Talk:Charles Murray (author)

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Contents

[edit] Uncited information

This following segment contains no citations:

He has been a witness before United States congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior Republican government officials in the United States, and conservative officials in the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Can anyone find something to substantiate these claims? Serotrance (talk) 21:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)


I found the citation and added it:
National Review Cruise. "Speaker's Biography of Charles Murray." May 2, 2008.
Reservoirhill (talk) 04:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Biased External Link

"The Bell Curve is a top-level work of science" Debunking The Bell Curve

First, the link should have been http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/LiberalFAQ.htm#Backbellcurve but I'd like to explain why I deleted the link anyways. In Race and Intelligence: Interpretations, Kangas is referenced once with the following disclaimer: Drummond 2005 challenges the factual accuracy of other reporting by Kangas 1999. Further discussion occurs in the talk page of The Bell Curve. I was unable to find Drummond 2005, but if it didn't make The Bell Curve article then it doesn't belong here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aron.Foster (talk • contribs) 03:49, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Race

This entire article needs a cleanup, as most of it is based on Jason DeParle's single, unfavorable article. For starters, I'm deleting the description of "race researcher." Dr. Murray's work on race has been incredibly blown out of proportion. In reality, only a tiny minority of his work deals with race. He's never been a race researcher, nor has he ever claimed to be. (Serotrance 10:16, 18 May 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Charles Murray (Racist)

I don't respect the guy's scholarship, but isn't having Charles Murray (Racist) redirect to this page a bit much?

[edit] Moving criticisms over to The Bell Curve

This whole article is a rehash of the dispute going on over at The Bell Curve. We don't need two pages devoted to this debate. I'll put in some effort to migrate the claims relevent to this issue over to the article The Bell Curve. Until then, I'm putting up an NPOV plaque, as I feel this page is mostly showing one side of a highly controversial issue. -- Schaefer 23:12, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, that was easy. I didn't notice that almost all of the content had already been pasted in The Bell Curve verbatim in the past, and thus could be safely deleted from here. I've removed my NPOV tag after rewriting the introduction. -- Schaefer 00:00, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


NPOV - please don't dignify supporters of _The Bell Curve_ by calling their arguments neutral. The assumptions and conclusions of the book were thoroughly demolished shortly after publication by then President of the AAAS Jay Gould in his book _The Mismeasure of Man_.b_calder 15:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bradley Foundation

Why is it POV to label the Bradley Foundation as "right-wing"? They have a clear political and ideological orientation. -Willmcw 22:55, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Bernard Goldberg complains that liberals regard liberalism as mainstream and conservativism as right or far-right. So for them, they are the center and thus need no tag. Those to the left or right of them are the only ones needing a tag.
Goldberg criticizes this usage in Bias. Elabro 17:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Puff piece

The thing is, though, with all the commentary about The Bell Curve moved out of here a year ago, we are left with little but a puff piece. This could be a publicity handout or a promo for him on the lecture circuit. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Boy, you're right. Maybe the media appearances can be cut, for starters. It sure needs work. -Willmcw 07:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Politics

The Charles Murray disambiguation page called him a Libertarian. Was that accurate? Elabro 17:26, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

He wrote a book titled What it Means to be a Libertarian --Rikurzhen 17:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps his politics should be mentioned in the article about him, then. Elabro 17:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC) Done. Elabro 17:54, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
AFAIK that's fine. --Rikurzhen 21:39, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Igniting a cross

I see that someone removed the remark about Murray having burned a cross as a youth for lack of citation. At least one solid citation for this is Adolph Reed, Jr. "Looking Backward", The Nation, 259:18, November 28, 1994. - Jmabel | Talk 04:44, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's something rock-solid:

...They had formed a kind of good guys' gang, "the Mallows," whose very name, from marshmallows, was a play on their own softness. In the fall of 1960, during their senior year, they nailed some scrap wood into a cross, adorned it with fireworks and set it ablaze on a hill beside the police station, with marshmallows scattered as a calling card.

Rutledge [on of Murray's friends from that time] recalls his astonishment the next day when the talk turned to racial persecution in a town with two black families. "There wouldn't have been a racist thought in our simple-minded minds," he says. "That's how unaware we were."

A long pause follows when Murray is reminded of the event. "Incredibly, incredibly dumb," he says. "But it never crossed our mings that this had any larger significance. And I look back on that and say, 'How on earth could we be so oblivious?' I guess it says something about that day and age that it didn't cross our minds."

Jason DeParle, "Daring Research or 'Social Science Pornography'?: Charles Murray", New York Times Sunday Magazine, October 9, 1994. p. 48 et. seq. The specific quotation is on page 51-52. - Jmabel | Talk 05:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The relevance of this for a reference work such as an encyclopedia is due to controversiality, rather than notability or impact on his life (biography). We can add it to a controversy section if we can provide an argument for doing so (e.g. "DeParle argues Murray's work is racist because when he was 18 he..."). Can you quote the argument DeParle uses this for? --Nectar 06:52, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
DeParle writes exactly what I quoted above. On the whole, he seems to be attempting to write a neutral article about a controversial figure. He does not draw any conclusion. Given the frequent accusations of Murray being racist and/or racially insensitive, it seems to me that one can hardly fail to mention the cross-burning incident. Even by Murray's own explanation, it shows him on the verge of adulthood being at least "oblivious" to giving racial offense. - Jmabel | Talk 05:39, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
DeParle's thesis is along the lines of that there's still a theme of Murray as a rebellious prankster, but even for those who disagree with him, he's a good person. This is seen, for example, in his concluding paragraphs:
In her view, Murray is still playing the precocious tricks he perfected in seventh grade, when his antics tied their teacher into knots. "He'll take off on one little piece of lint in an argument and make a furball out of it," she says.
But when the evening ends, she sends her visitor packing with a gift for her contrarian friend -- a slice of blueberry pie, freshly baked in her championship kitchen. "No matter what," she says, "I adore him." [1]
At any rate, this isn't a notable issue that comes up in the literature in discussions of Murray or of race and intelligence research.--Nectar 00:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PRO/CON

The external links section is divided in PRO and CON links. All those links are dealing with The Bell Curve. I think it is not appropriate to make that distinction here, we'd better leave that to the specialized article. If nobody objects, I'll reformat the external links section to fit better with the contents of this article and remove the PRO/CON sections. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 12:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll be happy to see what you come up with, but I think it is valuable when links are opinionated to give a quick indication of what opinions they represent. - Jmabel | Talk 18:13, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading Quotes

The biography section is filled with misleading quotes. It is never stated who is being quoted. A casual reader might assume that Murray is being quoted about his own life, but he's not.

It is bad form to quote someone without making it clear who is being quoted. In this particular case, it is the author of the cited NY Times article who is being quoted, not Murray. This Wikipedia article never makes that clear. It appears to me that the quotes are being used as a way of plagiarizing without plagiarizing: copying text from someone else's work verbatim, then putting the text in quotes to avoid the accusation of plagiarism.

In addition, the citations don't always come immediately after the quotation, as they should according to WP:CITE. "...the citation should be placed directly after the quotation..."[2] JHP 01:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed; any reason you don't want to clean this up yourself? - Jmabel | Talk 02:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Awful article

The whole thing should be redone as far as i can see; as has already been said, it reads like a 'puff piece'.

[edit] NPOV on Controversy

The "Controversy" statement is basically a full-fledged attack on Murray, and does not in any way constitute a remotely neutral POV. Biasedbulldog 20:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy Section

This section should stay since Murray is probably one of the most controversial sociologists in recent history.

HOWEVER, it does seem to have NPOV, and should be REWORDED, BUT NOT DELETED.

DELETION on entire section will count as vandalism. -- 68.81.229.178

You attribute most of the claims in this section to anonymous critics, and the one citation is for the extremely broad claim that Murray "misrepresented results to support his claims" and cites an entire edited volume. Your edits are a clear and gross violation of WP:BLP, which you should read carefully before trying to reinsert this text into the article. Perhaps you should try to fix this text up here on talk before putting in the article so other editors don't have to keep removing it. Also, you should sign your talk page edits by adding for tildes at the end of your comments. -- Schaefer (talk) 21:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not the previous anonymous poster, but Murray does misrepresent results in both The Bell Curve and in Losing Ground in order to make political points. Such lax 'research standards' should be a part of his wikipedia page. His notability stems primarily from the two books, particularly The Bell Curve, and as such should be discussed on his page. He's not known outside of right-wing think tanks as being a responsible scientist. I don't have the time right now, but when I do I will try to put something together. The problem could stem from the fact that I've not run across much academic or other peer-reviewed work on Murray outside of his work. But I don't believe this puff piece provides enough of a basis for somebody who has never heard of Charles Murray to gain an understanding of his standing in the wider intellectual community. Knightw 16:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganization and Cleanup of Material

I did some editing and cleanup today on Charles Murray. I realize that Murray is a divisive figure so I focused on the man and tried to stay away from the controversy which at this point is pretty well segregated to The Bell Curve itself.

I wanted to focus on the facts of Murray's life so in the biography section I divided the material into "Early Life and Education," "Peace Corps Service in Thailand," "Divorce and Remarriage," and "Research."

I added some new material to "Early Life and Education" that shows how Murray first became interested in intelligence testing because he credits his SAT scores with getting him out of the small town in Iowa where he was born and into Harvard.

I also added some material on his six years in Thailand that illuminates Murray's interest in Asia.

Since Murray is best known for co-authoring The Bell Curve I added a very short three paragraph section on the book stating what the book is about and that fact the the findings have been controversial.

I added a section on Murray's op-eds and I plan to keep an eye on his op-eds and update this section as new op-eds appear in the future.

There was some duplication of material in the article so I did eliminate duplicate sentences and clean up the duplicates. I tried not to eliminate any material that was in the previous version when I started. Reservoirhill 22:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Losing Ground

This book, _Losing Ground_, should be mentioned. It was very influential. It provided intellectual justification for the welfare reform bill of 1996. He did more than write the Bell Curve. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.239.65.177 (talk) 00:52, 19 March 2008 (UTC)