I must admit that I'm with Joan. I will admit to not having read the book (although I did read the Reference section that Stephen posted). but I did read the original article. I found it very sophomoric; a grab bag of mixed references (most of them anecdotal newspaper items) with a fairly high cherry picking quotient and little critical discrimination. At present, I'd call it at best an interesting hypothesis. It's links to the zeitgeist do provide some support for meme theory, which might account for its greater acceptance in the past decade than when originally presented.
At 4:51 AM -0500 3/15/08, Allen Esterson wrote: >On 14 March 2008 Joan Warmbold wrote in relation to Judith Rich Harris's >*The Nurture Assumption*: > >> When I read it, I was astonished at the amazingly poor scholarship >> throughout. First, she does not provide one (not one!) footnote, >> therefore making it impossible for readers to determine the source >> of her various conclusions and beliefs. > >Joan: I'm puzzled by your writing the above. In fact *The Nurture >Assumption* contains 26 pages of endnotes, all fully referenced (pp. >393-418), and some 30 pages of references (pp. 419-450), providing details >of around 700 articles, papers and books cited in the endnotes. > >The endnotes are not indicated by superscript numbers, but on each occasion >that a statement or quotation is cited the source can be checked by >consulting the relevant page in the endnotes section at the back of the >book. There are three ways of providing references, and this is not an >uncommon method. A cursory check of my bookshelves gives, e.g., Daniel >Schacter's well-referenced *The Seven Sins of Memory* using this method; >also Loftus and Ketcham's *The Myth of Repressed Memory*. -- The best argument against intelligent design is that people believe in it. * PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Psychology Department 507-389-6217 * * 23 Armstrong Hall Minnesota State University, Mankato * * http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/ * --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
