Re: The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund

I was just made aware of another review of Tucker's book.  It is below,
and it includes a review of Miele's book on Jensen.  --Mike

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no1/kl-miele.html

Race, Genetics, and IQ

The Funding of Scientific Racism:
Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund

William H. Tucker
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002
$34.95
286 pp.
__________________________________________

Intelligence, Race and Genetics:
Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen

Frank Miele
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002
$26
243 pp.
__________________________________________

Reviewed by Kevin Lamb

Nothing stirs the ire of egalitarians more than discussions of
genetic-based racial differences in intelligence.  Just raising the point
in a conversation during a coffee break at the office or over a backyard
barbeque with neighbors can stoke inflamed passions and scornful fury,
enraging even the most sedated egalitarian.  The implications of genetic
influences give credence to the idea that people (individuals, races, and
sexes) are actually different, and that these differences are reflected in
human nature, which completely undermines the entire raison d'être of
egalitarianism.

Racial egalitarians generally adopt two approaches when confronting
hereditarian arguments: Contest the empirical data by directly challenging
the validity of behavioral genetic methodology, and undermine the
credibility of researchers by leveling the charge of "racism."  Nearly a
decade after the publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's
bestseller The Bell Curve, egalitarian critics of IQ research have
aggressively tried to undermine both the empirical foundation of
behavioral genetic studies and the efforts of researchers to pursue
further analysis of the IQ gap between blacks and whites as measured by
the most reliably administered IQ tests.[1] Often, however, strident
egalitarian critics simply sidestep empirical validity issues by
"exposing" the alleged hidden political motivations of researchers who
persist in probing the relationship between IQ, genetics, and racial
differences.

Two recently published books highlight the contrast between a skeptically
objective examination of the genetic hypothesis of racial disparities in
intelligence and a neo-Marxian screed that presumably passes for social
science scholarship.  No two books could be more different in content and
tone-one carefully probes the complex scientific frontier surrounding the
empirical findings on intelligence, race, and genetics, while the other
rakes the muck of innuendo and hearsay rumor in a flimsy attempt to
undermine the credibility of leading IQ researchers by questioning the
motives and objectives that inspired their scientific pursuits.

The title of William H. Tucker's The Funding of Scientific Racism reveals
a great deal about the ideological lens with which the author views
research that investigates the genetic foundation of racial differences in
intelligence. A foretaste of the author's objectives is evident in his
acknowledgments, where Tucker recognizes Barry Mehler as "the director and
founder of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at Ferris State
University," who "generously opened both his files and his home to me,"
and Keith Hurt, "who shared his encyclopedic knowledge of right-wing
activists, as well as the transcripts of his interviews with a number of
important sources of information."  (Tucker's previous book, The Science
and Politics of Racial Research, received the Ralph J. Bunche Award, which
gives some indication of the author's own ideological ax-grinding.) That a
book purporting to expose the political bias of its subjects would rely
upon the efforts of Marxist mudslingers like Mehler and Hurt-in effect
employing witch doctors as witch hunters-brings the concept of chutzpah to
new heights.

From beginning to end, Tucker's ideological narrative, a spin-off from his
previous book, is part heuristic depiction ("racism" is the "hidden"
motive for studying racial differences) and part an extended diatribe that
traffics in gossip and innuendo. He aims to spin a tale of political
intrigue and conspiracy, revealing a plot of deception on the part of
Tucker's protagonists-scientific "racists" who seek to dismantle the civil
rights of American blacks. Private correspondence and manuscripts from no
fewer than eighteen archival repositories were combed through in search of
comments, no matter how flippant or trivial, that might be used-regardless
of context-to depict anti-egalitarian activists and researchers as
"racists."

Tucker's primary focus is the research activities of the Pioneer Fund, a
corporation founded in the late 1930s by five distinguished individuals:
Wickliffe P. Draper, Harry H. Laughlin, Frederick H. Osborn, John M.
Harlan, and Malcolm Donald, for the primary purpose of providing research
grants into the study of human nature, heredity, and eugenics.  The
research interests of these founders reflected a prevalent view of human
nature that has shifted over the years-one that remains at odds with the
contemporary ideological prism of radical egalitarianism, which considers
race as strictly a "social construct" rather than a biological concept.
What is missing from Tucker's account is any real sense of what the
Pioneer founders and grantees were actually like as persons.  Most were
accomplished Americans, some independently wealthy, others highly educated
with distinguished careers-departmental chairmen in academe, a Nobel
prize-winning scientist, a Guggenheim fellow, former U.S. a Supreme Court
justice, Royal Society fellows, members of leading scientific academies
and societies, and some of the most recognized authorities in the
behavioral and life sciences.

Tucker's narrative begins with an examination of the writings and
activities of Earnest Sevier Cox and his connection with Pioneer's main
benefactor and first director Wickliffe Draper. Cox's most noted work is
White America,[2] a self-published book that warned of the societal
dangers of racial miscegenation and argued for a historical record of
cultural and social decay as typified by racially hybrid societies in
Latin America and South Africa. Tucker then turns to Madison Grant and
Lothrop Stoddard, whose popular works exemplified an anti-egalitarian
perspective that dominated the first three decades of twentieth century
America.  He tries to portray Cox, Grant, Stoddard, and such other leading
scholars of the period as Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, as
sinister plotters in a "racist" and "anti-Semitic" scheme to undermine the
status of blacks and Jews in American society. The author's failure to
supply historical context glosses over a seismic ideological shift in the
social sciences over the last century that has been well documented in
Carl Degler's In Search of Human Nature and Ullica Segerstråle's Defenders
of the Truth.[3] This historical void enables Tucker to misleadingly
depict his principal characters as a malign and monolithic entity.

Other conspirators include assorted "neo-Nazis," "segregationists," and
garden-variety "racists" whom the author strives to link-no matter how
remotely-to Pioneer Fund directors or grant recipients. Tucker is also at
pains to weave a web of conspiratorial intrigue and subversion implicating
several researchers who received grants from the Fund. Their goal,
according to Tucker, was to give saliency to the idea of racial separation
and legitimacy to suppressing the rights of blacks. He fails however, to
establish that these researchers cooperated with one another in any
meaningful way.  Flippant remarks and trivial comments are lifted out of
context from private correspondence, and in one case the surviving mother
of a deceased researcher affiliated with Pioneer-sponsored academics is
questioned about her late son's attitudes and political views in order to
scandalize the slightest derogatory observation.

Tucker's selective manipulation of the factual record stands out in his
brief mention of the "Cyril Burt scandal."  Glossing over the details and
various twists in the course of the literature that deals with the
scandal, Tucker notes that it was Shockley's inquiries about Burt's
research on twins that "helped to prove that Burt's study had been
fraudulent."  Tucker simply accepts the accusations leveled against the
eminent British psychologist as if there were little doubt about Burt's
guilt.  In the research notes that cover this brief passage, readers are
advised of Leon Kamin's book, The Science and Politics of IQ, and N. J.
Mackintosh's Cyril Burt: Fraud or Framed?, but no reference is made to
Robert Joynson's The Burt Affair or Ronald Fletcher's Science, Ideology
and the Media.[4] The reader is left with a misleading impression that
Burt was actually guilty as accused, since the two major books that have
all but exonerated Burt's alleged misdeeds are nowhere to be found.  A
fair and balanced assessment of the literature on the Burt scandal would
conclude that the "evidence" fails to substantiate any of the claims that
Burt conscientiously fudged his findings on identical twins-findings that
have been corroborated by a growing body of evidence.

Such a simplistic narrative reflects a dogmatic mindset:  the egalitarian
social critic as true believer.  In his 1985 book Alien Powers, Kenneth
Minogue masterfully described the dynamics behind the "ideological
revelation"-a pseudo-intellectual Marxian dogma-in which "ideologies
neither fit, nor aspire to fit, the academic world."

It is the essence of the ideological challenge that it insists upon its
own comprehensiveness.  Indeed the main function of the dialectic is to
act as a glue which prevents ideology from dissolving into a set of
proposals and a collection of accounts of the real world, each of which
might be criticized according to the appropriate criteria of judgment.  
Ideology, however, denies that the conditions relevant to judging a
proposal are different from those appropriate to criticizing theories; it
similarly rejects the discipline of disciplinary boundaries.  Academics of
an ideological bent in universities are, of course, forced to take some
account of these distinctions, but the pure ideological position is an
insistence upon its own seamless unity.  Just as the only ideological
solution to any particular problem is the total revolution which solves
all problems, so also no practical or academic issue can be isolated from
the structure of domination.[5]

So it is with Tucker's work-one that purports to expose "clandestine
activities" which reveal the goals of the Fund as "the preservation of
white supremacy and white racial purity from the threat posed by blacks
and undesirable immigrants, especially Jews."  Such a discovery, according
to Tucker, shows that the Fund uses science as a vehicle against civil
rights.  The scheme that Tucker purportedly unravels ranks with some of
the great conspiracy theories of the modern age-the Illuminati,
Freemasonry, and the Protocols of Zion. True enough, any sophisticated
reader can conclude that some research endeavors which have received the
support of the Pioneer Fund have over the years effectively challenged the
empirical basis upon which the civil rights agenda of radical egalitarians
rests: the literal notion of racial equality.  What is missing from this
warped account is a balanced perspective of the quality and variety of
research projects that Pioneer has supported over the years, and which are
documented in Richard Lynn's official history of the Fund.[6]

Tucker claims that the Pioneer Fund's "favorite issues [are] no longer of
any great significance to either the scientific community or the public"
and that "very few researchers outside the Pioneer clique are particularly
interested in a topic that has so little basic scientific value."  This is
simply Tucker's way of carefully tiptoeing past the thicket of empirical
realities that cannot be addressed by some ideological doctrinaire.  The
core scientific findings that Pioneer has supported have become accepted
as valid scientific paradigms-from the ubiquitous presence of the g factor
to the behavioral genetic foundation of human personality traits.  
Academic egalitarians have shifted much of their criticism away from
disputes over the methodological analysis of empirical data to exposing
the motivational aims of researchers, particularly Pioneer Fund
recipients.

Egalitarian critics like Tucker have no other recourse but to massage
their own ideological passions, taking aim at empirically driven
scientists rather than properly evaluating the scientific analysis of
solid data, because the prism with which they render their own
assessments, as Garrett Hardin once argued, is a filter of folly.
Ideological egalitarians intuitively realize that egalitarianism rests on
a foundation of intellectual quicksand-void of any empirical validity-and
any extended scrutiny of racial disparities in IQ test scores, educational
outcomes, or ability-competitive occupations will expose the futility of
the dogma of racial equality.  The only possible recourse for keeping this
flawed grasp of human nature intact is to persist in using deceitful
smokescreens, such as the red herring of "racist" motivations, to avoid
the fundamental intrinsic realities of racial inequality.  Such a
contemporary Zeitgeist reflects a fantasy existence in which genetic-based
differences are meaningless. Social or educational policies that recognize
the realities of individual and group differences are immediately
denounced for their "racial insensitivity."

One must ask: What is it that drives knaves and fools to persist in
espousing such a scientifically bankrupt and destitute perspective as
egalitarianism, and more notably, launch a vindictive attack on those who
seek a true understanding of human nature?  Montaigne provides a
reasonably sound answer to this question in chapter IV ("How the Soul
Vents Its Emotions on False Objects When True Ones Are Lacking") of the
first volume of his essays:

   A gentleman of our day, who was terribly subject to gout, being urged 
   by his physicians to abstain altogether from salt meats, was wont to
   reply jocosely that in the paroxysms and torture of the disease, he 
   wanted to have something to lay the blame on; and that storming and
   cursing at one time about sausage, at another about tongue, and again
   about ham, he felt greatly relieved.

   But in all seriousness, as, when the arm is raised to strike, it annoys 
   us if the blow meets no object but is wasted on the air; and as, to
   make a view pleasant to the eye, it must not be lost and spread out to
   the dim horizon, but should have rising ground to limit it within a
   reasonable distance-

               Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densæ

                Occurrant silvæ spatio diffusus inani*-

   (a) so it would seem that the mind, when disturbed and excited, goes
   astray of itself, if we do not give it something to lay hold of; and it
   must always be supplied with some object to seize and work upon.  
   Plutarch says, speaking of those who become attached to monkeys and
   little dogs, that the affectionate part of us, in this way, for lack of 
   a legitimate object, fashions a false and frivolous one rather than
   remain useless.  And we see that the mind, when most excited, deceives
   itself, setting up a false and fanciful object, even contrary to its 
   own belief, rather than not act against something.  (b) So the anger of
   wild animals drives them to attack the stone or the spear which has
   wounded them, and to take vengeance on themselves with their own teeth
   for the pain they suffer.[7]

   *As a wind loses its strength meeting with no opposition from a dense
   forest, and is dissipated in the void. -Lucan, III, 362.


A Skeptic Objectively Examines Arthur Jensen's Work

The actual story of Arthur R. Jensen's career path and research
accomplishments is one that runs counter to the caricature rendered by
egalitarian critics. A scientist who has published over four hundred
articles and seven books, four of which are among some of the most cited
publications in the psychological literature, Jensen has tirelessly
pursued an exemplarily productive life as an educator and pioneering
researcher in his own field of expertise-differential psychology.  Jensen
studied under Percival Symonds as a graduate student at Columbia
University, then under Hans Eysenck for two years in a postdoctoral
program in London. As an educational psychologist and eventually pioneer
as a differential psychologist, Jensen spent his career teaching at the
University of California at Berkeley.  He is the recipient of numerous
awards and is ranked among the top one hundred most recognized
psychologists among his colleagues.

Jensen gained notoriety when the Harvard Educational Review (HER)
published his landmark article, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic
Achievement?" which its editors had solicited for the Winter 1969 issue.  
In 123 pages, Jensen summarized the findings from the psychological
literature on individual and group differences in IQ and the degree to
which genetics plays a role in shaping these differences.  Jensen's
framework for considering these issues was the abysmal failure of
compensatory education programs (Head Start) to achieve a lasting,
measurable increase in the intelligence levels of disadvantaged children.  
Jensen's article addressed the nature of intelligence, the concept of
heritability, social class differences in intelligence, possible dysgenic
IQ trends, kinship correlations, and racial differences in IQ. Shortly
after its publication, a wave of publicity and widespread coverage in the
mass media engulfed Jensen, including a profile in the New York Times
Magazine that coined the expression "Jensenism" and two interviews with
Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes.  It prompted several replies from critical
scholars that were published in subsequent HER issues and led to an
eventual monograph that included a rejoinder by Jensen.  Over the years,
Jensen has received hundreds of requests for reprints of his article.  It
remains one of the most cited articles in the psychological literature.

Frank Miele's recent book, Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations
with Arthur R. Jensen, explores Jensen's work in considerable detail.  In
terms of objectivity, it will likely remain the standard for other such
books in the future.  It is the first book to cover the full scope and
magnitude of Jensen's writings and explain his scientific outlook to a lay
readership.  Miele, an editor for Skeptic magazine, has put together a
concise yet definitive volume that spans Jensen's career and yet carefully
examines Jensen's major research accomplishments in a clear and succinct
manner.  Each chapter flushes out the essential highlights of Jensen's
career and major research endeavors: "Jensenism," the g factor in IQ
studies, heritability and the nature/nurture paradigm, race and racial
differences in intelligence, the Bell Curve wars, and science and social
policy.  It thus covers the full panorama of an interesting iconoclast-a
social scientist who pursued unresolved research questions while defying
the trends within his own profession.

The image of Jensen that emerges from this informative volume is of a
courageously honest, persistent, and thoroughly meticulous scientist. In
his most important undertaking-research that culminated with the
publication of his 1998 book, The g Factor-Jensen has remained several
steps ahead of his critics.  Anticipating various weak points in his
thesis (that g is the single ubiquitous factor in the constellation of
human abilities), Jensen pursued a range of research projects and
independent analyses that would solidify the thesis: measuring reaction
times and their relationship to differences in g (indicative of an
underlying physiological correlation to general mental ability); the full
range of biological correlates from body, brain, and head size,
electrochemical brain activity, cerebral glucose metabolism as measured by
positron emission tomography (PET scans), to nerve conduction velocity;
the heritability of g; population and demographic differences (race and
sex differences); the impact of nutrition, home environment, and other
non-biological factors; and theoretical challenges to g from
multi-intelligence rivals such as Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg.

By taking a lead in these research areas, Jensen carved out a scientific
niche that has earned him the respect of a number of his contemporaries.  
A 1998 special issue of the journal Intelligence, edited by Douglas K.
Detterman, and the forthcoming festschrift edited by Helmuth Nyborg
testify to the high esteem with which Jensen is viewed by his fellow
scientists.[8] When the American Psychological Association sponsored a
talk by Jensen on the Cyril Burt controversy and research taboos during
the APA's centennial convention in Washington, D.C. in August 1992, the
large banquet room at the Washington Hilton Hotel was nearly filled to
capacity.  Several hundred attendees turned out to hear Jensen's
enthralling lecture and slide presentation on the latest developments in
the Burt affair-a turnout five or ten times the norm for such a lecture.

Miele provides a well-rounded portrait of a complex individual.  He
describes a man whose personal interests include reading biographies (with
particular interest in Bertrand Russell's life and scientific philosophy,
and in Mohandas Gandhi and Indian culture) and playing the clarinet while
cultivating an intense interest in classical music. Jensen's support for
the role of inheritance in intelligence, we learn, was preceded by an
initial belief in the efficacy of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"
programs.  Needless to say, Jensen comes across as a workaholic,
steadfastly devoted to his professional work.

The book's only shortcoming is the lack of space devoted to certain
secondary and tangential issues. More space could have been devoted to
teasing out the relationship between Jensen's own research interests and
career path as an educational psychologist to specific educational
policies that Jensen must have pondered to a considerable degree. Despite
the turmoil that engulfed Raymond Cattell's nomination and subsequent
withdrawal for the APA's Life Time Achievement Award a few years ago, the
subject never comes up, nor is Cattell's work ever touched on.  Jensen
knew Cattell reasonably well and most likely would have had some
interesting thoughts about Cattell's wide range of research interests,
including his controversial philosophical beliefs as articulated in two
separate but related books on his "beyondism" ideas.  The issue of
political correctness surfaces from time to time, but only incidentally.  
Jensen mentions that he submitted The g Factor to eight different
publishers before it was accepted.  Miele could have pressed Jensen
further about his views on these and other issues, including his collegial
relationship with Nobel physics laureate and race researcher William
Shockley, and Jensen's thoughts about Shockley's own research endeavors.  
Miele barely skims the surface of Jensen's interests in eugenics, which
could have been expanded into a separate chapter.

Still, Miele is to be commended for an otherwise thorough and
comprehensive review of Jensen's major contributions to the psychology of
individual and group differences in general mental ability. If there is
one aspect of Jensen's life (both professional work and personal pursuits)
that emerges from Miele's book, it is that the caricature of Jensen
(promoted by Tucker and other critics) as a man consumed by "racist"
objectives could not be further from the truth. Jensen states
unequivocally that he has never supported segregationist policies;
believes that people should be treated as equals before the law; accepts
the idea of equal opportunity (provided that academic standards of
excellence apply even-handedly to everyone); and believes that the
variation in IQ within families is as important as the differences that
exist between blacks and whites in terms of understanding the latent
problems in educational policies.  His overarching goal is to pursue the
truth wherever it leads and to let the truth win out, rather than to
advance politically correct fallacies.  The irony is that it is Jensen's
staunchest critics who have persisted in grinding an ideological ax and,
in the process, have tossed any regard for the truth to the four winds.

_________________________________________________

Kevin Lamb is the Editor of The Occidental Quarterly and Race, Genetics &
Society: Glayde Whitney on the Scientific and Social Policy Implications
of Racial Differences (Scott-Townsend, 2002)
_________________________________________________


End Notes


1. Several books that attempt to directly or indirectly challenge the
thesis of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve:
Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York, NY: The Free
Press, 1994) have been published since late 1994, including The Bell Curve
Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America, ed. Steven Fraser
(New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995), The Bell Curve Debate: History,
Documents, Opinions, ed. Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman (New York,
NY: Times Books, 1995), Intelligence, Genes, & Success: Scientists Respond
to the Bell Curve, ed. Bernie Devlin et al. (New York, NY: Copernicus,
1997), Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth, C. S. Fischer
et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), The Rising
Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures, ed. Ulric Neisser
(Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1998), Race and
Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth, ed. Jefferson M. Fish (Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002).  Although this body of criticism
ranges from the serious to the absurd, most of it falls into the category
of social and political commentary and fails to credibly refute Herrnstein
and Murray's analysis of the data presented in their study.  For a
detailed scrutiny of the issues raised in the criticisms of The Bell
Curve, readers should consult the special issue of Intelligence 24, no. 1
(January-February 1997), ed. Linda Gottfredson.

2. Earnest Sevier Cox, White America (Richmond, VA: White America Society,
1923).

3. Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of
Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York, NY: Oxford University
Press, 1991), and Ullica Segerstråle, Defenders of the Truth: The Battle
for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond (New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, 2000).

4. Robert B. Joynson, The Burt Affair (New York, NY: Routledge, 1989), and
Ronald Fletcher, Science, Ideology and the Media: The Cyril Burt Scandal
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991).

5. Kenneth Minogue, Alien Powers: A Pure Theory of Ideology (New York, NY:
St. Martin's Press, 1985), 227.

6. Richard Lynn, The Science of Human Diversity: A History of the Pioneer
Fund (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001).  Lynn's balanced
description of the Pioneer Fund researchers leaves little doubt that these
grantees rank among the elite of distinguished scholars in a number of
professional disciplines.  See also Louis Andrews' review in The
Occidental Quarterly 2:1 (Spring 2002), 73-79), or
http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/.  For a thorough critique of recent
criticisms leveled against the Pioneer Fund, see J. Philippe Rushton's
"Commentary on The Pioneer Fund and the Scientific Study of Human
Differences," Albany Law Review 66 (2002), 207-262.

7. The Essays of Montaigne, trans. George B. Ives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1925), volume 1, 25).

8.  Intelligence 26 (no. 3, 1998) and Helmuth Nyborg, ed. The Scientific
Study of General Intelligence: Tribute to Arthur R. Jensen (New York, NY:
Pergamon, 2003).