Hi I'm having trouble understanding Mike P's reluctance to accept the evidence linked to in Miquel's posting.
1. Mike questions the credibility of the authors in a somewhat back-handed way ... he doesn't know if they are experts (while admitting that he is not an expert). If being editor of JEP: General does not grant some credibility, a few minutes on google would have revealed that the first author is indeed an expert on skilled performance and has published in Intelligence and numerous other relevant journals. 2. Then Mike does not think that there is any misrepresentation in the article, but he wants to read the cited papers before accepting its conclusions, since authors must be selective and students BS on papers all the time (relevance not clear). But the paper largely cites review articles by experts in the field. so I'm not sure what Mike expects to find. Nor do I think this kind of potential infinite regress is a constructive way for us (or students) to approach topics like this, unless one's intention is to raise doubts about the original conclusions. There are certainly no shortage of articles on intelligence by experts (including the APA expert panel led by Neisser) that would be consistent with the article Miquel cited. 3. After a brief digress to a movie allusion and comments on comments to the cited article, both of which held some import for Mike, he proceeds to resurrect (Easter allusion) his earlier claims about IQ and being a billionaire being negative. The negative correlation (I'm not sure what refereed journal it was published in or whether it was an expert in intelligence or statistics) is actually not with being a billionaire but with how many billions billionaires have. Perhaps in respect of such concerns as restriction of range, Mike buttresses this with a reference to the education level of millionaires, citing reports that 20% of millionaires never attended college. Of course, that statistic does not allow for much in the way of interpretation ... after all, 80% did attend college, and we do not know the denominators (i.e., total number not attending and attending college). My guess is that the percentage of people attending college who became millionaires is higher than the percentage of people who did not attend college who became millionaires, perhaps especially controlling for inherited wealth. But if Mike believes his claims, I assume that he is encouraging all his students to drop out of school, as that will (in his mind) increase their odds of becoming a billionaire or millionaire? I think I'll forgo that strategy, reluctantly putting at risk my students' chances of becoming wealthy. Happy Easter all. Take care Jim Jim Clark Professor & Chair of Psychology U Winnipeg Room 4L41A 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax ________________________________________ From: Mike Palij [[email protected]] Sent: April-19-14 9:23 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Michael Palij Subject: re: [tips] IQ g and SATs On Sat, 19 Apr 2014 05:25:26 -0700, Miguel Roig wrote: >Those of you who contributed and/or followed the recent >thread on IQ and g may be interested in reading the following >article in Slate: >Yes, IQ Really Matters: Critics of the SAT and other standardized >testing are disregarding the data. > > http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/04/what_do_sat_and_iq_tests_measure_general_intelligence_predicts_school_and.html First, I'd like to thank Miguel Roig for bringing this to our attention. At the very least, it provides Tipsters some sense of what psychologists who appear to be involved in these issues are saying to the general public. Second, it should be noted that the authors of the Slate article are: David Z. Hambrick is a professor at Michigan State University and an associate editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Christopher Chabris is a psychology professor at Union College and co-author of The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us. I don't know whether these people are expert in either intelligence research or research on academic achievement during college/lifetime or psychometricians or even scholars about the topics they are writing about (though this has not stopped other psychologists from writing articles and books about topics they have limited knowledge of). I point this out because it is unclear to me how fair or comprehensive their presentation (I admit, I'm not expert in these areas either but I do know that article writers have to be selective in what they present and what they do not present, especially in describing opponents and the support for their points). If we're just BS'ing (y'know, like undergrads on topics that they have limited knowledge about but strong opinions about what they think is right and wrong -- it really is amazing how often they think that they have made a hitherto unknown criticism or insight until they look at the literature and find that not only has the point been made but has already been dismissed because of new data or knowledge), then having a deep level of knowledge about these things is not important. Seriously, if one does not know the articles/research being cited in the article but still want to attack it, one cannot take the ignorant attack seriously (unless one is involved in cheerleading and mainly just saying "Hurray for our side!"). As I read through the article my first reaction was that I wanted to read the cited research but not because I thought it might have been misrepresented but because I was unfamiliar with it and would want to know it better before I accepted or rejected the assertions made by Hambrick & Chabris. But maybe some might think doing so is too much work to do, especially for a presentation in a non-academic forum. (3) It is interesting that there are 741 comments and 225 people listening. Some of the comments represent knowledge of the literature and an understanding of the issues, some represent ignorance and bluster, and some fall in-between. It probably is worthwhile to go through the comments to see how many are well-informed, how many are just reflexive reactions associated with a particular ideology, and how many just don't make any sense whatsoever (when everyone is allowed to speak, not everyone will have something worth saying; my favorite example of this comes from the movie "Tropic Thunder" where our intrepid "heroes" are trying to figure out how to break into a drug processing plant in the jungle to rescue the character played by Jerry Stiller -- Jack Black's suggestion starts out with "This might sound crazy but I have a plan" to which one response is "Well at this point crazy is better than nothing" but it really does turn out to out of touch with reality crazy and is never spoken of again in the movie). (4) Previously on Tips I have provided some analyses about the richest people in the world as identified by "Forbes" magazine and have pointed out that if one correlates their wealth (in billions of dollars) with years of education one would get a negative correlation. One reason for this is that our richest people are often college dropouts. For a list of college dropout billionaires, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_dropout_billionaires Quoting from the Wiki entry: |The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, |$9.4 billion, is approximately triple that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, |$3.2 billion. Even if one removes Bill Gates, who left Harvard University |and is now worth $66.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion |on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, |who are worth $2.9 billion. According to a recent report from |Cambridge-based Forrester Research, 20% of America's millionaires |never attended college.[3] The entry also points out that the net worth of dropout billionaires is US$ 246 billion (though the list it is based on is not exhaustive). Consider the implication: all those factors that predict success in college, including completion, are likely to be negatively correlated with becoming a billionaire. This might suggest that high levels of intelligence or "g" might actually interfere with being wildly successful in the real world (if the metric for success is net worth). Perhaps other capabilities such as Machiavellian social skills, being ruthlessly opportunistic, knowing who is "smart" and then exploit them for your own purposes (the "Every boss should own at least one Ph.D." situation; consider how many Ph.D.s the college dropout billionaires *cough*Steve Jobs*cough* employ), and other social, political, and economic skills. And maybe throw in a little psychopathy to spice things up. Perhaps there is certain myopia that researchers have when they are concerned with academic success because they are, well, academics. Academic success clearly is not needed to become fabulously wealthy (which in turn makes one very powerful in social, political, and economic terms -- "money makes the world turn round"). The politically influential Koch brother both have masters degrees as their highest level of education (according to Wikipedia, David is the wealthiest resident of New York City as of 2013). -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a891720c9&n=T&l=tips&o=36237 or send a blank email to leave-36237-13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a89172...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. 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