The Bell Curve received a great deal of media attention. The book was not distributed in advance to the media, except for a few select reviewers picked by Murray and the publisher, which delayed more detailed critiques for months and years after the book's release.
Stephen Jay Gould, reviewing the book in
The New Yorker, said that the book "contains no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its anachronistic
social Darwinism" and said that the "authors omit facts, misuse statistical methods, and seem unwilling to admit the consequence of their own words." A 1995 article by
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting writer
Jim Naureckas criticized the media response, saying that "While many of these discussions included sharp criticisms of the book, media accounts showed a disturbing tendency to accept Murray and Herrnstein's premises and evidence even while debating their conclusions". A 1995 article by the
Brookings Institution argued that critics had narrowly focused their attention on the book's arguments regarding race and intelligence while ignoring other contents of the book, but added that "the book may have fared even worse had the discussion of race and genetics not distracted attention from some serious problems of analysis and logic in its main arguments. There are indeed some useful messages in the book. But there is also much wrong with it." After reviewers had more time to review the book's research and conclusions, more significant criticisms began to appear.
Nicholas Lemann noted that the book was not circulated in
galley proofs, a common practice to allow potential reviewers and media professionals an opportunity to prepare for the book's arrival. was published in
The Wall Street Journal in 1994 and subsequently reprinted in the journal
Intelligence. The statement was drafted by
Linda Gottfredson, a professor of
educational psychology at the
University of Delaware. It was sent to 131 researchers whom Gottfredsen described as "experts in intelligence and allied fields". Of these, 52 signed the statement, 48 returned the request with an explicit refusal to sign, and 31 ignored the request. According to a 1996 response by former
American Psychological Association president
Donald Campbell, only ten of those who signed were actual experts in intelligence measurement. The
Southern Poverty Law Center reports that 20 of the signers were recipients of funding from the
white-supremacist organization the
Pioneer Fund, including Gottfredson herself.
APA task force report In response to the controversy surrounding
The Bell Curve, the
American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs established a special task force chaired by
Ulric Neisser to publish an investigative report focusing solely on the research presented in the book, not the policy recommendations that it made. The report, "
Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns", was first released in 1995 and published in
American Psychologist in 1996. Regarding explanations for racial differences, the APA task force stated:
American Psychologist subsequently published eleven critical responses in January 1997.
Criticism of assumptions Criticism by Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould wrote that the "entire argument" of the authors of
The Bell Curve rests on four unsupported, and mostly false, assumptions about intelligence: • Intelligence must be reducible to a single number. • Intelligence must be capable of rank ordering people in a linear order. • Intelligence must be primarily genetically based. • Intelligence must be essentially immutable. In a 1995 interview with
Frank Miele of
Skeptic, Murray denied making each of these four assumptions.
Criticism by James Heckman The
Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist
James Heckman considers two assumptions made in the book to be questionable: that
g accounts for
correlation across test scores and performance in society, and that
g cannot be manipulated. Heckman's reanalysis of the evidence used in
The Bell Curve found contradictions: • The factors that explain wages receive different weights than the factors that explain test scores. More than
g is required to explain either. • Other factors besides
g contribute to social performance, and they can be manipulated. In response, Murray argued that this was a
straw man and that the book does not argue that
g or IQ are totally immutable or the only factors affecting outcomes. In a 2005 interview, Heckman praised
The Bell Curve for breaking "a taboo by showing that differences in ability existed and predicted a variety of socioeconomic outcomes" and for playing "a very important role in raising the issue of differences in ability and their importance" and stated that he was "a bigger fan of [
The Bell Curve] than you might think." However, he also maintained that Herrnstein and Murray overestimated the role of heredity in determining intelligence differences.
Criticism by Noam Chomsky In 1995,
Noam Chomsky, a founder in the field of
cognitive science, criticized the book and its assumptions on IQ. He takes issue with the idea that IQ is 60% heritable, arguing that the "statement is meaningless" because
heritability does not have to be genetic. Chomsky gives the example of women wearing
earrings: He goes on to say there is almost no evidence of a genetic link, and greater evidence that environmental issues are what determine IQ differences.
Criticism by Ned Block Philosopher
Ned Block argues that
The Bell Curve misleads about intelligence as it conflates genetic determination with
heritability. Genetic determination and heritability are not interchangeable as there are traits that are genetically determined but not heritable, and vice versa. For example, the number of fingers on a human hand is genetically determined as genes code for five fingers in nearly everybody. However, the heritability of the number of fingers is very low, as variations in numbers of fingers are usually environmentally caused. The aforementioned earring example quoted by Chomsky is an instance where the opposite is true: high heritability, but not genetic determination.
Statistical methods Claude S. Fischer,
Michael Hout, Martín Sánchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas,
Ann Swidler, and Kim Voss in the book
Inequality by Design recalculated the effect of socioeconomic status, using the same variables as
The Bell Curve, but weighting them differently. They found that if IQ scores are adjusted, as Herrnstein and Murray did, to eliminate the effect of
education, the ability of IQ to predict
poverty can become dramatically larger, by as much as 61 percent for whites and 74 percent for blacks. According to the authors, Herrnstein and Murray's finding that IQ predicts poverty much better than socioeconomic status is substantially a result of the way they handled the statistics. In August 1995,
National Bureau of Economic Research economist Sanders Korenman and
Harvard University sociologist
Christopher Winship argued that measurement error was not properly handled by Herrnstein and Murray. Korenman and Winship concluded: "...there is evidence of substantial bias due to measurement error in their estimates of the effects of parents' socioeconomic status. In addition, Herrnstein and Murray's measure of parental socioeconomic status (SES) fails to capture the effects of important elements of family background (such as single-parent family structure at age 14). As a result, their analysis gives an exaggerated impression of the importance of IQ relative to parents' SES, and relative to family background more generally. Estimates based on a variety of methods, including analyses of siblings, suggest that parental family background is at least as important, and may be more important than IQ in determining socioeconomic success in adulthood." In the book
Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve, a group of social scientists and statisticians analyzes the genetics-intelligence link, the concept of intelligence, the malleability of intelligence and the effects of education, the relationship between
cognitive ability,
wages and
meritocracy, pathways to racial and ethnic
inequalities in health, and the question of
public policy. This work argues that much of the public response was
polemic, and failed to analyze the details of the science and validity of the statistical arguments underlying the book's conclusions. The AFQT covers subjects such as trigonometry.
Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas presented evidence suggesting AFQT scores are likely better markers for family background than "intelligence" in a 1999 study:
Cognitive sorting and the "cognitive elite" concept The cognitive elite concept has been widely criticized. Frank Wilson refuted "as cultural superstition and social science pornography
The Bell Curve's theories on the role of intelligence in the social stratification of postindustrial America." Nicholas Lemann described the notion of a cognitive elite as "a sociological cartoon with political uses, not a phenomenon to be accepted at face value." and Thomas Rotolo found that the more the written, IQ-like, examinations are used as screening devices for occupational access, the stronger the relationship between IQ and income. Thus, rather than higher IQ leading to status attainment because it indicates skills needed in a modern society, IQ may reflect the same test-taking abilities used in artificial screening devices by which status groups protect their domains. Min-Hsiung Huang and
Robert M. Hauser write that Herrnstein and Murray provide scant evidence of growth in cognitive sorting. Using data from the General Social Survey, they tested each of these hypotheses using a short verbal ability test which was administered to about 12,500 American adults between 1974 and 1994; the results provided no support for any of the trend hypotheses advanced by Herrnstein and Murray. 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 add that the data, properly used, "do not tell us anything except that selected, highly educated occupation groups have grown rapidly since 1940." In 1972,
Noam Chomsky questioned Herrnstein's idea that society was developing towards a
meritocracy. Chomsky criticized the assumptions that people only seek occupations based on material gain. He argued that Herrnstein would not want to become a baker or lumberjack even if he could earn more money that way. He also criticized the assumption that such a society would be fair with pay based on value of contributions. He argued that because there are already substantial inequalities, people will often be paid at levels that preserve such inequalities rather than commensurately with their contribution to society.
Race and intelligence One part of the controversy concerned the parts of the book which dealt with racial group differences on IQ and the consequences of this. In chapter 13, the authors state: "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences." The introduction to the chapter, however, provides the caveat that "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved". In an article praising the book, economist
Thomas Sowell criticized some of its aspects, including some of its arguments about race and the malleability of IQ: In 1996,
Stephen Jay Gould released a revised and expanded edition of his 1981 book
The Mismeasure of Man, intended to more directly refute many of
The Bell Curve's claims regarding
race and intelligence, and argued that the evidence for
heritability of IQ did not indicate a genetic origin to group differences in intelligence. Psychologist
David Marks has suggested that the
ASVAB test used in the analyses of
The Bell Curve correlates highly with measures of literacy, and argues that the ASVAB test in fact is not a measure of general intelligence but of literacy.
Melvin Konner, professor of
anthropology and associate professor of
psychiatry and
neurology at
Emory University, called
Bell Curve a "deliberate assault on efforts to improve the school performance of African-Americans": The 2014 textbook
Evolutionary Analysis by Herron and Freeman devoted an entire chapter to debunking what they termed the "Bell Curve fallacy", saying that "Murray and Herrnstein's argument amounts to little more than an appeal to personal incredulity" and that it is a mistake to think that heritability can tell us something about the causes of differences between population means. In reference to the comparison of African-American with European-American IQ scores, the text states that only a common garden experiment, in which the two groups are raised in an environment typically experienced by European-Americans, would allow one to see if the difference is genetic. This kind of experiment, routine with plants and animals, cannot be conducted with humans. Nor is it possible to approximate this design with adoptions into families of the different groups, because the children would be recognizable and possibly be treated differently. The text concludes: "There is no way to assess whether genetics has anything to do with the difference in IQ score between ethnic groups." Rutledge M. Dennis suggests that through
soundbites of works like
Jensen's famous study on the achievement gap, and Herrnstein and Murray's book
The Bell Curve, the media "paints a picture of Blacks and other people of color as collective biological illiterates—as not only intellectually unfit but evil and criminal as well", thus providing, he says "the logic and justification for those who would further disenfranchise and exclude racial and ethnic minorities".
Charles Lane pointed out that 17 of the researchers whose work is referenced by the book have also contributed to
Mankind Quarterly, a journal of anthropology founded in 1960 in Edinburgh, which has been viewed as supporting the theory of the genetic superiority of white people. David Bartholomew reports Murray's response as part of the controversy over the Bell Curve. In his afterword to the 1996 Free Press edition of
The Bell Curve, Murray responded that the book "draws its evidence from more than a thousand scholars" and among the researchers mentioned in Lane's list "are some of the most respected psychologists of our time and that almost all of the sources referred to as tainted are articles published in leading refereed journals".
The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America is a collection of articles published in reaction to the book. Edited by Steven Fraser, the writers of these essays do not have a specific viewpoint concerning the content of
The Bell Curve, but express their own critiques of various aspects of the book, including the research methods used, the alleged hidden biases in the research and the policies suggested as a result of the conclusions drawn by the authors. Fraser writes that "by scrutinizing the footnotes and bibliography in
The Bell Curve, readers can more easily recognize the project for what it is: a chilly synthesis of the work of disreputable race theorists and eccentric
eugenicists".
Allegations of racism Since the book provided statistical data making the assertion that blacks were, on average, less intelligent than whites, some people have argued that
The Bell Curve could be used by extremists to justify genocide and hate crimes. Much of the work referenced by
The Bell Curve was funded by the
Pioneer Fund, which aims to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences, and which has been accused of promoting
white supremacist views, particularly
scientific racism. Murray criticized the characterization of the Pioneer Fund as a racist organization, arguing that it has as much relationship to its founder as "
Henry Ford and today's
Ford Foundation". Evolutionary biologist
Joseph L. Graves described
The Bell Curve as an example of racist science, containing all the types of errors in the application of scientific method that have characterized the history of
scientific racism: • Claims that are not supported by the data given • Errors in calculation that invariably support the hypothesis • No mention of data that contradict the hypothesis • No mention of theories and data that conflict with core assumptions • Bold policy recommendations that are consistent with those advocated by racists. Eric Siegel wrote on the
Scientific American blog that the book "endorses prejudice by virtue of what it does not say. Nowhere does the book address why it investigates racial differences in IQ. By never spelling out a reason for reporting on these differences in the first place, the authors transmit an unspoken yet unequivocal conclusion: Race is a helpful indicator as to whether a person is likely to hold certain capabilities. Even if we assume the presented data trends are sound, the book leaves the reader on his or her own to deduce how to best put these insights to use. The net effect is to tacitly condone the prejudgment of individuals based on race." Similarly, Howard Gardner accused the authors of engaging in "scholarly
brinkmanship", arguing that "Whether concerning an issue of science, policy, or rhetoric, the authors come dangerously close to embracing the most extreme positions, yet in the end shy away from doing so ... Scholarly brinkmanship encourages the reader to draw the strongest conclusions, while allowing the authors to disavow this intention." Columnist
Bob Herbert, writing for
The New York Times, described the book as "a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship". "Mr. Murray can protest all he wants", wrote Herbert; "his book is just a genteel way of calling somebody a
nigger." ==See also==