Clashes between science and society are not new, of course scientific knowledge often brings with it the threat of destroying cherished hopes and values. At times, indeed, it seems as though these critics wish to fend off the very evidence that they had long demanded.įrom the perspective of experts on intelligence, the controversy over the 1994 book The Bell Curve, although it echoed like a thunderclap in public discourse, was but the latest of the convulsions that have seized the public when certain facts and theories about intelligence have come to light. If anything, it has become more vocal, with critics dismissing even the ABC’s of the field as outmoded ideology. Yet the public controversy over intelligence seems little changed since Lippmann’s day. Their conclusion is that differences in general intelligence are real, stubborn, and important. As befits a vibrant, interdisciplinary endeavor, the field’s scientists scarcely agree on all matters, but they have forged a consensus on certain fundamental facts-on the ABC’s, so to speak. Representing disciplines from genetics to sociology, these scientists have produced a vast body of evidence about why people differ in intelligence, how durable those differences are, and what they mean for us as individuals and as a society. The first public broadside against the new field of intelligence research was struck in 1922 by the journalist Walter Lippmann, who criticized the swelling cadre of IQ-test enthusiasts for “pretentious” claims, “abuse of scientific method,” and a “New Snobbery.” 1 In intervening decades, thousands of scientists have entered the field, some bent on testing the claims that they initially thought dubious. For that we will pay a high price, says Gottfredson, and the highest will be paid by those who can ill afford it-our least able citizens. In practical life, from school to work to public policy, the response has been to pretend that significant, lifelong differences in general intelligence simply do not exist. The reaction of the media, Gottfredson argues, has been a “spasm of denial,” a persistent misrepresentation of intelligence research to the public. In our time, writes Linda Gottfredson, co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society, this discipline has established certain fundamental facts about the nature and measurement of intelligence and its impact on our “life chances.” The problem is that these facts, well accepted by intelligence researchers, clash-or are seen to clash-with our era’s interpretation of democratic values. Intelligence research, a pioneering field of modern neuroscience, began with Charles Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, and has drawn on the work of psychologists, neurologists, geneticists, and educators for more than a century. But as we move into a world where intelligence may be the individual’s most necessary resource-necessary not only to succeed but to cope at all-the persistent, major differences among us in sheer brainpower, which we call “IQ,” may stand in the way of today’s dream of greater social equality. One of the mantras of American schools is that students are being prepared for “full participation in a more complex world” of technology, multiple health care options, rapid-fire communications, and public policy debates.
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