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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent overview of Psychometrics
Review: Although I am not a professional psychologist, it is my opinion that psychometrics is the dirty little secret of this discipline. This book was published as a reaction to Herrnstein & Murray's _The Bell Curve_, and includes (somewhat) recent primary-source scholarship on the state of intellectual norming, from the Flynn Effect to Lynn's dysgenics hypothesis. Every aspect of intellectual norming is covered, from the nutritional hypothesis to other SES correlatives.Forget that the bell curve is a statistical convenience. The ostensive purpose of this text is not to show that psychometrics is invalid, but to show that Herrnstein & Murray were selective in their studies on intelligence, and that intelligence is on the rise. To the layman, however, it shows that psychology actually grapples with racial differences and believes that norming is a valid measure of human intelligence. It made me realize that the caustic reaction to Herrnstein & Murray was not because their suppositions about the measuring of intelligence were wrong, but because they made public many of the embarassing(can I say racist?) underpinnings of psychometrics. Even if psychometrics is not inherently racist, the continued sorting of individuals on the basis of race and class has no effect but to stigmatize and socially divide. However, I understand that it is part of human nature to continue conducting such studies. This book is enlightening. If you're in the field and you read journals, however, it is nothing new. (The book is a compilation of journal articles.)
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview of Psychometrics
Review: Although I am not a professional psychologist, it is my opinion that psychometrics is the dirty little secret of this discipline. This book was published as a reaction to Herrnstein & Murray's _The Bell Curve_, and includes (somewhat) recent primary-source scholarship on the state of intellectual norming, from the Flynn Effect to Lynn's dysgenics hypothesis. Every aspect of intellectual norming is covered, from the nutritional hypothesis to other SES correlatives. Forget that the bell curve is a statistical convenience. The ostensive purpose of this text is not to show that psychometrics is invalid, but to show that Herrnstein & Murray were selective in their studies on intelligence, and that intelligence is on the rise. To the layman, however, it shows that psychology actually grapples with racial differences and believes that norming is a valid measure of human intelligence. It made me realize that the caustic reaction to Herrnstein & Murray was not because their suppositions about the measuring of intelligence were wrong, but because they made public many of the embarassing(can I say racist?) underpinnings of psychometrics. Even if psychometrics is not inherently racist, the continued sorting of individuals on the basis of race and class has no effect but to stigmatize and socially divide. However, I understand that it is part of human nature to continue conducting such studies. This book is enlightening. If you're in the field and you read journals, however, it is nothing new. (The book is a compilation of journal articles.)
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