Frank Miele - Intelligence, Race, And Genetics: Conversations With Arthur R. Jensen

Jensenism, n: the theory that an individuals IQ is largely due to heredity, including racial heritage; after Arthur R. Jensen (born 1923), U.S. educational psychologist, who first propounded this hypothesis in 1965.

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Skepticism, n: the search for provisional, not metaphysical, truth through the continuous and vigorous application of the methods of science, that is, formulating hypotheses and gathering data against which to test them.

J ensenism and skepticismwhats the connection? What does a controversial theory linking intelligence, race, and genetics have to do with a growing movement that promotes better understanding of the scientific method and greater use of critical thinking by the general public?

On the one hand, one skeptic icon, the late Stephen Jay Gould, who was then Americas best-known science writer, a distinguished though controversial scientist in his own right, and a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, once claimed to have debunked Jensenism as resting on a rotten edifice. On the other, Intelligence, the most prestigious journal in the field of IQ research, devoted an entire issue to honoring Jensen and his work, which its editor, Douglas Detterman, titled A King Among Men: Arthur Jensen.

If these wildly varying assessments of Arthur R. Jensen and his theories of race, genetics, and human intelligence dont invite a skeptical examination and some critical thinking, what does? As senior editor of Skeptic, Ive interviewed some of the worlds leading scholars on differing sides of the race-IQ issue and related controversies in biological and behavioral sciences. Who better to interview than the namesake of the most controversial ism of them allthe relation between race, intelligence, and genetics?

I realized that a fair treatment of Jensen and Jensenism would require a book, not just an article. Jensen accepted, but could he commit the time? That year, 1999, he was based in London, England, working at the Galton Library on biographies of Charles Spearman and Hans Eysenck commissioned by the American Psychological Association (APA) and delivering the annual Galton Lecture as well as invited lectures at universities and research institutes in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain. It wasnt possible for me to spend the year in Europe attending the lectures while we did the interviews. Even long-distance phone calls presented a difficulty because of the eight-to-nine-hour time difference, and they would be a budget buster. So we decided to conduct the conversations via E-mail. I wrote a series of questions on a particular topic, and Jensen replied. We had our printed transcript proofed, but the only other modifications are those requested by the publisher, Westview Press, to remove repetition, to clarify some of the more technical passages, or to update information and references to the scientific literature where appropriate.