Some Comments on the Klein-Harris Debate
So Ezra Klein and Sam Harris finally had it out, at great length. Transcript here. In a perfect world with unlimited time it would be fun to do this @SethAbramson style, and tweet or blog my through the entire thing, but there is actual work to do today. So instead I'll focus on the parts where my contribution comes up. Maybe I'll have time for something longer over the weekend.
First, personnel. SH obviously doesn't know who any of us-- me, Paige or Dick-- actually are. He seems to have some sense Dick wrote the intelligence book, but beyond that, he seems to think that we are some kind of minor fringe figures Vox dug up to attack him. For the record:
It is Professor Kathryn Paige Harden, her friends call her Paige. Paige was a student of mine and is now tenured at UT Austin, where she is one of the leading under-40 scientists in the genetics of intelligence.
Dick Nisbett is an unquestioned top five social psychologist of his generation, a Fellow of the National Academy of Science. He isn't on Twitter, and gets treated unfairly by the online intelligence crowd. Yes, his book has a point of view, he wouldn't deny that, but it is based on data from front to back. Don't just read the James Lee review that the hereditarians always point to. Lee is a fine young scientist, but he has his own point of view, and it is very different than Dick's. It's the usual thing: criticize the book if you want, but read it first. Though I am willing to be corrected, I doubt very much that SH has read it.
I am a past-President of the Behavior Genetics Association, lead author of one of the most cited papers in the genetics of intelligence. I have been writing about the theory of behavior genetics for more than 25 years. My point in all this is not to brag about our credentials, or to suggest that because we have them everyone should agree with us. My point is that SH's cluelessness about who we are isn't exactly a mark of his detailed knowledge of the field. It's a badge of ignorance.