Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve (Statistics for Social Science and Public Policy) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0387949860 ISBN 13: 9780387949864

Publisher: Copernicus, 1997

Synopsis

This is author-approved bcc. If it is too long, delete the last sentence in each of the biographies. THE BELL CURVE by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, a best selling book published in 1994, set off a hailstorm of controversy about the relationships among IQ, genetics, and various social outcomes, including welfare dependency, crime, and earnings. Much of the public reaction to the book was polemical and did not focus on the details of the science and in particular on the validity of the statistical arguments that underlie the books's conclusions. A detailed understanding of the arguments in THE BELL CURVE requires knowledge about (i) statistical models for genetic heritability, (ii) factor analysis, especially as it has been applied to the analysis of IQ tests, (iii) logistic regression and multiple regression analyses,and (iv) causal modelling and alternative statistical frameworks for making inference from longitudinal data. In this volume a group of statisticians and social scientists have assembled a scientific response to THE BELL CURVE. The sixteen chapters begin by presenting an overview of the scientific and statistical issues and summarize the material in Herrnstein and Murray's book. Then separate chapters by various experts deal with more focused issues, including reanalyses of data relied upon by the authors of THE BELL CURVE. The final chapters consider some of the implications of the work described in the book for American public policy and scientific research. BERNIE DEVLIN is Program Director of the Computational Genetics Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He serves on

About this title

From the Author

The relationship between cognitive ability and wages
In chapter 8 of Intelligence, Genes, and Success, my coauthors and I test the claims about cognitive ability and wages made by the authors of The Bell Curve. We show that measured cognitive ability is correlated with wages but explains little of the variance in wages across individuals and time. We also present evidence that cognitive ability is unequally rewarded in the labor market for people of different ethnicity and gender, which is inconsistent with the claim of The Bell Curve that the U.S. labor market is meritocratic.

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Synopsis

A scientific response to "The Bell Curve" which caused controversy upon its publication in 1994. This work argues that much of the public response was polemic and failed to analyze the details of the science and validity of the statistical arguments underlying the book's conclusions.

Edition details

• Publisher: Copernicus
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0387949860
• ISBN 13: 9780387949864
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376
• Editor: Devlin Bernie, Fienberg Stephen E., Resnick Daniel P., Roeder Kathryn