Distributed Digital Property Board

[goin fishn]

Matt25, you may find this interesting-

Upon the publication of "The Bell Curve," and the attendant controversy it caused, the American Psychological Association published this document

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/research/Correlation/Intelligence.pdf

-which is a review of the state of the research on IQ up to that point. Among the hilites:

The actual definition and specification of what intelligence is is still in debate. See the work of Spearman, Gardner, and Sternberg on differing conceptions of what "intelligence" is.

Intelligence tests were originally devised by Alfred Binet to measure children’s ability to succeed in school. They do in fact predict school performance fairly well: the correlation between IQ scores and grades is about .50.

Scores on intelligence tests predict various measures of job performance: supervisor ratings, work samples, etc. Intelligence tests are also correlated with socio-economic status and income. Most of the above correlations are weak, with IQ accounting for about 20-30% of the differences in achievement.

There are some differences between groups such as racial groups or gender, but social factors may explain those differences.
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My comments:


When conducting an exercise such as Steve Sailor does, in which he attempts to use measured IQ as a predictor of how to treat certain groups, one would be wise to consider that ethnic groups are largely the result of social conventions based on ethnic origin as well as on observable characteristics. None of them are internally homogeneous-as an example, Asian-Americans hail from a wide variety of cultures-China, Japan, Korea, The Phillipines, etc. Lumping these people, or any "ethnic" group into one category is not conducive to performing good research. It likely will lead to sampling bias which will confound any conclusions drawn.

Research has demonstrated that IQ tests tend to be culturally biased, and that when cultural biases are accounted for, IQ scores among groups are largely similar. That being said, the "gap" between White IQ scores and African American IQ scores is narrowing.

A good summary of the most recent findings may be found on Wikipedia:

Still, a 2007 study at Case Western Reserve University found that cultural differences in the provision of information account for racial differences in IQ. The study also found that test problems, similar to some problems found on conventional IQ tests, were only solvable on the basis of specific previous knowledge. Such specific knowledge based questions showed evidence of test bias since the performance on non-specific knowledge based questions did not always correlate with the performance on the knowledge based question. Arguing that IQ tests are often wrongly described as measuring "innate" rather than developed ability, Jencks and Phillips (1998) write that this "labeling bias" causes people to inappropriately attribute the Black-White gap to "innate" differences. They argue that non-cultural environmental factors cause gaps measured by the tests, rather than innate difference based on genetics, and that to use these tests as a measure of innate difference is misleading and improper.


IQ scores overall are rising about 3 points per decade. This is called the "Flynn Effect." African-Americans are rising faster than Whites.



Most researchers agree that genetics accounts for about 50% of IQ, with the other half coming from the environment in which individuals are raised.


Yet, it is also interesting to note that studies of identical twins who are raised seperately reveal that even when raised in different households, their adult IQs were approximately the same.

Contradictory findings such as this show there is still much that is not understood about "intelligence." People such as Steve Sailor would be well advised that the current conventional knowledge about IQ will be subject to drastic change as researchers continue to probe this area. It's too soon to apply findings on IQ to public policy.