Intelligence, Race, And Genetics: Conversations With Arthur R. Jensen
Arthur R. Jensen is the psychologist who set off an enduring controversy with his 1969 article in the Harvard Educational Review holding that an individual's IQ is largely attributed to heredity, including racial heritage, and that efforts to boost IQ educationally do not achieve much. Miele, senior editor of Skeptic magazine, set out to "skeptically cross-examine" Jensen on his views. The questions and answers traveled by e-mail, but they read like a conversation. Jensen, now professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, holds that the scientific evidence is stronger now than it was in 1969 that IQ is highly genetic, that race is a biological reality rather than a social construct, and that the cause of the 15-point average IQ difference between blacks and whites in the U.S. is partly genetic. Miele hopes the exchange will enable the reader "to decide for yourself whether Jensenism represents one man's search for provisional, not metaphysical, truth through the continuous and vigorous application of the methods of science ...or a dangerous diversion back down a blind alley of old and disproven ideas, deceptively dressed up in modern scientific jargon."Editors of Scientific American