Lane Singer Debunks The Bell Curve

1) The book is a political polemic to undermine both Affirmative Action and social welfare programs, from welfare itself through educational programs.

2) Though they make statements regarding racial foundations for differences in intelligence, neither of them are knowledgeable about population biology, or any biology for that matter, and Murray is completely incompetent to even define heritability. Herrnstein was nothing more than a psychologist, and a man with a political bone to pick with liberalism. Murray is a political scientist of some sort.

3) Most in the fields of molecular genetics and physical anthropology consider the work to be little more than a pop-science piece of tripe that was written for mass consumption by gullible folks who are in no way capable of discerning the lack of scientific foundation to their outrageous claims.

It should be noted that the leaders in these fields felt it necessary to make specific statements denouncing the lack of science behind M&H's outlandish claims when they convened for the AAAS annual meeting in January of this year.

4) None of the data upon which the book is based was gathered with any consideration for the "race" of the subjects, and in fact, the studies on which the most in depth analyses were made consisted entirely of white subjects.

5) In order to prop up their racist themes, they relied upon studies conducted up to 40 years ago in South Africa and Rhodesia, none of which followed even the most basic standards necessary for meaningful results. These were all culled by one Richard Lynn, an infamous racist who has absolutely no credibility in academic circles.

6) None of their hypotheses were subjected to peer review via academic or scientific publication. Instead they found a willing commercial publishing house in order to mass produce what is nothing more than baseless propaganda, guaranteed to appeal to people who are upset with the many political and economic problems that we face at this time.

All in all, it's a scandal that so much fuss has been made about the book, but then, they knew that would happen, and Murray is undoubtedly shaking his head in concern ... all the way to the bank.