The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy is a book published by Smith College professor emeritus Stanley Rothman and Harvard researcher Mark Snyderman in 1988.
Claiming to document liberal bias in media coverage of scientific findings regarding intelligence quotient (IQ), the book builds on a survey of the opinions of hundreds of North American psychologists, sociologists and educationalists conducted by the authors in 1984.
"[7] In their analysis of the survey results, Snyderman and Rothman state that the experts who described themselves as agreeing with the "controversial" partial-genetic views of Arthur Jensen did so only on the understanding that their identity would remain unknown in the published report.
This was due, claim the authors, to fears of suffering the same kind of castigation experienced by Jensen for publicly expressing views on the correlation between race and intelligence which are privately held in the wider academic community.
As they wrote:[9] With the possible exception of Leon Kamin, we can be confident that none of the experts cited here actually believes that genes play no role in individual differences in IQ, but their positions are represented as such by newspapers that divide the world into hereditarians and environmentalists, and often fail to clarify for their readers that the argument is over the degree of genetic influence, not its existence or exclusive control.
[10] Snyderman and Rothman described this as a misattribution of views to these individuals, and speculated that it was fueled by the attacks made on them by public intellectuals, such as psychologist Leon Kamin.
The study also found that the media regularly presented the views of Kamin and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould as representative of mainstream opinion among experts, whereas those who publicly state that individual and group differences are partly genetic, in particular psychologist Arthur Jensen, were characterized as a small minority.
Gottfredson (1994) claimed that the findings confirmed a systematic and ongoing attempt in the media and academia to promote the "egalitarian fiction" and "scientific fraud" that intelligence differences are entirely due to environmental causes.
[17] A 1990 review of the book by behavior geneticist and IQ researcher Erik Turkheimer commented "The authors do not attempt to document their assertion that the opinion of scientific experts is colored by their political beliefs; thankfully, they can't make it stick.
Reality, psychologist Hans J. Eysenck cites the Snyderman and Rothman study as proof that, despite the reports of him and his views which have appeared in the media to the contrary, his findings have always been in "complete accord with orthodoxy".
In his response, Jensen cites the Synderman and Rothman study as a "thorough presentation of expert opinion among behavior geneticists and psychometricians" on the subject of intelligence.
[21] When Miele points out that, despite the findings of Snyderman and Rothman to the effect that the majority of experts silently agree with Jensen's views, no official body such as the APA has issued a statement explicitly supporting him or his findings, Jensen responds that, in his opinion, no scientific organization such as the APA should make such public statements, as "these questions are not answered by a show of hands".
He took particular issue with the last chapter where the authors picked out the "real culprits" in the controversy during the 1970s and 1980s: "the liberal press, a biased and uninformed 'elite'; media personalities, seekers of sensational topics only; universities and academics; environmentalists; civil rights activists who dared to question and confront the societal implementation of the in-place value system; and social service professionals who are responsible for 'liberal and cosmopolitan ideas'."