IQ: “Lonely Ice Floe” or Consensus Science?

Malcolm Gladwell calls those who accept the Mainstream Science on Intelligence statement “IQ fundamentalists”, but the reality of g and the predictive validity of intelligence tests are widely accepted as consensus science by intelligence researchers, with some caveats. Reading Eurekalert and PhysOrg, I see press releases practically every day that analyze the correlation of intelligence with a variety of genetic and environmental factors. Here’s one from yesterday:

Fit teenage boys are smarter But muscle strength isn’t the secret, study shows In the first study to demonstrate a clear positive association between adolescent fitness and adult cognitive performance, Nancy Pedersen of the University of Southern California and colleagues in Sweden find that better cardiovascular health among teenage boys correlates to higher scores on a range of intelligence tests – and more education and income later in life.

“During early adolescence and adulthood, the central nervous system displays considerable plasticity,” said Pedersen, research professor of psychology at the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences. “Yet, the effect of exercise on cognition remains poorly understood.”

…

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On Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

As somewhat of an aside, Mr. Lynch criticized my critique of Gardner’s theory of “multiple intelligences” as “irreverent”. This is extremely unfair. All I said was that his theory is “something that doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.” I criticize an ad hoc, unscientific theory that has practically no empirical evidence to support it, and the popular appeal of which derives entirely from its egalitarian and inclusive political flavor, and get called irreverent.

Calling Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences unscientific is not even nearly the most irreverent thing I’ve said, by a long shot. It shouldn’t even be considered irreverent, period. Theories of this sort, which have great popular appeal to the public and practically zero appeal to cognitive psychologists, should be regarded as guilty before proven innocent. Skepticism should be our default mode. Rain on as many unscientific parades as you can.

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Stephen Pinker Responds to Malcolm Gladwell

Here is the exchange of letters. Pinker’s response:

What Malcolm Gladwell calls a “lonely ice floe” is what psychologists call “the mainstream.” In a 1997 editorial in the journal Intelligence, 52 signatories wrote, “I.Q. is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic and social outcomes.” Similar conclusions were affirmed in a unanimous blue-ribbon report by the American Psychological Association, and in recent studies (some focusing on outliers) by Dean Simonton, David Lubinski and others.

Gladwell is right, of course, to privilege peer-reviewed articles over blogs. But sports is a topic in which any academic must answer to an army of statistics-savvy amateurs, and in this instance, I judged, the bloggers were correct. They noted, among other things, that Berri and Simmons weakened their “weak correlation” (Gladwell described it in the New Yorker essay reprinted in “What the Dog Saw” as “no connection”) by omitting the lower-drafted quarterbacks who, unsurprisingly, turned out not to merit many plays. In any case, the relevance to teacher selection (the focus of …

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Why I Care About Malcolm Gladwell’s Igon Values

Why do I care so much about the Malcolm Gladwell issue? First is the matter of scientific integrity in journalism. Science-oriented folks care about it, and most everyone else doesn’t. For instance, here is John Horgan from Slate:

Almost four years ago, an esteemed science journalist — OK, it was me — suggested that the days of truly momentous scientific discovery might be over. One symptom of science’s plight, I predicted, would be that my fellow science writers would become increasingly desperate for and willing to invent “revolutionary” theories. To my delight, Malcolm Gladwell has provided the most spectacular confirmation of my hypothesis to date.

Compare this to the Columbia Journalism Review:

The answer to this charge is: Of course Gladwell lacks rigor — he’s a feature writer, not a brain scientist. Why some people — including the corporate titans who pay Gladwell’s speaking fees — seem confused about this I haven’t a clue. I can’t also help but wonder what would prompt the Times to haul out the heavy gun that is Pinker …

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The Problem is That Gladwell is Wrong, Not That He’s Popular, But the Latter Certainly Doesn’t Help

Malcolm Gladwell is acting slightly odd as the criticism of his thinking is reaching a “tipping point”, to use the phrase he popularized. He posted a screenshot of the “igon value” section of his Taleb essay from the New Yorker, but the essay on his website still has the error, which is clearly not a casual spelling error as he claimed, but an idea error. If it were a spelling error, he wouldn’t have made it two words.

Even the earliest commenters are confused about what point he is trying to make:

Not sure why my initial post is gone. Also not sure what your point is here. The image you posted is clearly from a computer screen, and all it shows is that the New Yorker finally cleaned up after you. The original article used “Igon”, as does the version of the article hosted on your own website. (Readers can check the cached version of the article, in case Gladwell edits the current version without fessing up.)

Even his advocates know this:

Perhaps …

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Pinker on Gladwell, with Cameos by Sailer and Madrigal

In The New York Times, Steven Pinker takes the time to look at Malcolm Gladwell and his latest book of anecdotal curiosities coupled with feel-good populist platitudes. Gladwell is a poster boy for IQ denialism, which bores academics familiar with the mainstream science on intelligence, like Pinker. Here is an excerpt from the end of the review:

The common thread in Gladwell’s writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favor of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition. For an apolitical writer like Gladwell, this has the advantage of appealing both to the Horatio Alger right and to the egalitarian left. Unfortunately he wildly overstates his empirical case. It is simply not true that a quarter­back’s rank in the draft is uncorrelated with his success in the pros, that cognitive skills don’t predict a teacher’s effectiveness, that intelligence scores are poorly related to job performance or (the major claim in “Outliers”) that above a minimum I.Q. of 120, higher intelligence does not bring greater intellectual achievements. …

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BPS Research Digest: The Influence of Genes on Exceptional Cognitive Ability

From the British Psychological Association Research Digest blog:

We know a great deal about the relative genetic and environmental influences on average intelligence and on learning disabilities, but far less about the role of genes in exceptional cognitive ability – in lay terms, what we might call genius or innate talent.

A new “mega-analysis” of 11,000 twin pairs, aged between 6 and 71, has helped to plug that gap. The results suggest that genes exert a significant influence on exceptional cognitive ability, similar in magnitude to their influence on the normal range of intelligence. The findings challenge versions of the “discontinuity hypothesis” – the idea that the relative contribution of nature and nurture changes for exceptional ability.

Claire Haworth and colleagues, of the newly-established Genetics of High Cognitive Abilities (GHCA) consortium, combined data from six studies, involving twins from four countries – the UK, Netherlands, Australia and United States. Combining so much data altogether allowed them to restrict their analyses to participants in the top 15 per cent for intelligence performance, whilst still maintaining enough power for statistical …

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