From: Tim Freeman (tim@fungible.com)
Date: Fri Sep 20 2002 - 13:53:58 MDT
I was reading through the conversation about The Bell Curve on this
list. Usually such conversations do not cite any page numbers of
specific statements in that book, so when I read them and I can't
confirm with certainty that they are disputing things that really were
written in that book. After 20 or so back-and-forths amongst the
various contestants, Peter McCluskey's email was the first I noticed
that actually cited it by page number!
>From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
>Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 11:46:32 MDT
>...
> "This does not mean that socioeconomic background is irrelevant.
>The magnitude of the effect shown in the graph and its statistical
>regularity makes socioeconomic status significant in a statistical sense."
>- The Bell Curve, page 135 (discussing the causes of poverty).
Thanks!
If other people continue in that vein, then there can be a discussion
about the book that can be verified to be a discussion about the
contents of the book rather than rumormongering about the book.
You'd think that if so many people hate it, there would be lots of
citations by page number of specific idiotic statements from the book.
There are certainly such lists about the Bible, for example. The Bell
Curve is a big book, so it is sure to have idiotic statements in it.
However, when I have searched on the web I have not found such lists
of citations. (I admit that my previous search was at least a year
ago.) I'm discouraged enough that I won't follow cited URL's that
claim to be a review of the book any more, unless the pointer includes
a quote from the cited URL that includes a citation by page number
into the book. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't make specific
citations to the source you're writing about, you are not likely to be
accurate enough to be worth reading.
-- Tim Freeman tim@fungible.com GPG public key fingerprint ECDF 46F8 3B80 BB9E 575D 7180 76DF FE00 34B1 5C78
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