Volume 27, Number 7 · May 1, 1980
Jensen's Last Stand
By Stephen Jay Gould
Bias in Mental Testing
by Arthur R. Jensen
The Free Press, 786 pp., $29.95
There are many styles of retreat in the face of failure. As a first and most forthright strategy, one can simply be humble and contrite. Clarence Darrow once stated that if God really existed after all, and if he were, following his death, arraigned before God as judge with the twelves apostles in the jury box, he would simply step up to the bench, bow low, and say: 'Gentlemen, I was wrong.' In a second, intermediate strategy—the stiff upper lip—one looks upon the bright side (or sliver) of admitted adversity. When Robert FitzRoy, Darwin's captain on the Beagle, learned that Jemmy Button, the Fuegian native he had trained in English ways, had 'reverted' completely to old habits within months of his return, FitzRoy took refuge in the thought that 'a ship-wrecked seaman may hereafter receive help and kind treatment from Jemmy Button's children; prompted, as they can hardly fail to be, by the traditions they will have heard of men of other lands.' As a third tactic, one proclaims triumph and punts hard. I remember Senator Aiken's brilliant solution to the morass of Vietnam—that we should simply declare victory and get out.
Review, 5834 words
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