Sir Cyril Burt ended his day by defeating, reducing fraud to support his convictions, but his idea that the low values \u200b\u200bof IQ were the stigmata through which recognize individuals inevitably destined for the lower layers of company had already marked the existence of a large number of people: the examination eleven plus ", argued that every student at the age of eleven, was the incarnation of the idea of \u200b\u200bintelligence as a unilinear scale value drive on which the people once and for all, and separated on 20% of kids who could have access to the classical schools and university, the remaining 80% considered inappropriate for higher education for schools and technical remained in force in British schools from 1944 until the mid-60s, who knows how frustrating potential talent. In addition, the
g, 's "general intelligence" Spearman resurrected more times: in 1969, Arthur Jensen published in the United States How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? that caused a sensation because it sounded like a definitive demonstration of lower innate intelligence of blacks, with 15 points of deviation from the average white (remember to historicize to better understand the context in which certain statements are taken on public opinion: we are in the battle for civil rights and Martin Luther King was assassinated a few months); in his work the g shone like a lighthouse which illuminates the universe could even be the measure of value not only of humans but of all living things, of course, arranged in a linear scale from bottom to top. Feel it here:
" The common features of experimental tests developed by psychologists compared, most of which clearly distinguish, say, chickens, dogs, dogs from monkeys and apes from chimpanzee, indicate that they are roughly ordered along a dimension g g (...) The can be seen as a concept with a broad-based interspecies biological culminating in primates. "
On this caricature of evolution as a linear scale of progress I have already written in the past, and this case is one of the most embarrassing I've ever met. Jensen picked up all errors that we encountered repeatedly in this series of six stories of determinism: the reification (in this case, runaway ) g of Spearman mathematical abstraction from a real mental function, the classification of complex entities (people) along a linear scale on the basis a single numerical value, the category mistake to use the causal determinants of differences within groups to explain the differences between groups (values \u200b\u200bof the heritability of IQ within groups to claim a genetic basis for differences between blacks and whites), the confusion between "hereditary" and "inevitable and unchangeable."
But guess what are the most solid data on the heritability of IQ is based on which Jensen? Again, studies on identical twins fake Burt: fraud is discovered only a few years later. Find
here a reply to the criticisms of Gould in which Jensen, in my view, is given in the foot more than once. In 1994
the g resurrected again when Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray published, amid great fanfare, The Bell Curve , despite the pervasive advertising that accompanied him, this text also presented no new arguments with respect to what has been seen, covering the old prejudices in a most modern statistical framework, but used with evident bad faith: it hides the weakness of the correlations, it is perfectly silent data against known and available, and so on. The Bell Curve pen had little academic value, and it was nothing more than advocacy of a cause: the social inequalities are justified by the accumulation in the lower strata of society intellectually less gifted individuals, who report their inferior genes to their offspring, and blacks are burdened with those fateful and inescapable 15 points in less than an average IQ than whites to make any vain hope of social redemption. And 'no need, therefore the community to engage in mass education programs and invest resources in welfare, social inequalities because they are irreversible. But because this argument is sustainable, is once again must occur four basic premises that we have always met since the beginning of this long discourse - that intelligence is governed by any single factor and unit - which has measured and classified - that both hereditary and genetically determined - that is unchangeable. If any of these assumptions were false, the whole building would collapse. Herrnstein and Murray defended nor ever discussed any of these critical foundations of their work, just gave it for granted. The only point on which we spent was to demonstrate that the results of IQ tests were not subject to statistical distortion, so if the average IQ of blacks was 85, and the average of 100 whites, the difference was not considered reliable and sitematiche subject to distortion. But if a century of fine psychometricians are dedicated to this measurement technique, I'd be very surprised if they brought with them yet due to defects in method as distorting the results! What The Bell Curve that refused to discuss is if the blacks are, on average, a score of 85 and 100 whites, it's because the blacks live, on average, in worse social conditions than whites? And 'this is the distortion that interests us, not about the flaws of the measure.
Finally, the sample from which, months ago, had left the starting point for all this long review of the topic: Professor Richard Lynn, University of Dublin, which recently caused a bit of fuss in Italy, saying that the Southerners are less intelligent than northern Italians ( touch ). For him to classify peoples and nations based on the values \u200b\u200bof IQ is a true passion. In his most famous book, IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002), has under any differences in wealth or poverty, backwardness and progress, the average IQ of nation by nation. It is worth just doing a few methodological remarks: Lynn ranking based on their average IQ 185 countries, the data available were actually 81. For the other 104 nations, or the value is extrapolated from other sources, or obtained as the average of neighboring countries (some of which, it must be assumed, in turn, the data will have been produced in the same way).
First observation: if here, instead of IQ, it comes to productivity of dairy cows, no Livestock magazine would never have agreed to publish data obtained in this manner.
Second observation: the method by which missing data are obtained, assumes that there is a relationship between ethnic groups, or at least geographically close, and their values \u200b\u200bof QI, which is the thesis that you would like to demonstrate, the circularity of the demonstration is not involved As often happens, the interpretation of results, but even in their production, in the etymologically strict sense of "pre-judgment." But these
sterile exercises of classification for groups of human value, from time to time brings at least some positive note.
For example, to the "fateful 15 IQ points" you end up discovering that the average difference of 15 points, actually use it quite often.
of 15 points increased the average IQ in some countries in the 40 years following the end of World War II, in parallel with the improvement of general conditions of social structure and education, and 15 points is the difference in average IQ between Catholics and Protestants in 'Northern Ireland, in favor of the Protestants (1). The Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants are not two different ethnic groups: unless you want to argue that the religious sect is genetically determined, it will be worthwhile to recognize that the 15 points of IQ are a legacy of more or less standardized featuring groups socially disadvantaged?
(1): Jacoby R. and N. Glauberman: The Bell Curve Debate . Times Books, New York, 1995.
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