Race and intelligence (Controversies)

Utility of research
Theories of race and intelligence have been challenged on grounds of their utility. Critics want to know what purpose such research could serve and why it has been an intense an area of focus for a few researchers. Some defend the research, saying it has egalitarian aims or that it is pure science, others say that the true motivation for the research is the same as that of the eugenics movement and other forms of scientific racism. Even supporters of intelligence research have described such research as analogous to "working with dynamite" or "dangerous play" in sports.

As to whether research in this area is desirable, John C. Loehlin wrote in 1992, "Research on racial differences in intelligence is desirable if the research is appropriately motivated, honestly done, and adequately communicated." [emphasis original] Defenders of the research suggest that both scientific curiosity and a desire to draw benefits from the research are appropriate motivations. Researchers such as Richard Lynn have suggested that conclusions from the research can help make political decisions, such as the type of educational opportunities and expectations of achievement policy makers should have for people of different races. Researchers such as Charles Murray have used their conclusions to criticize social programs based on racial equality that fail in Murray's eyes to recognize the realities of racial differences.

Sociologist and demographer Reanne Frank says that some race and intelligence research has been abused "The most malignant are the "true believers," who subscribe to the typological distinctions that imply hierarchical rankings of worth across different races. Although this group remains small, the members' work is often widely publicized and well known (e.g., Herrnstein and Murray 1994; Rushton 1991)"

Potential for bias
Proponents of partly-genetic explanations of race/IQ correlation have often been criticized because much of their work is funded by the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund has been characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

Conversely, supporters of race and intelligence research have accused other scientists of suppressing scientific debate for political purposes. They claim harassment and interference with the work or funding of partly-genetic proponents.

The Pioneer Fund
Many critics of the genetic hypothesis have criticized the source of much of the funding for researchers supporting this hypothesis, the Pioneer Fund.

Many of the researchers supporting the genetic explanation of the racial IQ disparity, like the IQ researcher and current head of the fund J. Philippe Rushton, have received grants of varying sizes from the Pioneer Fund. In accord with the tax regulations governing nonprofit corporations, Pioneer does not fund individuals; under the law only other nonprofit organizations are appropriate grantees. As a consequence, many of the fund's awards go not to the researchers themselves but to the universities that employ them, a standard procedure for supporting work by academically based scientists. However, in addition to these awards to the universities where its grantees are based, Pioneer has also made a number of grants to other nonprofit organizations. William H. Tucker suggests that they are essentially dummy corporations created solely to channel Pioneer's resources directly to a particular academic recipient and that this is "a mechanism apparently designed to circumvent the institution where the researcher is employed".

Accusations of "political correctness"
It is asserted by some that misguided political correctness has led to large-scale denial of recent developments in the human sciences, including research regard group differences in cognitive ability. Steven Pinker argues a fear of the implications of the science of human nature ("mind, brain, genes, and evolution") has led to the perception that these are dangerous ideas. Pinker states regarding recent discussions regarding group differences:

"Whether or not these hypotheses hold up ... proponents of ethnic and racial differences in the past have been targets of censorship, violence, and comparisons to Nazis. Large swaths of the intellectual landscape have been reengineered to try to rule these hypotheses out a priori (race does not exist, intelligence does not exist, the mind is a blank slate inscribed by parents). The underlying fear, that reports of group differences will fuel bigotry, is not, of course, groundless."

Gottfredson accuses others of maintaining a "double standard" for research that finds unpopular results and a "stiff professional tax on scholars whose work on race or intelligence discomfits reviewers for non-scientific reasons they need not articulate" Gottfredson further argues that high quality of work is no protection from this bias, citing the example of Arthur Jensen as both one of the most eminent and one of the most vilified psychologists, hence the word Jensenism.

Accusations of racism
A racist motivation is frequently ascribed to some researchers who work on questions of race and intelligence. Both historical and contemporary researchers have been described as racists, and some critics hold that it is racist to assert that there are cognitive or behavioral differences between ethnic groups. For example, psychologist Jerry Hirsch has claimed that Arthur Jensen has "avowed goals" that were "as heinously barbaric as were Hitler's and the anti-abolitionists"

Others have raised serious concerns about the Pioneer Fund, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center "has funded most American and British race scientists, including a large number cited in The Bell Curve" The Pioneer fund has been criticized for having a eugenic and racist political agenda, and history tied to Nazi-sympathizers. Pioneer Fund grantees include J. Phillipe Rushton (current head of the orgnization), Arthur Jensen, Linda Gottfredson, Richard Lynn, Hans Eysenck, Thomas Bouchard, David Lykken, Henry Garrett, William Shockley, Philip Vernon, and Audrey Shuey. Critics of the fund include the SPLC, IQ critic William H. Tucker, and historian Barry Mehler and his Institute for the Study of Academic Racism. The Pioneer fund has been characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being a "hate group," using the definition "attack[ing] or malign[ing] an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics". According to Keith Booker, president of the Wilmington Delaware chapter of the NAACP, the Pioneer Fund "supports only research that tends to come out with results that further the division between races... by justifying the superiority of one race and the inferiority of another... this research is being done in the name of white supremacy." Tucker has argued that some prominent researchers advancing genetic explanations have also opposed school integration. Prominent critic Ulric Neisser, who was the chairman of the APA's 1995 task force on intelligence research regards the fund as helping "change the face of social science" and as being "a weak plus".

Researchers who accept grants from the Pioneer Fund have been subject to criticism regarding bias. Anti-racist Searchlight Magazine notes Pioneer head J. Phillipe Rushton has given a speech at an American Renaissance meeting that Searchlight describes as a "veritable 'who’s who' of American white supremacy." In the early 1990s, the University of Delaware imposed a "prohibition on the receipt of funding (by a faculty member) from the Pioneer Fund, amidst accusations that the Fund had a "history of supporting racism, anti-semitism and other discriminatory practices". Grantee Linda Gottfredson fought a two-year battle with the university before it rescinded its prohibition, arguing that a ban on funding restricted academic freedom. The Scientist 1992 Although there is no direct evidence that the Pioneer Fund has biased the research one critic notes:

"The real question is not did the Pioneer Fund make you alter your scientific findings but why did the Pioneer Fund fund you? ... It's not so much a question of whether or not they influence an individual scientist but rather the scientists they choose to fund in the first place."

Robert A. Gordon, criticized for accepting grants from the Pioneer Fund, replied to media criticisms of grant-recipients: "Politically correct disinformation about science appears to spread like wildfire among literary intellectuals and other nonspecialists, who have few disciplinary constraints on what they say about science and about particular scientists and on what they allow themselves to believe."

Most of the proponents of the genetic hypothesis implicitly or explicitly assume that U.S. Blacks are both genetically inferior and environmentally inferior to U.S. Whites, and consider any explanations to account for IQ gaps to be in direct competition with each other. Ned Block wrote in the The Boston Review regarding the authors of The Bell Curve:

"In this passage, Herrnstein and Murray are 'resolutely agnostic' about whether bad environment or genetic endowment is more responsible for the lower IQs of Blacks. But they indicate no agnosticism at all about whether part of the IQ difference between Blacks and Whites is genetic; and given their way of thinking about the matter, this means that they are not at all agnostic about some Black genetic inferiority."

Threats and harassment
Researchers who propose that differences in average intelligence are due to the genetics of race have been subject to threats and harassment. has summarized the history of harassment and violence against Arthur Jensen and others. "For a long time Jensen received death threats, needed body guards while on his campus or others, had his home and office phones routed through the police station, received his mail only after a bomb squad examined it, was physically threatened or assaulted dozens of times by protesters disrupting his talks in the United States and abroad, regularly found messages like 'Jensen Must Perish' and 'Kill Jensen' scrawled across his office door, and much more. Psychologists Richard Herrnstein and Hans Eysenck also had such experiences during the 1970s for defying right thinking about intelligence—Eysenck, for example, being physically assaulted by protesters during a public lecture at the London School of Economics."

Policy implications

 * See also: Intelligence and public policy

Public policy implications of IQ and race research are one of the greatest sources of controversy surrounding this issue. Regardless of the source of the gap, most educators agree that it must be addressed. They often advocate equitable funding for education.

Some proponents of a genetic interpretation of the IQ gap, such as and, have sometimes argued that their interpretation does not in itself demand any particular policy response: while a conservative/libertarian commentator For example, the policy recommendations of The Bell Curve were denounced by many. wrote: "We can imagine no recommendation for using the government to manipulate fertility that does not have dangers. But this highlights the problem: The United States already has policies that inadvertently social-engineer who has babies, and it is encouraging the wrong women. If the United States did as much to encourage high-IQ women to have babies as it now does to encourage low-IQ women, it would rightly be described as engaging in aggressive manipulation of fertility. The technically precise description of America's fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended. (p. 548)"

Two year later the 1996 U.S. welfare reform substantially cut these programs. In a discussion of the future political outcomes of an intellectually stratified society, they stated that they: "fear that a new kind of conservatism is becoming the dominant ideology of the affluent - not in the social tradition of an Edmund Burke or in the economic tradition of an Adam Smith but ’conservatism’ along Latin American lines, where to be conservative has often meant doing whatever is necessary to preserve the mansions on the hills from the menace of the slums below. (p. 518)"Moreover, they fear that an increasing welfare will create a "custodial state": "a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation of some substantial minority of the nation’s population. They also predict increasing totalitarianism: It is difficult to imagine the United States preserving its heritage of individualism, equal rights before the law, free people running their own lives, once it is accepted that a significant part of the population must be made permanent wards of the states. (p. 526)" may feel the results justify, for example, reductions in affirmative action, a liberal commentator may argue from a Rawlsian point of view (that genetic advantages are undeserved and unjust) for substantial affirmative action. Since all races have representatives at all levels of the IQ curve, this means any policy based on low IQ affects members of all races.

According to the "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" statement published in Intelligence in 1997:

"The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They can, however, help us estimate the likely success and side-effects of pursuing those goals via different means."

While not specifically race-related, policies focused on geographical regions or nations may have disproportionate influences on certain racial groups and on cognitive development. Differences in health care, nutrition, regulation of environmental toxins, and geographic distribution of diseases and control strategies between the developing world and developed nations have all been subjects of policies or policy recommendations (see health and nutrition policies relating to intelligence).

Finally, germinal choice technology may one day be able to select or change directly alleles found to influence intelligence or racially identifying traits (such as skin color; see gene SLC24A5), making them susceptible to biotechnological intervention.

Interpretations of measured group IQ differences

 * See also: Practical importance of IQ

Given the observed differences in IQ scores between certain groups, a great deal of debate revolves around the significance of these observations. Some believe that these differences indicate a natural genetic hierarchy of races, with East Asians being the most genetically superior, followed whites with Blacks at the lower end, and suggest that attempts to close the gaps are doomed to fail. Others believe that these differences are direct evidence of the social oppression of certain minority groups.