Charles Murray (author) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Charles A. Murray (b. 1943) is the author of several controversial and allegedly inaccurate books which try to make a scientific case for ideas like eliminating welfare (Murray argues it creates dependency) and treating blacks poorly (Murray argues they're genetically inferior). Critics point out Murray has little training in the scientific fields he writes in and experts have refuted much of his work.

Table of contents

1 Popularity 2 Criticism 3 Quotes 4 Books

Popularity

Thanks to a stunningly-successful PR campaign by the books institutional supporters, The Bell Curve, while weighing in at over 800 pages, received an incredible publicity including cover stories in Newsweek, The New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review. Early articles and editorials appeared in Time, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and The National Review. The book sold over 300,000 copies in hardcover. It was featured in teh 1994 film With Honors to demonstrate a character's intellectual toughness.

Criticism

Murray's books have been extremely controversial and many scientists have concluded that they are riddled with inaccuracies. Murray has a Ph.D. in political science but no formal credentials in economics or psychometrics (the measurement of human characteristics), the two fields in which his books have sparked the most serious debate. None of his book's content or conclusions were ever submitted to any peer-reviewed journals, the standard mechanism for ensuring the accuracy of scientific work.

Reviewing Murray's The Bell Curve in the peer-reviewed American Behavioral Scientist, professor Michael Nunley wrote "I believe this book is a fraud, that its authors must have known it was a fraud when they were writing it, and that Charles Murray must still know it's a fraud as he goes around defending it. ... After careful reading, I cannot believe its authors were not acutely aware of ... how they were distorting the material they did include."

Professor Leon J. Kamin said the book did "a disservice to and abuse of science." Craig T. Ramey, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Alabama said "Within the sophisticated research community, the opinion has been virtually unanimous that The Bell Curve was a primitive, oversimplistic and flawed analysis."

A special American Psychological Association task force set up to review the book concluded "The scientific basis of The Bell Curve is fraudulent."[1]

Quotes

• "Why can a publisher sell it [Losing Ground]? Because a huge number of well-meaning whites fear that they are closet racists, and this book tells them they are not. It's going to make them feel better about things they already think but do not know how to say.

Books

• Losing Ground (1984)
• The Bell Curve (1994) (with Richard Herrnstein)
• What it Means to be a Libertarian (1997)
• Human Accomplishment (2003)

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