Race and intelligence (Accusations of bias)
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| Race and intelligence |
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| Public controversy |
| Accusations of bias |
| Media portrayal |
| Utility of research |
| Average test score gaps among races |
| Explanations |
| References |
Proponents of partly-genetic explanations of race/IQ correlation have often been criticized because much of their work is funded by the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund has, in turn, been criticized for poor research methods, and even more strongly characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
Conversely, supporters of race and intelligence research have accused other scientists of suppressing scientific debate for political purposes. They claim harassment and interference with the work or funding of partly-genetic proponents.
[edit] The Pioneer Fund
Many critics of the partially genetic hypothesis have criticized the source of much of the funding for researchers supporting this hypothesis, the Pioneer Fund (Tucker 2002 [1]). Defenders argue that standards of evaluating scientific research require that researchers receiving grants be judged only on the scientific merits of their research.
Many of the researchers supporting the partially-genetic explanation of the racial IQ disparity, like the IQ researcher and current head of the fund J. Philippe Rushton, have received grants of varying sizes from the Pioneer Fund. In accord with the tax regulations governing nonprofit corporations, Pioneer does not fund individuals; under the law only other nonprofit organizations are appropriate grantees. As a consequence, many of the fund's awards go not to the researchers themselves but to the universities that employ them, a standard procedure for supporting work by academically based scientists. However, in addition to these awards to the universities where its grantees are based, Pioneer has also made a number of grants to other nonprofit organizations, essentially dummy corporations created solely to channel Pioneer's resources directly to a particular academic recipient. William H. Tucker suggests this is "a mechanism apparently designed to circumvent the institution where the researcher is employed" [2][3].
Although the fund typically gives away more than half a million dollars per year, there is no application form or set of guidelines. Instead an applicant merely submits "a letter containing a brief description of the nature of the research and the amount of the grant requested." There is no requirement for peer review of any kind; Pioneer's board of directors—two attorneys, two engineers, and an investment broker—decides, sometimes within a day, whether a particular research proposal merits funding. Once the grant has been made, there is no requirement for an interim or final report or even for an acknowledgment by a grantee that Pioneer has been the source of support, all atypical practices in comparison to other organizations that support scientific research [4].
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an anti-racism organization, lists the Pioneer Fund as a "hate group," citing its funding of some racist organizations and individuals, and the funding of race and intelligence research.[5]. However, the SPLC itself has been accused of exaggerating the threat of racism in order to increase fund-raising revenue and of wrongfully applying the term "hate group" to legitimate organizations. In 1994, a 1995 Pulitzer Prize-nominated[6] investigative report of the SPLC found evidence of racial discrimination and finanical impropriety.
[edit] Scientific misconduct
There has been no serious claim of systematic misrepresentations by race and intelligence researchers as a group. Note that this group includes both advocates and opponents of the partially-genetic hypothesis. However, individual researchers have been accused. When Rushton's claimed supporting references were examined, for example, they were reportedly found to include a nonscientific semipornographic book and an article in Penthouse Forum. Some recent claims by the same researchers have also been criticized; see Brain size.
Supporters of race and intelligence research have accused other scientists of suppressing scientific debate for political purposes. Behavioral geneticist Glayde Whitney argued in his controversial 1995 presidential address to the Behavior Genetics Association that suppression of debate on both individual and group hereditary differences has occurred as a result of a larger ideology of "environmental determinism for all important human traits ... [a] 'Marxist-Lysenkoist' denial of genetics."[8]
Scientists who openly support the hereditary hypothesis have in a number of occurrences faced harassment and interference with their work or funding. Critic of race science William H. Tucker considers these events to be unjustified, "intolerable violation of academic freedom” (Tucker 2002). When J. Phillipe Rushton was being censured by superiors at his University of Western Ontario in 1989 "despite," as Tucker notes, "being the recipient of a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship and having one of the most productive records of peer-reviewed publication in his department," even notable scientists who had criticized his work, such as James Flynn and Jack Block, wrote to the university on his behalf (Tucker 2002).
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Race and intelligence |
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| Public controversy | Media portrayal | Utility of research | Accusations of bias Average test score gaps among races | Explanations | References |
