Posted on 08/09/2013 3:06:33 PM PDT by reaganaut1
IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore, the Guardians 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 Googles academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits just for the year 2013.
But Coxs 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.
Im 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.
For people who have studied mental ability, whats truly frustrating is the déjà vu they feel each time a media firestorm like this one erupts. Attempts by experts in the field to defend the embattled messenger inevitably fall on deaf ears. When the firestorm is over, the medias mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
I might not give the answer that you want me to.
One reason a college degree has become a necessary qualification for so many jobs is that the lawyers and the P.C. crowd have all but outlawed employers giving intelligence tests. If someone actually gets a college degree you can assume they have the intelligence to do most jobs.
Didn’t the author of this piece used to be Wonkette? Or maybe still is for all I know. And she wants us to take HER seriously about the usefulness of IQ’s? Really?
It offends the stupid.
My mistake- NOT the writer of this piece- he refrees to hr in it.
My IQ takes long weekends off in August.
Cox was at Wonkette. Richwine, the author of this essay, “resigned” from Heritage.
I read or maybe saw on TV that the most accurate predictor of future success is IQ. Achievement tests were not as good but still a good way to measure it.
...same reason you don’t get to see the Wonderlic results
We live in a culture where the left and the media fight for equality.
That includes the “right” to be a completely ignorant moron.
Why can’t we talk specifically about g-factor, the part of intellect that IQ testing is supposed to measure? And what’s wrong with linking it to race? It’s all statistics, but statistics can be very explanatory in the large, while being irrelevant in individual cases.
Why does your graph stop at 20 and omit an entire region to the left? Referring to the Jeantel region...
that pic is hilarious. what is it from?
I read another article that stated a very good predictor of future success is the number of bookcases in a childs home.
I don't know anything about Ana Marie Cox, but the above statement is sophistry at the least. I've been working in this field for 16 years, and we have never stopped using IQ as a means of measuring aptitude and estimating success, and there are no plans to do so in the future.
No, it shines the light on all the MBA managers who should really be flipping burgers...........
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