Good-bye Bell Curve!

[The Backlash Cometh]

Good reference for those who debate Bell Curve aficionados on the net:

Genes' Sway Over IQ May Vary With Class
Study: Poor More Affected by Environment

Back-to-school pop quiz: Why do poor children, and especially black poor children, score lower on average than their middle-class and white counterparts on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive performance?

It is an old and politically sensitive question, and one that has long fueled claims of racism. As highlighted in the controversial 1994 book "The Bell Curve," studies have repeatedly found that people's genes -- and not their environment -- explain most of the differences in IQ among individuals. That has led a few scholars to advance the hotly disputed notion that minorities' lower scores are evidence of genetic inferiority.

Now a groundbreaking study of the interaction among genes, environment and IQ finds that the influence of genes on intelligence is dependent on class. Genes do explain the vast majority of IQ differences among children in wealthier families, the new work shows. But environmental factors -- not genetic deficits -- explain IQ differences among poor minorities.

The results suggest that early childhood assistance programs such as Head Start can help the poor and are worthy of public support. They also suggest that middle-class and wealthy parents need not feel guilty if they don't purchase the latest Lamaze mobile or other expensive gadgets that are pitched as being so important to their children's development.

More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12059-2003Sep1?language=printer

[Brian Sweat]

1. I am convinced that this is why the right is so opposed to head start.

They like to advance the subtely notion that black people are intellectually inferior. A fully funded Head Start program would put an end to this debate in a few short years.

On Edit: It might also lead to more liberal voters.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. It's Too Bad This Needed To Be Studied

It seems so patently obvious that there is a difference between native intelligence and the ability to apply it. One is innate, the other is nurtured. And it's harder for the poor and uneducated to nurture it. So, the underclass is, alas, self-sustaining.

Smart kids getting left behind, is a really bad thing, IMO.

The fact that someone needed to study and prove something this obvious, and to have to refute the charlatanism behind "The Bell Curve" is depressing.
The Professor

[TahitiNut]

7. IQ isn't a measure of "native intelligence".

Since its inception by Alfred Binet (ergo "Stanford-Binet") it has specifically presupposed a cultural and systemic context. When the French employed Binet's testing methods, it was intended to allocate limited public school resources among those demonstrably capable of 'succeeding' in that system. It's important, IMHO, to note the distinction between choosing to allocate public resources based on need as opposed to (arguably) least need. In my view, lifting the body politic by the neck instead of the bootstraps is poor public policy. :shrug:

[Solomon]

3. And good riddance,

too!

[gratuitous]

4. There was also a book review in The Nation

I don't have it readily at hand, but it reviewed "standardized" tests and the methods the companies that publish those tests have for incorporating new questions.

Basically, they have a formula that gives them an "expected" number of correct answers to any new question. If a question doesn't get the expected number of correct answers from white students, the question is discarded or reformulated. I had to read the paragraph over about three times to figure out that what the reviewer was saying the book was saying was that questions qualify for the tests based on the success a sampling of white students has with them. Questions with too many "minority" correct answers or with insufficient numbers of "white" correct answers don't get on the test.

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. If this could be proven, it would be compelling evidence

in a court of law.

[jiacinto]

5. The Bell Curve has been debunked

Michael Lind's Up from Conserativism debunks it in a chapter where he traces the origions of the theories in the book back to the Nazis.

[AquariDem]

13. Yet it keeps popping up, like herpes

(sorry, guys) :evilgrin:

[jiacinto]

6. What studies is the post mentioning?

But it should be obvious that children in poverty are less likely to do well because they don't have access to the same educational resources that their middle class and affluent counterparts have.

[Fescue4u]

8. I don't know if I buy into this study

Genetics explains why rich kids differ, but Class explains why poor kids differ?

I wonder how the genes know how much money is in the parents pockets??

Frankly I DON'T buy into the bell curve theory and I do think that Headstart and similiar programs are important.

This studys conclusion is almost written so that the rich can brag about genes, while simulatenously the poor can blame it on class.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Maybe what they are saying is...

"a fool and his money are soon parted" Therefore, all things being equal, you do have people with high I.Q.s at the top income levels.

But that still doesn't say much because there is so much tied into maintaining wealth. For example, the ability to network, and to be ruthless, and all the chameleon like qualities that are necessary to fit in with the Joneses.

[TahitiNut]

9. Ignores "common cause".

Measures of correlation do not establish causality. While the correlation bewteen genetic makeup and 'intelligence' may be high, neither may be the 'cause' of the other. Since one "inherits" socioeconmic advantages and disadvantages (e.g. wealth, health care habits, skin color, trade connections, mentoring) from one's parents, so do we "inherit" our genes. That certain ameliorative social processes/programs have a contrary effect is most notable, IMHO.

[Generic Other]

12. How does breeding for "cuteness" improve IQ?

Isn't that how the gene pool of the rich is constantly "improved"?

[recidivist]

14. Uh, folks: the study STILL says IQ is mostly inherited.

Did anyone here actually read the article? The researchers explicitly accept the finding that intelligence is largely inherited, putting the heritability factor at .72 for higher SES families. As implied in the article, this is basically a baseline measure of heritability, absent "environmental" factors (mostly poor parenting) that artifically depress IQ.

All the researchers are pointing out is that even potentially bright kids can be overwhelmed by negative environmental influences and not reach their potential. As far as I know, no one has ever doubted this. Dysfunctional families produce crippled kids. This is not news. This happens at all income levels, of course, but the accumulated parenting deficits tend to be greater and more pervasive at lower SES levels for reasons that, I think, most of us understand.

The good news, of course, is that if we can reduce the environmental deficits that cognitively cripple so many kids, the measured IQ gaps between social classes can also be reduced. (Easy to say but hard to do.) But once these extraneous factors are removed, the underlying inherited differences will still remain. So will measured differences between classes; even if every family were somehow made perfect, lower intelligence people will still be disproportionately clustered in lower wage, lower status jobs.

I allow for plenty of exceptions of course; Eric Hoffer worked as a longshoreman, and on a more prosaic level, plenty of bright kids rebel at the discipline of school, or screw up with drugs, or otherwise self-destruct. Downward mobility is all too easy. The screening is tougher on the way up, but even so, I wonder how some people make it through college, law, or grad school. But the exceptions are, in the end, still exceptions.

One should not confuse an argument about The Bell Curve (the book) with the bell curve (the measured distribution of intelligence). Intelligence is measurable, albeit imperfectly, and some people have more of it than others. This, too, is not news.

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Little baby steps...

Today it's enough to defend Head Start. That is an improvement over yesterday.