School Information System: Why can't we talk about IQ?

August 14, 2013

Why can't we talk about IQ?

"IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore," theGuardian's Ana Marie Cox wrote back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted in response that a search for "IQ test" in Google's academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits -- just for the year 2013.

But Cox's assertion is all too common. There is a large discrepancy between what educated laypeople believe about cognitive science and what experts actually know. Journalists are steeped in the lay wisdom, so they are repeatedly surprised when someone forthrightly discusses the real science of mental ability.

If that science happens to deal with group differences in average IQ, the journalists' surprise turns into shock and disdain. Experts who speak publicly about IQ differences end up portrayed as weird contrarians at best, and peddlers of racist pseudoscience at worst.

I'm speaking from experience. My Harvard Ph.D. dissertation contains some scientifically unremarkable statements about ethnic differences in average IQ, including the IQ difference between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. For four years, the dissertation did what almost every other dissertation does -- collected dust in the university library. But when it was unearthed in the midst of the immigration debate, I experienced the vilification firsthand.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 14, 2013 1:04 AM
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Comments

Why not talk about IQ? Because it is fake, and pseudo-science at the core.

Why is spelling not on the IQ test? Because "smart" people are often lousy spellers.

At the dawn of this pseudo-science, Thurstone, one of the founders ran this "IQ" test which was based on reaction times to questions. Here's how it ran. He tested Blacks, American Indians and Whites. On average, Blacks came in last, whites came in second, and Native Americans came in first place. His conclusion? Clearly, Blacks are inferior, but whites the smartest because coming in second showed that whites were "the more deliberative race".

Richwine (not "Richwhine"), a Heritage Foundation staffer got the results he as looking for. It's always easy to do. Funny how members of the master race always are looking for and finding objective rationale's for why they are superior (genetically).

Posted by: Larry Winkler at August 14, 2013 5:50 PM