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The Pursuit of Knowledge
Jensen And Flynn
The friendly dispute between Arthur Jensen and James Flynn over the role of genes in IQ was a model of intellectual discovery.
Anyone who has followed the decades-long controversies over the role of genes in IQ scores will recognize the names of the two leading advocates of opposite conclusions on that subject — Professor Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley and Professor James R. Flynn, an American expatriate at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
What is so unusual in the academic world of today is that Professor Flynn’s latest book, Are We Getting Smarter? is dedicated to Arthur Jensen, whose integrity he praises, even as he opposes his conclusions. That is what scholarship and science are supposed to be like, but so seldom are.
Professor Jensen, who died recently, is best known for reopening the age-old controversy about heredity versus environment with his 1969 article titled, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?”
His answer — long since lost in the storms of controversy that followed — was that scholastic achievement could be much improved by different teaching methods, but that these different teaching methods were not likely to change I.Q. scores much.
Jensen argued for educational reforms, saying that “scholastic performance — the acquisition of the basic skills — can be boosted much more, at least in the early years, than can the IQ” and that, among “the disadvantaged,” there are “high school students who have failed to learn basic skills which they could easily have learned many years earlier” if taught in different ways.
But, regardless of what Arthur Jensen actually said, too many in the media, and even in academia, heard what they wanted to hear. He was lumped in with earlier writers who had promoted racial inferiority doctrines that depicted some races as being unable to rise above the level of “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
These earlier writers from the Progressive era were saying, in effect, that there was a ceiling to the mental potential of some races, while Jensen argued that there was no ceiling but, by his reading of the evidence, a difference in average IQ, influenced by genes.
When I first read Arthur Jensen’s landmark article, back in 1969, I was struck by his careful and painstaking analysis of a wide range of complex data. It impressed me but did not convince me. What it did was cause me to dig up more data on my own.
A few years later, I headed a research project that, among other things, collected tens of thousands of past and present IQ scores from a wide range of racial and ethnic groups at schools across the United States. Despite serious limitations in these data, due to constraints of time and circumstances, these data nevertheless threw some additional light on the subject.
A feature article of mine in the Sunday New York Times Magazine of March 27, 1977 pointed out that any number of white groups, here and overseas, had at some point in time had IQs similar to, and in some cases lower than, the IQs of black Americans. During the First World War, for example, white soldiers from some Southern states scored lower on army mental tests than black soldiers from some Northern states.
Professor Jensen read this article and came over to Stanford University to meet with me and discuss the data. That is what a scholar should do when challenged. But the opposite approach was shown by Professor Kenneth B. Clark, who earlier had sought to dissuade me from doing IQ research. He said it would “dignify” Jensen’s work, which Clark wanted ignored or discredited instead.
Unfortunately, Professor Clark’s ideological approach became far more common in academia, so much so that Jensen’s attempts to speak on campuses around the country provoked dangerous disruptions, instead of reasoned arguments.
Years later, Professor James R. Flynn created the biggest challenge to the hereditary theory of intelligence, when he showed that whole nations had risen to much higher results on IQ tests in just one or two generations. Genes don’t change that fast.
Professor Flynn told me that he would never have done his research, except that it was provoked by Jensen’s research. That is just one of the reasons for having a free marketplace of ideas, instead of turning academic campuses into fortresses of politically correct intolerance.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 11.27.12 @ 6:17AM
Perhaps the IQ's that should be challenged are the IQ's of those who turned over the educational processes of an entire country to a monopoly, the public school system.
Once established, monopolies move in one direction to solidify their power and the consequences be damned.
In this case, public education spawned other monopolies in certain areas, the public teacher unions which has led to other disasters centered around lack of accountability.
All in all, you have persons of questionable IQ's setting up systems to students whose learning abilities soon degenerate.
It's like a race to the bottom of civilized skills.
Mender| 11.27.12 @ 8:59AM
Inspiring article. It's good to know people with differences of opinion still get over their differences and respect each other.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.27.12 @ 9:23AM
Racial differences are a reality, and science backs up the notion of average IQ differences among races.
However, the problem with many IQ theorists of the past and modern racialists of today is that they trace these differences into the Paleolithic era. IOW, they are Darwinists. Christians believe that all men are from Adam and partake of Adam's fall. Therefore, any differences among men and races must be traced to history rather than evolutionary differentiation.
Because of this Christians can believe that such differences are not permanent, and can also believe that IQs and other racial differentiations can change dramatically within history.
Von Mises Jr| 11.27.12 @ 9:48AM
Dr. Sowell writes more completely about intellect, intelligence and intellectuals in his book "Intellectuals and Society."
Actually, intellect and intelligence are not the same. Intellect is the ability to grasp complex ideas while intelligence is the ability to solve complex problems. Intellectuals are simply those whose product is ideas, good or bad.
I have a couple people in my family that have photographic memories. I could never match them on standardized tests, but sometimes find myself explaining the obvious to them. One's wife quips about the "banker that never wore a Mack in the pouring rain, very strange."
My mother had ESP. She was prescience on most things but actually scary predicting things she could not know.
But the concern I have is less about IQ and improving learning than the willful ignorance and social pressures that lead people to refuse to accept the obvious. The "normalcy bias" and cowardice of conforming to the crowd creates more ignorance than we can ever hope to overcome by musing about IQ. And as long as we have the education establishment and MSM propagandizing the populace, there is not much hope for change.
buckeyeman| 11.27.12 @ 10:04AM
"When I first read Arthur Jensen's landmark article, back in 1969..."
As a side note, when I tried to read Jensen's article back in 1960 it had been removed from every one of the numerous library branches on Ohio State's campus. So much for intellectual freedom. BTW, the NFL is 67 percent black and the NBA is 78 percent black (all apparently without affirmative action). Genetic racial differences are so obvious as to defy dispute. To me the real question is what do these differences mean and what (if anything) should society seek to do about it. I don't want to watch some 5' 9" slow fat white guy trying to play in the NBA, but I also don't want some guy who had a 2.4 GPA getting into med school and treating me in the ER. A free society allows everyone to seek the highest level to which they are capable. A command and control society imposes artificial distortions that hurt everyone.
buckeyeman| 11.27.12 @ 10:07AM
"1960" 1969. Even I can't read article nine years before they're published.
JD| 11.27.12 @ 10:44AM
No, only Leftists have the ability to know what people are saying or thinking without listening to them at all. They use this ability constantly.
Butch| 11.27.12 @ 3:44PM
Remember a defunct publication called "Psychology Today?" It was mainly BS pop psychology, but they did accept Jensen's account of his findings in layman's terms. It was excellent! I saved it, but somewhere over time (probably moving), I lost it. I read it in the early 70s, probably around 72, 73, maybe 74. Some old archives may exist somewhere.
Jensen was trying to talk to the general public because he was under heavy fire. I believe he was barred or blocked from speaking at an academic conference. Students demonstrating outside his office were being stirred up by leftwing faculty members. His seminal article was published in "The Harvard Educational Review" (I think), and it denied him reprints and would not let him respond to critical letters and articles.
Jensen, Herrnstein, and Shockley, the Nobel physicist and inventor of the transistor, were all exploring the same subject at the same time, and all came to the same conclusions. Herrnstein, of Harvard, was Charles Murray's mentor (and lead author of "The Bell Curve" with Murray). Shockley was the most controversial, because he went on to make policy recommendations.
JP| 11.27.12 @ 11:44AM
Charles Murray wrote recently that for the last 30 years in the US people with high IQs have been only marrying other people with high IQs. This selection process has been going on in our univsersities. Murray said that in earlier times there was a large mix of couple with differing IQs. In past decades a man studying for an MD at Harvard would marry his HS school sweetheart who might have had a lower IQ. Ditto for those going into law, engineering, mathematics and the hard sciences. In past decades men didn't care if their wive was as smart as him.
That all changed as high IQ ambitious women have flooded our universities. These women would never marry a plumber or tool and die maker. They marry (or move in with) other high IQ men. And so, the gene pool remains within a nautural elite. For the first time in our history we are breeding a natural aristocracy.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.27.12 @ 4:50PM
Reminds me of a Star Trek episode.
Occam's Tool| 11.27.12 @ 4:26PM
My wife had a 32 ACT and I had a 33. We are an infertile couple as she has PCOS.
We adopted two children from Guatemala, both of whom had uneducated peasant mothers. Both children are scoring 99% on their California Achievement Tests. Both are homeschooled. Both are learning about, say, Sparta.
"
All Men Are Fairly Much The Same.He Does Best Who Is Trained In The Severest School." -Thucydides.
C. Vernon Crisler | 11.27.12 @ 4:50PM
IQ theorists have tested adopted childlren from difference races. The same averages tend to hold, though there are exceptions (which is why it's called an average).
JmsA| 11.30.12 @ 12:53AM
I know you're not a psychometrician, yet you feel compelled to comment about something you obviously don't know much about. I believe Facebook would best fit your insatiable need to be heard from. Go ahead and call me any name you please.