Saturday, August 10, 2013

Why can’t we talk about IQ?

Via Bill 

 Brain scans are shown. | Reuters

“IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,” the Guardian’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.

More @ Politico

1 comment:

  1. Here is an excerpt of a canned response I use at blogs when race becomes a topic. I usually shut the place down real fast(when posting the whole test) or I am banned, which is rare. People simply don't know how to deal with IQ scores when it is reported by legitimate organizations.

    "In being so bold to state the facts that are readily available, you can check the World Health Organization (WHO)yourself, as they are the authors of what I am going to post.

    The WHO has tested all countries, nationalities and races of people on this planet. They have reports on it. People in Africa scored the lowest on IQ testing than anyone else in the world, having an average IQ of 70. Blacks in the united States didn't fair much better having a average score of 75.(An IQ of 70-75 is considered borderline mentally deficient.) Whites by comparison have an average IQ of 100 and Jews of about 112. Now you know why blacks never contributed anything to the world's development through knowledge and why Africa remained the most backward continent on earth."

    You can Google, "WHO World IQ" and find info concerning all countries and races relating to their IQ scores. Amazing...

    Michael-- Deo Vindicabamur

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