Over on Cafe Hayek they note an interview with economist and Nobel Laureate James Heckman, who chides economists because "formal economic models view the development process solely in terms of raising IQs. Or else they assume that IQ is purely heritable." I found this outrageous on several levels.

First, when Hernstein and Murray came out with The Bell Curve, the economics profession circled the wagons, proclaimed their PC bona-fides, and shunned it. There has not been much research on IQ or aptitude and labor outcomes, before or since (in my opinion because it is too inegalitarian). The Journal of Economic Literature gave primo space and an expedited review to a facile hatchet job on the Bell Curve, just so everyone would know what right-minded economists should think. Unlike all other books on economic subjects (books don't have economist referees), the JEL noted The Bell Curve committed the following key error:

[Hernstein and Murray] and their publishers have done a disservice by circumventing peer review. The Bell Curve was sprung full blown without external scientific scrutiny

Around that time Heckman himself criticized Hernstein and Murray because it "ignored" environmental factors, as if all the cross-tabbing of IQ and socioeconomic variables, twin studies, adoption studies, all don''t count--though ignoring IQ is perfectly acceptable when running a regression that measures the effects of discrimination. The idea that unless a factor can be isolated and uncorrelated with all other relevant factors, you can't say anything about it, is just an obvious pretext because clearly this critique would invalidate all econometrics, and no econometrician is that much of a nihilist.

Secondly, his statement that "it's not nature versus nurture, but rather nature with nurture." is really banal. No modern scientist in this field ever argues that IQ is deterministic, 100% heritable. It's a typical straw man argument you see again and again, like when someone responds to a criticism of excess lawsuits by saying "but if there were no lawyers you would be at the whim of various government authorities!" True, but irrelevant. Repetition doesn't make it a better argument, it merely shows it's the best one they have.

So what is the result of his "unconventional" approach: "We find that both social and emotional skills are essential in producing successful people. These findings change the way economists think about the human capital formation process." The idea that "social and emotion skills are essential" is an incredibly obvious remark, to insiders and outsiders. There isn't a reluctance to measure these things and test their imacts, there's a difficulty in measurement. To imply these important soft variables are being ignored merely because they are not appreciated, and meanwhile to assert there has been too much emphasis on IQ in the literature, by such a smart and educated guy like Heckman, is in my opinion a calculated disingenuousness.