The Politics of Intelligence · Episode 4 of 9 · 41 min
How Race Science Went Mainstream: Herrnstein and Eysenck
The 1969 argument did not stay in one journal. Harvard's Richard Herrnstein and London's Hans Eysenck carried a hereditarian theory of class and race into magazines and bestsellers in the early 1970s, drawing student protests and, in Eysenck's case, a physical assault. Both leaned on Cyril Burt's twin studies just as those were being exposed as unreliable.
Who's who
- Richard J. Herrnstein+1 more episodeHarvard psychologist whose 1971 Atlantic article argued for a hereditary meritocracy
- Hans Eysenck+2 more episodesLondon psychologist who popularized Jensen's argument for general readers
- Arthur Jensen+7 more episodesBerkeley psychologist whose 1969 article started the controversy
- Sandra Scarr+1 more episodeDevelopmental psychologist who critiqued Eysenck's popularization
- Leon Kamin+2 more episodesPsychologist who exposed problems in Burt's data
- Cyril Burt+2 more episodesBritish psychologist whose twin studies both men relied on
Where it happens
- Harvard University, Massachusetts+1 more episodeWhere students campaigned against Herrnstein
- London School of Economics, EnglandSite of the 1973 assault on Eysenck
- Institute of Psychiatry, King's College LondonEysenck's academic base
Timeline
- 1960Mankind Quarterly founded in Edinburgh
- September 1971Herrnstein's 'I.Q.' appears in The Atlantic
- 1972Science for the People issues a statement on the Herrnstein controversy
- 1973Herrnstein publishes I.Q. in the Meritocracy; Eysenck publishes The Inequality of Man
- May 1973Eysenck assaulted at an LSE lecture
- 1994The Bell Curve appears, the endpoint of the 1971 argument
Still debated
Herrnstein was more cautious on race than Jensen or Eysenck, and believing IQ is heritable within a group is not the same as a racial claim. The gap between within-group heritability and between-group difference remains the central logical dispute.
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