{"id":76560,"date":"2015-10-09T16:02:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T00:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=76560"},"modified":"2015-10-09T16:03:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T00:03:21","slug":"why-cant-we-talk-about-iq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=76560","title":{"rendered":"Why can’t we talk about IQ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Richwine writes for Politico<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\u201cIQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,\u201d the Guardian<\/i>\u2019s Ana Marie Cox wrote<\/a> back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted<\/a> in response that a search for \u201cIQ test\u201d in Google\u2019s academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits \u2014 just for the year 2013. <\/p>\n

But Cox\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

If that science happens to deal with group differences in average IQ, the journalists\u2019 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. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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 \u2014 collected dust in the university library. But when it was unearthed in the midst of the immigration debate, I experienced the vilification firsthand. <\/p>\n

For people who have studied mental ability, what\u2019s truly frustrating is the déjà vu<\/i> 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 media\u2019s mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along. <\/p>\n

At stake here, incidentally, is not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but also how science informs public policy. The U.S. education system, for example, is suffused with mental testing, yet few in the political classes understand cognitive ability research. Angry and repeated condemnations of the science will not help. <\/p>\n

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists. <\/p>\n

For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor <\/i>(referred to colloquially as \u201cintelligence\u201d) that explains much of an individual\u2019s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person\u2019s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes. <\/p>\n

In terms of group differences, people of northeast Asian descent have higher average IQ scores than people of European lineage, who in turn have higher average scores than people of sub-Saharan African descent. The average score for Hispanic Americans falls somewhere between the white and black American averages. Psychologists have tested and long rejected the notion that score differences can be explained simply by biased test questions. It is possible that genetic factors could influence IQ differences among ethnic groups, but many scientists are withholding judgment until DNA studies are able to link specific gene combinations with IQ. <\/p>\n

How can I be sure all of this reflects mainstream thinking? Because, over the years, psychologists have put together statements, reports, and even books aimed at synthesizing expert opinion on IQ. Many of these efforts were made in explicit response to the periodic media firestorms that engulfed people who spoke publicly about cognitive science. It\u2019s worth reviewing some of those incidents and detailing the scholarly responses \u2014 responses that are invariably forgotten before the next furor begins. I\u2019ll place my own experience in that context. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start 25 years ago, with the publication of The IQ Controversy<\/i>, a book by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman. The authors surveyed more than 1,000 experts in the field of cognitive science to develop a picture of what the mainstream really looks like. It was very similar to the description I\u2019ve supplied above. <\/p>\n

Snyderman and Rothman then systematically analyzed television, newspaper, and magazine coverage of IQ issues. They were alarmed to find that the media were presenting a much different picture than what the expert survey showed. Based on media portrayals, it would seem that most experts think IQ scores have little meaning, that genes have no influence on IQ, and that the tests are hopelessly biased. \u201cOur work demonstrates that, by any reasonable standard, media coverage of the IQ controversy has been quite inaccurate,\u201d the authors concluded. <\/p>\n

In conducting the expert survey and contrasting the results with media depictions of IQ research, one would think Snyderman and Rothman had performed a valuable service. Surely public discussion of IQ would now be more firmly grounded in science? <\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t happen. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray\u2019s The Bell Curve<\/i> was published in 1994, and real science was hard to find in the media circus that ensued. Herrnstein and Murray\u2019s central claim about IQ differences shaping class divisions continues to be the subject of reasoned debate among social scientists. But non-experts in the media questioned whether IQ is even a valid concept. Intelligence research \u2013 psychometrics \u2014 is a pseudoscience, they said. The tests are meaningless, elitist, biased against women and minorities, important only to genetic determinists. And even to discuss group differences in IQ was called racist. <\/p>\n

In short, the media did everything Snyderman and Rothman had warned against six years earlier. As a consequence, the interesting policy implications explored by Herrnstein and Murray were lost in the firestorm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jason Richwine<\/a>: All of my public statements on the media controversy surrounding my dissertation are collected on this page<\/span><\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n

May 13, 2013: A talk with Jason Richwine: ‘I do not apologize for any of my work’<\/a> <\/span><\/span>
\n(interview with Byron York of the Washington Examiner)<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

May 20, 2013: About that dissertation<\/a> <\/span>
\n(article in National Review)<\/span><\/p>\n

May 21, 2013: Race and IQ at Harvard<\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/span>
\n(radio interview on Boston NPR) <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

May 24, 2013: Jason Richwine responds on race, IQ, and his dissertation<\/a> <\/span>
\n(article in Think Progress)<\/span><\/p>\n

May 30, 2013: Response to Peter H. Irons<\/a><\/span>  <\/span>
\n(unpublished letter to the Harvard Crimson) <\/span>
\n
\n<\/b> August 9, 2013: Why can’t we talk about IQ?<\/a><\/span> <\/span>
\n(article in Politico)<\/span><\/p>\n

June 3, 2014: Run out of the think tanks<\/a>
\n(radio interview with Vicki McKenna)<\/p>\n

October 12, 2014: Dr. Jason Richwine on human intelligence and American politics<\/a>
\n(radio interview with Joseph Cotto)<\/p>\n

October 5, 2015: IQ and immigration policy<\/a>
\n(radio interview with Stefan Molyneux) <\/p>\n

To learn about my professional background and my personal experiences during the firestorm, I specifically recommend “About that dissertation<\/b>.” For a more detailed discussion of the dissertation’s content and approval process, see “Jason Richwine responds on race, IQ, and his dissertation<\/b>.” For a critique of the media’s handling of IQ issues, please read “Why can’t we talk about IQ?<\/b>” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Richwine writes for Politico: \u201cIQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,\u201d the Guardian\u2019s Ana Marie Cox wrote back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29582,42699],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iq","category-jason-richwine"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76561,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76560\/revisions\/76561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}