5 ms·

Question for any IQ skeptics here (e.g. "it just measures your ability to take tests" or "it just tells you how rich your parents are"): what's your response to

by cltby 3y ago

Question for any IQ skeptics here (e.g. "it just measures your ability to take tests" or "it just tells you how rich your parents are"): what's your response to studies like this? Is there anything that can be said about the effect of lead on cognitive function? Why might IQ be a good measure of lead-induced stupidification, but unreliable for literally anything else?

jiofj 3y ago
[flagged]
- hedora 3y ago
  Critical race theory explains IQ differences between socioeconomic groups (including races) extremely well.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    Critical Race Theory is politically incorrect, under any definition of political correctness I know
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    Does it? Most of what I’ve seen amounts to assume races are have equal inherent IQ distributions, given test results are unequal the assumption is then tests must be inherently biased (examples of recent immigrant non-English speaking Jews improving their IQ scores as they learned English) or differences are caused by socio economic factors. That logic would fall apart if the original assumption wasn’t made, but anything starting with a prior that races can have different IQ distributions is thrown out as racist. The progressive book ‘The Genetic Lottery’ kind-of makes the case for polygenic factors considered evenly distributed amongst the races as a basis for that assumption but in my view their logic has a number of holes in it. If there is a better treatment of the topic I’m genuinely interested in reading it.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    Nit: CRT certainly offers an explanation, but I don't think it's a particularly good one. Because it always appeals to "systemic injustice", it can't account for things like 1. the persistence of between group IQ differences amongst children people who have relocated to other countries/culture; 2. the disproportionate success of certain historically-marginalized groups; 3. regression to the mean; and, 4. other factors that marginally influence IQ scores (e.g. single-parent household vs dual-parent household) without engaging in circular reasoning. At best, CRT's explanation is incomplete.
- rjsw 3y ago
  Or people just haven't tried hard enough to find a politically correct explaination. I think slavery itself could be one cause of it. Restricting the freedom to pick a partner of one group compared with other nearby groups seems likely to have an effect.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
masfuerte 3y ago
It's possible for IQ to be a good population measure while being a poor individual measure. (FWIW, I think proponents and opponents of IQ testing all overstate their cases.)
omginternets 3y ago
I think it's a pretty straightforward thing: intelligence somewhat correlates with life/career outcomes overall, and it's not linear. Separately, IQ tests are reasonably good, though imperfect measures of general intelligence. Also separately, if you look at careers where high intelligence is needed, then IQ correlates much better. IQ does not principally measure test-taking abilities or SES. Yes, those correlations exist, but their effect sizes are not nearly as large as a certain political ideologies would have you believe. And simultaneously, it's not as ironclad as the other political ideology would have you believe. It's very reliable as these things go, but noisy at the margin. EDIT: a sibling comment correctly points out that aggregate effects do not always apply individuals.
colechristensen 3y ago
IQ is a mediocre-at-best metric for intelligence. "Intelligence" is probably real and variable among people, but poorly defined, very hard to test, and subject to a whole lot of opinion. IQ is bad at comparing people from different backgrounds, especially across cultures, languages, etc. But IQ can be a valid comparison for a single non-cultural variable. i.e. lead exposure in otherwise identical cohorts.
- cltby 3y ago
  > otherwise identical cohorts. You could do this stratification/matching for any IQ study. What's special about lead-IQ?
hedora 3y ago
I assume the study authors controlled for such things. For example, they could bin the study participants by socioeconomic group, race, location, etc, etc, etc, and then show the average IQ loss per bin. I haven't read the study, but statisticians do this stuff for a living, and there are definitely ways to control for sample biases that let you distinguish between "poorer people have lower IQs and are exposed to more lead, and the root cause of both is being poor", and "lead leads to lower IQs within all socioeconomic groups we could think of and measure"
- cltby 3y ago
  But these controls could be done for any IQ-related study. Is IQ-skepticism based on the belief that IQ researchers generally don't use controls? That lead-IQ researchers alone do this?
  - astrange 3y ago
    You can't demonstrate causation by controlling for things, because of collider bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_control You need better methods like an intervention study or a natural experiment to show causation.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
swayvil 3y ago
I think IQ reflects your general cognitive ability AND a few other things like wealthy parents etc. Just like your videogame score reflects your diet and a few other things. Just like lots of things.
raincole 3y ago
If the chemical can complete nullify the advantages of having rich parents, how doesn't it sound bad enough...?
csa 3y ago
> "it just measures your ability to take tests" This is largely wrong. One could be a master at test-taking and not come close to a high score. That said, familiarly with the test/item structure almost certainly helps, especially for folks with the potential to score high (see below). > or "it just tells you how rich your parents are") Hmm… family wealth and IQ may be correlated, but not perfectly so. There are plenty of low-IQ rich people and also plenty of high-IQ poor people. > what's your response to studies like this? Probably too many confounding variables. That said, this study is a publishable unit that can push one or more funded agendas, so here we are. > Is there anything that can be said about the effect of lead on cognitive function? While I know a bit about IQ, I don’t know much about the details of the relationship of IQ and lead. > Why might IQ be a good measure of lead-induced stupidification Maybe it’s not. See “funded agendas” comment above. > but unreliable for literally anything else? (the main reason I replied is below) People really need to let go of this idea in a reasonably reliable way. 1. IQ measures reasoning ability. It is quite good at measuring this. 2. People put a lot of weight onto how IQ correlates with a bunch of other things, but these are not things that IQ tests are designed to measure. As such, these correlations may not be meaningful in some cases. So the “literally anything else” that IQ is allegedly not good for is almost entirely things that IQ tests are not designed to measure. I don’t think it’s prudent to disregard the test/measure because of misuse by some folks (typically within agendas). 3. People get very self-conscious about IQ scores. Let me help with that. IQ scores are a measure on a particular day that can vary from day to day for any one person. For any given test taker, they are trying to optimize what they score out of a theoretical max (i.e., their “true IQ”). Many, many things cause people to score lower than their potential max — lack of sleep, lack of food, external distractions, distress (physical, mental, emotional), anxiety, ambivalence, lack of test familiarity, etc. Very few things cause them to score higher than their max (it will almost certainly be within the confidence interval). It’s ok. Retake the test if it matters (it usually doesn’t). 4. IQ matters most in three areas, imho. The first is at the extremes. Gifted/genius folks and learning disabled folks need additional resources. How and whether this is implemented is highly debated. The second is in leadership positions. You want your leaders (e.g., in the military) to be within about 20 IQ points of those they lead. The idea is that > 20 IQ delta folks see the world in fundamentally different ways, so leading someone who views the world so differently is difficult and largely inefficient. The third is with one’s significant other. Same as above, it will be hard to be understood (if that’s your goal) by someone who is +/-20 IQ points away from you. I hope this helps.
mkoubaa 3y ago
Most IQ skeptics think IQ correlates with intelligence. The argument is generally over how good a proxy it is for intelligence and what conclusions can and can't be drawn from statements about IQ
- harry8 3y ago
  False. Low IQ correlates with lack of intelligence. Average and above means nothing. --IQ skeptic
  - mkoubaa 3y ago
    That's still a loose correlation, but I do appreciate the correction
    - harry8 3y ago
      Intelligence is both directions. It only correlates with un-intelligence. Eg the poor individual has a brain injury or does not.
astrange 3y ago
You have to read the study to find out what it meant by IQ. People freely confuse IQ (a score on a test that's calling itself an IQ test) with IQ (a platonic ideal statistic people assume exists for the purpose of publishing research about it). This could be either.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  No, IQ is just the test result; the theoretical phenomena understood to be underlying it are things like g and task-specific factors.
  - astrange 3y ago
    You're claiming this study used a test that it could have a "the test result" for, but it didn't - it's a meta analysis using another meta analysis, whose different studies all used different tests: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00166-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... <- the one in the article https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.7688 https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.7688 <- the one it refers to > We contacted investigators for all eight prospective lead cohorts that were initiated before 1995, and we were able to retrieve data sets and collaboration from seven. The participating sites were Boston (Bellinger et al. 1992); Cincinnati (Dietrich et al. 1993) and Cleveland, Ohio (Ernhart et al. 1989); Mexico City, Mexico (Schnaas et al. 2000); Port Pirie, Australia (Baghurst et al. 1992); Rochester, New York (Canfield et al. 2003); and Yugoslavia (Wasserman et al. 1997). I checked two of the studies from 1989: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/089203628990055X?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/089203... > The test used was the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022848 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022848 > We measured blood lead concentrations in 172 children at 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months of age and administered the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale at the ages of 3 and 5 years. So they didn't all take the same test[0]. This supports my claim, which is that people who believe IQ research also believe that all test results produce the same valid statistic called IQ as long as the test calls itself an IQ test. I actually can't think of a time I've seen an online IQ arguer claim that any given test result isn't an accurate representation of an IQ. They certainly also think it about things like SAT scores and old national-IQ studies where they gave the tests in second/third languages or just made up the numbers. [0] if it was the same test, isn't the norm process to convert from raw scores to normally distributed ones be different in different years? Not sure how that part is done.

by cltby 3y ago

jiofj 3y ago

[flagged]

hedora 3y ago
Critical race theory explains IQ differences between socioeconomic groups (including races) extremely well.
- klyrs 3y ago
  Critical Race Theory is politically incorrect, under any definition of political correctness I know
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  Does it? Most of what I’ve seen amounts to assume races are have equal inherent IQ distributions, given test results are unequal the assumption is then tests must be inherently biased (examples of recent immigrant non-English speaking Jews improving their IQ scores as they learned English) or differences are caused by socio economic factors. That logic would fall apart if the original assumption wasn’t made, but anything starting with a prior that races can have different IQ distributions is thrown out as racist. The progressive book ‘The Genetic Lottery’ kind-of makes the case for polygenic factors considered evenly distributed amongst the races as a basis for that assumption but in my view their logic has a number of holes in it. If there is a better treatment of the topic I’m genuinely interested in reading it.
- omginternets 3y ago
  Nit: CRT certainly offers an explanation, but I don't think it's a particularly good one. Because it always appeals to "systemic injustice", it can't account for things like 1. the persistence of between group IQ differences amongst children people who have relocated to other countries/culture; 2. the disproportionate success of certain historically-marginalized groups; 3. regression to the mean; and, 4. other factors that marginally influence IQ scores (e.g. single-parent household vs dual-parent household) without engaging in circular reasoning. At best, CRT's explanation is incomplete.
rjsw 3y ago
Or people just haven't tried hard enough to find a politically correct explaination. I think slavery itself could be one cause of it. Restricting the freedom to pick a partner of one group compared with other nearby groups seems likely to have an effect.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

masfuerte 3y ago

It's possible for IQ to be a good population measure while being a poor individual measure. (FWIW, I think proponents and opponents of IQ testing all overstate their cases.)

omginternets 3y ago

I think it's a pretty straightforward thing: intelligence somewhat correlates with life/career outcomes overall, and it's not linear. Separately, IQ tests are reasonably good, though imperfect measures of general intelligence. Also separately, if you look at careers where high intelligence is needed, then IQ correlates much better. IQ does not principally measure test-taking abilities or SES. Yes, those correlations exist, but their effect sizes are not nearly as large as a certain political ideologies would have you believe. And simultaneously, it's not as ironclad as the other political ideology would have you believe. It's very reliable as these things go, but noisy at the margin. EDIT: a sibling comment correctly points out that aggregate effects do not always apply individuals.

colechristensen 3y ago

IQ is a mediocre-at-best metric for intelligence. "Intelligence" is probably real and variable among people, but poorly defined, very hard to test, and subject to a whole lot of opinion. IQ is bad at comparing people from different backgrounds, especially across cultures, languages, etc. But IQ can be a valid comparison for a single non-cultural variable. i.e. lead exposure in otherwise identical cohorts.

cltby 3y ago
> otherwise identical cohorts. You could do this stratification/matching for any IQ study. What's special about lead-IQ?

hedora 3y ago

I assume the study authors controlled for such things. For example, they could bin the study participants by socioeconomic group, race, location, etc, etc, etc, and then show the average IQ loss per bin. I haven't read the study, but statisticians do this stuff for a living, and there are definitely ways to control for sample biases that let you distinguish between "poorer people have lower IQs and are exposed to more lead, and the root cause of both is being poor", and "lead leads to lower IQs within all socioeconomic groups we could think of and measure"

cltby 3y ago
But these controls could be done for any IQ-related study. Is IQ-skepticism based on the belief that IQ researchers generally don't use controls? That lead-IQ researchers alone do this?
- astrange 3y ago
  You can't demonstrate causation by controlling for things, because of collider bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_control You need better methods like an intervention study or a natural experiment to show causation.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

swayvil 3y ago

I think IQ reflects your general cognitive ability AND a few other things like wealthy parents etc. Just like your videogame score reflects your diet and a few other things. Just like lots of things.

raincole 3y ago

If the chemical can complete nullify the advantages of having rich parents, how doesn't it sound bad enough...?

csa 3y ago

> "it just measures your ability to take tests" This is largely wrong. One could be a master at test-taking and not come close to a high score. That said, familiarly with the test/item structure almost certainly helps, especially for folks with the potential to score high (see below). > or "it just tells you how rich your parents are") Hmm… family wealth and IQ may be correlated, but not perfectly so. There are plenty of low-IQ rich people and also plenty of high-IQ poor people. > what's your response to studies like this? Probably too many confounding variables. That said, this study is a publishable unit that can push one or more funded agendas, so here we are. > Is there anything that can be said about the effect of lead on cognitive function? While I know a bit about IQ, I don’t know much about the details of the relationship of IQ and lead. > Why might IQ be a good measure of lead-induced stupidification Maybe it’s not. See “funded agendas” comment above. > but unreliable for literally anything else? (the main reason I replied is below) People really need to let go of this idea in a reasonably reliable way. 1. IQ measures reasoning ability. It is quite good at measuring this. 2. People put a lot of weight onto how IQ correlates with a bunch of other things, but these are not things that IQ tests are designed to measure. As such, these correlations may not be meaningful in some cases. So the “literally anything else” that IQ is allegedly not good for is almost entirely things that IQ tests are not designed to measure. I don’t think it’s prudent to disregard the test/measure because of misuse by some folks (typically within agendas). 3. People get very self-conscious about IQ scores. Let me help with that. IQ scores are a measure on a particular day that can vary from day to day for any one person. For any given test taker, they are trying to optimize what they score out of a theoretical max (i.e., their “true IQ”). Many, many things cause people to score lower than their potential max — lack of sleep, lack of food, external distractions, distress (physical, mental, emotional), anxiety, ambivalence, lack of test familiarity, etc. Very few things cause them to score higher than their max (it will almost certainly be within the confidence interval). It’s ok. Retake the test if it matters (it usually doesn’t). 4. IQ matters most in three areas, imho. The first is at the extremes. Gifted/genius folks and learning disabled folks need additional resources. How and whether this is implemented is highly debated. The second is in leadership positions. You want your leaders (e.g., in the military) to be within about 20 IQ points of those they lead. The idea is that > 20 IQ delta folks see the world in fundamentally different ways, so leading someone who views the world so differently is difficult and largely inefficient. The third is with one’s significant other. Same as above, it will be hard to be understood (if that’s your goal) by someone who is +/-20 IQ points away from you. I hope this helps.

mkoubaa 3y ago

Most IQ skeptics think IQ correlates with intelligence. The argument is generally over how good a proxy it is for intelligence and what conclusions can and can't be drawn from statements about IQ

harry8 3y ago
False. Low IQ correlates with lack of intelligence. Average and above means nothing. --IQ skeptic
- mkoubaa 3y ago
  That's still a loose correlation, but I do appreciate the correction
  - harry8 3y ago
    Intelligence is both directions. It only correlates with un-intelligence. Eg the poor individual has a brain injury or does not.

astrange 3y ago

You have to read the study to find out what it meant by IQ. People freely confuse IQ (a score on a test that's calling itself an IQ test) with IQ (a platonic ideal statistic people assume exists for the purpose of publishing research about it). This could be either.

dragonwriter 3y ago
No, IQ is just the test result; the theoretical phenomena understood to be underlying it are things like g and task-specific factors.
- astrange 3y ago
  You're claiming this study used a test that it could have a "the test result" for, but it didn't - it's a meta analysis using another meta analysis, whose different studies all used different tests: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00166-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... <- the one in the article https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.7688 https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.7688 <- the one it refers to > We contacted investigators for all eight prospective lead cohorts that were initiated before 1995, and we were able to retrieve data sets and collaboration from seven. The participating sites were Boston (Bellinger et al. 1992); Cincinnati (Dietrich et al. 1993) and Cleveland, Ohio (Ernhart et al. 1989); Mexico City, Mexico (Schnaas et al. 2000); Port Pirie, Australia (Baghurst et al. 1992); Rochester, New York (Canfield et al. 2003); and Yugoslavia (Wasserman et al. 1997). I checked two of the studies from 1989: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/089203628990055X?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/089203... > The test used was the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022848 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022848 > We measured blood lead concentrations in 172 children at 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months of age and administered the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale at the ages of 3 and 5 years. So they didn't all take the same test[0]. This supports my claim, which is that people who believe IQ research also believe that all test results produce the same valid statistic called IQ as long as the test calls itself an IQ test. I actually can't think of a time I've seen an online IQ arguer claim that any given test result isn't an accurate representation of an IQ. They certainly also think it about things like SAT scores and old national-IQ studies where they gave the tests in second/third languages or just made up the numbers. [0] if it was the same test, isn't the norm process to convert from raw scores to normally distributed ones be different in different years? Not sure how that part is done.