A term frequently misused by genetic determinists is heredity, especially in the field of IQ testing. The psychologists Hans Eysenck in Britain, Richard Herrnstein and Arthur Jensen in the US have promoted the idea that intelligence is largely inherited. They also maintain that the average IQ of blacks is genetically lower than that of whites, and of Irish in Ireland to English in England. Eysenck apparently believes that blacks and the Irish have been selectively bred for “low IQ” genes. In point of fact, IQ tests have been shown to be inherently flawed. There is no such thing as a unit of measurement for “intelligence”, as there is for height or weight. The IQ is an imaginary concept based upon arbitrary assumptions.

The IQ test originated at the beginning of the century when Alfred Binet established a simple test to help identify children with learning difficulties. For Binet it was a means of identification of difficulties that could then be remedied through “mental orthopaedics”. He certainly did not believe that this measure was of some “fixed” intelligence, and for those who contemplated such ideas Binet’s rebuke was sharp: “We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism.”

The basis of Binet’s test was simple enough: older children should be able to carry out mental tasks that younger children could not. He thus assembled tests suitable for each age group; those considered brighter or less able were judged accordingly. Where children encountered difficulties, then remedial action should be undertaken. However, this system in the hands of others was used to draw different conclusions. With the death of Binet, the advocates of eugenics saw their opportunity to reinforce their determinist message. Intelligence was now considered innate and fixed through heredity and corresponded with social class and racial origin. As Lewis Terman introduced the Stanford-Binet tests into the US, he made it plain that low intelligence:

“is very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the South-West and also among negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in the family stocks from which they come…Children of this group should be segregated in special classes…They cannot master abstractions, but they can often be made efficient workers…There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding.”

This constituted the tone of the US educational establishment in regard to testing. A new twist was also introduced to extend its scientific scope: standards were set for adults, and the ratio between age and mental age – the “intelligence quotient”, or IQ.

In Britain, it was English psychologist Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt who translated and championed even more obsessively than his American counterparts Binet’s tests. He claimed that men were more intelligent than women on the basis of alleged studies. The same gentleman alleged that he possessed the strongest scientific evidence that Christians were more intelligent than Jews, Englishmen than Irishmen, upper-class Englishmen than lower-class Englishmen, and so on. Not surprisingly, Burt himself just happened to be an upper class, Christian English male! By such means the oppressors justify oppression, the wealthy and powerful justify their privileges, on the grounds that their victims are “inferior”. For some 65 years, until his death in 1971, Burt continued his work on eugenics and IQ testing, being duly knighted for his services to mankind. He helped to establish the notorious “eleven plus” education system, which segregated children between “secondary modern” and grammar schools. Burt explained: “Capacity must obviously limit content. It is impossible for a pint jug to hold more than a pint of milk; and it is equally impossible for a child’s educational attainments to rise higher than his educable capacity permits.”

So Binet’s tests were twisted beyond recognition to reinforce the class character of society. There were those born to be hewers of coal and carriers of water, and those who would rule over society. The tests were not used to remedy, but to segregate. Whatever the modification of the IQ test, they all have the same roots: a preconceived “intelligence” that is the hallmark on which all are judged. However these tests are overwhelmingly influenced by culture and social stereotypes that determine the results. Again they are linked to school performance, and reflect those results. However, the idea that it is possible to identify or measure “intelligence” in this crude fashion is fundamentally false. After all, what is intelligence? How can it be quantified? It is not like weight or height. Intelligence is not fixed, as Burt claimed, but elastic. The potential of a human brain is limitless. To allow a human being to fulfil this potential is the task of society. Environmental facts can greatly restrict potential or enhance it. Bring up children in bad social conditions, and they will be disadvantaged in comparison with those brought up with all their needs provided. Social background is extremely important. If you change the environment, you change the child. Despite the claims of the biological determinists, intelligence is not fixed or genetically predetermined.

The obsession to statistically plot “intelligence” through the bell-shaped curve is an attempt to enforce social conformity. Those outside of the norm are said to be “abnormal” and in need of treatment. Alternately, it is genetic, and determines our class, race, and life. But in reality, whereas our genotype is fixed, our phenotype changes constantly. The loss of an arm or leg is irreversible but not heritable. Wilson’s disease is heritable but with drugs not irreversible. “Nor, of course,” says Rose, Kamin, and Lewontin, “does the phenotype develop linearly from the genotype from birth to adulthood. The ‘intelligence’ of an infant is not merely a certain small percentage of that of the adult it will become, as if the ‘pint jug’ were being steadily filled.”

Burt’s frantic attempts to shore up the genetic basis of IQ, led him systematically to falsify his records and data. His celebrated IQ study of separated identical twins resulted in his incredible assertion that there was no correlation between the environments of the separated pairs. For him, everything was determined by the twin’s genes. He was the idol of the genetic determinists, and his work gave them the ammunition to further their cause. In 1978, D. D. Dorfman, an American psychologist, proved conclusively that this respectable scientist and English gentleman had simply invented his results. After his exposure as a fraud, his supporters were forced to change tack, simply berating Burt for his scientific carelessness! Burt’s work was the IQ equivalent to the Piltdown Man. And yet at the time – despite fifteen years of glaring inconsistencies – his researches were hailed by the scientific establishment as proof of the inheritability of IQ. Despite Burt’s demise, the establishment still clung to his reactionary philosophy as the cornerstone of their class outlook.

The more recent studies, involving separated identical twins in Britain, America and Denmark, do not in any meaningful way prove the inheritability of IQ. These studies have been convincingly answered by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard Lewontin. Their conclusion?

“We do not know what the heritability of IQ really is. The data simply do not allow us to calculate a reasonable estimate of genetic variation for IQ in any population. For all we know, the heritability may be zero or 50 per cent. In fact, despite the massive devotion of research effort to studying it, the question of heritability of IQ is irrelevant to the matters at issue. The great importance attached by determinists to the demonstration of heritability is a consequence of their erroneous belief that heritability means unchangeability.”

“Neither for IQ nor for any other trait can genes be said to determine the organism,” they continue. “There is no one-to-one correspondence between the genes inherited from one’s parent and one’s height, weight, metabolic rate, sickness, health, or any other nontrivial organic characteristic…every organism is the unique product of the interaction between genes and environment at every stage of life.”[84]

  1. See Rose, S. L. Kamin and R. Lewontin, Not in our Genes, pp. 84, 86, 87, 96, 116 and 95.