Customer Reviews

The G Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications

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This is simply an excellent book. It is well written, the general interest is high, and the prose sparkles like champagne. As a book on the subject of psychometrics, it is superb writing, and Brand manages to capture the crux of the debate in clear, crisp informative style.

An interesting point of the book is his tackling of the more dispirate issues of intelligence, like the types of heritablility, the evidence marshalled indicating differences in group IQ, and discussions of the evidence given regarding the arguments against IQ as it is now bing studied.

This book is a different format than the Bell Curve, as it uses less correlative data for social impact of IQ, but it hits on the overall issues in much more depth than the Bell Curve gave, and it is not a policy reccomendation book.

Overall, a very good book. Buy it to anger the folks who would see it banned and because of its merits.

This book was withdrawn by the publisher, Wiley (UK & USA), which wanted to dissociate itself from 'racism.'

(1) The g Factor was reviewed in Nature (2 May 1996, p.33) by N. J. Mackintosh, Professor of Psychology, University of Cambridge, as a "radical libertarian" contribution to debates on education providing "spirited attacks on....Stephen Jay Gould and Steven Rose [and] the massed battalions of the politically correct...." Mackintosh said "[Brand] develops a strong argument for individual freedom of choice in education." The book said that children are not largely the creatures (let alone the victims) of their environments, except in so far as adults deny them serious choice; and that parents, after receiving advice about IQ, should be able to help children choose how fast they progress through school {cf. 'fast track learning', advocated by Mr Tony Blair in February, 1996}. Mackintosh condemned Wiley's "singularly cack-handed attempt at censorship" which, he said, raised doubts about the firm's "good sense, competence and integrity."

(2) An Edinburgh Psychology Honours student wrote a Brief Summary / review of The g Factor for Student [Edinburgh University's student newspaper]. An extract: "Brand thinks that once we are all comfortable and realistic about the notion of intelligence we can accept systems of education geared to our intelligence levels. He goes beyond the ideas of streaming and suggests that, given the choice, children would naturally select classes pitched at their own IQ levels: "Clever children would no longer be let down by a state educational system providing a cross between a child-minding service and a reformatory.""

(3) New Scientist wrote in an editorial (May 1996): "It is....a great pity that the book will not now be speedily published, for it is probably the best argued treatise from the general intelligence camp. For the many that will disagree violently with every step of its argument, this is the book to stimulate a true scientific debate."

(4) A substantial summary and review was published by economics professor Ed Miller (University of New Orleans) in the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, 1996. Miller finds it surprising that such a 'mainstream' book which advocates more scholastic choice for parents and children (in line with children's abilities) should have caused such controversy.

...

Everyone who values science and civilisation should read this book .
I'm sure it would have sold millions if wiley had published it as planed.
Civilisation itself is in danger when books like this do not get
to the public.

I found the science rather unconvincing, but perhaps I was very skeptical given that the author is also a fundraiser for a U.S. organization that promotes sterilization of people who are, or have ever been, addicted to drugs, which would have prevented the birth of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Jaqueline Kennedy, Dave Eggers (Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes), Bill Cosby, John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath), etc. Any "science" that comes to a conclusion these genetic defectives would have been better off never born due to their alcoholic parent smells like that fish I left in the trash last week.

I Thought it was. But it wasn't.