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Comment by crabkin | Hacker News Reader

IQ will be seen in a 100 years the same way phrenology is now.

It already is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man

Weird that that whole book is spent arguing against guys who worked like 120 years ago instead of confronting the voluminous modern work. "Of all the book's references, a full 27 percent precede 1900. Another 44 percent fall between 1900 and 1950 (60 percent of those are before 1925); and only 29 percent are more recent than 1950. From the total literature spanning more than a century, the few "bad apples" have been hand-picked most aptly to serve Gould's purpose." https://www.debunker.com/texts/jensen.html

You are aware that this book was published in 1981, and is largely a history book on scientific racism? I brought up this book is because it justly categorizes IQ research among other pseudo-scientific practices such as phrenology.

You should also be aware the Arthur Jensen is one of the scientists which Gould is criticizing, and that his reputations hasn’t gotten any better since 1980. This source of yours is hardly an impartial one.

Gould is right that the people he discuss were racist. But you shouldn't use his book as an argument against modern psychometrics since it doesn't deal with that much at al. In actuality Jensen's reputation has improved while Gould's has declined.

Despite having almost twice as long of a career Jensen has only a third of the citations Gould has. Goulds work continues to be influential in the field of psychology, while Jensen remains a controversial figure at best. Jensen spent his entire career trying to prove the existence of the g-factor which to this date remains unconvincing among the rest of psychology. Jensen’s work includes collaborations with other controversial and disgraced pseudo-scientists and eugenicists like Richard Lynn, while Goulds collaborator includes other influential figures like Howard Zinn and Richard Lewontin. The Wikipedia article for Jensen cites three separate authors criticizing Jensen’s findings, while the one for Gould doesn’t even have this section.

These are some of my reasons for believing that Jensen’s reputation isn’t that great, at least compared to Gould. Now why do you believe the opposite?

I mean LOL at comparing citations. http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Arthur+R.+Jensen&column=auth... This is a good start. These books engage directly with the great bulk of modern IQ research.

Sorry, I said n citations, but I meant to say, has been cited n times.

But honestly it raises no red flags that Jensen is the face of “modern IQ research”? His most influential work was from the 80s and the 90s, and was heavily criticized at the time (including by Gould).

Since than there has been a revolution in non-linear statistics, are you satisfied that “modern IQ research” is basically the same stuff they were doing in the 70s? I mean even General relativity has evolved significantly with since the 70s as new technology becomes available to measure old predictions. Do you honestly think it is a sign of a healthy scientific theory that after a revolution in machine learning, they are still using same old factor analysis to back up their constructs?

The modern work is even worse than the old in many respects, which is impressive to be honest. It doesn’t stop those self assured of their own genius from picking signal from noise of course. So much ink spilled for nothing.

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