I don’t deny that we all have innate abilities, and that heredity accounts for many if not all of them. I do not, however, choose to frame my understanding of intelligence with test scores or the parts of our academic system that values them, and which together lead to generalized conclusions that include reduction of “intelligence” to a number.

I have a weight, and a body temperature. There are instruments for measuring both as quotients. There is no way of measuring my intelligence, other than by the faith of others in it, and through its results in the world.

By those measures I’m doing okay. But even there I’m with Whitman: “I was never measured, and never will be measured.”

Whitman never took an IQ test. If he had, he might not come out as smart as many contemporaries. But he helped make civilization at its best, and that’s what matters.

Oh, by the way, an old friend of mine once showed me his Army IQ and aptitude tests. They showed him to be a dummy, basically. His highest score was 118. Others were below 100. Long after his service he got into computer programming, and eventually made his bones running large programming teams for major banks. Make of that what you will.

I would recommend Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate instead.

While the nonscientific reviews of The Mismeasure of Man were almost uniformly laudatory, the reviews in the scientific journals were almost all highly critical (Davis, Bernard D. (1983). Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ, and the press. The Public Interest, 74, 41-59).

- Gould also makes some misleading comments about the early performance of Jewish migrants on psychometric tests. Goddard never found that Jews as a group did poorly, and there is no evidence the tests were used in passing the 1924 Immigration Act (see, Franz Samelson (1975, 1982), Snyderman & Herrnstein 1983).

- Gould overlooks identical twin studies.

- Gould’s factor analysis is incorrect (also see John Carroll’s review Intelligence 21, 121-134 (1995), (also, Jensen Contemporary Education Review Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.) David J. Bartholomew, from London School of Economics, who has writtena textbook on factor analysis, also explains in “Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies” where Gould goes wrong in this area.

-Gould states that Morton “doctored” his collection of results on cranial size, but J. S. Michael (1988) remeasured a random sample of the Morton collection he found that very few errors had been made, and that these were not in the direction that Gould had asserted.

- The Army actually still uses IQ tests, and more generally, the tests have been shown to strongly predict academic performance.

- Gould largely attacks old tests. Jensen responded to a large amount of Gould’s criticism in Contemporary Education Review
Summer 1982, Volume 1, Number 2, pp. 121- 135.) I don’t think Gould ever replied.

-He attacks Cyril Burt for fabricating his twin studies, but books since Gould’s first edition came out have vindicated Burt (Joynson (1988) and the other by Ronald Fletcher (1991). Further, twin studies since show average heritability from these studies of 75%, almost the same as Burts supposedly ‘faked’ heritability of 77%.

If a task requires specific skills in an area, wouldn’t it help to have a ‘test’ or ‘measure’ to categorize prospects as suitable, ideal or completely unqualified for it?

True, I don’t subscribe to the theory of ‘genius’ as measured by I.Q. test figures – but I do believe a measure of various things, including intelligence (in its many forms) matters in many ways, indeed may even be critical in certain areas.

All success
Dr.Mani

Why does “IQ matter”, even if it has many forms?

IQ is about categorization. That’s what it’s used for. And it’s an ‘-ism” no less bad than racism, sexism and the rest of them. And perhaps far worse, because it’s applied, individually, to all kids, in ways that have profound effects on their lives. That’s how it really matters.

In his 1983 book, “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences”, Howard Gardner described 8 domains of intelligence:

- linguistic
- logical-mathematical
- spatial
- musical
- bodily-kinesthetic
- intrapersonal
- interpersonal
- naturalistic

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

Conventional I.Q. tests (from where the data on Ashkenazi Jews were derived) do not measure all of them. I also seem to vaguely recall a factoid from med school – Ashkenazi Jews had brains that weighed 2% more than the non-AJ population, on average.

Nice post, anyway

All success
Dr.Mani

1. I am an Ashkenazi Jew.

2. The school have shown me the door after 10th grade. The next two years I have spent as an electricians apprentice were among the most enriching I had in my life.

3. It’s a Good Thing that we don’t have this measurement system here in Israel.

“How Not to Talk to Your Kids” by Po Bronson

“What if the best that I can be just isn’t good enough? Isn’t it better not to know?” — Jonathan Coulton

I wrote this post in great haste, and simply ran out of time before I could mention Steven Jay Gould’s classic “The Mismeasure of Man.” What he said then still applies now. What’s remarkable is that, decades later, we still have this notion that people possess “an IQ.” Read a piece in Time recently on Birth Order — it showed up again on the plane today — that talks about how IQ descends with birth order. Not “IQ scores.” Just IQ. Arg.

Jon, good stuff as usual. Dunno why your post would be held in moderation. I didn’t see it there, and I don’t think links would have anything to do with it, but hey, I dunno.

Thanks, all.