Rating: 
Summary: Poor Quality Research
Review: Unfortunately, this book that caused so much controversy is seriously flawed in its statistical methods and its use of the AFQT as a measure of IQ. First off, the AFQT is not designed to be an IQ test, and it measures what people have learned in school (which is different than general intelligence). It has long been known that education predicts outcomes. Unfortunately, access to quality education is correlated with socioeconomic class and race. Additionally, all subsequent follow-up studies, using the exact same data that Hernnstein and Murray use, find the exact opposite conclusions: one's socioeconomic background is a more important predictor of outcomes than intelligence. Their statistical methods are terrible and they misuse data. This book received a chilly reception in the academic community because people with advanced knowledge of human behavior and statistics can see the fallacy of their logic and statistical methods, while these mistakes typically remain unnoticed by the average reader. If you would like to read the truth, check out "Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth." It will quickly dispell the myths for you that The Bell Curve caused. It's disappointing that there are many people that gave this book a 5 star rating. I would have given it a negative 5 if I could have. In case your wondering, I am white, but I have no delusions about being superior because of this.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthwhile, but incomplete
Review: Ten years after publication, this book is evidently as controversial as when published. Much of the controversy is about the validity of the book's assertions, but much of it is about topics related to the book's content, but not directly addressed by the book, and not intended by the book's authors to be inferred from what they wrote. For 29 years before this book was published I made a living directing scientific and technical research and development, in which one of the most important aspects of my success or failure was my ability (or lack of ability) in deciding whom to hire and whom to retain. So this book might offer information relevant to my decision processes. It does provide intersting background; despite some incautious or erroneous conclusions, its general theme is well worth considering. However, its practical value for people making decisions such as those I had to make is not great.
In hiring or retaining scientific and technical researchers or developers, a great deal of information is available to the decisionmaker: schools attended, educational transcripts, degrees or diplomas attained, test scores alleged to be directly related to the job to be performed, faculty recommendations, pre-hiring interviews, and (in the case of retention decisions) measures and evaluations of performance; IQ scores, of course, are not available (and in my personal opinion would not add to the information that is available, because some of the available data indirectly depends on IQ). All this available data is routinely used, and it screens out people who manifestly cannot do the job. As a result, the decisionmaker is choosing among members of a population already severely restricted by selection (like the NFL football players used as an example in the book). But there is extreme variablility in performance among members of this restricted population, despite the screening, and an R&D manager is of course vitally interested in the sources from which this variation springs.
In examining this repeatedly over many years, I concluded that demonstrated "smarts" per se, or education per se, or any of the other available measures (even including experience), has little or no predictive ability for estimating how well an individual will perform. This should not be surprising, because all of that data has already been used in the selection process that determines whether individuals will even be considered for specific jobs or particular assignments. I was able to discern only two factors that distinguished the best performers from the least performers, among those who met the threshold criteria. One of these two is motivation; the more motivated the individual to achieve well on the job, the better the performance. This obviously has little to do with IQ, and is only weakly correlated with such things as educational attainment. The other important factor, which I couldn't measure quantitatively but found it easy to discern qualitatively, was the individual's ability to discern which tasks among many the individual should most usefully focus on. The best performers display an uncanny knack for deciding whether a problem is at the right level of importance, the right level of difficulty, and the right match to the individual's personal talents and skills, to be worth a major investment of the individual's time and energy. Perhaps this has something to do with the idividual's IQ score or "g", perhaps not; I did not find it useful to speculate about that. But, unmistakeably, individuals who unerringly refused tasks they were not well suited for and accepted tasks for which they were exceptionally suited, were amomg the best performers, and those whose judgment in this respect was poor were among the least performers.
What does this say about the book? To me, it says that although much of what's in the book is presumably true, and much else is subject to dispute, it has little useful bearing on selection or retention for excellence in predicted performance on specific jobs. Whether the book's assertions are important in broader issues of social policy and social welfare I'm not competent to opine about.
More specifically, I found among the candidates I interviewed and the employees I observed, no correlation between performance on the one hand and race, sex, "credentials", economic or family background, test scores, faculty recommendations, or any other crisply definable characteristic. What does this say to me? it says that after the obvious screening to eliminate people manifestly unable to do the job, there is no discernable difference of performance between men and women, blacks and whites, people from advantaged or disadvantaged backgrounds, Asian-Americans and people of European ancestry, Jews and Episcopalians, native-born Americans and immigrants, or other such categories. Individuals must be evaluated one by one as individuals, without reference to categories.
The book is only relevant, in my opinion, in two respects. First, cultural asumptions among certain groups make members of those groups more or less likely to seek certain professions, so, for example, there is a shortage of black and Hispanic applicants for technical jobs in engineering and physical science. This is deplorable; it may perhaps be due to a correct perception in those groups that they will be discriminated against, or it may not; that I don't know. Second, because many employers rely far to much on easily available but untrustworthy data, such as "credentials", it is possible for a careful employer to find, hire, and retain outstanding performers who have been overlooked by less careful decision-makers.
In short, I find this book well worth reading and rereading, but only in the same sense that the Hollywood "Oscar" ceremony is worth watching. It provides little information useful either to individuals or to those who select individuals for specific jobs or assignments, just as, to a casting director, the question of whether someone has or has not received an "Oscar" has little bearing on whether that person is the best choice for a specific role in a particular movie. Properly viewed, the individual's match to the need is everything; the individual's background, ethnicity, and so on are irrelevant. Therefore, I consider the decade-long controversy about this book to be uninteresting and irrelevant.
Rating: 
Summary: Common Sense Science, Should not surprise anyone.
Review: The Bell Curve is not a book about ethnicity or race. Contrary to much of the media hype about this book, it is an attempt by the authors to compile statistical data relevant to intelligence and socio-economic status. For example, in Part II of this book, the authors attempt to show a causal relationship between intelligence and crime rates, poverty, teen pregnancy, etc. In the process of conducting their research, the researchers discover blacks in America generally score 1 standard deviation (15 points) beneath whites on various IQ tests. To discredit claims that black IQ is impacted by the oppression of blacks in America, they also revealed similar studies in Africa. In these studies, blacks generally scored 2 standard deviations beneath whites. For this, the book has been denounced as racist.
American society is becoming more and more stratified among economic lines, where poverty and underemployment is offset by spectacular business and economic success stories. The Bell Curve asks why, and then discusses the theory that intelligence may be playing a role here. Critics again claimed that connecting intelligence to success is not reasonable as the economically disadvantaged would naturally fall short on IQ tests, due to poor environmental and educational opportunities. However, the facts state otherwise. Among whites and blacks of equal socio-economic status, children of white families consistently scored 1 standard deviation above black children in the same economic bracket. Again, this was portrayed as racist.
This book is not about racism. It is about frequency distribution and intelligence scores. It is a fascinating look at the use of statistics and is recommended for any student of statistics or the social sciences. Ignore the race card, and learn from this book. As the authors claim over and over, their objective is not to create division, but to establish the foundation of further study in this area. At one time the church virtually stomped out scientific research because the answers being offered contradicted their beliefs. Likewise, perpetuating a falsehood in the name of political correctness will do nothing to help address the facts.
Rating: 
Summary: More valid than ever
Review: Everyone is talking about race. Only Chapters 13,14 really discuss this, and seeing how the topic has been dicussed to death, I won't touch it.The first 10 or so chapters raise good points. As things, such as education, sociolization factors and living enviorments (rise of the suburbans) become more standarized, your genetic traits that you are born with will become increasenly important. Also, the first 10 chapters or so compare low IQ whites to high IQ whites. The authors keep things to ONLY whites. White people who have a high IQ will most likely get a higher paying job than a low IQ white. It's not gauranteed though!!! The authors are talking about a population. Making broad statements about a population does not apply to an induvidual. The authors merely state that IQ plays a more significant role in things than previously thought. They say that IQ can change in the earlier ages of childhood. They say that sociolization factors also influence things. The authors are just merely saying that IQ does infact play some sort of role in a person's outcome.
Rating:
Summary: It Doesn't Add Up
Review: After hearing all the hype about this book, both pro and con, I decided I needed to read it to see for myself what the truth was. The main problem I had was that, because of previous arguments I had read, I knew where to find the data that was used to write the book. To say that the data was incorrectly interepted would by giving too much credit to the authors. This book has been dismissed as being fraudulent by the leading social, medical and intellectual societies, and I agree with them. Don't waste you time or money on "The Bell Curve."
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