Condemn first, read later

I've recently been reading through a couple of books from three controversial academics - DNA by James Watson and the infamous Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein.

One of the most striking things revealed in both books is that none of the three academics are particularly pre-occupied by race issues, despite all three being condemned for rank racism by the mainstream media.

When the Bell Curve was first published in the mid 1990s, various critics in the media were quick to condemn Murray and Hernstein for suggesting there were significant IQ differences in the U.S between Blacks and Whites. However, only one chapter in the book is actually devoted to race issues. Most of the book deals with IQ differences among whites, and the many policy implications of the unchanging distribution of IQ scores after over half a century of universal public schooling.
Nor, does the book necessarily advocate right-wing approaches to dealing with the social and economic problems caused by IQ differences. Despite the fact that Charles Murray is a self-confessed libertarian, in the Bell Curve he doesn't necessarily advocate reducing government spending on public education or other right -liberal policies. A 1920s-style Fabian socialist like George Bernard Shaw would probably be less offended by its public policy discussions than the majority of today's neo-conservatives and libertarians.

Arguably the most interesting finding in the book, in my view, is the declining level of education among high IQ students, rather than those at the bottom of the Bell Curve. As the authors point out, dumbing-down modern schooling has actually improved the academic performance of most average IQ children, but at the same time it's undermined the education of the smartest pupils, who are now no longer challenged as much as they used to be.

If the book had been written in 1904 instead of 1994, the press would have no doubt spent more time talking about its relevance to the decline of elite education rather than its single chapter on racial differences.

In the same way that Samuel Huntington's Clash of Cilivisations was simplistically criticised as a work of Islamophobia, the Bell Curve has been written off as a white supremacist book about racial IQ differences. Indeed, in some ways the Bell Curve is something of a anti-managerial work, in that it questions the value of the one dimensional BMA- type education criticised in more left-leaning books like John Ralston's Saul's Voltaire's Bastards.

Reading through half a dozen chapters of Watson's DNA (first published in 2003) he certainly doesn't give the impression of being the far-right racist he's been labeled in the popular media over his recent African IQ comments. For example, he describes the early-20th Century eugenics movement in the U.S as a "pseudo-scientific vehicle for the notably unscientific prejudices of men like Madison Grant and Harrry Laughlin," and criticises the 1924 Immigration Act (unfairly in my view) for restricting refugee immigration in the 1930s.

About the only right-wing comment I noted in the book was Watson's interesting observation that despite the popular perception, Republican administrations are no stingier than Democratic ones when it comes to investing in scientific research.