LETTERS Wake up, prof
Sir: Professor Richard Lynn writes (Letters, 20 May) that my article on 'the inheritabili- ty of intelligence and the genetic basis of race differences in intelligence contains a number of errors. Perhaps the most impor- tant is his assertion that the late Richard Herrnstein, Charles Murray, J. Phillipe Rushton and I are a small minority in believing racial differences in intelligence are determined genetically.'
Perhaps Professor Lynn would be kind enough to point out where exactly in my article I made that claim. I cannot find it anywhere in the original piece.
What I actually wrote was that 'although it is now widely accepted that intelligence has a genetic component, few share either Lynn's views on how large that component is, or his methods for "proving" it.'
Professor Lynn's inability to distinguish between those two propositions suggests one reason why his reputation within the scholarly community is not as high as he might hope. It also demonstrates that, occasionally, it is possible for a person 'who has no expertise whatever' to know better than one of 'the leading academic authorities'.
Alasdair Palmer
The Spectator, Doughty Street, London WC1
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