The Race-Intelligence Controversy

For over fifty years scientists, particularly in the United States, have disagreed over the interpretation of a common observation: that American whites score on average about fifteen points higher on standardized tests of intelligence ('IQ tests') than do American Negroes. Although many scientists familiar with the arguments have not committed themselves on the issue, several have perceived the data as favouring either an 'hereditarian' or an 'environmentalist' explanation for this IQ gap.3 Since 1969, Arthur Jensen's monograph 'How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?'4 has provoked a reemergence of this controversy. In this paper I focus on several environmentalists and hereditarians in the current phase of the race-IQ controversy and attempt to explain their advocacy in terms of professional circumstances which incline participants in the controversy to maximize their own discipline's explanatory role. In a companion paper,5 I relate this controversy to