A lot of social scientists are so scandalised by my proposals that they think I must be a Fascist,' Lykken himself has complained. Racists, Nazis, Communists and guilty parents form an uncanny and unholy alliance. Wright notes that to give in to these views, to cease to struggle to control our environment, is to yield to 'a kind of social and political nihilism which says that there is very little we can do to change individual lives. This view is unjustifiably fatalist, assuming, for instance, that a person with low IQ is ineducable. But statistics about people cannot be interpreted or applied like statistics about potatoes.
Twin studies attempt to quantify the non-quantifiable aspects of human nature.
Few of us would deny that a child is more likely to have a rough ride through life if she is born of a mother addicted to crack. But if even one such child thrives, all bets are off. Until the statistics are 100 per cent, each individual has the right to hope that she will be the exception, but an exception is a human phenomenon that is steamrollered by the biogenetic argument. Twin studies, and related genetic projects like The Bell Curve , have largely been funded by the Pioneer Foundation, whose racist agenda was convincingly exposed by Charles Lane. Because such an argument lacks the sharp edge that is the weapon of ideology.