Scientific American and Spearman's g.

[bpesta22]

For those following the other IQ thread-- not so much the main combatants, but anyone on the fence trying to decide what they think about IQ tests:

Here is a short article in Scientific American by Linda Gottfredson. She's a big name in psychometrics, but note that this ain't no psych journal publishing her claims.

I'm citing it here in a new thread because I think its very consistent with what I've been arguing (perhaps showing at least that I'm not making it up), and is a nice lay person's summary of the state of the art regarding g (with all claims passing American Scientists' peer review process).

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingo...8gottfred.html

[Complexity]

Give it a rest, Romeo.

[bpesta22]

Originally Posted by Complexity

Give it a rest, Romeo.

I'm just thinking of the children.

I bet you drive an SUV.

[Complexity]

Wrong again.

You had no good reason to start yet another thread on this topic.

[Dylab]

I at least appreciate this thread. Those giant threads intimidate me...

[bpesta22]

Originally Posted by Complexity

Wrong again.

You had no good reason to start yet another thread on this topic.

In your opinion-- I see now 2 threads on page 1 on IQ. Wow, talk about spam!

One doesn't have to look far here to see threads that probably have no good justification for being....

Who gets to pick n chose which threads have good enough reason to start?

I say let the market sort it out. If no one else replies; so be it.

[Complexity]

You participated in several threads on this subject.

If you insist on starting another thread to spread your gospel, I'll just have to jump in to counter your junk.

The people who claim to measure intelligence by means of IQ testing to estimate g are participating in an intellectual fraud, knowingly by some, through laziness and ignorance by others.

bpesta22 is one of these people.

These people have done, and will continue to do, a great deal of harm.

They have too much of a vested interest in their approach, and too little perspective and integrity, to address valid criticism and reconsider their field.

Their methods and their understanding of intelligence will, many years from now, be seen to be on par with feeling the skull for bumps.

Shame on them.

[AmateurScientist]

Originally Posted by Complexity

You participated in several threads on this subject.

If you insist on starting another thread to spread your gospel, I'll just have to jump in to counter your junk.

The people who claim to measure intelligence by means of IQ testing to estimate g are participating in an intellectual fraud, knowingly by some, through laziness and ignorance by others.

bpesta22 is one of these people.

These people have done, and will continue to do, a great deal of harm.

They have too much of a vested interest in their approach, and too little perspective and integrity, to address valid criticism and reconsider their field.

Their methods and their understanding of intelligence will, many years from now, be seen to be on par with feeling the skull for bumps.

Shame on them.

Hmmm...I smell a political agenda in your criticisms. You also lack the credentials to go toe to toe with Pesta intelligently on the subject, as far as I can tell.

AS

[T'ai Chi]

Originally Posted by AmateurScientist

Hmmm...I smell a political agenda in your criticisms. You also lack the credentials to go toe to toe with Pesta intelligently on the subject, as far as I can tell.

AS

Heh.

[Complexity]

Originally Posted by AmateurScientist

Hmmm...I smell a political agenda in your criticisms. You also lack the credentials to go toe to toe with Pesta intelligently on the subject, as far as I can tell.

AS

No political agenda, just disgust at people who have made an industry out of oversimplifying something truly important and portray it as science.

Statistical analysis is not my area.

Intelligence is an abiding interest of mine, aspects of which are relevant to my research. Most of my graduate work involved the study of intelligence.

I'll leave the arcana of IQ testing to bpesta. Whatever they are measuring, I don't think it is intelligence.

He recommended an article, I'll recommend a book: Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.

bpesta regards it as discredited. Gould regarded IQ as discredited. So do many others.

[davefoc]

Thanks for the link bpesta22,
That was an interesting article.

[T'ai Chi]

Originally Posted by Complexity

Gould regarded IQ as discredited.

Was IQ testing Gould's area?

[AmateurScientist]

Originally Posted by Complexity

He recommended an article, I'll recommend a book: Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man.

Gould himself and his work in punctuated equilibrium have not been discredited. The Mismeasure of Man largely has been discredited in the cognitive sciences. Few persons other than laypersons look to it as a scholarly work on the subject of intelligence.

You could have picked a better example to counter Pesta's citation.

AS

[Complexity]

I've spent some time reviewing some of the critical reactions to The Mismeasure of Man, especially those in psychology. I think it is fair to say that he had a purpose when he wrote the book, that he organized his argument to further that purpose, that those whose views and practices he attacked vehemently disagree with him, and that his writing style makes his works quite accessible to the layman.

I'd say that his book is discredited within the IQ-testing community and those areas of psychology in which that is embedded. This is not a surprise - they are the ones he's calling to account.

I don't know which other fields you regard as "cognitive sciences" and how the book is regarded in those fields.

I do know that I do research in one of the fields regarded as a cognitive science. I regard the characterization of intelligence as one of the great open problems. I don't think the IQ crowd have come close to doing intelligence justice.

[fls]

Originally Posted by bpesta22

For those following the other IQ thread-- not so much the main combatants, but anyone on the fence trying to decide what they think about IQ tests:

In all honesty, I haven't read all of the other IQ thread, but I may have the gist of it (the essence usually repeats).

Quote:

Here is a short article in Scientific American by Linda Gottfredson. She's a big name in psychometrics, but note that this ain't no psych journal publishing her claims.

I'm citing it here in a new thread because I think its very consistent with what I've been arguing (perhaps showing at least that I'm not making it up), and is a nice lay person's summary of the state of the art regarding g (with all claims passing American Scientists' peer review process).

Scientific American is not a peer-reviewed journal. What you mean is that the article passed editor-review.

Quote:

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingo...8gottfred.html

The article refers mostly to correlations found between "g" and various other measures of "success". The assertions are unreferenced, making them difficult to evaluate. The statistical references are vague and the statements made in the text are inconsistent with the information presented in the illustration. I'm not saying that any of that makes the information wrong, just that there is no way to independently evaluate the information provided in that article. So it ends up adding nothing to the debate, because whether or not you trust it depends entirely on your perspective prior to reading the article.

What you don't see in the article is discussion of how useful this information is. In medicine, tests are evaluated for usefulness based on likelihood ratios (LR). A test is useful if it makes a difference in the likelihood of a particular diagnosis. For reference, LR's >10 are very useful, 5-10 moderately useful, 2-5 minimally useful, and 1-2 are rarely useful. If you apply these standards to the information presented in the illustration from that article, the majority of the likelihood ratios fall in the 1-2 range - i.e. rarely useful. This means that if you are trying to determine whether or not someone is likely to live in poverty, get divorced or have illegitimate children, IQ testing rarely adds any useful information.

Just something to take into consideration.

Linda

[Jeff Corey]

Originally Posted by AmateurScientist

Gould himself and his work in punctuated equilibrium have not been discredited. The Mismeasure of Man largely has been discredited in the cognitive sciences. Few persons other than laypersons look to it as a scholarly work on the subject of intelligence.

You could have picked a better example to counter Pesta's citation.

AS

But Gould did make valid points about the misuse of IQ tests at Ellis Island in the early 1900s, the testimony of scientists like Goddard before Congress that a majority of certain groups were "feebleminded" and the subsequent passage of immigration quotas for those groups.

[bpesta22]

Linda-- I could be wrong but I thought likelihood ratios are used when the outcome is black or white (you have cancer or you don't; the patient lived or he didn't).

Most of the things that people use IQ to predict seem to fall on a continuum (job performance; grades; income; years education).

One can tell from a validity co-efficient how much variance in y is explained just by knowing x (iq in this case).

Schmidt and Hunter have a classic article showing that-- for job selection-- the incremental validity of IQ for predicting job performance is something like .50. Adding other things to the selection process (reference checks, unstructured interviews, even graphology) adds very little to prediction once IQ is controlled for (the exceptions, iirc, are conscientiousness, structured interviews and work sample tests-- the only selection methods that improve accuracy beyond IQ).

There are also utility formulas where you plug in values based on the cost of admin an IQ test versus its return (the increase in validity, coming just from using a test-- in this case, an IQ test), compounding the return, adjusting for inflation, etc. It's been awhile since I looked at these, but I remember the ROI for using an IQ test in selection is massive.

I posted a smaller version of this in the other thread, but I think it puts things in perspective. Here are some validities for various things:

First, validities of IQ tests:

predicting grades .50
job performance .50
income .33
year's education .55
Speed of neurons firing .33
teenage pregnancy .19
Your IQ given your biological parents' r=.8
Your IQ given your adopted parents' r=.00


Validities of other things:

Nicotine patch and quitting smoking....r=.18

employment interviews predicting job success..r=.20

graphology predicting job success r=.00

Conscientiousness predicting job success r=.30

gender predicting weight of adults in the USA....r=.26

elevation above see level and daily temp in the USA...r = .34

weight and height USA adults r=.44

gender and arm strength for adults...r=.55

prenatal screening of maternal serum to ID down's syndrome, r=.11

test anxiety and grades, r=.17

ECG stress test results and heart disease, r=.22

decreased bone density and risk of hip fracture in women, r = .25

screening mamograms and detection of breast cancer within 2 years, r = .27

pap smear and cervical abnormality, r=.36

accuracy of home pregnancy kit used at home, r=.38

MRI and detection of lymph node metastisis in cervical cancer, r = .55

speed of processing and reasoning ability, r=.55

[Yahzi]

Originally Posted by bpesta22

anyone on the fence trying to decide what they think about IQ tests:

Does the article mention gorillas?

Is there any particular reason you keep trying to bury this inconvienent fact at every turn? If you want to sway fence-sitters in a rational and ethical way, you need to present all of the relevant information.

For instance:

We know that gorillas can delay puberty for up to nine years based solely on social cues. This naturally leads to the question, what effects can purely social cues have on human development? And the answer is... WE DO NOT KNOW.

Therefore, concluding anything about IQ and success in a cultural setting is absolutely unjustifiable. Only dishonest or despicable people would argue for the validity of IQ testing while concealing known sources of error that are larger than the effects they claim to be measuring.

The fact that there are a lot of people pushing this crap is really no more relevant than the fact that there are a lot of people pushing religious crap.

Psychometrics cannot measure IQ separate from cultural influence. Ergo, it is at best useful for determining gross defencies. Its use in any other arena is simply a way to reinforce cultural prejudices.

[Yahzi]

Originally Posted by AmateurScientist

Hmmm...I smell a political agenda in your criticisms.

Yes, there is a political agenda here. It is the political agenda of "fairness." It is the political agenda of not allowing cultural prejudices to be supported by culturally prejuiced data.

Quote:

You also lack the credentials to go toe to toe with Pesta intelligently on the subject, as far as I can tell.

I cannot comment on intelligently; but perhaps ethically also matters to you. Bpesta, along with the entire psychometric industry, simply ignores data that destroys their mythology.

Compare Bpesta's defense to the defense of lie-detector testing. Surely the correlations between guilty tests and guilty verdicts is reasonably high. Police everywhere swear by them, and there is an entire industry that publishes papers, research, and pretty graphs showing their validity.

Does any of that, even for a second, convince you that the electrical resistance of the skin is a clear window into the mind?

We know about gorillas, no matter how much the industry would like to ignore it. We know about racism, no matter how much some people would like to pretend it does not exist or has no effect. The only number Bpesta presented that means anything is the correlation of IQ with adopted/biological parents. And notice he chose to bury that number under a welter of culturally based metrics. Why do you suppose that is? Does one need outstanding intellectual credentials to spot a pig in a poke?

[Dave1001]

Originally Posted by Yahzi

Only dishonest or despicable people would argue for the validity of IQ testing while concealing known sources of error that are larger than the effects they claim to be measuring.

The fact that there are a lot of people pushing this crap is really no more relevant than the fact that there are a lot of people pushing religious crap.

Can we discuss/debate the ideas rather than try to dissuade people from considering point of views by using words like "dishonest", "despicable", "crap", and "religious crap"? I think it detracts rather than adds to the discussion.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Dave1001

Can we discuss/debate the ideas rather than try to dissuade people from considering point of views by using words like "dishonest", "despicable", "crap", and "religious crap"?

It's an unfortunate fact that most of the scholarly analyses of IQ are deeply and fundamentally flawed in their approach to statistics. For example, Murray and Herrnstein's mammoth The Bell Curve does not distinguish between within-group and between-group differences, despite the fact that this is an elementary statistical fallacy that a second-year undergraduate should feel embarrassed by.

It is an even more unfortunate fact that much of the fundamentals of the field of psychometrics are widely acknowledged to be falsified. (I refer in particular to the work of Cyril Burt in manufacturing data, and publishing from pseudonymous sockpuppets to "replicate" it -- and the work of Eyesenck and Jensen in covering these malfeasances up.)

It is therefore difficult for me to discuss the ideas of IQ theory without using words like "crap" and "dishonest" in the same way that it's difficult for me to discuss Queen Elizabeth II without using words like "royalty" and "England," or for me to discuss a O.J. Simpson without using words like "trial," or for me to discuss homeopathy without using words like "snake oil."

Once you eliminate the incompetent and the outright dishonest, there's little left.

[Dave1001]

Originally Posted by drkitten

It's an unfortunate fact that most of the scholarly analyses of IQ are deeply and fundamentally flawed in their approach to statistics. For example, Murray and Herrnstein's mammoth The Bell Curve does not distinguish between within-group and between-group differences, despite the fact that this is an elementary statistical fallacy that a second-year undergraduate should feel embarrassed by.

It is an even more unfortunate fact that much of the fundamentals of the field of psychometrics are widely acknowledged to be falsified. (I refer in particular to the work of Cyril Burt in manufacturing data, and publishing from pseudonymous sockpuppets to "replicate" it -- and the work of Eyesenck and Jensen in covering these malfeasances up.)

It is therefore difficult for me to discuss the ideas of IQ theory without using words like "crap" and "dishonest" in the same way that it's difficult for me to discuss Queen Elizabeth II without using words like "royalty" and "England," or for me to discuss a O.J. Simpson without using words like "trial," or for me to discuss homeopathy without using words like "snake oil."

Once you eliminate the incompetent and the outright dishonest, there's little left.

Let's talk about the "little left".

Who are the top reputable researchers in the field of human intelligence. There must be at least dozens of credible researchers in a field that fascinating.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Dave1001

Let's talk about the "little left".

Who are the top reputable researchers in the field of human intelligence.

Certainly. Who are the top reputable researchers in the field of homeopathy?

In my experience, the well has been sufficiently poisoned that the only reputable researchers are the ones who have been reinvestigating the fundamental assumptions -- so I'd start with Gardner of Multiple Intelligences fame. I also have a lingering amount of respect for some of the early statistical pioneers such as Spearman, but more for their statistical than for their psychometric prowess -- and of course they're not longer participating in the field.

Beyond that, "human intelligence" is a huge field, and only a very small proportion of it is concerned with IQ and intelligence metrics. If you discount the fraudulent data, there's very little reason to believe that the processes involved in (e.g.) lexical decision are the same as the ones involved in chess-playing, so few people outside of the IQ community consider the question of a single measure of "intelligence" to be meaningful, and they focus instead on specific aspects of intelligence. If you wanted me to list the top players in "human intelligence" using a definition that broad, you're really just asking me for a Who's Who in Psychology collection.

[bpesta22]

data from lie detectors can't be used in court-- data from IQ testing can.

The federal polygraph protection act makes it illegal to use lie detectors to hire people.

How come there isn't no federal IQ protection act?

It's not even a bad analogy, it illustrates my point. Congress will pass laws outlawing invalid selection methods. They've clearly done so with lie detectors. Why haven't they done this for IQ tests?

I invite people who think that the key psychometricians alive today are babbling idiots, committing mistakes that would embarass 2nd year stats students, to actually perhaps read some of their work.

***

IQ predicts GPA better than height predicts weight. How dare those ruler salespersons who attempt to predict weight with something as shoddy as a yardstick! Their measures reify the growing trend of heightism in the USA.
It's purely a political agenda, these babbling idiots don't even reliaze that some tall people are skinny (look at mr skinny!) certainly that "person who" statistic invalidates the correlation.

There's rampant falsification of data here too-- just ask the average person
to report her true weight. Heck, it occurs with height too. I will tell people I'm 5'8", even though I'm 5 7 1/2.

[Dave1001]

Originally Posted by drkitten

Certainly. Who are the top reputable researchers in the field of homeopathy?

In my experience, the well has been sufficiently poisoned that the only reputable researchers are the ones who have been reinvestigating the fundamental assumptions -- so I'd start with Gardner of Multiple Intelligences fame. I also have a lingering amount of respect for some of the early statistical pioneers such as Spearman, but more for their statistical than for their psychometric prowess -- and of course they're not longer participating in the field.

Beyond that, "human intelligence" is a huge field, and only a very small proportion of it is concerned with IQ and intelligence metrics. If you discount the fraudulent data, there's very little reason to believe that the processes involved in (e.g.) lexical decision are the same as the ones involved in chess-playing, so few people outside of the IQ community consider the question of a single measure of "intelligence" to be meaningful, and they focus instead on specific aspects of intelligence. If you wanted me to list the top players in "human intelligence" using a definition that broad, you're really just asking me for a Who's Who in Psychology collection.

I wrote "Who are the top reputable researchers in the field of human intelligence".

That is not analogous to asking who the top researchers in homeopathy (except as a joke about the "intelligence" of our species).

I think listing the top current players in "human intelligence" in not as broad as asking for who's who in psychology. I'm pretty sure it's a narrower subset than that.

I'm not asking about intelligence generally, I'm talking specifically about the top reputable scientists that publish in the best peer reviewed journals on the topic of human intelligence. I'm sure there's great work being done by brilliant minds, even if it may still be at a very basic level.

[Dave1001]

Originally Posted by bpesta22

data from lie detectors can't be used in court-- data from IQ testing can.

I agree that this whole line of defense "it's used in court" should be dropped.

Let's discuss these topics using empiricism, the scientific method, etc. as our benchmarks of the best models of apparent reality are.

[bpesta22]

Originally Posted by Dave1001

I agree that this whole line of defense "it's used in court" should be dropped.

Let's discuss these topics using empiricism, the scientific method, etc. as our benchmarks of the best models of apparent reality are.

I still think it's relevant because many here characterize psychology as junk science. I think showing that other respected disciplines and institutions have accepted our junk science argues that perhaps it's not so junky.

re experts. Here is the list of the 52 iq experts who signed the wall street journal op ed defending the Bell Curve after the media tried tearing it apart:

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/wsj_main.html


Also, the 8 or authors on the APA task force article with Neisser are indeed leading experts in the field.

[Dave1001]

Originally Posted by bpesta22

I still think it's relevant because many here characterize psychology as junk science. I think showing that other respected disciplines and institutions have accepted our junk science argues that perhaps it's not so junky.

re experts. Here is the list of the 52 iq experts who signed the wall street journal op ed defending the Bell Curve after the media tried tearing it apart:

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/wsj_main.html


Also, the 8 or authors on the APA task force article with Neisser are indeed leading experts in the field.

okay, I'm just letting you know that it signals weakness, not strength, to defend a science in a scientific discussion by saying it's used by courts. Empiricism should be the master here, not judicial discretion. No science should need that type of defense to defend its merits. So I encourage you to stick to an empirical/scientific method defense of IQ research instead.

[Dave1001]

Here's the list of scientists in Bpesta's link:

Richard D. Arvey, University of Minnesota
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota
John B. Carroll, Un. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Raymond B. Cattell, University of Hawaii
David B. Cohen, University of Texas at Austin
Rene V. Dawis, University of Minnesota
Douglas K. Detterman, Case Western Reserve Un.
Marvin Dunnette, University of Minnesota
Hans Eysenck, University of London
Jack Feldman, Georgia Institute of Technology
Edwin A. Fleishman, George Mason University
Grover C. Gilmore, Case Western Reserve University
Robert A. Gordon, Johns Hopkins University
Linda S. Gottfredson, University of Delaware
Robert L. Greene, Case Western Reserve University
Richard J.Haier, University of Callifornia at Irvine
Garrett Hardin, University of California at Berkeley
Robert Hogan, University of Tulsa
Joseph M. Horn, University of Texas at Austin
Lloyd G. Humphreys, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
John E. Hunter, Michigan State University
Seymour W. Itzkoff, Smith College
Douglas N. Jackson, Un. of Western Ontario
James J. Jenkins, University of South Florida
Arthur R. Jensen, University of California at Berkeley
Alan S. Kaufman, University of Alabama
Nadeen L. Kaufman, California School of Professional Psychology at San Diego
Timothy Z. Keith, Alfred University
Nadine Lambert, University of California at Berkeley
John C. Loehlin, University of Texas at Austin
David Lubinski, Iowa State University
David T. Lykken, University of Minnesota
Richard Lynn, University of Ulster at Coleraine
Paul E. Meehl, University of Minnesota
R. Travis Osborne, University of Georgia
Robert Perloff, University of Pittsburgh
Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Cecil R. Reynolds, Texas A & M University
David C. Rowe, University of Arizona
J. Philippe Rushton, Un. of Western Ontario
Vincent Sarich, University of California at Berkeley
Sandra Scarr, University of Virginia
Frank L. Schmidt, University of Iowa
Lyle F. Schoenfeldt, Texas A & M University
James C. Sharf, George Washington University
Herman Spitz, former director E.R. Johnstone Training and Research Center, Bordentown, N.J.
Julian C. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
Del Thiessen, University of Texas at Austin
Lee A. Thompson, Case Western Reserve University
Robert M. Thorndike, Western Washington Un.
Philip Anthony Vernon, Un. of Western Ontario
Lee Willerman, University of Texas at Austin


I recognize Robert Gordon of Johns Hopkins. He doesn't inspire confidence in me in this group. He was rather asocial and had a clear axe to grind (though fortunately for him he had tenure). Last I read he was doing research on how intelligence coordinates with AIDS infection. I understand the narrative he was trying to shoehorn this research into, but it did seem clumsy to me.

What do folks know about other professors on this list. Surely some must be top researchers of human intelligence, with unimpeachable resumes and published research?

[Jeff Corey]

Originally Posted by Dave1001

...J. Philippe Rushton, Un. of Western Ontario...
...What do folks know about other professors on this list. Surely some must be top researchers of human intelligence, with unimpeachable resumes and published research?

I've seen some of his more controversial stuff on IQ and race and some bizzaro stuff on an inverse correlation between penis size and IQ across races.
I don't know whether the observations were blinded. It's hard to tell with hands-on research.

[TruthSeeker]

Rushton is such an embarrassment to me as a Canadian psychologist. He's the head of the Pioneer Fund.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund

[Jeff Corey]

Well. he was born in England, if that makes you feel better. And according to his hypothesis, he ought to have a "really big schwantzenstucker."

[geni]

Originally Posted by drkitten

Certainly. Who are the top reputable researchers in the field of homeopathy?

Professor Edzard Ernst
Maybe someone at southampton.

Problem is that most research in the area is either done by people who are not very good at research or people who don't know very much homeopathy.

[TruthSeeker]

Originally Posted by Jeff Corey

Well. he was born in England, if that makes you feel better. And according to his hypothesis, he ought to have a "really big schwantzenstucker."

eeeeeeeewwwwwwww

[fls]

Originally Posted by bpesta22

Linda-- I could be wrong but I thought likelihood ratios are used when the outcome is black or white (you have cancer or you don't; the patient lived or he didn't).

Yes. Those were the kind of outcomes I (and the author) were referring to - divorce, living in poverty, holding a job, etc.

Linda

[Jeff Corey]

Originally Posted by TruthSeeker

eeeeeeeewwwwwwww

Sorry, the line from Young Frankenstein was, "A really enormous....."

[Dave1001]

Originally Posted by Jeff Corey

I've seen some of his more controversial stuff on IQ and race and some bizzaro stuff on an inverse correlation between penis size and IQ across races.
I don't know whether the observations were blinded. It's hard to tell with hands-on research.

As I've said before, I find this approach (oh look, an easy marginal target - it's safe for me to make fun of him) to be enlightenment-retarding, not facilitating.

Either the theory that IQ and penis size inversely correlate, and they both correlate with social race is correct, or it's bunk. But to consider the theory more worthy of (homophobic) ridicule because it touches on politically incorrect topics than other potentially bunk theories -yuck, in my opinion. I get the sense from posts like that that the poster's greater nemisis is free thought and wide open discourse, rather than one particular fringe theory or thinker.

[Dave1001]

There are about 40 names left on the list (eyeballing it). Any unimpeachably reputable scientists/research scholars?

[BrianSI]

Originally Posted by bpesta22

IQ predicts GPA better than height predicts weight.

And what, exactly, does GPA predict? Perhaps number of interviews out of college based on a resume with no relevant experience. Anything else?

[Jeff Corey]

Originally Posted by Dave1001

As I've said before, I find this approach (oh look, an easy marginal target - it's safe for me to make fun of him) to be enlightenment-retarding, not facilitating.

Either the theory that IQ and penis size inversely correlate, and they both correlate with social race is correct, or it's bunk. But to consider the theory more worthy of (homophobic) ridicule because it touches on politically incorrect topics than other potentially bunk theories -yuck, in my opinion. I get the sense from posts like that that the poster's greater nemisis is free thought and wide open discourse, rather than one particular fringe theory or thinker.

Too bad. And I think your "homophobic" comment says more about you than me. There was none.