Vol 457|12 February 2009
COMMENTARY
Should scientists study race and IQ?
In the first of two opposing commentaries, Steven Rose argues that studies investigating possible links
between race, gender and intelligence do no good. In the second, Stephen Ceci and Wendy M. Williams argue
that such research is both morally defensible and important for the pursuit of truth.
NO: Science and society do not benefit
re there some areas of poten-
A tial knowledge that scientists
should not seek out? Or, if they
do, should they keep the knowledge
secret, hidden from the hoi polloi?
Certainly Francis Bacon, that great
theorist of the birth of modern science,
thought so. For with knowledge comes power
— potentially dangerous power. In his utopian
novel The New Atlantis, scholars determined
which of their findings were too dangerous to
be shared. Modern governments, obsessed with
biosecurity, make similar decisions about what
can be researched, how, and in what way dis-
seminated. Private companies bind researchers
with non-disclosure and confidentiality agree-
ments. Genetic tests for disorders that have no
treatment, such as late-stage Alzheimer’s, are
often not offered for ethical reasons. As Steven
Shapin’s book The Scientific Life documents,
the idea of free, untrammelled and publicly-
disseminated research, if it ever corresponded
to reality, looks distinctly unrealistic today.
To meet the canons of scientific enquiry a
research project must meet two criteria: first,
are the questions that it asks well-founded?
Research based on the assumption that
burning coal releases phlogiston fails this
test. And second, are they answerable with
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the theoretical and technical tools
available? As the eminent immunolo-
gist Peter Medawar pointed out, sci-
ence is the art of the soluble. Further,
given that our society already accepts
a number of restrictions to the pursuit
of knowledge, it is sensible to require
that funded research also addresses questions
that either contribute to basic scientific under-
standing, offer new beneficial technological
prospects, or aid sound public policy-making.
These criteria are, of course, those used by both
public and private funding bodies.
So what should we make of the century-
old but regularly-recycled call for research
aimed at discovering whether there are group
differences in intelligence?
These days the ‘groups’ under consideration
are ‘race’ and ‘gender’. But it has not always
been so. A hundred and fifty years ago, when
Darwin published The Descent of Man, and
Selection in Relation to Sex, he regarded it as
so self-evident that white Anglo-Saxon upper-
class males were the most intelligent as not to
need evidence. Half a century ago, at least in
Britain, class was the more relevant grouping,
leading to eugenic concerns that the genetically
inferior workers were outbreeding their
superiors. The issue of race and intelligence
© 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
became prominent in the United States in the
P.-A. PETTERSSON/GETTY IMAGES
late 1960s, perhaps in response to the civil-
rights movement. Arthur Jensen’s How Much
Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?
(A. R. Jensen Harvard Educ. Rev. 39, 1–123;
1969) argued that the deficit in black IQ was too
great to be explained by deprivation and must
be genetic. Similarly, the sex/gender question,
naturalized through most of western scientific
history, was thrust into the public domain as
part of a backlash against emergent feminism
in the 1970s by publications such as The Inevi-
tability of Patriarchy by Steven Goldberg, which
argued that men, by grace of their physiology,
were ‘naturally’ more successful than women at
whatever society judged to represent success.
The categories judged relevant to the study of
group differences are clearly unstable, depend-
ent on social, cultural and political context. No
one, to my knowledge, is arguing for research
on group differences in intelligence between
north and south Welsh (although there are well-
established average genetic differences between
people living in the two regions). This calls into
question the motivation behind looking for such
specific group differences in intelligence, sheds
doubt on whether such research is well-founded,
and begs whether answers could possibly be put
to good use. As we shall see, a more thorough
 NATURE|Vol 457|12 February 2009 DARWIN 200 OPINION

look at the field will prove that it fails all three of category. Among geneticists interested in The debate
my criteria for justifiable science. differences in gene frequencies between popu- In this Commentary package, two parties
There is a difficulty in the first instance of lations, there is increasing consensus that the tackle the sensitive proposition that gender-
measuring ‘intelligence’. For around a century, word obscures more than it reveals, and should or race-linked differences in intelligence
this has been done with the IQ test, originally be replaced by the concept of biogeographic ought to be studied.
developed in France as a way of supplement- ancestry, which makes possible the study of Steven Rose, arguing against, is a
ing teachers’ assessments of their pupils. In subpopulations for relevant genetic and phe- neuroscientist and biologist, and a founding
the hands of later psychometricians, the tests notypic characteristics. There are some well- member of the British Society for Social
became increasingly reified, and seemingly recognized, meaningful genetic differences Responsibility in Science. His books include
made more scientific by the development of between groups, for instance between Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against
the term ‘g’ to encapsulate ‘crystallized’ or Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in terms
A Evolutionary Psychology (2000), co-edited
‘general intelligence’. of their risk to Tay–Sachs disease,
o with the sociologist Hilary Rose. Stephen
However, except to a small band of dedicated and the study of such differences Ceci and Wendy M. Williams argue for the
psychometricians, it seems obvi- may reveal important clues with proposition. Ceci, who studies the development
ous that to try to capture the “It’s just respect, for instance, to disease of intelligence and memory, and Williams, who
many forms of socially expressed propensity. But such groups are studies educational and societal implications of
intelligent behaviour in a single ideologyy not normally considered socially intelligence, are co-authors of The Mathematics
coefficient — and to rank an entire masquerading distinct races for the purposes of of Sex: How Biology and Society Conspire to
population in a linear mode, like as science.” studies of group differences in intel- Limit Talented Women and Girls (2009).
soldiers on parade lined up by ligence. Broad divisions between Neither party saw the other’s argument
height — excludes most richly intelligent ‘white’ or ‘Caucasian’ and ‘black’ or ‘Asian’, the before publication. They will have
human activities. Social intelligence, emotional groups generally discussed in the context of opportunity to respond to each other and to
intelligence, the intelligent hands of the crafts- the IQ debate, especially in the United States, continue the debate online at
man or the intelligent intuition of the scientist hide genetically important subpopulation http://tinyurl.com/askwhp, where we invite
all elude the ‘g’ straightjacket. differences within these groups. contributions from our readers. Nature
This is partly why James Watson’s ill-advised
The flexibility of IQ remark that he was “inherently gloomy about the the biological is expressed through the social
Group comparisons of IQ are even more prospect of Africa” because “all our social poli- and cultural, but that the social and cultural
problematic. Attempts have been made to make cies are based on the fact that their intelligence in turn shape the biological. One only has to
‘culture-fair’ or ‘culture-free’ tests, as if such a is the same as ours — whereas all the testing note how the understanding of what it is to be
thing were possible, to allow comparisons of ‘g’ says not really” was recognized not merely as a man or a woman in Europe or North Amer-
between people from very different societies. inflammatory, but as scientifically unacceptable ica has shifted over the past century, to say
But IQ is clearly a flexible construct — as amply in terms of its lumping together of all Africa. nothing of how gender relations vary in other
demonstrated by decisions in the 1930s and ‘Gender’, that inherently biosocial con- cultures. Thus, although there are minor average
1940s in the United States and Britain to ‘adjust’ struct, presents even greater difficulties. In structural and biochemical variations between
test questions to equalize the scores of boys and the context of the present debate, the crucial Western men’s and women’s brains (such as the
girls, because in previous versions of the tests question is whether it is possible to identify volume of some nuclei and the distribution of
girls had scored higher. When Lev Vygotsky a biological — presumably genetic or neuro- hormone receptors), speculations on their
tested Russian peasants back in the 1930s, he developmental — cause to any difference in implications for how men and women may
found that answers that seemed logical to an the way men and women think and act. The think or behave lack any empirical basis.
urbanite were responded to quite differently, problem is that from the moment of birth, boys To conclude: the categories of intelligence,
but with parallel logic, by the peasants. and girls are treated differently, which shapes race and gender are not definable within the
As for ‘race’, the problem is whether it is a both their growing bodies and brains and how framework required for natural scientific
biologically, as opposed to socially, meaningful they are expected to behave. It is not just that research, failing my first criterion of being BETTMANN/CORBIS
PETRIFIED COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

Social and cultural influences have a huge impact on our definitions and measures of race, gender and intelligence.

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OPINION DARWIN 200 NATURE|Vol 457|12 February 2009

well-founded. They also fail the second
criterion of being answerable: we lack the
theoretical or technical tools to study them.
The standard approach of population
biologists to estimating the potential genetic
contribution to a trait is to make a heritability
estimate. Whatever the strengths and weak-
nesses of this measure within a population,
it is essentially just that: a within-population
measure, only valid for a given environment.
The nature of the equations means that if the
environment changes, the heritability esti-
mate changes too. Moreover, the measure
relates to a randomly interbreeding popula-
tion — useful for agricultural purposes such
as estimating optimal genotypes for crop
yields or milk production — but not for peo-
ple. Even if reliable correlations were found
between some intelligence test score and a
measure of brain physiology or activity held
by a specific group, such a correlation says
nothing about the direction of causation.
As for the third and final criterion, if attempts
to answer these group-difference questions are
fraught with scientific fallacies, might there
nonetheless be some public-policy implications
making investigation worthwhile? The answer
sometimes advanced is that if there were such
differences, and their causes were understood,
the less well-endowed groups could be ‘compen-
sated’ by some form of differentiated education.
But in practice, claims that there are differences
in intelligence between blacks and whites, or
men and women, have always been used to
justify a social hierarchy in which white males
continue to occupy the premier positions
(whether in the economy in general or natural
science in particular). Using pseudoscience,
based on concepts as ill-founded as was phlogis-
ton, to justify preordained conclusions should
not serve as the basis of sound policy-making.
In a society in which racism and sexism
were absent, the questions of whether whites
or men are more or less intelligent than blacks
or women would not merely be meaning-
less — they would not even be asked. The
problem is not that knowledge of such group
intelligence differences is too dangerous, but
rather that there is no valid knowledge to
be found in this area at all. It’s just ideology
masquerading as science. ■
Steven Rose is a neuroscientist and emeritus
professor at the Open University, UK.
e-mail: S.P.R.Rose@open.ac.uk

YES: The scientific truth must be pursued

he Soviet Union lost a generation of genetics without the incentive of disproving one’s critics. a lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK, took

T research to the politicization of science There is an emerging consensus about racial

when Trofim Lysenko, director of biol- and gender equality in genetic determinants
ogy under Joseph Stalin, parlayed his rejection of intelligence; most researchers, including
early retirement in the face of an ethical storm
that developed after he suggested in a student
newspaper that intelligence levels were related
of Mendelian genetics into a powerful political ourselves, agree that genes do not explain to ethnicity. The list goes on. Many have been
scientific movement. By the late 1920s, Lysenko between-group differences. But some issues dissuaded from even looking at the research
had denounced academics embracing Mende- remain unresolved, such as identification of topic for fear of condemnation.
lian genetics, which some said undermined mechanisms that bring genetic potential to The outcries against those who speak of
tenets of Soviet society. His efforts to extinguish fruition. Censuring debaters favouring genetic racial and gender gaps in IQ have become
‘harmful’ scientific ideas ruined opponents’ explanations of intelligence differences is not deafening, at times resembling Lysenkoism in
careers and delayed scientific progress. the answer to solving such mysteries. language if not in deed.
It is difficult to imagine this situation There is a long history to both the study and
repeating today, when rival views feed the sci- the vilification of group differences in intel- Judged too fast?
entific process, and inquiry and debate trump ligence. In the late 1800s, Francis Galton, the Consider two recent high-profile cases. In 2005,
orthodoxy. Yet the spectre of Lysenkoism father of eugenics, was acclaimed and was later Harvard’s then-president Lawrence Summers
lurks in current scientific discourse on gen- knighted
g for his work. Cesare Lom- suggested gender differences in intrinsic ability
der, race and intelligence. Claims that sex- orr broso,
bros the scientist who claimed that as one cause of the dearth of women in the top
race-based IQ gaps are partly genetic can n criminality
crim was inherited and evi- tier of science, rather than espousing the pop-
offend entire groups, who feel that such workk dent in physical features, was also ular view that women’s under-representation
feeds hatred and discrimina- respected during his lifetime. results from biased hiring, discriminatory
tion. Pressure from professional “The Both were posthumously reviled tenure practices and negative stereotypes.
organizations and university by some, when their thinking Summers’s insinuation of biologically-based
administrators can result in boy-
dominant ant became associated with Hitler’s sex differences in cognitive ability was radio-
cotting such research, and even side goes policies, mandatory sterilization active, setting off debates on campuses and
in ending scientific careers. unchallenged, and restrictive immigration policies. outpourings of editorials. Despite apologizing
But hatred and discrimination
do not result from allowing sci-
forestalling the leyNobel prizewinner William Shock-
became a subject of controversy
for reckless language — which his supporters
felt research supported — he later resigned.
entists to publish their findings, evolution of in the 1970s, after his work turned James Watson is the most illustrious scholar
nor does censuring it stamp out crucial ideas.” to racial differences in intelligence. to have his career ended for reckless language.
hatred. Pernicious folk-theories In recent decades, the writings, Watson’s downfall was his assertion that “all our
of racial and gender inferiority predated sci- statements and teachings of Arthur Jensen, social policies are based on the fact that [African]
entific studies claiming genetic bases of racial Michael Levin and John Philippe Rushton, also intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the
differences in intelligence. Even if one does not on racial differences in intelligence, have met testing says not really”. Although he hoped every-
support such work in the interests of free speech, variously with acclaim, outcries and demands body was equal, “people who have to deal with
it should be seen as supporting the scientific for job termination. So have writings of Richard black employees find this is not true”. Watson
process of debate. Important scientific progress Herrnstein and Charles Murray on the differen- instantly plunged from A-list Nobelist to out-
on these topics would never have been made tial distribution of IQ by race. And Frank Ellis, cast, and was suspended from his chancellorship
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