Intelligence 47 (2014) 204205

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Intelligence

Book review
Helmuth Nyborg (Ed.) Race and sex differences in intelligence and personality: A tribute to Richard Lynn at 80. Ulster
Institute for Social Research. London U.K. Pp. xiv +354. ISBN
9780957391338.
This book reprints 15 papers that appeared in a special
edition of Personality and Individual Differences in 2012 in honor
of Richard Lynn's 80th birthday. It covers most of the topics on
which Lynn has published, and which have earned him his
reputation as a fearless scholar ever ready to offend the
politically correct establishment, or as a sexist and racist
proponent of eugenics (take your pick). Only an extreme
proponent of this second point of view would, I think, begrudge
Lynn the honor implied by this Festschrift. He has published,
often in collaboration with others, an astonishingly wide range
of studies, which, however strongly one may disagree with
their conclusions, demand attention and at the least require a
considered response.
Some years ago, Helmuth Nyborg edited a rather similar book
on the work of Arthur Jensen. On that occasion he wrote that he
had wanted a balanced approach and so invited several of
Jensen's opponents to contribute (although most declined), but
was pained by the one chapter contributed by a critic who did
accept his invitation. He appears to have learned his lesson, and
on this occasion has made no attempt to invite a range of
opinions: indeed, the only paper that is omitted here from those
that appeared in the original journal is one by Emily SavageMcGlynn, which reported that the British standardization sample
of the latest revision of Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices
(the SMP+) shows, contrary to Lynn's prediction, absolutely no
evidence of male superiority in 16- or 17-year olds (this is
achieved by the simple expedient of changing the items in Set E
that in the original SPM had revealed a significant male
advantage).
As a result, this book consists of a rather relentless paean of
praise, which, from what I know of him, Lynn himself would be
the first to question. Even the final chapter, by James Thompson,
described as a critical evaluation lets him off quite lightly. This
seems absurd. Whatever else one can say of them, Lynn's views
have been controversial, and have not commanded universal
assent. For example, although he believes that the view that men
have a higher IQ than women is now accepted by all serious
scholars, this is simply untrue. Neither Diane Halpern (2012) nor
James Flynn and Rossi-Case (2011) appear to accept it, nor for
what it is worth, do I. The one chapter on sex differences in IQ in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.05.015
0160-2896/ 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc.

the present book concentrates exclusively on the American

standardization of the WAIS III. Yes indeed, there is an overall
male advantage here, as earlier versions of the WAIS had shown.
The critical question is whether this finding has been consistently
replicated with other test batteries or in other countries. I do not
think that it has (for example both the DAT (Hyde & Trickey,
1995) and the W-J III (Keith, Reynolds, Patel, & Ridley, 2005) find
an overall female advantage).
Nyborg reserves his greatest admiration for Lynn's work
with Tatu Vanhanen on IQ and the wealth of nations, which he
describes as the stuff Nobel prizes are made of. Lynn believes
that initial criticisms of the work with Vanhanen, on the
grounds that the data on national IQs were more or less
meaningless, have now been met by showing that they
correlate almost perfectly with data on educational attainments. It is not entirely obvious why this is sufficient to
invalidate the criticism, and even if it does, it is even less
obvious why a correlation between national IQ and national
wealth implies that the former causes the latter, rather than
vice-versa. The answer given by Vanhanen here is that we
know that differences in national IQ are largely (wholly?)
genetic and therefore must have preceded the emergence of
differences in national wealth. A more empirical answer is
provided in a chapter by Heiner Rindemann, who reports a
cross-lagged panel design showing that differences between
nations in years of schooling in 1970 predict differences in GDP
in 2000 more strongly than GDP in 1970 predicts years of
schooling in 2000. Years of schooling are used as a proxy for IQ,
since there are insufficient IQ data from 1970. Of course all
educational measures are correlated with IQ, but it seems
reasonable to suggest that differences between countries in the
amount of schooling that their children receive might be as
much a measure of those countries' level of development as of
their children's IQ.
I do not doubt that Lynn's achievements deserve to be
acknowledged, but they also deserve to be discussed a great
deal more critically than they are here. I think that the editor
has missed an opportunity to produce what would have been a
much more valuable book (even if not a traditional Festschrift),
which could have not only taken Lynn's ideas and data
seriously, but also presented data and arguments that do not
support his conclusions. This would not have been a difficult
thing to do, and at least it would have signaled to the outside
world that IQ testing is not the sole preserve of those whose
views run counter to received liberal opinion.

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References
Flynn, J. R., & Rossi-Case, L. (2011). Modern women match men on Raven's
Progressive Matrices. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 799803.
Halpern, D. F. (2012). Sex differences in cognitive abilities (4th ed.). Hove, East
Sussex, U.K.: Psychology Press.
Hyde, G., & Trickey, G. (1995). Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) for Guidance
Manual. London: Psychological Corporation.
Keith, T. Z., Reynolds, M. R., Patel, P. G., & Ridley, K. P. (2005). Sex differences in
latent cognitive abilities ages 6 to 59: Evidence from the Woodcock
Johnson III tests of cognitive abilities. Intelligence, 36, 502525.

N.J. Mackintosh
Department of Psychology, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK
E-mail address: njsmm10@gmail.com.

29 May 2014