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Rating: 
Summary: Changing the Face of Social Science Research
Review: As the recently elected president of The Pioneer Fund, a charitable foundation that gives grants for the study of human genetic variation, it is only fair that I declare my interest before reviewing a book that chronicles the Fund's history, its benefactors, its directors, and most of all, its academic researchers and their findings. Perhaps the best known is the Minnesota Study of Identical Twins Reared Apart, which reunited about 100 twins separated early in life from around the world. The identical twins turned out to have an extraordinary number of traits in common while the fraternal twins were not nearly as alike. The Texas Adoption Project studied 300 families who had adopted one or more children. It found that in both personality and intelligence, the adoptees turned out to be much more like their biological families than their adoptive families. Together these two research projects demonstrated that about 50% of individual differences in IQ and personality are due to heredity. Other Pioneer funded studies used state-of-the-art Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques to find that IQ scores are related to brain size, while others found that IQ scores are related to speed of neural transmission and brain evoked potentials. Pioneer funded research has also shown that IQ scores have real-life significance, being among the best predictors of work productivity, health, and longevity. More controversial has been Pioneer's support of research on racial differences. One project was Audrey Shuey's (1958) massive compilation of every study of Black White IQ score differences, later revised by Osborne and McGurk (1982). Research by Arthur Jensen examined bias in tests (1980) and the general factor of intelligence (1998). Studies by Richard Lynn, Philip E. Vernon and myself made the race IQ debate international in scope, extending it beyond IQ scores by showing that East Asians, Whites, and Blacks obtained the same mean ranking on over 60 different traits in countries all around the world. (See Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations, and my Race, Evolution, and Behavior). Lynn, himself a Pioneer Fund grantee and largely responsible for four very important findings about human variation (the Asian IQ advantage, the effect of nutrition on IQ, the secular rise in IQ, and the average African IQ of 70), has provided an invaluable insider's guide to the Fund's history and accomplishments. My predecessor, the late Harry F. Weyher, contributed an extensive, informative, and at times amusing Preface in which he cogently noted that even Pioneer's severest critics pay it the compliment of having produced more intellectual "bang for the buck" than any comparable organization. Both Lynn and Weyher should be commended for telling the story of the Pioneer Fund's record of accomplishment.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: Over the years The Pioneer Fund has been maligned and misunderstood. This book presents their side in a literate and concise reporting of the science and the researchers they have helped fund. I found the book to be very informative and well written.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: Over the years The Pioneer Fund has been maligned and misunderstood. This book presents their side in a literate and concise reporting of the science and the researchers they have helped fund. I found the book to be very informative and well written.
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