THE DEPICTION OF HERRNSTEIN AND MURRAYS THE BELL-CURVE IN THE PDR

This short paper records the author's reaction to a review of The Bell Curve that recently appeared in Population and Development Review (PD R), one of the leading demography journal in the world and the only on e to have printed a review of The Bell Curve. This response, which was rejected by the PDR, comprises four parts: (1) the PDR reviewer's ins istence that psychology is not a social science and therefore its disc overies can be disregarded, (2) the reviewer's (indeed all of social s cience's) hostile reaction to eugenics, (3) the reviewer's equally hos tile reaction to The Bell Curve's demography, and (4) the abandonment by the Population Association of America (PAA) of all study of the qua litative aspects of population, though such studies are firmly embedde d in the PAA's constitution.