Murray Supports the Patriarchy

Ezra shoots him down.

Over here:

http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/01/a_charles_murra.html

My links are busted again -- sorry.

But you'll remember Charles Murray, he of The Bell Curve fame. He's hot again, for once again claiming that some of us (oddly, mostly the poor and disenfranchised and female us -- who would have guessed?) just can't be helped through the gate into the power structure. Sorry, son. No way to do it. No use wasting precious resources trying. Not when we have an expensive war to run and tax cuts to finance.

Ezra has many, many links to show the why Murray's work is shoddy (and always has been). Don't skip the comments either.

This whole IQ/No Child's Behind/BushCo/Murray thing -- whether or not IQ tests are valid, or GRE tests are, or SATs, you know, whatever. I know they aren't predictive, which is the key point, or ought to be.

That is: take ACT exams. White males do better on them than women did, by some percentage, on the average. But take that same woman and that same man and put them in the university classroom, and the woman will, on the average, do better her freshman year than the male will. So while the test predicts that the male will do better, the test is wrong. Why? because, on the average, the woman has better study habits, the woman works harder, the woman listens better.

Not always, of course, which is why college acceptance committees ought to look at letters and grades and essays.

But IQ tests also don't predict success either, frankly, or MENSA members would be ruling the world.