to be a white woman having a black guy’s kids than the other way around. This is also possible, I just see no reason to believe that most slave owners didn’t take advantage of slaves when it would have cost them pretty much nothing, socially, to do so. Perhaps some would not want to dishonor their wives, but even these slave owners would have been either single or widowed at some point in their lives. Do you really think that 16-20 year old, single, sons of wealthy plantation owners wouldn’t have taken advantage of attractive young slaves, on a routine basis? > [@](#): > > You either did not understand it correctly, or you have an odd definition of “small”. Here again are the relevant numbers: > > So adopting wealthy-to-wealthy gets you at the 90th percentile of IQ. Poor-to-poor is the 30th percentile. If your wealthy mother (probably a teenager, I’m guessing) gave you up for adoption and you were raised by a poor family, you are (on average, in all cases obv.) at the 70th percentile. Born to a poor mom and adopted by a rich one: 60th percentile. > > So you may see that 70th-60th span and say that’s small. But that’s not really the appropriate one to compare (except that it’s kind of interesting how going both directions balances out fairly closely in different ways). There are clear environmental effects shown here, which Kristof delighted in pointing out. But the heritable ones are just so dramatic, and those would actually show up as (average) differences between siblings raised together. > > If a wealthy family adopted two kids, one from a wealthy family and one from a poor one, the average expectation will be something like a 1940 on the SAT (enough for a pretty selective college, although not an Ivy) for the one with “rich genes”, and a 1570 for the one with “poor genes” (not getting into the semi-elite college your sibling did, but still sufficient to get into a regional public university in most cases). > > In the poor family that adopted two kids, the one that came from another poor family is looking at a 1310 SAT. Community college is an option, but it won’t be easy sledding. The other adopted kid, with the “wealthy genes”, is scoring about a 1670. That might well be enough to become the first person in the family to get into the state’s flagship university, depending on the state. This is all interesting, but it could as easily support various environmental causes (in vitro and very early nutrition and health, for example) as genetic causes. Whatever is involved seems very likely to be heritable, but heritable doesn’t imply genetic – many traits are heritable but have nothing to do with genetics. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2017, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/530 "2017-05-02T14:41:07Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > **Richard Parker** asserted a version of this axiomatic assumption. No. If you take a look at what my post is responding to, you’ll see that it was someone on your side of the debate making that assertion. Even your formulation is, at bottom, deeply racist. Suppose you got a class of 30 new calculus students. The only information you have on student #5 is that his great great-grandfather had an IQ of 90. Would you send him for special tutoring based on that information? No. Of course not. Because stated that way it’s obviously fucking stupid. But apparently you _would_ do so if the student were black and Murray’s speculation about intelligence gene propensities were true. ---
**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, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/531 "2017-05-02T18:36:39Z")
This post largely captures my criticism of Harris’s interview: > **[Sam Harris Whitewashes ‘The Bell Curve’ During Interview With Charles Murray](https://angrywhitemen.org/2017/04/26/sam-harris-whitewashes-the-bell-curve-during-interview-with-charles-murray/)** > > In the 73rd installment of his podcast Waking Up With Sam Harris, the famed neuroscientist and “New Atheist” author made the curious choice of interviewing right-wing political scientis… Harris should know better. He should be willing to criticize someone who has used so much junk science to reach his conclusions. Harris was either too interested in currying favor or too lazy in checking the facts, and it reflects very poorly on him. > [@](#): > > As an interviewer, he should have done more than toss softballs and whitewash Murray’s record. As a skeptic, he should have been more willing to examine Murray’s beliefs. I agree completely. Shame on Harris. ---
**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, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/532 "2017-05-02T22:16:05Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Or just that they knew all that stuff described in Wikipedia about how hostile peer review is to iconoclastic research findings. Piffle. In 1994, their “research” was not that iconoclastic, as demonstrated by the huge acceptance they originally received following their immensely funded propaganda campaign. (And if they were interested in truth, getting someone with some legitimate understanding of the topics of mathematics to review it and fix glaring errors would have been the way to dampen the errors that were sure to be pointed out.) ---
**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, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/533 "2017-05-02T22:27:45Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Piffle. > > In 1994, their “research” was not that iconoclastic, as demonstrated by the huge acceptance they originally received following their immensely funded propaganda campaign. (And if they were interested in truth, getting someone with some legitimate understanding of the topics of mathematics to review it and fix glaring errors would have been the way to dampen the errors that were sure to be pointed out.) Many of the objections quoted here have been from sociologists and anthropologists. As the offspring of one of each, I can assure you that those fields were extremely hostile to all of this (not just the race aspect) long before 1994. ---
**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, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/534 "2017-05-02T22:27:57Z")
> [@obeast](#): > > 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. Herrnstein was a behaviorist. Psychology has branched into many different threads since the days of William James and, aside from a general familiarity with the language, there is no evidence that Herrnstein’s training prepared him to dip into the origins of cognitive theory any more than Murray’s economics. ---
**Author:** ![Salvor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Salvor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salvor)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2017, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/535 "2017-05-03T00:28:24Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > You haven’t really started doing internet science until you’ve started ignoring evidence that’s inconvenient to your pre-existing beliefs. > > Anyway, I answered your challenge, now it’s your turn. \*\*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._ No study I know of suggests that. I do not assume that is true. The best these sorts of studies can hope to do (until we get more genes linked to intelligence and test predictions based on the presence of those specific combinations) is try to isolate different environmental variables and isolate the factors that might boost or hinder iq scores. How do black students from families of the same income level as white families do on iq scores and in college? Economics is one variable, but does it catch everything? Is it reasonable to expect that the son of a millionaire basketball player or musician that is black would be just as likely to score high on iq tests and do as well in college academically as a black person who went into computer science and made millions writing software? I suspect not, but you can control for those variables. Is it lingering effects of racism? How do you isolate that? It seems hard to believe it’s peoples brown skin, Indians in the US do better than just about any other immigrant group, and if it was bias against people with african ancestry, why do Nigerian immigrants do so well? And then, horror of horrors, what if we controlled for the variable of parental iq? How do those children do? Here is my guess, black children of black parents (with upper middle class incomes) with a 130 iq will do better academically than black children of black parents with a 95 iq score (wealthy black couple where the money came from the arts). We have still not controlled for a sea of other variables, perhaps the home life of the musicians is more chaotic, even though they are wealthier, but if you consistently got stronger correlations of academic performance based on an innate ability score like iq, to me that suggests pretty strong links to a biological contribution for iq. Not all, we can’t isolate all the environmental variables, but our inability to do that is no reason to say that it is unreasonable to think that some of the variance is probably based on genetic differences. If you keep isolating environmental variables, and the gaps diminish but never close to the degree you would wish and such gaps continue to persist, then either we are missing some massive and potent environmental effects, or the more obvious explanation (and one you all keep refusing to countenance) is at play. That it’s increasingly likely that some portion of the gaps are genetic. Terribly sloppy Example incoming: Take the set of all possible variables that could explain gaps in performance and aptitude between groups. b = biological (genes and the differences in allele frequencies between populations) ep = biology with heavy environmental pressure - epigenetics E = environment - effects of society (wealth, socioeconomic status, racism, etc etc) G(b,ep,E) = b + ep + E My GREAT sin, is that I assume the probability of b in that function of the variables that describe the gaps, is not ZERO. Most people in this thread: You can’t SAY that, where is your PROOF that the gaps are ALL based on genetic differences? Salvor: I never said that You can’t PROVE that b is a factor based on x or y study and measurements of persistent gaps Salvor: True, I am making a statement of what I consider likely based on what has already been ruled out environmentally with controls that did not close the gap. Except in that one study, decades ago, that has not been replicated, and contradicts numerous other studies over and over and over. But I am the shill for not latching onto that one study that confirms my HOPES that NONE of the differences we see are materially influenced by genetics. I am not the one behaving like the child here. I am not the one being unreasonable. Going back to my sloppy function example: G(b,ep,E) = b + ep + E I do not know what all the potential environmental factors are, but am I insane to think that if we keep picking off more components that could contribute to E, and they fail to completely close the gaps collectively, that once you start to level off, the probability of the other two being a factor in the remaining portion of the gaps rises? Is that a CRAZY thought? A higher probability does not imply that b IS higher than zero, or more than a rounding error in the total function, but we are talking about liklihoods, not certainties. The MORE reasonable view on the gaps we see in iq and performance, to me, is that some of the differences are likely do to genetic differences between populations. That seems more likely to me than the view that it is more likely it’s environmental, or that we cannot make any assumptions one way or the other since we do not know ALL the details and variables and magnitudes. Most people here seem to want to hold onto that last view, a standard they apply to almost nothing in life when making assessments of probabilities of things being one way or another in the world. ---
**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 3, 2017, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/536 "2017-05-03T00:31:15Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Many of the objections quoted here have been from sociologists and anthropologists. As the offspring of one of each, I can assure you that those fields were extremely hostile to all of this (not just the race aspect) long before 1994. Just a note that once again the Nobel price economist that you are continuing to avoid is James Heckman. [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/interview-with-james-heckman](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/interview-with-james-heckman) In any case, if Murray had been right a lot should had been confirmed later but the reality is that people involved in Psychometrics still point at Murray and others missing the mark, and that is even before looking at any alleged genes that are claimed to make the differences with the levels of intelligence from one “race” to another. > **[SocSci\_v3\_520to539.pdf](https://www.sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-3/july/SocSci_v3_520to539.pdf)** > > 212 B Abstract: > [@](#): > > In 1994, the publication of Herrnstein’s and Murray’s The Bell Curve resulted in a social science maelstrom of responses. In the present study, we argue that Herrnstein’s and Murray’s assertions were made prematurely, on their own terms, given the lack of data available to test the role of genotype in the dynamics of achievement and attainment in U.S. society. > > Today, however, the scientific community has access to at least one dataset that is nationally representative and has genome-wide molecular markers. We deploy those data from the Health and Retirement Study in order to test the core series of propositions offered by Herrnstein and Murray in 1994. First, we ask whether the effect of genotype is increasing in predictive power across birth cohorts in the middle twentieth century. Second, we ask whether assortative mating on relevant genotypes is increasing across the same time period. Finally, we ask whether educational genotypes are increasingly predictive of fertility (number ever born [NEB]) in tandem with the rising (negative) association of educational outcomes and NEB. The answers to these questions are mostly no; while molecular genetic markers can predict educational attainment, we find little evidence for the proposition that we are becoming increasingly genetically stratified. ---
**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 3, 2017, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/537 "2017-05-03T01:16:29Z")
> [@Salvor](#): > > How do black students from families of the same income level as white families do on iq scores and in college? From the [Brookings Institute](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-test-score-gap-why-it-persists-and-what-can-be-done/), a left-leaning think tank: > [@](#): > > Traditional explanations for the black-white test score gap have not stood up well to the test of time. During the 1960s, most liberals blamed the gap on some combination of black poverty, racial segregation, and inadequate funding of black schools. Since then, the number of affluent black families has grown dramatically, but their children’s test scores still lag far behind those of white children from equally affluent families. ---
**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 3, 2017, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/538 "2017-05-03T01:28:42Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > From the [Brookings Institute](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-test-score-gap-why-it-persists-and-what-can-be-done/), a left-leaning think tank: Later, from the same cite: > [@](#): > > The three most common “conservative” explanations for the black-white gap-genes, the culture of poverty, and single motherhood-are also hard to reconcile with the available evidence. \*\*There is no direct genetic evidence for or against the theory that the black-white gap is innate, because we have not yet identified the genes that affect skills like reading, math, and abstract reasoning. \*\*Studies of mixed-race children and black children adopted by white parents suggest, however, **that racial differences in test performance are largely if not entirely environmental in origin.** ---
**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 3, 2017, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/539 "2017-05-03T01:52:34Z")
Like I said, left-leaning. But what I quoted is a pretty scathing repudiation of the kind of thing we keep hearing in this thread, that still sounds like the 1960s. ETA: Notice too that the way they get away from blaming genetics is to blame deficiencies in black parenting culture. That seems like it’s more insulting to me (“they will be just fine as soon as white folks teach them how to raise their children properly”), but apparently not to most liberals. ---
**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 3, 2017, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052/540 "2017-05-03T01:56:00Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Like I said, left-leaning. But what I quoted is a pretty scathing repudiation of the kind of thing we keep hearing in this thread, that still sounds like the 1960s. And what you say here is still mostly a straw man. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=26) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interesting-podcast-conversation-between-sam-harris-and-charles-murray-of-bell-curve-fame/785052.md?page=28)