31 MAY 2003, Page 29

'Fascist' IQ tests

From Fiona Pitt-Kethley Sir: Sean Thomas's article ('Are whites cleverer than blacks?', 24 May) accepts somewhat blindly The Bell Curve's claims about race and IQ. Most of the 'data' that Murray and Herrnstein relied on in that book was paid for by the Pioneer Fund, described by the Sunday Telegraph (3 December 1989) as a 'neo-Nazi organisation closely integrated with the far right in American politics'. The tests considered were not IQ ones as we know them, but achievement tests — something rather more subjective, in other words.

Fiona Pitt -Kethlev Orihuela Costa, Spain