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A HEAD FOR FIGURES
In 1888, Francis Galton lined up a group of Cambridge undergraduates and mea- sured their heads. He found that a man's head size was correlated with his degree result — the bigger the head, the better the degree. His conclusion? People with big heads are more intelligent. Psychologists have elaborated on Gal- ton's result, with varying degrees of success and sophistication, ever since. This week, Professor Richard Lynn of Ulster Universi- ty published an article alleging to prove that women's failure to achieve as many first-class degrees as men was a result of their smaller heads. In America, Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein have argued that low IQ scores by blacks relative to whites may be explained by a different genetic inheritance — some of which is cor- related with smaller heads.
The reaction to research of this kind is generally anger and outrage. That is exactly what it has generated this time. When the American magazine, New Republic, pub- lished Murray and Herrnstein's research, its editor felt obliged to surround it with 15 articles attacking their work. Murray and H. errnstein have already been transformed into demons whose malign influence must be exorcised. Perhaps that is what they are. But — as with Jensen and Eysenck, their predecessors in this treacherous field most of the anger and outrage is directed not at the sloppiness of their science or the fallibility of their reasoning, but at its imag- ined social consequences. Fear of those consequences continues to excite calls for such research to be banned or suppressed. Most university departments do what they can to discourage it. It is currently almost impossible for a scientist to raise money to fund research into this area. It is true that in the past such research has been linked to frightening social experi- ments. From Galton onwards, evidence that intelligence has a large inherited corn- Ponent, or is differentially distributed across races and sexes, has been seized on by politicians and used to justify selective abortion, sterilisation, deportation and even extermination. The Nazis' forced ster- ilisation programme only put into practice a Policy that had been frequently discussed as a sensible option in most democracies in the 1930s, including Britain.
But the terrible history of what work on the heritability of intelligence has been used to justify is not an argument for trying to suppress it. In fact, it is just the opposite. Precisely because of its association with coercion, violence and the denial of most of the values which liberal democracies are committed to upholding — and because it seems to confirm the most popular of all prejudices — work by researchers like Mur- ray and Herrnstein needs very close study. In the first instance, that study should focus simply on its scientific credentials, and not on its alleged association with death camps.
Partly because of the difficulty of raising funds, and partly because of terror of being reviled as a racist or 'Nazi', very few rep- utable scientists have done research on inheritance and intelligence. Those that have, have mostly been social scientists psychologists and sociologists — rather than geneticists. As devotees of IQ tests will know, several studies have confirmed that social science PhDs have lower IQs than people who acquire PhDs in the physi- cal sciences. (They may well have smaller heads too — the topic is awaiting a dedicat- ed researcher.) Murray and Herrnstein are social scientists. That may mean the results they trumpet as now 'beyond dispute' are not beyond dispute at all. They merely haven't been disputed so far, because only a few very brave souls have dared to discuss them. Bravery, as everyone's experience will confirm, is not always correlated with intelligence. The question of the genetic component in intelligence is a vital one to answer, and answer accurately. Doing so will require identifying the genes for intelligence none have so far been discovered — as well as the environmental factors, which can alter their effects. For even if intelligence is predominately determined by genetic inheritance, it still may be possible to increase the person's brain power by alter- ing his environment. Height, for instance, is determined genetically. But average height has increased over the last 500 years as people have become healthier and better fed. No one knows how to pull the same trick with intelligence, but there is evidence that it might be possible in the future. European studies have shown that average IQs have risen 15 points during the course of the century. No one knows why, except that it is a result of an environmental, rather than a genetic, change.
The effect of making the whole issue taboo for the past 50 years has been to ensure that the topic is shrouded by preju- dice and ignorance. If that prejudice and ignorance is to be dispelled, much more work needs to be done. When we know what the truth is, then we can decide what to do about it. In the meantime, it remains the case that the best way to assess an indi- vidual's intelligence is not to measure his head, or identify his sex or race, or even to discover his IC) score. Meeting and talking to him is stillifie'inost reliable test.
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