Talk:The Bell Curve

Popular reception?

What seems to be missing from the discussion is how well did The Bell Curve sell? A discussion of how many copies were sold, how many reprints were made, and critics’ assessment of the reason’s behind the book’s commercial success or lack of it are certainly worthwhile. Luokehao, 13 December 2020, 08:09 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.221.166.49 (talk)

Chomsky's criticism needs a better example.

Chomsky's argument that "heritability does not have to be genetic" is either a semantic disagreement or a misunderstanding of biology. Per wikipedia's article on heritability, "broad-sense heritability" is defined as "all the genetic contributions to a population's phenotypic variance including additive, dominant, and epistatic (multi-genic interactions), as well as maternal and paternal effects, where individuals are directly affected by their parents' phenotype, such as with milk production in mammals." In the same wikipedia article, narrow-sense heritability is "the genetic component of variance responsible for parent-offspring resemblance". So by commonly accepted definitions, heritability is genetic. Therefore the example from Block, which Chomsky quotes, of a "heritable" trait that is not genetic (wearing earrings) is incorrect. Wearing earrings “some years ago when only women wore earrings" was NOT a heritable trait because a women does not inherit her female sex from her mother. She is female because she has 2 X chromosomes, one from each parent. Unless there is a better example of the point he is trying to make (or from Ned Block, a philosopher who specializes in defining consciousness), or a more substantial argument from Chomsky, the value of this section is dubious. There are plenty of more valid counterarguments that can be cited.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.132.109 (talk • contribs) 16:34, April 7, 2021 (UTC)

Since this is not a fair summary of Chomsky's argument, anything more than a quick rebuttal would be misplaced.

The "common" definition is wrong: "The term ‘heritability,’ as it is used today in human behavioral genetics, is one of the most misleading in the history of science. Contrary to popular belief, the measurable heritability of a trait does not tell us how ‘genetically inheritable’ that trait is."[1] Chomsky certainly knew this as well, since that's part of the context of the cited quote.

Any further discussion of changes to the article should avoid WP:OR, but Chomsky was far from the only one to point out this deep flaw in the book, regardless of which examples he used. Grayfell (talk) 03:24, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose merging Cognitive elite into The Bell Curve. I think that the worthwhile content of Cognitive elite is a small proportion of the 7KB article and can easily be incorporated into The Bell Curve. Most of the lede of Cognitive elite is devoted to The Bell Curve, whereas most of the main body is about Nietzsche. The Nietzsche material is not clearly relevant (as an editor argued recently on the talk-page), and it's a very superficial treatment compared to the main article Friedrich Nietzsche. It's also not well sourced (for example, schoolhomehelper.com). I believe that much or all of the Nietzsche material could be removed before merging. NightHeron (talk) 22:06, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

• Cognitive elite is a disaster area of WP:SYNTH. Unless the term is widely used in contexts completely separate from The Bell Curve, redirecting it to this article would be the sensible move. The fraction of the content that might be suitable for merging is very small. XOR'easter (talk) 22:32, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
• I think the merge is the way to go. The section is short, the topic is only discussed in the context of the bell curve, and there isn't commentry from other sources. Talpedia (talk) 23:14, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
• Right, merge that thing away. Also, in the Cog El article, we only learn that the concept "has been criticized", but not how. Someone tried to formally fulfil an NPOV requirement by just adding the Wikipedia Bad Writing equivalent of a Quack Miranda warning. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:49, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
• (I'm here from watching WP:FT/N) The whole Nietzsche part should go as it is unrelated OR. In fact, I'll remove it right away. The short bit that is left, even if it has a couple refs mentioning it after the book came out, should be merged into its own section in this article with some tweaks. VdSV9•♫ 15:07, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
• Thanks, NightHeron, for taking the initiative to put out this dumpster fire. I agree that the middle-school book report on Nietzsche should be cut entirely, and will add that Gottfredson's unsubstantiated POV quote is also UNDUE for any encyclopedia article anywhere. I'm agnostic about whether the single study by Jonathan Wai is DUE in this context, but would probably tend to lean against inclusion given the well known issues with the journal Intelligence on related topics. We can certainly merge edited versions of the remaining sentences, if they're not completely redundant, into the existing subsection "Part I. The Emergence of a Cognitive Elite" –– but from a quick glance I'm not sure there's much left that isn't completely redundant. Generalrelative (talk) 16:22, 7 November 2021 (UTC)
• Right idea, wrong target. The idea of a self perpetuating, assortatively mated, quasihereditary cognitive elite is much older than the Bell Curve book and is not so specifically associated with it. It has recurred enough to get its own article eventually (starting from zero, the current content is WP:TNT material) and at least a redirect right now. If there is a merger or redirect I would direct it to someplace more general such as the Meritocracy book from the 1950's, social stratification, elite, or Social Darwinism. "Cognitive" elite isn't quite the root concept, this has been discussed more voluminously as the intellectual, educational, technocratic, bureaucratic, power, status or professional elite. Cognitive elite would fit as a section in an article on any of those. Sesquivalent (talk) 02:18, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support merge - I agree the underlying topic is vague and older than the book. The phrase "cognitive elite" is closely tied to The Bell Curve by modern sources. Without this context, or at least context directly supporting the use of this term itself, the phrase would be too loaded to be usable as a title for an article on the broader concept. If necessary, the article can always be spun-off again based on newer or better sources. As it stands now, any non-redundant content can be summarized here. Grayfell (talk) 02:39, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

My concern is that someone typing "cognitive elite" into the search bar would arrive at the specific setting of The Bell Curve without mention of the broader context, the explanation of which is mostly out of scope for this article. What about reducing the Cognitive Elite page to a stub consisting of one sentence referring to the Bell Curve for the recent (though largely USA focused) association, followed by a list of links to pages on Meritocracy (book), meritocracy (concept), noocracy, and the rest? This could later be converted to a standalone article or redirected to a section of whatever article is considered as the root underlying topic, once either of those is ready. Sesquivalent (talk) 07:58, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

By the book, you mean The Rise of the Meritocracy, correct?

In practice, a very short article which mainly serves to link to other articles is a disambiguation page. Is this phrase common enough for that? Do we have an independent indication that this is a cause for confusion among readers? If we preserve an article with this specific title, it should be under the assumption that some editors are typing in this phrase expecting to find something specific. I don't know what that specific thing is, and I'm not sure anyone else does, either. My understanding is that this specific phrase is mainly used in the context of Murray's political advocacy, and not as it relates to broader philosophy. The current sources at that article superficially support that, also. If we (Wikipedia editors) are the ones creating the link in readers minds between this phrase and the broader philosophy of merit or wisdom, that would be a form of editorializing, among other serious problems. Grayfell (talk) 21:34, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Young's book on rise of the meritocracy. There is virtually no difference in meaning between "cognitive elite" in the Bell Curve sense and Young's "meritocracy", except that the first has retained its original meaning while the second transmuted into a pop culture meme with totally different connotations. As meritocracy in Young's sense is no longer the WP:COMMON meaning of his term, it makes some sense to use cognitive elite instead.

The specific phrase "cognitive elite" came into much more common use after the Bell Curve, most of it in responses espousing very different points of view than Murray's, so I don't think advocacy is a pressing issue here (a random sample of sources will come out anti Bell Curve). Anyway, there is a literature and a usage pattern that is ultimately connected to The Bell Curve but the term is synonymous with Michael Young's notion of "meritocracy", itself a satire of similar ideas that had been around for some time.

Nicholas Lemann has a couple of articles in the Atlantic on this that can be used as sources, one from 1994 reviewing Young's book (before The Bell Curve was published) and a 1996 piece A Cartoon Elite [2] with references to several other books besides Murray and Herrnstein (Young 1958, Milovan Djilas The New Class, Christopher Lasch Revolt of the Elites, Steven Brint In an Age of Experts). His summary of Young's book...

"From Young came the idea that not long after a society institutes mass educational sorting based on the results of IQ tests, a distinct high-IQ ruling class will begin to emerge. Because of the tendency of people in this class to marry fellow students at highly selective universities and pass on their IQ-rich genes to their offspring, over time the meritocratic upper class will more and more resemble a hereditary aristocracy. If this class absorbs the left-wing views that prevail in the universities, then once it is in power, it will resemble the arrogant Communist bureaucracy that was the subject of Djilas's book."

...makes it clear the concept is identical to cog-elite as popularized by Murray. Lemann's book The Big Test on the SAT probably has more on this. My point though is that there is enough of a broader topic here beyond the particular usage in The Bell Curve that its existence should be conveyed somehow. Unless the Cognitive Elite page is deleted without leaving any redirect we would be editorializing in any case by redirecting to this article on the book, which isn't the place to get into all the other literature and links to related pages. Sesquivalent (talk) 09:37, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Coincidentally, Michael Young is also the author of To Merge or Not to Merge. Sesquivalent (talk) 10:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support the proposed merge, but I'd also support just deleting Cognitive elite as not a notable encyclopedia topic. If there is an article that discusses this concept in a broader way than The Bell Curve, I'd support redirecting it there, too. If there isn't, but one is written later, the redirect can be re-targeted. But let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Cognitive elite should not be an article. Levivich 16:19, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Elite#Power_elite is pretty close, Elite theory is a laundry list to which cognitive elite could be added, social stratification would be ideal but with more work than the other two. There is by now a WP:SECONDARY literature on cognitive stratification besides The Bell Curve; the "hereditarian left" (Fredrik deBoer, Paige Harden) is now publishing books making the same points as Michael Young and Charles Murray. They even discuss assortative mating! From the introduction to deBoer's The Cult of Smart: "the ship has already sailed on selective breeding thanks to how we find partners in the twenty-first century, and liberals are more guilty of this selective breeding than anyone". Richard Nisbett in his hardcore environmentalist book on intelligence says there is no doubt that the upper classes are somewhat genetically smarter than the lower ones.

The left and right have started to converge on the basic facts of this subject and it is no longer accurate to treat it as a pet obsession of right wing eugenicists (Murray wants to abolish the SAT and advocates Universal Basic Income), or as very specifically tied to The Bell Curve. Between Lemann, deBoer, Harden and Nisbett there are enough ready to use recent sources. Sesquivalent (talk) 21:16, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

This is about a specific title. It is not the place to discuss or defend the underlying concept. Further, your editorializing on the supposed acceptance of some version of this topic has no bearing on the usage of the phrase in reliable sources. If sources about this perspective consistently use the phrase "cognitive elite" outside of discussions about the Bell Curve, we could evaluate those sources on their own merits. The sources you have indirectly suggested for this change are not usable to overturn the broader consensus here, because they do not represent the issue in a coherent or consistent way regarding the phrase "cognitive elite". Some pop-sci books misrepresent complex questions in order to pretend they have been answered, and their overconfidence is not a virtue. This problem is as old as science itself, but it has no bearing on this specific Wikipedia issues. To put it another way, this is especially weak for overturning Wikipedia's extremely well-established consensus on this strain of pseudoscience. Grayfell (talk) 23:19, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

factually inaccurate representation of book in article

In describing the inaccuracies of TBC's press coverage, the article mirrors them. It reads [emphasis mine throughout]:

• "The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are strictly genetic, when in fact they attributed IQ differences to both genes and the environment."

It goes on to quote the portion of the book in question:

• "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved"
• "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences."

In short: the authors stated that it's unresolved whether genes contribute anything at all the to racial IQ gaps, but that they personally believe that it's likely they contribute at least something. To paraphrase that as "they attributed IQ differences to both genes and the environment" is flatly untrue—one cannot be said to have "attributed X to Y" while one simultaneously states Y may have had no effect at all on X.

For that reason, I edited the article to say: "...when in fact they only claimed there was a likelihood that IQ differences were affected by both genes and the environment." That seemed to me the fairest encapsulation—the quote speaks for the rest. Or one can get rid of the Wikivoice altogether, and simply include the quotes as rebuttal to the false claims.

My edit was reverted, ostensibly because "the earlier wording was clearer and more accurate, as the reader can judge from the direct quotation".

I have no idea what the second clause means ("as the reader can judge")—but it's in no way "more accurate" to claim the authors attributed race differences in IQ to genes when they stated in clear English that it's unknown whether genes have contributed anything at all to those differences. There is no excuse for factually incorrect information in an article, and the fact that "the reader can judge for themself" based on a direct quotation is no defense of inaccuracy and false statements in Wikivoice. The article says something that is demonstrably untrue—ironically enough, in a section that attempts to describe all the untrue statements made about the article subject.

Barring some convincing explanation of how it's "more accurate" to say the authors "attributed differences to genes"—when in fact they flatly stated that it was unresolved whether genes contributed anything to those differences—I will undo the reversion. Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 05:37, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

There is possibly some over reliance on Murray's post at AEI in that section, that can be shortened, but if we are quoting that, his final point has also been made by several third parties (including ideological opponents) and is more important than many of the back and forth details that do get space: "in all the critiques of The Bell Curve in particular and my work more generally, no one ever accompanies their charges with direct quotes of what I’ve actually said". Three such parties that come to mind are Sam Harris in his podcast a few years ago, one of Vox's own reporters commenting on Vox's hit piece on Murray and Harris (the article by Harden, Nisbett and Turkheimer cited in multiple Wikipedia pages) that resulted from that, and one of the responses that Harden et al quoted in their followup piece that was forced by this observation, i.e., that their article attacking Murray did not include a single quotation of his own words from either the podcast or the book.

I agree, though, that the position of Murray and Herrnstein in the book should not be presented as being more definite than it was, and the simplest way to do that is to quote them in full and let their statements speak for themselves. Sesquivalent (talk) 06:40, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the phrase altogether, along with the unsourced preceding clause The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are strictly genetic.... The entire section on Race and Intelligence, however, remains a train-wreck of false balance. More work to be done. Generalrelative (talk) 06:48, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Update: I've made a bit of progress shoveling out the manure but the section's still a mess. Generalrelative (talk) 07:03, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The Bob Herbert quote should not be the finale of the article. The Gardner quote that had been in that position until today was fair, accurate and worked very well as a coda to the article. Herbert's statement is the single most negative thing published about the book in any major venue, and it belongs to the first wave of enraged but superficial denunciations. This article gives space to Nicholas Lemann's explanation of why the first responses were of that nature (advance copies of the book had not been sent out, and the regression analyses were new and undigested for another year) whereas Gardner's piece is a long and relatively academic review that engages with the content and clearly demonstrates that he had read the book in detail (he claims to have reread it as well). Besides all this, putting the Herbert quote at the end reads like a blatant attempt to end the article with a dramatically worded accusation tying the book to the word "nigger" as a theatrical climax ending. Sesquivalent (talk) 07:54, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

• I think Bob Herbert's quote should be excised altogether: it's a bombastic and unserious critique and undeserving of inclusion. In any case, concluding with it trivializes the serious arguments.
• I see there was a discussion above about surveys by Rindermann, et al. I do think they merit inclusion—it's a bit churlish to claim they aren't representative of "experts" in the field of intelligence while quoting the opinions of paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, linguist Noam Chomsky, et al. Ditto for the complaints that TBC wasn't peer-reviewed—it wasn't a journal article, and the vast majority of its criticism referenced here wasn't peer-reviewed, either. I don't really see how the Pioneer Fund stuff adds anything, either—it's not a critique of the book's substance. What's wrong with sticking to substantive critiques?
• Part of the article acknowledged the very real racial gaps in IQ: "parts of the book which dealt with racial group differences on IQ". Yet elsewhere the article is squeamish: in the lead (" purported connections between race and intelligence") and later ("statistical data making the assertion that blacks were, on average, less intelligent than whites"). The fact is that, as measured by IQ, blacks are on average less intelligent than whites—so while it's good to clarify that "intelligence" in TBC is measured by IQ, using weasel-words like "purported" and "assertion" serves no purpose other than editorializing in Wikivoice.

Thanks for everyone's input! Elle Kpyros (talk) 04:57, 15 November 2021 (UTC)