Straightening the Bell Curve
Book (italiano):
Responding to the question, posed in the scientific journal Nature, of whether scientists should study race and IQ, Hilliard (history, U. of North Texas) wittily responds by asking whether science should study whether blondness in females is inversely correlated to IQ or whether white males have a genetic predisposition towards precipitating Wall Street crashes. Her deeper point is that there is a disturbing predilection on the part of many otherwise respectable scientists to veer into the realm of pseudoscience when dealing with issues of race, gender, and other complex social issues such as the relationship between race and IQ; a predilection that has a long history of revolving around issues of masculinity, penis size, and muscularity--e.g., psychologist Philippe Rushton's 1994 comment, "It's a trade-off, more brain or more penis." She explores this history through case studies of exemplary (pseudo)scientific moments in history: the initial development of eugenics by mathematician Francis Galton, the early history of intelligence testing (or psychometrics), the conversion of Nobel Prize-winning physicist William Shockley to racist eugenics and the expansion of Shockley's theories by psychologist Arthur R. Jensen, the trajectory of Richard Herrnstein from experimental psychologist to theorist of racial differences in intelligence and muscularity, and Rushton's work on proving an inverse correlation between intelligence and penis size among different races. She also considers the reasons 20th century race researchers placed Asians at the summit of the intelligence racial hierarchy, describes the equally pseudoscientific (if far less celebrated) response of "melanism" researchers who ascribe superior qualities to those with greater melanin, and presents a new way of thinking about intelligence that holistically includes those qualities that race and intelligence researchers tend to ignore. Distributed in the US by Books International. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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