From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 17 2002 - 14:35:19 MDT
Harvey wrote:
> On Monday, September 16, 2002, at 07:15 pm, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>> Since neither one of us is a practitioner in the field of IQ
>> testing, it is important to establish a list of the authorities we
>> want to base our discussion on. I would like to establish a list of
>> journals which both of us might accept as such authorities.
>
> I actually do have some graduate work specifically in cognitive
> testing and performed some internship in the State of Florida's
> Department of Education developing gifted programs. But what does
> that have to do with anything?
### I assume you agree that the journals I listed are not untrustworthy, are
not mere mouthpieces of neo-Nazis, etc.
It's nice you mention your superior qualifications in this subject. I know
of course you are not trying to use "some graduate work" as an independent
argument.
--------
>
> Why do we need to establish a list of pre-approved "authorities"? If
> you have any scientific reviews of The Bell Curve that support it,
> just post it!
### First let's progress in an orderly fashion through the basic claims of
modern psychometrics, which you so far dismissed. Once we agree on the
basics, we can handle the Bell Curve.
-------
>
>>> The American Psychological Association denounced the book by
>>> concluding "The scientific basis of The Bell Curve is fraudulent."
>>
>> ### Am I to infer that the above statement is an actual quote from an
>> official APA policy statement? Please be so kind and provide a link.
>
> No. Why would you infer that? I clearly gave the reference for this
> as coming from The Bell Curve FAQ at
> <http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/L-bellcurvescience.htm>. If you
> look there, it clearly gives this quote right after the summary
> paragraph at the top. That quote has a footnote that clearly
> documents the news article where this exact quote came from. I don't
> know why you people keep acting like I haven't provided links to my
> evidence. It's all there if you read my postings.
### Ah, so you didn't read the APA report. You went to its review in a
political advocacy site, read a private statement of Halford Fairchild, PhD
(conveniently provided at the top of the document, although it did not find
its way into the APA statement, which is no surprise, as it is only the
opinion of a vociferous minority). Yet, you claimed that the APA condemned
TBC.
You might want to read the actual APA report.
------
> Feel free to post whatever you want. But the only thing I am waiting
> to see is a scientific review of The Bell Curve that concludes that it
> was good science. I posted my list of scientific studies that
> reviewed The Bell Curve and concluded it was flawed over a week ago.
### You insist on calling advocacy sites you quoted as "scientific studies".
It is misleading. So far you failed to provide a single peer reviewed
reference in support of your claims (lack of validity of IQ testing, lack of
predictive power of IQ tests, etc.).
OK, so here is the peer-reviewed articles of the day, paired with a quote
from you:
Harvey:
In what Universe? Mensa is full of genius failures, and the real
world is full of average successes. IQ doesn't predict anything. It
does not correlate to salary, grades, SAT scores, military
achievement, job success, social success, or anything else.
and the relevant articles:
Lubinski D. Webb RM. Morelock MJ. Benbow CP. Top 1 in 10,000: a 10-year
follow-up of the profoundly gifted. [Journal Article] Journal of Applied
Psychology. 86(4):718-29, 2001 Aug
Abstract:
Adolescents identified before the age of 13 (N = 320) as having exceptional
mathematical or verbal reasoning abilities (top 1 in 10,000) were tracked
over 10 years. They pursued doctoral degrees at rates over 50 times
base-rate expectations, with several participants having created noteworthy
literary, scientific, or technical products by their early 20s. Early
observed distinctions in intellectual strength (viz., quantitative reasoning
ability over verbal reasoning ability, and vice versa) predicted sharp
differences in their developmental trajectories and occupational pursuits.
This special population strongly preferred educational opportunities
tailored to their precocious rate of learning (i.e., appropriate
developmental placement), with 95% using some form of acceleration to
individualize their education.
and:
Plomin R. Genetics of childhood disorders: III. Genetics and intelligence.
[Journal Article] Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry. 38(6):786-8, 1999 Jun (review)
<excerpt>
Genetic research has made important discoveries about intelligence during
the past few decades. To outline some of these findings, I won't spend space
on the measurement of intelligence except to say that what I mean by
intelligence is general cognitive ability defined as g. All reliable and
valid tests of cognitive ability intercorrelate at a modest level-g is what
they have in common. g is often assessed as a total score across diverse
cognitive tests as in intelligence (IQ) tests, although it is more
accurately indexed by an unrotated principal component that best reflects
what is in common among the tests. Nearly all genetic data have been
obtained using measures developed from this psychometric perspective,
primarily IQ tests. One new direction for genetic research on intelligence
is to investigate other measures such as information-processing and more
direct measures of brain function such as evoked potentials, positron
emission tomographic scans, and functional magnetic resonance imaging and to
explain how these measures relate to g
<excerpt>
A surprising finding concerning specific cognitive abilities is that
multivariate genetic analyses indicate that the same genetic factors largely
influence different abilities. What this finding means concretely is that if
a specific gene were found that is associated with verbal ability, the gene
would also be expected to be associated with spatial ability and other
specific cognitive abilities. This finding is surprising because it goes
against the tide of the popular modular theory of cognitive neuroscience
that assumes that cognitive processes are specific and relatively
independent of one another. The multivariate genetic results are consistent
with a top-down model in which genetic effects of g pervade a broad range of
cognitive processes. An even more surprising finding in 4 out of 4 studies
is that genetic effects on measures of school achievement overlap almost
completely with genetic effects on g. The converse of this finding of
genetic overlap is equally interesting. Although genetics accounts for the
overlap between school achievement and g, discrepancies between school
achievement and g, often used to describe underachievers, are largely
environmental in origin.
The above quotes indicate that intelligence as measured by IQ tests does
predict scholastic achievement (grades), job success (patents, awards,
obtaining PhD-level education).
Do you still think that "IQ doesn't predict anything"?
Rafal
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