[Hang onto this for me please. -Max]
http://quillette.com/2017/06/11/no-voice-vox-sense-nonsense-discussing-iq-race/ by Richard Haier
Long before the Trump Administration, alternative facts and misrepresentations have permeated attacks on the science of human intelligence. Even reasonable discussions are not immune. The recent piece posted on VOX (May 18, 2017) by Turkheimer, Harden & Nisbett (THN) excoriates Sam Harris about his recent podcast discussion with Charles Murray, author of the 1994 book, The Bell Curve(co-author Richard Herrnstein died before the book was published).
Sam Harris is not an expert in intelligence research but I am. After hearing the podcast, I emailed congratulations to him and Murray for conducting an informative discussion of complex and controversial issues. Every point they enumerated as having broad support among intelligence researchers is correct. There is an overwhelming weight of evidence to support the ideas that intelligence is something real, it can be reliably and validly measured without bias, and the measures predict many real world variables that are important to most human beings. There also is broad agreement that one component of intelligence is a general ability (the g-factor) to reason and problem-solve across a wide range of situations. There also is overwhelming evidence that genes play a significant role in explaining differences in intelligence among individuals.
These points were reasonably well established when The Bell Curve was published, as evidenced by a task force of prominent researchers constituted by the American Psychological Association in 1995 (report published in 1996), hardly a right-wing group. And, as Murray noted in the podcast, all these findings have been validated even further by subsequent research with much larger samples and more powerful research designs.
*snip*
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If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.
"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."
http://quillette.com/2017/06/11/no-voice-vox-sense-nonsense-discussing-iq-race/ by Richard Haier
Long before the Trump Administration, alternative facts and misrepresentations have permeated attacks on the science of human intelligence. Even reasonable discussions are not immune. The recent piece posted on VOX (May 18, 2017) by Turkheimer, Harden & Nisbett (THN) excoriates Sam Harris about his recent podcast discussion with Charles Murray, author of the 1994 book, The Bell Curve(co-author Richard Herrnstein died before the book was published).
Sam Harris is not an expert in intelligence research but I am. After hearing the podcast, I emailed congratulations to him and Murray for conducting an informative discussion of complex and controversial issues. Every point they enumerated as having broad support among intelligence researchers is correct. There is an overwhelming weight of evidence to support the ideas that intelligence is something real, it can be reliably and validly measured without bias, and the measures predict many real world variables that are important to most human beings. There also is broad agreement that one component of intelligence is a general ability (the g-factor) to reason and problem-solve across a wide range of situations. There also is overwhelming evidence that genes play a significant role in explaining differences in intelligence among individuals.
These points were reasonably well established when The Bell Curve was published, as evidenced by a task force of prominent researchers constituted by the American Psychological Association in 1995 (report published in 1996), hardly a right-wing group. And, as Murray noted in the podcast, all these findings have been validated even further by subsequent research with much larger samples and more powerful research designs.
*snip*
--
If I esteem mankind to be in error, shall I bear them down? No. I will lift them up, and in their own way too, if I cannot persuade them my way is better; and I will not seek to compel any man to believe as I do, only by the force of reasoning, for truth will cut its own way.
"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else."
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