Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Fiduciary Responsibility and Improbability Principle III
common. Both fields of study, when they are most scientific,
depend on statistical methods expressing probabilities. The concept
of statistical significance describes a degree of association
between an independent variable (cause) and a dependent variable
(effect) greater than can be explained by chance. Such a statement
oversimplifies and is especially unsatisfactory in the inferential
use of cause and effect.
Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to expect that, if specified
classes of phenomena are associated with other specified phenomena
more frequently than would be explained by chance, this
finding would be useful in prediction. Thus, the concept of race
and certain other" phenomena are more frequently associated
than chance would allow.
In this area the sociologist and the psychologist are not without
data. Otto Klineberg's often cited Race Differences is used as a
basic source. An exhaustive study for the period, and a careful
one, it is ordinarily mentioned in support of the statement that
Northern Negroes made higher scores on World War I Army
Alpha tests than did Southern Whites. Seldom is the fact mentioned
that Northern Whites. consistently surpassed Northern
Negroes. 3o
A more recent study of the many published comparisons of intelligence
by racial categories, The Testing of Negro Intelligence)
by psychologist Audrey M. Shuey, has been met so far by silence
from the reviewers in professional journals. One reviewer did give
it attention, under the title, "Cat on the Hot Tin Roof," which
suggests the unfavorable verdict. (An almost automatic party line
of silence or sneer comparable to the one in this country does not
yet seem to exist in Great Britain. 'Thus, Professor Shuey's book is
praised as a "painstaking and valuable contribution to the literature
of social and racial differences" by W. D. Wall of the National
Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales in his
review of the book in the Sociological Review [December, 1959],
published by the University College of North Staffordshire.)
It is possible to follow the propagandizing scientist one step
further. It is not only difficult for him to examine and report findings
suggesting significant correlations between race and other