Picture: IsaacMao, Flickr (CC)
Jean Philippe Rushton, one of recent history’s most controversial, even hated, ‘scientists’ has died, leaving behind a cesspool of overly-simplistic theories in the field of race and intelligence. His research ignored the complexities of genetic variance, mutation and of course the social and environmental factors that indeed change genes in a lifetime, and the myriad of factors affecting IQ testing from education and income to the various testing methods themselves. His contrived conclusions harken back to the days of phrenology, eugenics and social Darwinism.
As moral philosopher James Flynn points out, mere inheritance would not explain why study replications get different results, why we’re all getting smarter so much faster today, how blacks could be so rapidly ‘catching up’, or how women seem to have even surpassed men by some testing measures. And even if intelligence were directly linked to the genes, and testing methods were perfect, researchers like Chris Chabris and David Laibson are finding more and more that “social science traits are complex.… Read the rest
