January 27, 1982

1982, January 27. Defining a “race” as “a breeding population with a characteristic frequency of inherited traits,” Molecular biologist and immunologist Richard A. Goldsby from the University of Maryland disparaged the linking of race and intelligence.

Defining a “race” as “a breeding population with a characteristic frequency of inherited traits,” Molecular biologist and immunologist Richard A. Goldsby from the University of Maryland disparaged the linking of race and intelligence. “One could not have come away,” wrote Gordon Shepherd in The Miscellany News, “without an opinion,” adding that Dr. Goldsby “explored the controversial topic of race and IQ by presenting current and historical scientific research in a very understandable and humorous manner.”

Goldsby’s research indicated that IQ differences were largely socially, not genetically, based, a position he advanced in a much-publicized debate at the University of Virginia with Nobel Prize winning physicist William B. Shockley—the co-inventor of the transistor—on February 5, 1975. In his later years, Dr. Shockley, concerned with race, intelligence and eugenics, embraced the notions that intelligence was largely hereditary, that the intelligence of blacks was statistically in decline and that individuals with lower intelligence quotients (IQ) should be paid to voluntarily undergo sterilization. Goldsby said of Shockley: “He’s a racist because he thinks he can make statistical prediction of behavior by population. He’s not a bigot because he apparently does not despise blacks…. I like to debate Bill, because I always win.” Joel N. Shurkin, Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley

Dr. Goldsby examined this question in detail in Race and Races (1971) and in his articles, “Human Races: Their Reality and Significance” in Science Teacher in 1973 and “The Reality and Significance of Human Races: A Biological Perspective” in Biological Differences and Social Equality (1983), edited by Masako N. Darrough and Robert H. Blank.