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Entry: Is "Black Hole" the New "Niggardly"? Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/is_black_hole_the_new_niggardly#32105 Post contents: Their evidence [Bell Curve] comes from an analysis of data compiled in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY), a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics tracking thousands of Americans starting in the 1980s. All participants in the NLSY took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), a battery of ten tests taken by all who apply for entry into the armed services. Four of those tests comprise the **[AFQT] Armed Forces Qualification Test, a measure of cognitive ability comparable to an **IQ test (Some had taken an IQ test in high school, and the median correlation of the AFQT and those tests was .81, which is high.) Participants were later evaluated for social and economic outcomes. In general, IQ/AFQT scores were a better predictor of life outcomes than social class background. <em><b><bold><strong>Similarly, after statistically controlling for differences in IQ, many outcome differences between racial-ethnic groups disappeared.</em></bold></strong></b> William J. Matthews writes that part of The Bell Curve's analysis is based on the **AFQT "which is not an IQ test but designed to predict performance of certain criterion variables".[14] Nobel Prize in Economics winner James J. Heckman observed that the **AQFT was designed only to predict success in military training schools and that most of these tests appear to be achievement tests rather than ability tests, measuring factual knowledge and not pure ability. Sent at: 2008 12 01