Monday, April 17, 2017

Murray's Numbers

Charles Murray's views are back in the news because of an experiment run on professors showing that his views are actually rather centrist. We have seen this ebb and flow over the decades.  I am familiar with arguments criticising Murray because IQ is not what he thinks it is, or complaints about his methodology.  There are also the more suspect arguments that such things should not be studied because of their possible consequences, or that evil and racist people in the past have subscribed to versions of his idea.

Does anyone know of a criticism of Murray that stems from the claim "I have better numbers?"

3 comments:

  1. In The Bell Curve Wars one of the contributors (Nisbett) claimed to have some -- not necessarily better numbers, but numbers he thought they'd left out. That's not my field, though, and I can't readily evaluate the claim. You'd think if it was straightforward there'd be more refutation and fewer personal attacks.

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  2. I should have remembered that. You wrote about it a month ago. Or perhaps I just didn't make the short leap from what you wrote.

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  3. I'll bet a lot of people who participated in this project were deeply embarrassed by the results...though likely not enough to change their minds.

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