The Bell Curve and Neuroplasticity

The Bell Curve's Impact and Rebuttals

Initial Reactions to The Bell Curve

  • Bob Herbert (New York Times): Described The Bell Curve as "a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship."

  • Herbert argued against the book's implication that intelligence disparities between whites and African Americans are genetic, citing:

    • The legacy of slavery.

    • Brutal oppression.

    • Lack of political representation.

    • Poverty and inadequate healthcare.

    • Segregation, redlining, and job market exclusion.

    • Deliberately poor education and constant humiliation.

    • Herbert posited that these factors contribute to social pathology and lower test scores.

Differing Perspectives

  • Christopher Winship (Harvard sociologist): Acknowledged potential flaws in The Bell Curve but noted its valuable insights, particularly the assertion that "cognitive ability is largely immutable."

  • Winship cautioned against oversimplifying the issue and assuming increased funding for early childhood education would solve the problem.

  • James J. Heckman (University of Chicago economist, Nobel Prize winner):

    • Argued that Herrnstein and Murray's core argument "fails" because their "central premise" was empirically incorrect.

    • Disagreed with the idea that a single factor (g or IQ) primarily explains individual performance differences.

    • Acknowledged the book's courageous challenge to assumptions about human malleability and the importance of environmental factors.

APA Report on The Bell Curve

  • A committee of psychologists neutrally summarized the race and intelligence issue.

    • Stressed that genetic effects on observable traits are modifiable by environmental input.

    • Cautioned against assuming heritable traits are unchangeable.

    • Acknowledged the IQ score differential between Blacks and Whites might not solely reflect socioeconomic status.

    • Suggested environmental differences could cause IQ differences, but individual abilities could also influence environment.

    • Concluded that explanations based on caste and culture lack direct empirical support.

Defense of The Bell Curve

  • "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" (Wall Street Journal, 1994):

    • Signed by 50+ experts, supporting The Bell Curve's principles.

    • Intelligence tests are valid cognitive assessments; IQ tests aren't culturally biased; IQ differences exist within and between racial groups.

    • Intelligence differences are primarily due to heritability and genetics, less to environment.

    • The bell curve for whites centers around IQ 100, for American blacks around 85.

    • IQ scores are strongly related to educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes.

Gottfredson's Arguments

  • Individuals with lower IQs can handle "routine decision making or simple problem solving (unskilled work)."

  • Modern world complexity requires high IQ for professions and management.

  • Herrnstein and Murray believed cognitive ability is crucial for grasping complexity.

  • They noted the increasing segregation of people by cognitive skills.

  • Warned about the consequences of "ablest blacks" leaving "inner city."

  • Described a dystopian vision of an expanded welfare state for the underclass.

Gottfredson's Polemical Writing

  • Life requires mastering abstractions, solving problems, drawing inferences, and making judgments with limited information.

  • Individuals at the low end of the IQ bell curve struggle with daily tasks.

  • Social policy should narrow expectations for those with cognitive limitations.

  • Schools should use essential, accessible materials for children of the cognitive underclass.

  • Schools should terminate the tendency to "overpromise" education for those not educable.

  • Civil rights advocates ignore that low IQ may disadvantage poor Black youth more than racial discrimination.

  • Undeserving blackness is often associated with the welfare state.

Gottfredson on General Intelligence

  • Intelligence is "multiple" but general intelligence ("g") is singularly significant.

  • Similar to Arthur Jensen's arguments since the 1960s.

  • Diminished the role of personality or interests in predicting success.

  • "Higher Levels of g Are Required up the Occupational Ladder."

Challenging Racial Liberalism

  • The Bell Curve challenged post-1960s racial liberalism by using empirical data to debunk liberal orthodoxies.

  • It suggested that all races were not created cognitively equal.

  • Defenders claimed the book broke taboos, though these taboos had been routinely broken throughout U.S. history.

  • The book promoted age-old racial prejudices while claiming to tell the truth.

  • Gottfredson argued the scientific evidence in The Bell Curve was real.

  • Herrnstein and Murray refused to endorse the "falsehood, or 'egalitarian fiction,'" that racial-ethnic groups never differ in average developed intelligence.

  • Those who didn't endorse this faced censorship.

  • Gottfredson claimed liberals were frightened by inherited intelligence differences between races.