doi:10.1037/1076-8971.11.2.328
WANTED: MORE RACE REALISM, LESS MORALISTIC FALLACY J. Philippe Rushton The University of Western Ontario Arthur R. Jensen University of California, Berkeley Despite repeated claims to the contrary, there has been no narrowing of the 15- to 18-point average IQ difference between Blacks and Whites (1.1 standard devia- tions); the differences are as large today as they were when first measured nearly 100 years ago. They, and the concomitant difference in standard of living, level of education, and related phenomena, lie in factors that are largely heritable, not cultural. The IQ differences are attributable to differences in brain size more than to racism, stereotype threat, item selection on tests, and all the other suggestions given by the commentators. It is time to meet reality. It is time to stop committing the “moralistic fallacy” that good science must conform to approved outcomes. In our target article (Rushton & Jensen, 2005), we proposed a hereditarian model—50% genetic–50% environmental—to explain the 15- to 18-point average IQ difference (1.1 standard deviations) between Blacks and Whites. We reviewed the worldwide distribution of test scores, thegfactor of mental ability, the heritability of within- and between-groups differences, the relation of brain size to intelligence and of race differences in brain size, regression to the mean, cross- racial adoption studies, racial admixture studies, and data from life-history traits and human origins research. We were unable to identify (in Section 12 of Rushton & Jensen, 2005) any reliable environmental contribution to the Black–White IQ difference, including the non-gFlynn effect (i.e., the secular rise in IQ scores). We also found that on many dimensions, East Asian–White differences were a mirror image of Black–White differences. In Section 14, we concluded in favor of an even stronger hereditarian model—80% genetic–20% environmental—based on Jensen’s (1998, p. 443) “default hypothesis” that, by adulthood, gene…