Kevin Lamb’s review of Tucker on Cattell

Kevin Lamb’s TOO review of William Tucker’s book on Raymond Cattell is a microcosm of how far the academic world has sunk. (“The Malicious Smearing of a Psychological Pioneer”) Tucker, who calls himself a psychologist,  is no better than the $PLC or the ADL, substituting guilt-by-association arguments for intellectual engagement with Raymond Cattell on issues like eugenics and race differences. Richard Lynn’s review of Cattell’s Beyondism shows why the left hates Cattell.  Cattell viewed racial hybridization as leading to a genetic potential for IQ that is midway between the two parent races, leading to a decline from the IQ of the superior group. This is basic behavior genetics for a trait like IQ — and well supported by the results of White/African admixture in the US.

As a result, races should remain separate, and incompetent peoples should be allowed to die out. (Haiti comes to mind.)

For Cattell the basic principles for a scientific ethics are these: diverse societies and types; competition between societies and between individuals; survival of the fittest, extinction of the unfit. This is the way to a better world. How different from most prescriptions for Utopia, with their socialistic world states in which competition is extinguished and all men work together in a spirit of co-operation, brotherly love and, no doubt, boredom.

The most pathetic thing is that Cattell spent most of his career as a professor at the University of Illinois, and yet the U of I Press published Tucker’s book. Tucker should be ashamed, but he will doubtless be praised effusively by his colleagues.

In my last blog I conceded the humanities departments to the political left while acknowleding the power of the left throughout the university. The sordid tale of Raymond Cattell and the story of the denial of his lifetime achievement award from the American Psychological Association shows that the political pressures are very strong in the social sciences and that scientific rigor can easily be pushed aside for political purposes.