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January 02, 2006

Comments

SnoopyTheGoon

"The underlying fear, that reports of group differences will fuel bigotry, is not, of course, groundless."

Right. Which creates, for a conscious and responsible scientist, an unbearable situation of "damned if I would and damned if I wouldn't".

Especially in our PC-mad times. However, there is one paradox here: in our PC-mad times we are still ready to fight for freedom of speech for a maddest bigot, racist and hater of this or that minority.

Go figure...

Richard

It is at least somewhat gratifying that the likes of Pinker can say such things these days without being castigated as racists, as they were in the 1960s and 1970s - when to intimate that intelligence has a genetic component (a glimpse of the blindingly obvious for most of us) brought down the full fury of the Politically Correct Left.

It has taken years of solid science to scotch that shibboleth, though the notion that some people (and some cultures) can be better than others is still a heresy for many Liberals, and we still don't like the word failure - witness the almost unanimous opprobrium of "elitism" in our schools on a recent "Any Questions". You cannot have little Johnny (Prescott?) scarred for life by failing his 11+. Just what do these people think Evolution is about?

And thank goodness that the behaviourism of B.F.Skinner and the genetic nonsense of Lysenko have met their demise, though I doubt the politically correct brigade will want to remember them.

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