48 THE MISMEASURE OF MAN
studies, done at the end of a long career, on identical twins separated
early in life and reared in different social circumstances. Inevitably,
I suppose, some recent commentators have tried to rehabilitate Burt
and to cast doubt upon the charges. I regard these attempts as weak
and doomed to failure, for the evidence of Burt's fraud seems con-
clusive and overwhelming to me. But I wish to emphasize that I
regard the subject as unfortunate, diversionary, and unimportant—
and the title of my chapter tried to express this view, though perhaps
in a pun too opaque. Whatever Burt did or did not do as a pitiful
old man (and I ended up feeling quite sympathetic toward him, not
gloating over his exposure, but understanding the sources of his
action in personal pain and possible mental illness), this late work
had no enduring significance in the history of mental testing. Burt's
earlier, deep, and honest error embodies the fascinating and por-
tentous influence of his career. For Burt was the most important of
post-Spearmanian factor analysts (he inherited Spearman's aca-
demic post)—and the key error of factor analysis lies in reification,
or the conversion of abstractions into putative real entities. Factor
analysis in the hereditarian mode, not later studies of twins, repre-
sented Burt's "real" error—for reification comes from the Latin for
res, or real thing.
Inevitably, as for all active subjects, much has changed, some-
times to my benefit and sometimes to my deficit, since the book first
appeared in 1981. But I have chosen to leave the main text essen-
tially "as is" because the basic form of the argument for unitary,
rankable, heritable, and largely unchangeable intelligence has never
varied much, and the critiques are similarly stable and devastating.
As noted before, I have deleted a few references topical to 1981,
changed a few minor errors of typography and fact, and inserted a
few footnotes to create a bit of dialogue between me in 1981 and me
now. Otherwise, you read my original book in this revised edition.
The major novelty of this revision lies in the two slices of bread
that surround the meat of my original text—this prefatory state-
ment in front and the concluding section of essays at the end. I have
included five essays in two groups for this closing slice. The first
group of two reproduces my two very different reviews of The Bell
Curve. The first appeared in The New Yorker for November 28, 1994.
I was particularly pleased because Mr. Murray became so apoplectic
about this article, and because so many people felt that I had pro-