The IQ Controversy, the Media and Public Policy
 Respondents on average identified themselves as slightly left of center politically, but political and social opinions accounted for less than 10% of the variation in responses. Snyderman and Rothman discovered that experts were in agreement about the nature of intelligence. "On the whole, scholars with any expertise in the area of intelligence and intelligence testing (defined very broadly) share a common view of the most important components of intelligence, and are convinced that it can be measured with some degree of accuracy." Almost all respondents picked out abstract reasoning, ability to solve problems and ability to acquire knowledge as the most important elements. Regarding the role of heritability of intelligence almost all (94%) felt that it played a substantial role. Half of those that felt qualified to reply in this section stated that there was not enough evidence to estimate heritability accurately. The 214 who thought there was enough evidence gave an average estimate of .596 for the US white population and .57 for the US black population. The study also revealed that the majority (55%) of surveyed experts believed that genetic factors also help to explain socioeconomic differences in IQ. The role of genetics in the black-white IQ gap has been particularly controversial. The question regarding this in the survey asked "Which of the following best characterizes your opinion of the heritability of black-white differences in IQ?" Amongst the 661 returned questionnaires, 14% declined to answer the question, 24% voted that there was insufficient evidence to give an answer, 1% voted that the gap was "due entirely to genetic variation", 15% voted that it "due entirely to environmental variation" and 45% voted that it was a "product of genetic and environmental variation". According to Snyderman and Rothman, this contrasts greatly with the coverage of these views as represented in the media, where the reader is led to draw the conclusion that "only a few maverick 'experts' support the view that genetic variation plays a significant role in individual or group difference, while the vast majority of experts believe that such differences are purely the result of environmental factors." In their analysis of the survey results, Snyderman and Rothman state that the experts who described themselves as agreeing with the "controversial" partial-genetic views of Arthur Jensen did so only on the understanding that their identity would remain unknown in the published report. This was due, claim the authors, to fears of suffering the same kind of castigation experienced by Jensen for publicly expressing views on the correlation between race and intelligence which are privately held in the wider academic community. Snyderman and Rothman stated that media reports often either erroneously reported that most experts believe that the genetic contribution to IQ is absolute (~100% heritability) or that most experts believe that genetics plays no role at all (~0% heritability). As they wrote: News reports made mistakes of the same proportion when reporting the expert view on the contribution of genetics to racial-ethnic group differences in IQ. News reports also tended to cite the opinions of only very few experts, such as Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and William Shockley, to whom they often erroneously attributed a variety of views, including that Blacks are 'inherently or innately inferior' to Whites, that their views have adverse implication for education policy or adverse political implications, or that they are racist. Snyderman and Rothman speculated that the misattribution of views to these individuals is fueled by the attacks made on them by public intellectuals, such as psychologist Leon Kamin. The study also found that the media regularly presented the views of Kamin and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould as representative of mainstream opinion among experts, whereas those who publicly state that individual and group differences are partly genetic, in particular psychologist Arthur Jensen, were characterized as a small minority. According to Synderman and Rothman, their survey of expert opinion found that the opposite is actually true. In particular, the surveyed experts reported that they hold the scientific views of Kamin to be of only marginal importance. The survey confirmed that IQ tests had been misused but that nevertheless most respondents strongly supported their continued use: Snyderman and Rothman suggested that the personal views and preferences of journalists and editors influenced their reporting, especially their selection of which views to present and how to present them. They suggested that the desire of the journalists and editors to advance liberal political goals, which are seen by many as incompatible with a substantial genetic contribution to individual and group differences in IQ, caused them to preferentially report the views of experts who reject the heritability of IQ.