Normally I'm glad to have a good debate about whether Charles Murray is racist, but the point I'm trying to make here is that whether he is or not is irrelevant.
Here we are talking about class differences. That's the primary subject of The Bell Curve (indeed he only devotes a scant few pages to the subject of race) and the only thing relevant to this discussion. Even if he were racist, them implication that he would have nothing important to say on matters of class is absurd.
> just look at the ratio of the Wikipedia articles for each book which is devoted to criticism and controversies.
Wikipedia is a great source finding out that things exist and their connections to other things, but there is no reason to believe it is objective with regard to politically charged issues.
That is not to say that the criticisms are wholly without merit, but few are actually technical critiques of the data or analysis.
Which is actually kind of sad, because while the technical critiques may be good (I haven't the time yet to check) the non-technical critiques I've studied are pretty poor.
> If both books were criticized and surrounded in controversies, one was definitely worse then the other.
The counter argument to that is that going against the shibboleths of our modern era is going to get you more flak, regardless of whether you are right or not.
This does not mean that Murray is correct because he is going against the grain and gets a lot of negative attention. Simply that all of the negative attention tells you a lot less than you might otherwise hope.
Here we are talking about class differences. That's the primary subject of The Bell Curve (indeed he only devotes a scant few pages to the subject of race) and the only thing relevant to this discussion. Even if he were racist, them implication that he would have nothing important to say on matters of class is absurd.
> just look at the ratio of the Wikipedia articles for each book which is devoted to criticism and controversies.
Wikipedia is a great source finding out that things exist and their connections to other things, but there is no reason to believe it is objective with regard to politically charged issues.
That is not to say that the criticisms are wholly without merit, but few are actually technical critiques of the data or analysis.
Which is actually kind of sad, because while the technical critiques may be good (I haven't the time yet to check) the non-technical critiques I've studied are pretty poor.
> If both books were criticized and surrounded in controversies, one was definitely worse then the other.
The counter argument to that is that going against the shibboleths of our modern era is going to get you more flak, regardless of whether you are right or not.
This does not mean that Murray is correct because he is going against the grain and gets a lot of negative attention. Simply that all of the negative attention tells you a lot less than you might otherwise hope.