When IQ scores advance the New York Ties left-wing agenda, it promotes the value of IQ scores. When IQ scores undercut the New York Times agenda, it casts doubt on the validity of IQ scores.
If you optimize for truth, you don’t operate like the New York Times.
If you enter “iq most replicable social science” (without quotes) into Google today, you get this as the first answer (generated by its AI):
According to current research, IQ testing is considered one of the most replicable findings in the social sciences, meaning that studies on intelligence consistently produce similar results when replicated across different populations and research teams, even amidst the broader “replication crisis” within social science research.
Key points about IQ and replicability:
High consistency:
Studies on IQ tend to show a high degree of consistency in their findings, particularly when using standardized intelligence tests.
Strong correlations:
IQ scores are demonstrably correlated with various life outcomes like educational attainment and occupational status, further supporting their reliability.
Twin studies:
Research using twin studies has provided evidence for a significant genetic component to intelligence, adding to the understanding of IQ’s stability.
The first academic article suggested by Google is from the Journal of Intelligence, published Nov. 19, 2020:
Despite intelligence research being among the most replicable bodies of empirical findings—a Rosetta stone across the social sciences—the communication of intelligence research with non-intelligence researchers and the public remains a challenge, especially given ongoing public controversies throughout the history of the field. Hunt argued that “we have a communication problem.” This article is a call for intelligence researchers to consider communication at multiple levels—communication with other intelligence researchers, communication with non-intelligence researchers, and communication with the public, defined here as policymakers, practitioners, students, and general readers. It discusses ongoing tensions between academic freedom and social responsibility and provides suggestions for thinking about communication and effective research translation and implementation of intelligence research from the frameworks of science and policy research communication. It concludes with some recommendations for effective communication and stresses the importance of incentivizing more scholars to responsibly seek to educate and engage with multiple publics about the science of intelligence.
The research on intelligence, from a purely scientific perspective, is among the most robust literatures in all of the social sciences (Arvey et al. 1994; Carroll 1997; Deary 2020; Jensen 1998; Neisser et al. 1996). At least within the community of researchers around the world who openly acknowledge this enormous body of evidence accumulated to date, then, whether intelligence or cognitive abilities are measurable and have real world consequences is not, at least in my view, the most crucial debate. Of course, there remain healthy disagreements in the field about various aspects of intelligence, and we still have much to learn about intelligence and how it might be most fruitfully applied. Yet, intelligence researchers often find themselves facing many people outside of the field (including the general public) holding strong misconceptions or even distorting the facts about intelligence. Thus, this article seeks to build from Hunt’s (2009) point that the field has a communication problem as a way of expanding the list of challenges or problems that intelligence researchers face in conducting scientific inquiry and stressing that communication has been a neglected topic for the field.
Because intelligence research is multidisciplinary and the construct—especially when conceptualized and measured as general intelligence or g—can be considered a Rosetta stone across the social sciences (Jensen 1998, 2006), it (should) have influence in numerous other fields. Some fields, such as industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology (e.g., Schmidt and Hunter 2004; Kuncel et al. 2004), are one step removed from intelligence research but have incorporated it into their discipline and training (they just call it general mental ability, or GMA). Other fields, such as gifted education, are somewhat accepting of intelligence as a core aspect, but still it remains a minority perspective (e.g., Thompson and Oehlert 2010; Wai and Worrell 2015; Warne 2015). On the flipside, there are other fields, such as epidemiology (e.g., Gottfredson 2004) and education (e.g., Wai et al. 2018) in which there has simply been little to no integration of intelligence research at all, and even strong resistance or just open absence of acknowledgment throughout history (e.g., Maranto and Wai 2020). In the field of psychology, beyond the I/O subdiscipline, it does not appear that intelligence research is really fully accepted as indicated by the number of jobs in traditional psychology, education, or other departments who employ intelligence researchers. Moving outside psychology to the broader social sciences or other areas of science does not necessarily show intelligence research being integrated strongly in a systematic way. One indicator intelligence research is not well accepted by mainstream psychology is the relatively low number of faculty positions, at least in the U.S., recruiting for intelligence as a specialty (e.g., in the U.S. the Psychology Job Wiki (psychjobsearch.wikidot.com), throughout recent years in particular, almost uniformly does not have any positions explicitly asking for intelligence as a specialty). Additionally, though not typically seen this way by intelligence researchers, the lack of accuracy of how intelligence research is represented in general psychology textbooks (Warne et al. 2018) is another indicator of mainstream acceptance within the field of psychology broadly. However, more systematic research on the representation of intelligence as mainstream in psychology has also not yet been conducted and would be useful information.
The history of intelligence research has been simultaneously filled with enormous empirical advancement alongside a number of resurfacing public controversies (see Jensen 1969; Gottfredson 2010a; Herrnstein and Murray 1994; see Carl and Woodley 2019; Rindermann et al. 2020 for recent reviews). Some intelligence researchers have argued that given how intelligence research has the potential to be misused due to its complicated and sometimes unfortunate history, that it is crucial to be careful about how such research is conducted and disseminated (e.g., Martschenko et al. 2019). This type of concern about the history of intelligence research may have even prompted the Journal of Intelligence (2020) editors to openly state on their “aims” page that certain types of research questions, as determined at the discretion of the editors, will not be accepted: “The journal will not consider manuscripts that present results or conclusions with mixed language, with misleading wording or with insufficient supporting data that may therefore lead to or enhance political controversies; and the editors will judge whether that is the case.” Haier’s (2020) editorial stance in Intelligence states that “Our responsibility is to publish the best quality studies we can to elucidate all aspects of human intelligence research. In our view, publishing empirical data, along with clear explanations of what the data mean and what they do not mean, is the only basis for reasoned discussions about what intelligence is and why it is important.”
Thus, there is debate within the field of intelligence itself on what are acceptable topics to conduct research on and what are not and what should even be communicated. Some intelligence researchers believe that all questions should be openly pursued and communicated (e.g., Carl and Woodley 2019; Jensen 1998). Other researchers have noted that certain questions in intelligence research are a bit like playing with fire (e.g., Hunt and Lubinski 2005; Martschenko et al. 2019; Sternberg 2005). It is clear that intelligence research often comes under attack for reasons that have nothing to do with the integrity of the science, but more to do with the possible social implications and misuse when it comes to policy (Martschenko et al. 2019)…
At a time when psychology and the broader social sciences are struggling with a replication crisis (Open Science Collaboration 2015), the research on intelligence and its implications for society is among the most replicable domains across the social and behavioral sciences. Thus, the fact that intelligence as a field remains under fire at present for identical issues as those that continue to resurface across the decades suggests that Hunt (2009) is correct, we very likely have a communication problem. The goal of this short piece has been to provide a framework to think about communication of intelligence research at multiple levels, and how that might shed some light on the historical issue of intelligence not being well integrated into other academic disciplines and also not well understood or accepted by the general public. As a field, it is true that our first priority should be to ensure that we seek to build our scientific understanding of intelligence, but this does not preclude the need to ensure the institutional and public support for new researchers to be able to pursue intelligence research for their careers. For example, we need mainstream psychology, education, or other departments to hire and support the next generation of intelligence researchers, which comes from adjacent more mainstream fields (e.g., social/personality, developmental, health, educational, quantitative, I/O, cognitive) accepting the current empirical findings from intelligence and not being turned off by the public and academic controversies.
Steve Sailer writes:
One of the most controversial things Donald Trump ever said was to suggest that, judging by the state of their respective countries, Norwegians would tend to make better immigrants than Haitians.
Now another Trump is in trouble over Haiti.
From the New York Times’ news section:
Donald Trump Jr. Piles On With Racist Comments About Haitians
After former President Donald J. Trump spread debunked claims that immigrants from Haiti were eating pets, his son cast more aspersions on Haitian immigrants.
By Simon J. Levien
Sept. 14, 2024, 1:54 p.m. ET
Amid fallout from Donald J. Trump’s debunked claim about immigrants from Haiti stealing and eating people’s pets in a small Ohio city, the former president’s oldest son weighed in with his own aspersions on Haitians.
Donald Trump Jr. suggested on Thursday that Haitian immigrants were less intelligent than people from other countries, and claimed that there was demographic evidence to back this up. He provided none.
“You look at Haiti, you look at the demographic makeup, you look at the average I.Q. — if you import the third world into your country, you’re going to become the third world,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Charlie Kirk on Real America’s Voice, a conservative broadcasting network. “That’s just basic. It’s not racist. It’s just fact.”
Claims inherently linking race, nationality and intelligence have long played a role in scientific racism, which uses pseudoscience to try to justify false claims of racial inferiority or superiority. And intelligence quotient testing, a commonly used measure of intelligence, has long been criticized as unreliable. …
The National Haitian American Elected Officials Network, a nonpartisan group for Haitian American politicians, rejected Mr. Trump’s comments about Haitians and intelligence.
“That is so sad,” said Mary Estimé-Irvin, the group’s chairwoman. “The campaign is desperate.”
The New York Times adds: “Donald Trump Jr. has emerged as a key campaign surrogate for his father. They have both advanced the false claim that Haitian migrants are stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio.”
How do they know that is false?
Here are three New York Times articles about lead and low IQ:
C.D.C. Lowers Recommended Lead-Level Limits in Children
High lead levels in young children have been found to affect cognitive development and may lead to a lower I.Q.
One in Three Children Have Unacceptably High Lead Levels, Study Says
Nicholas Rees, a policy specialist on climate and environment at UNICEF and one of the study’s co-authors, said the consequences are dire.
“When you’re talking about a third of the world’s children, you’re talking about a potential loss of learning opportunities, an impact on future wages, you’re talking about a tremendous burden on society,” he said.
Lead-Poisoning Harm Held to Be Partly Reversible
Performance on standardized tests for cognitive development improved significantly six months after the children were treated to reduce the levels of lead in their blood and their homes were cleaned to reduce their exposure, the study found.
I found many New York Times articles about low IQ scores can help murderers escape the death penalty, including the following three:
On Death Row With Low I.Q., and New Hope for a Reprieve
His intellectual disability was even obvious to a Florida judge, who found him “mentally retarded” and took him off death row 18 years after his original sentence.
I.Q. Cutoff Ruling May Spare Some Inmates on Death Row
MIAMI — A Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday throwing out Florida’s strict I.Q. cutoff in death penalty cases could increase the number of inmates exempt from execution because they are deemed mentally disabled, legal experts said Wednesday.
Low I.Q. and the Death Penalty
The Supreme Court will be asked today to decide ”whether the execution of mentally retarded individuals convicted of capital crimes violates the Eighth Amendment.” The case involves Daryl Atkins, who was sentenced to die in Virginia for a 1996 murder and kidnapping. Mr. Atkins has an I.Q. score of 59, below the score of 70 that is commonly used to identify mental retardation.
When it becomes a tool for murderers to avoid the death penalty, invoking retardation is cool.
If low IQ is so bad that people suffering from it are not fully responsible for their actions, then why would you want to import people with low IQs?
