A Second Opinion from Jensen

Psychologist Arthur Jensen is not widely admired among liberal intellectuals. Last winter a number of prominent professors, including Anthropologist Margaret Mead, displayed some remarkably illiberal behavior by protesting Jensen's election as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The reason: he believes heredity accounts for most of the difference in average IQ scores between blacks and whites.

Jensen's now famous--or notorious --article appeared in a 1969 issue of the Harvard Educational Review under the title "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" His answer: Not much. His own later study of black and white children in Berkeley (where he teaches at the University of California) confirmed his conclusion that IQ scores are 60% to 90% determined by genetics. IQ tests show blacks hi the U.S. scoring, on the average, 15 points lower than whites.

Now, however, Jensen has produced an IQ study to delight his critics. As reported in the journal Developmental Psychology, Jensen studied 1,479 children, both black and white, in a dirt-poor town in southeastern Georgia. He compared the scores of pairs of siblings in order to test the thesis that environmental factors can produce a decline in IQ scores. His finding: unlike the blacks in relatively affluent Berkeley, whose IQs remained stable with increasing age, the rural Georgia blacks on the average showed a decrease of one IQ point each year between ages five and 18. There was no significant decrease with age in the scores of whites, who were generally from less impoverished families.

Though Jensen does not believe these results undermine his genetic theory, he thinks it proves the case for some environmental damage to black children. Says he: "You have to conclude that something is happening to those kids while they are growing up." Jensen, in fact, claims he has done a better job proving environmental damage than the environmentalists themselves. Says he: "This is one of the first rigorous studies of IQ deficit. The environmentalists just took it for granted. They never did a really careful study."

Many of Jensen's critics believe he has only discovered the obvious. But they are pleased because they think the study will discourage the political use of Jensen's work by racists. "It is an interesting methodology, though not an important contribution to knowledge," says Harvard Psychologist Jerome Kagan, a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist. "But from a political point of view it's probably important. For Jensen to say this has political implications that are good and positive."

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