The Bell Curve: Methodological Fetishism

FOR ALL its wealth of data, skillful argumentation, and scope, The Bell Curve is a narrow and deeply flawed book. Murray and Herrnstein have fallen prey to a methodological fetishism that prevents them from adequately considering alternative, equally plausible inferences that can be drawn from the studies they marshal to buttress their conclusions.

The argument of The Bell Curve is carried out on two distinct, though in the authors’ minds interrelated, levels. On the first, they discuss issues related to the rise of a “cognitive elite,” a trend characteristic of all industrial societies, whose knowledge-driven economies offer fewer and fewer employment opportunities for people unable to operate in the type of occupations such economies require. On the second level, they argue that a more or less permanent underclass, characterized by the prevalence of low cognitive ability, is becoming a fixture of American society.

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Brigitte Berger

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FOR ALL its wealth of data, skillful argumentation, and scope, The Bell Curve is a narrow and deeply flawed book. Murray and Herrnstein have fallen prey to a methodological fetishism that prevents them from adequately considering alternative, equally plausible inferences that can be drawn from the studies they marshal to buttress their conclusions.

The argument of The Bell Curve is carried out on two distinct, though in the authors’ minds interrelated, levels. On the first, they discuss issues related to the rise of a “cognitive elite,” a trend characteristic of all industrial societies, whose knowledge-driven economies offer fewer and fewer employment opportunities for people unable to operate in the type of occupations such economies require. On the second level, they argue that a more or less permanent underclass, characterized by the prevalence of low cognitive ability, is becoming a fixture of American society.