That was the word from a recent BBC article:
Paul Irwing and Professor Richard Lynn claim the difference grows when the highest IQ levels are considered.
Their research was based on IQ tests given to 80,000 people and a further study of 20,000 students.
So who are these researchers, and what is their background?
That turns out to be a question with an interesting answer, thanks to Media Girl who cites a summary from the organization, FAIR:
[…]
Murray and Herrnstein describe Lynn as “a leading scholar of racial and ethnic differences.” Here’s a sample of Lynn’s thinking on such differences: “What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the ‘phasing out’ of such peoples…. Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality.” (cited in Newsday, 11/9/94)
Elsewhere Lynn makes clear which “incompetent cultures” need “phasing out”: “Who can doubt that the Caucasoids and the Mongoloids are the only two races that have made any significant contributions to civilization?” (cited in New Republic, 10/31/94)
FAIR goes on in its description of where Lynn gets his funding – from an organization called the Pioneer Fund. Here’s their take on the Pioneer Fund:
The Pioneer Fund was set up in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a millionaire who advocated sending blacks back to Africa. The foundation’s charter set forth the group’s missions as “racial betterment” and aid for people “deemed to be descended primarily from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States.” (In 1985, after Pioneer Fund grant recipients began receiving political heat, the charter was slightly amended to play down the race angle–GQ, 11/94.)
The fund’s first president, Harry Laughlin, was an influential advocate of sterilization for those he considered genetically unfit. In successfully advocating laws that would restrict immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, Laughlin testified before Congress that 83 percent of Jewish immigrants were innately feeble-minded (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94). Another founder, Frederick Osborn, described Nazi Germany’s sterilization law as “a most exciting experiment” (Discovery Journal, 7/9/94).
The fund’s current president, Harry Weyher, denounces the Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools, saying, “All Brown did was wreck the school system” (GQ, 11/94). The fund’s treasurer, John Trevor, formerly served as treasurer for the crypto-fascist Coalition of Patriotic Societies, when it called in 1962 for the release of Nazi war criminals and praised South Africa’s “well-reasoned racial policies” (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94).
One of the Pioneer Fund’s largest current grantees is Roger Pearson, an activist and publisher who has been associated with international fascist currents. Pearson has written: “If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide” (Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party).
[…]
These are the people that financed nearly all The Bell Curve‘s “data” on the connection between race and intelligence. (Murray and Herrnstein themselves have not been funded, although Weyher says of Herrnstein, “We’d have funded him at the drop of a hat, but he never asked”–GQ, 11/94.)
Take the infamous Chapter 13, which Murray has often claimed is the only chapter that deals with race (far from it–there are at least four chapters focused entirely on race, and the whole book is organized around the concept).
Murray and Herrnstein’s claims about the higher IQs of Asians–widely cited in the media as fact–are almost entirely cited to Richard Lynn, a professor of psychology at the University of Ulster.
In the book’s acknowledgements, Murray and Herrnstein declare they “benefitted especially from the advice” of Lynn and five other people.
Lynn has received at least $325,000 from the Pioneer Fund (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94). He frequently publishes in eugenicist journals like Mankind Quarterly–published by Roger Pearson and co-edited by Lynn himself–and Personality and Individual Differences, edited by Pioneer grantee Hans Eysenck. Among Lynn’s writings cited in The Bell Curve are “The Intelligence of the Mongoloids” and “Positive Correlations Between Head Size and IQ.”
The description of some of the other researchers who receive grants from the Pioneer fund is eye-opening, to say the least. So do these folks remind you of anyone? Steve Gilliard notes that the last prominent group of people to advocate eugenics were the Nazis, whose efforts at eugenics-based genocide were justly rewarded following WWII at Nuremburg. However, the Nazis certainly weren’t the first to advocate or apply eugenics. We can trace the eugenics movement’s history to Anglo-American biology and psychology.
The term “eugenics” was first used by Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Eugenics was defined as “the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally” (cited in Guthrie’s Even the Rat Was White, 2004). The intellectual roots of Galton’s eugenics goes back arguably to Plato’s Republic. Galton eventually went on to establish the Eugenics Society of Great Britain in the early 1900s and shortly thereafter began publishing a journal called the Eugenics Review. Around the same time the American Eugenics Society was founded. A number of these eugenics advocates gravitated toward the early IQ tests – which were used and abused to support their thesis that those of Western European stock were superior to those of other races. By arguing that individuals of African descent (as well as those of American Indian and Mexican-American descent) were intellectually inferior, they could advocate various restrictive laws regarding marriage between races, as well as the legalization of involuntary sterilization of those deemed “unfit.”
The eugenics movement was largely discredited over time, namely due to the shoddiness of much of the research purported to support its thesis, as well as legitimate questions regarding the definition and measurement of intelligence. On the former, it became quite apparent that individuals who didn’t share the same educational and socioeconomic advantages and experiences of a predominantly white upper class and upper middle class would be at a disadvantage from the get-go. Also, it turns out, as Guthrie (2004) points out, that cultural factors could influence test results – for example kids from the Dakota tribe considered it impolite to answer questions in front of others who might not know the answer. The question of what actually composes intelligence is also rather thorny – Howard Gardner has perhaps come as close as anyone to developing a comprehensive theory of multiple intelligences; and his theory goes to underscore the limitations of standard IQ tests (which typically measure spacial and verbal ability and little else).
In any case, eugenicists continue to rear their ugly heads from time to time, and find plenty of willing recipients for their message among America’s and England’s right-wingers. A good primer of eugenics can be found here.
In any event, I find myself highly skeptical about the results reported by Irwing and Lynn on both empirical and theoretical grounds. Theoretically, I am convinced that intelligence is considerably more complex than what is presumably measured on IQ tests. Empirically, I see a number of plausible alternative explanations to the findings presented by the authors – among them variations in academic and social experiences between boys and girls that could influence performance on spacial and verbal tasks.
let ’em go right on thinkin’ that.
Great diary, JB — thanks!
Look how far George has gotten with the playing stupid act. If I’m stupid enough apparently I’ll be president one day.
Aaaahhh…intelligence and standardized tests drive me crazy!!!
Someone is given an IQ test – the answers are scored. And that human being is reduced to a number. And the number is treated with great respect. Why?
Intelligence tests, IMO, are an example of twisted “science.” What purpose does it serve to even attempt to identify and categorize intelligence?
The planet is stressed from all our human activities. Global warming – a result of all those “below average folks?”
“Developmentally challenged” folks are the ones creating stuff we don’t need and formulating marketing campaigns to convince us to buy the stuff?
“Developmentally delayed” folks are responsible for the genetic modification of plants and the requisite pesticides?
“Retarded” folks are designing weapons systems to sell world wide?
Who knew?!
IMO, IQ tests are an extension of our very sick society. What is the difference between the research quoted in this diary, the “proof” of phrenology, and the interpretation of religious texts? None. They have all been used to maintain the status quo.
Living in a secular society? No problem – just replace religion with “science.”
The most severely delayed are the ones who haven’t a heart. Saldy, they usually grow up to become World Leaders. And smearers of grieving mothers.
My son knows comprehends more about the anti-war movement than most politicians. He also cares greatly for animals and the environment.
what it say, oh.. pretty shiny monitor… pretty.
Oh thank you – I have been snarling since I read about this “research” – and you gave me a laugh! Ah, release…
Is a system created by people to measure certain qualities in other people.
Any bias in the result can just as easily be explained by bias in the test itself as any quality inherent to the subject of the test.
had better pull their head out and start playing nice with the girls or else they won’t be getting any pussy from me or the gorgeous female lineage from my loins!!
. . . that anyone can take anything Richard Lynn says seriously? Certainly all of his research results should be viewed as tainted by his eugenicist agenda. It seems that now he’s expanded his reach from racism to misogyny.
What next–publication of newly discovered research conducted by Josef Mengele?
SOME men can hold their brains in their hands simply by unzipping their pants… doesn’t mean they are smarter. 🙂
Some men. Because we here at BooMan have incredible, smart, compassionate men here and we love them dearly.
The most amusing thing to me about all this IQ stuff is that when the tests were first developed the girls skunked the boys very badly, so badly they had to change the tests to give the boys a chance. This makes a person wonder if the tests that these folks are pointing to have been rigged to play to the strengths of the guys, thereby making it so they can claim the girls aren’t as bright.
I know lots of people that are in the top 2% on IQ, and have to say that it doesn’t seem to help when it comes to close mindedness, bigotry, and the ability to believe lies put out by the leaders we have now. I’m thinking that a balance between IQ and EQ may be a better indicator as to how rationally a person thinks. (test yourself) Emotions can lead to truth – when we include emotions we have a broader grasp of reality.
Because I’m a girl, I’m probably too stoopid to comment on this but I’m gonna anyway.
The people promoting these results are full of hooey, of course, and racist, sexist assholes.
I belong to Mensa, am involved with the local organization pretty heavily, and I can tell you a couple of things that IQ scores prove-
1)you’re good at taking tests.
2)the people who designed the test are likely from either the same or very similar cultural demographic as you are.
There are many more men than women in Mensa, but the women in it strike me as being much smarter than most of the men; many of the men are much better educated, but the women are flat out smarter in terms of pure intelligence. Having met and conversed at length with hundreds of Mensans over the years, this may or may not go beyond empirical evidence, you decide.
Because of the testing criteria for Mensa, the vast majority of american members are white. This is sad, but true.
FWIW, the “emotional intelligence” test came out at 90% for me. My IQ is in the 99th percentile.