suggested head -- Un-publishing a book is like unbreaking an egg second-week revision e-mail follows Books are published by the thousands every year, but when one is de-published, that's news. Christopher Brand's book on IQ testing, "The 'g' Factor," appeared quietly in British bookstores around March 20. Early sales were encouraging, but then the author had excellent credentials. "The author is well known," publisher John Wiley & Sons U.K. announced proudly in its press release, "for his contributions to research and debate on intelligence and personality. He pioneered 'inspection time' testing in Britain and the U.S.A. He lectures in psychology at the University of Edinburgh and is a Fellow of the Galton Institute." The book will provoke discussion, Wiley promised, and so it did — along with student boycotts, a university investigation of Brand's teaching and a media circus. Wiley's New York headquarters ordered the book pulled from bookstores. A statement issued by Charles Ellis, president and chief executive officer of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., said the firm had decided to withdraw the book after careful consideration of Brand's statements as reported in the British press, as well as some of the views presented in his work. "The management of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., does not want to support these views by disseminating them or be associated with a book that makes assertions that we find repellent," it proclaimed. Brand calls this censorship, but I don't agree. Governments censor; Wiley, as a private company, has absolute right to decide what and what not to publish, for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons. In any case, Wiley's management had plenty of opportunity to decide during the year it took to turn Brand's manuscript into a book. On the evidence of their own publicity blurbs, they thought the book was just fine until they began to feel the political heat, and then they decided it was "repellent." That's not censorship. It's cowardice. And quite possibly breach of contract, too, but that's a different question. Brand is furious at Wiley — "twerps" is about the mildest epithet he uses — but not at all intimidated. "I can hardly wait for the battle vs. US Wiley to commence," he told me Monday by e-mail. "Here the journalists are chiefly interested in the student protests and have forgotten about the book's suppression entirely." Books can't be suppressed for long in an Internet world, and summaries of the conclusions will soon be available. Brand is distributing an on-line newsletter about his book's travails and if he can't find another publisher to print it, he could just post the whole thing. That would make it difficult to collect royalties, of course, but notoriety has financial rewards of its own and Wiley has certainly guaranteed Brand that. In the meantime, there are the several hundred copies that were sold before Wiley panicked. I've read "The 'g' Factor." Someone attending the National Association of Scholars conference in Washington, D.C., last weekend had a copy, and I managed to land a turn. So there I was in the back row of the Westend Ballroom of the Washington Marriott, frantically taking notes because the hotel's photocopier was broken. In ironic counterpoint, the panel discussion going on in the front of the room, which would otherwise have engaged my rapt attention, was on "Intellectual freedom in the academy." Brand's book would be innocuous enough, if it weren't that everything having to do with IQ and genetics carries a high-voltage political charge. His title refers to the common measure of intelligence derived statistically from the correlations among various kinds of mental tests, called "g" for general intelligence. Some psychologists deny there is any such thing, but that's like denying the existence of the Dow-Jones average. There is a precise algorithm for calculating it and clearly it reflects something important and useful, whether about human intelligence or the stock market. The book differs from other introductions for the general reader, such as Daniel Seligman's "A Question of Intelligence," in its extensive treatment of intelligence tests that rely on the very brief presentation of stimuli, research that is much better known in Britain than in the United States, and in its insightful (and devastating) outlines of opposing views. So what's repellent? Wiley's management disdained to say, but presumably it included Brand's brash adoption of the term "scientific racist" as a self-description. That's what critics of views like his would call him anyway, he said. If you've heard the chant "We're here, we're queer, . . ." you will recognize Brand's choice of appellation as a similar expression of moral certainty that he has nothing at all to be ashamed of. He also discusses the evidence that African-Americans score about one standard deviation lower than American whites on IQ tests. Nobody likes that, but it's one of the best-established experimental results in psychology. The scientific debate is over causes, how genes and environment interact to determine intelligence. And the political debate is over what to do about it. Brand's main policy proposal is a plea for the revival of voluntary ability grouping, called "streaming" in British parlance. That policy is as controversial in Britain as it is here, though for class rather than racial reasons, but letting children and their parents choose a suitable intellectual environment for education shouldn't be revolutionary. "Acceptance of others' rights is what protects everyone from state manipulation of any kind," he writes. "Such acceptance follows perhaps a little more easily from a belief in biologically based individual agency than from an environmentalism that stresses the power of society to shape and even 'construct' the individual." Educators devoted to environmentalism and egalitarianism have created lockstep schools where children learn far less than they can. Brand wrote a book about why it would be a good idea to try something different. You might want to read it. (second week revision; moved on the wire Thursday, May 16) Books are published by the thousands every year, but when one is de-published, that's news. Christopher Brand's book on IQ testing, "The 'g' Factor," appeared quietly in British bookstores around March 20. Early sales were encouraging, but then the author had excellent credentials. "The author is well known," publisher John Wiley & Sons U.K. announced proudly in its press release, "for his contributions to research and debate on intelligence and personality. He pioneered 'inspection time' testing in Britain and the U.S.A. He lectures in psychology at the University of Edinburgh and is a Fellow of the Galton Institute." The book will provoke discussion, Wiley promised, and so it did — along with student boycotts, a university investigation of Brand's teaching and a media circus. Wiley's New York headquarters ordered the book pulled from bookstores. A statement issued by Charles Ellis, president and chief executive officer of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., said the firm had decided to withdraw the book after careful consideration of Brand's statements as reported in the British press, as well as some of the views presented in his work. "The management of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., does not want to support these views by disseminating them or be associated with a book that makes assertions that we find repellent," it proclaimed. Brand calls this censorship, but I don't agree. Governments censor; Wiley, as a private company, has absolute right to decide what and what not to publish, for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons. In any case, Wiley's management had plenty of opportunity to decide during the year it took to turn Brand's manuscript into a book. On the evidence of their own publicity blurbs, they thought the book was just fine until they began to feel the political heat, and then they decided it was "repellent." That's not censorship. It's cowardice. But cowardice is endemic among textbook publishers. The circus now going on in Edinburgh, including an "anti-Nazi" rally Thursday, strikes terror into the hearts of executives whose income depends on the goodwill of fanatically "multicultural" statewide adoption committees like California's. Most publishers would be delighted when an obscure academic work suddenly showed best-seller potential. Fortunately, books can't be suppressed for long in an Internet world. Brand has a web page (http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/johnny/chris/) offering summaries of the book's conclusions, an on-line newsletter about its travails and instructions for ordering photocopies. I've read "The 'g' Factor." It's mainstream science — nothing "Nazi" about it. I'd even call it innocuous, except that I know everything having to do with IQ and genetics carries a high-voltage political charge. His title refers to the common measure of intelligence derived statistically from the correlations among various kinds of mental tests, called "g" for general intelligence. Some psychologists deny there is any such thing, but that's like denying the existence of the Dow-Jones average. There is a precise algorithm for calculating it and clearly it reflects something important and useful, whether about human intelligence or the stock market. The book differs from other introductions for the general reader, such as Daniel Seligman's "A Question of Intelligence," in its extensive treatment of intelligence tests that rely on the very brief presentation of stimuli, research that is much better known in Britain than in the United States, and in its insightful (and devastating) outlines of opposing views. So what's repellent? Wiley's management disdained to say, but presumably it included Brand's brash adoption of the term "scientific racist" as a self-description. That's what critics of views like his would call him anyway, he said. If you've heard the chant "We're here, we're queer, . . ." you will recognize Brand's choice of appellation as a similar expression of moral certainty that he has nothing at all to be ashamed of. He also discusses the evidence that African-Americans score about one standard deviation lower than American whites on IQ tests. Nobody likes that, but it's one of the best-established experimental results in psychology. The scientific debate is over causes, how genes and environment interact to determine intelligence. And the political debate is over what to do about it. Brand's main policy proposal is a plea for the revival of voluntary ability grouping, called "streaming" in British parlance. That policy is as controversial in Britain as it is here, though for class rather than racial reasons, but letting children and their parents choose a suitable intellectual environment for education shouldn't be revolutionary. "Acceptance of others' rights is what protects everyone from state manipulation of any kind," he writes. "Such acceptance follows perhaps a little more easily from a belief in biologically based individual agency than from an environmentalism that stresses the power of society to shape and even 'construct' the individual." Educators devoted to environmentalism and egalitarianism have created lockstep schools where children learn far less than they can. Brand wrote a book about why it would be a good idea to try something different. You might want to read it.