question:  Murray and Herrstein believe that _____ is not important to an individual’s success.
context: The Bell Curve Flattened Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank. The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position.
output:  Education
options:  Education  IQ  Parents' status  Ability