The Fulford File, By James Fulford | Richard Lynn And the People Who Don’t Want To Know
05/21/2009
Professor Richard Lynn, whose Race Differences, Immigration, And The Twilight of the European Peoples we ran on May 20, is a psychologist specializing in intelligence who has made studies of the differences in average IQ between different races and nations.
Scientists like Lynn come in for a lot of abuse. Here’s a recent depressing example — Megan McArdle is an econoblogger at the Atlantic Monthly. She has some interesting and valuable ideas about economics, in which she is trained, but is extremely squishy, not to say pious, on racial issues, about which she knows very little. In a recent post, The Society for Ethical Data, she linked hypothetical research proving that torture works with research showing differences in average racial IQs:
"So what we get in practice on a lot of tough questions is that the people who are willing or able to do objective research on a question bow out, leaving the people who are only interested in finding (or publishing) one of two possible answers. The uncomfortable results don’t get discovered … by anyone credible.
"The few conversations I've had about the Bell Curve with professionals who work in cognitive sciences indicate that this is why most of the work about race and IQ seems to be written by crypto-racists with an axe to grind. Given what we know about evolution and cognitive science, it is possible that there are real and heritable differences between genetically isolated groups (and just as possible that there aren’t.) What reputable scientist wants to risk being the guy who found credible evidence of a persistent, heritable, IQ gap? Moreover, given all the interesting questions there are to study, why on earth would you pick this one unless started out fairly determined to prove either that blacks are genetically handicapped, or that they aren’t?"
This is a pretty good example of "don’t-tell-me!-don’t-tell-me!-I-don’t-want-to-knowism" that all scientists who deal with this question have to face.
Leon Kass, one of George W. Bush’s pet bioethicists, was the same way. He thought The Bell Curve shouldn’t have been published, because it was violating taboos that he thought should be taboo. [Intelligence and the social scientist, Public Interest, Summer, 1995]
Then there’s Steve Sailer’s blog post Award-Winning Economist: I’m Ignorant About My Purported Specialty And I Intend To Stay That Way, about a man who replied to a question about Richard Lynn’s work by saying "I don’t know this stuff and don’t want to."
There are a large number of people who don’t want to know the answer to questions about IQ, and that’s why Richard Lynn’s work is important. IQ differentials are important for all kinds of public policy questions, involving crime, "disparate impact," immigration policy, education, and all kinds of other things.
Lynn has been studying IQ and publishing the results for years.
Here’s a partial list of the pieces that VDARE.com has done about his work:
- "Richard Lynn’s new book The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ and Inequality Worldwide builds on Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve. Its subject: whether the same type of racial hierarchy in IQ and socio-economic status that Herrnstein and Murray documented in the US is present in other parts of the world. Its answer: yes. "Richard Lynn’s The Global Bell Curve — The Explanation That Fits The Facts By Professor J. Philippe Rushton, June 16, 2008
- "Ever since the publication of Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen’s IQ and the Wealth of Nations more than four years ago, I've been beating the drums about how hugely important is their finding of a high correlation (r = 0.73) between average national per capita GDP and average national IQ.
"Yet this fascinating research has been almost completely spiked in the press. For example, you might think that The Economist would owe its $129-per-year subscribers some coverage of this research that has so many implications for international business and investing.
"Yet the only time The Economist has mentioned the book was in citing it as the source when the magazine fell for that bogus blue-states-have-higher-IQ-hoax!"
Lynn’s Race Differences in Intelligence: PC Won’t Make Them Go Away By Steve Sailer April 23, 2006 - "These findings in Lynn’s latest book have profound geopolitical significance. They imply it may simply not be possible to transmit Western-style democratic and economic systems to the populations of Latin America and Moslem North Africa and the Middle East, let alone sub-Saharan Africa. They mean that the world’s long-term problems will stem from its populations' capabilities — much deeper and more intractable than any "Clash-style competition between different political concepts.
"The implications for immigration are obvious: it can have fundamental, and permanent, consequences."
Winters Are Good For Your Genes: Lynn Book Finds World Average IQ 90, Declining From North To SouthBy Professor J. Philippe Rushton March 22, 2006
- I.Q.: Why Africa is Africa — and Haiti Haiti By J. Philippe Rushton March 10, 2004
- A Few Thoughts on IQ and the Wealth of Nations By Steve Sailer April 14, 2002
- The Intelligence Of Nations By J. Philippe Rushton February 27, 2002
The point of Richard Lynn’s Race Differences, Immigration, And The Twilight of the European Peoples is that IQ has consequences. The immigration of low IQ people into high IQ societies changes those societies for the worse. And what Steve Sailer has been writing about the Minority Mortgage Meltdown is that it was caused by assuming that the minority borrowers were smart enough to decide for themselves that they could pay back those mortgages. Certainly no lender could have put out an internal memo saying that perhaps they weren’t.
And the accusation that the only people who study this subject are "crypto-racists with an axe to grind", made by Ms. McArdle, above may be caused by the fact that scientists who study this always come up with the same depressing answer.
If you define as "racist" anyone who believes in differences in average in IQ, then any scientist who studies this will become a "racist", unless he practices a form of self hypnotism, like Stephen Jay Gould.( Steve Sailer:"The late Stephen Jay Gould advised his readers to repeat after him, "Human equality is a contingent fact of history." To help keep their faith up, he advised them to chant his slogan "five times before breakfast.")
Richard Lynn concluded Race Differences, Immigration, And The Twilight of the European Peoples: "This is the first time in the whole of human history that a people has voluntarily engineered in its own destruction".
In contrast, this is not the first time that a people has been urged (and compelled) to bow before a fanatical faith.
In this case, however, the two are clearly connected.