Some Final Thoughts on the Intelligence Research Brouhaha

It turns out I'm going to beat this horse a little more. In his last comment on the subject, Sullivan writes:

The question of whether the taboo against research on intelligence between racial groups has hampered research into intelligence in general does not rely on any position about the validity of the racial research. It's an empirical claim. My first stab was an over-reach. Sometimes that happens when you respond as a blogger to a story. But I've walked back that empirical claim (run, I might add, on a hyper-lefty site), and run several posts explaining why, and fail to see how that claim in particular is offensive.

Personally, I didn't find the claim to be offensive, I just found it to be a wild exaggeration of the effect political correctness is exerting on psychological research into intelligence. Basically, Sullivan erased the existence of a thriving field. To his credit, he did walk the claim back after receiving some feedback from well-informed people. Still, he seems perturbed that this aspect of the story drew as much attention as it did. Has he forgotten that this aspect of the story was what he himself identified as the "deeper problem" in his first post on the subject?

The right response to unsettling data is to probe, experiment and attempt to disprove them - not to run away in racial panic. But the deeper problem is that the racial aspects of IQ have prevented non-racial research into intelligence, and how best to encourage, study and understand it.

I read that as Sullivan trying to make a point about the extraordinary power of p.c. sensitivities. While I didn't find it offensive, it was a false claim, and I can understand why some people might have been offended.

Sullivan implicitly turned critics of Jensen and race-IQ research into persecutory ogres who have shut down an entire field of study because of their off-the-charts oversensitivity and influence. That false claim amounted to unfair scare-mongering to discredit and dismiss critics of a narrow subset of research that happens to be something of a hobby horse for undeniably racist people.

Comments

[The Armchair Philosopher]

How quaintly synchronistic! I have been reading Stephen J. Gould's essay collection, THE LYING STONES OF MARRAKECH. At #17, Gould talks about A Tale of Two Worksites and expounds on the "Social Darwinism" of Herbert Spencer. It is tale also of the rich and powerful canons who fought against efforts to eliminate sweatshops in New York City's garment district around the turn of the century (the last one, that is).

It is interesting that racism has a broader history than Black v. White, and that to some people, ends justify means, human suffering notwithstanding.

[The Armchair Philosopher]

As I read further into Gould's essays (The Lying Stones...), I found a reference to Carl Jung. How utterly synchronistic. I would have loved to have met Gould. He was about the same age as my brother, who, fortunately, is still among us and writing some pretty good poetry. So, we can believe all we wish about anything we choose. Or, we can believe nothing at all.