20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent anti-IQ manifesto, August 14, 2007
This review is from: IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea (Hardcover)
I was not sure I'd like this book given the author expressed bias against all intelligence testing right in the subtitle. Even though this book is not balanced, it provides much valid information. The book is very well written and easy to read.
The author covers well the history of intelligence testing in the first chapters. Murdoch starts with Galton who in the 1880s comes up with the first set of intelligence tests that are related to measurements of physical reactions (reflex reaction time, sensory acuity). Galton is also a pioneer in mathematics with major contributions in regression analysis and correlation. His own mathematical tools reveal there is little correlation between his tests and intelligence. In the early 1900s, Binet comes up with a test relying on verbal and quantitative questions that better correlate with intelligence. Later, other pioneers come up with both verbal and nonverbal tests (diagrams, etc...) for intelligence testing. Finally, Wechsler combines verbal and nonverbal questions into a single multiple choice test. This becomes our modern IQ test.
Next, Murdoch turns to the dark side of intelligence testing by presenting the eugenics movement. The author introduces the concept of negative eugenics (limiting the reproduction of the mentally weak to improve the gene pool) and positive eugenics (focusing most educational resources on the gifted to improve the leadership of a nation while ignoring everyone else). Murdoch first covers negative eugenics in the U.S. By 1932, 27 states had passed eugenic sterilization laws. During this period, 60,000 individuals deemed to have very low IQ were sterilized. But, the most egregious development of the eugenic movement took place in Nazi Germany. They took the U.S. law and made it far more inclusive including many social groups not even deemed to be mentally handicapped. Also, their intelligence testing was far less scientifically rigorous than their American counterpart. As a result, by the end of WWII the Germans had sterilized 400,000 individuals and killed 200,000 under the guise that they impaired the Germanic gene pool. Many of them were simply anti-Nazis. The author moves on to the UK as a case of positive eugenics with the advent of their 11 Plus testing. This was a very tough intelligence test administered to 10 to 11 years old. Only a small fraction of the population would pass this selective exam. The ones who passed were on an educational track to go on to universities and become the leaders in the profession and politics. All others were essentially ignored. Boys were doomed to work in coal mines, and girls on factory floor. Finally, a government official put an end to the 11 Plus in the early sixties to open up educational and professional opportunities.
Murdoch then moves on to debunking the underpinning of intelligence testing. He uses the Flynn effect as his first major blow to intelligence testing. The Flynn effect denotes the rise in IQ over time. If you want to read more about this phenomenon get
What is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect. But, that's where it gets ambiguous. Murdoch states that IQ tests don't test intelligence but instead knowledge and abstract problem solving ability. Well, knowledge is a proxy for crystalline intelligence (reflecting what you have learned) and abstract problem solving is a good proxy for fluid intelligence (your natural cognitive capability). I gather the attack is that IQ test captures knowledge which is a function of education and socio economic background. However, many IQ tests now do not rely on knowledge at all (Raven matrices) and capture solely fluid intelligence. Also, as our society has moved from an agrarian to an industrial and finally to an information based society I would find it inevitable that the IQ of the masses has gone up over time given that the daily challenges of our lives have become more complex.
Murdoch goes on mentioning what he views as better alternative models of intelligence such as Howard Gardner multiple intelligence theory as depicted in his seminal work
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences published in 1983. Similarly, he mentions Daniel Goleman's
Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition; Why It Can Matter More Than IQ published in 1995. Unfortunately, those intelligence frameworks are not scientifically testable. He later mentions that Naglieri came up with a much superior intelligence test. However, this test has not been accepted by the psychometric profession.
Murdoch moves on to debunking the old SAT I by indicating that the UC system deemed that high school GPA combined with three SAT IIs (subject tests) is a better predictor of college freshman grade performance. And, that adding the SAT I to this mix adds little explanatory power. However, what is not mentioned by the UC system is that a combination of high school GPA and SAT I was probably as good a predictor as the combination of high school GAP with 3 SAT IIs. This is because on a stand alone basis, the explanatory power of the SAT I is nearly equal to the one of the three SAT II combined per UC's own studies.
In his Afterword section, Murdoch explicitly admits he will never be satisfied with intelligence testing by stating "psychologists claim that what they do is science, but the use of statistics alone is not enough to support their claim." Statistics represent collective information of a scale (sample size) that allows you to separate what is random from what is not. If you don't accept statistics as a confirmation of scientific hypothesis, what do you have to work with? The author does not answer this issue.
To fully educate yourself on this issue, you have to also study the other side. For this purpose, I recommend Herrnstein and Murray
Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (A Free Press Paperbacks Book). If you want to know even more about the subject, I also suggest Arthur Jensen
The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence). Even though this latter book is very hard to read, it is a valuable reference that confirms the Bell Curve findings.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Encourage Poor Scholarship..., February 19, 2009
This review is from: IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea (Hardcover)
...by buying Murdoch's potboiler.
First and foremost, this book was not very well researched, nor very deeply.
The use of IQ tests by the Nazis was a very central discussion in "IQ", and yet Murdoch failed to discuss the Nazis' very uncomfortable relationship with rigorous intelligence testing. Many of the best intelligence tests (in Germany, at that time) were authored by prominent Jewish academics, and so were suspected of infection with aberrant "Jewish forms of thinking". Also, then as now, Jews as an ethnic group outperformed all other ethnic groups in Germany on general cognitive tests (and not just tests written by Jewish professors). This was observed by prominent Gentile scientists in Germany (notably Lanz). As a consequence of these factors, IQ tests of any sort were absolutely useless as tools for one of the most important social progams of the Third Reich: the toppling of Jews from their prominent role in the professional and academic elites of Germany, and their ultimate genocide. Jewish intelligence and accomplishment could not be denied, so they were demonized. German industrialists and the military did use IQ tests for placement purposes, but this was never sanctioned by the political authorities.
Murdoch overlooked another very key point about cognitive testing, this time in the context of Nazi eugenics programs. The tests actually administered to potential inmates of sterilization and detention centers for the insane and feeble-minded would not have been considered valid intelligence tests, even by the less refined standards of the 1930s. Recall that the Third Reich suppressed rigorous intelligence tests, and fired, exiled, and ultimately executed their often Jewish authors. So the persons administering the "intelligence tests" for eugenics programs were not psychologists, but Nazi M.D. physicians tasked with liberally applying programmatic eugenics criteria. The tests themselves were simply lists of general knowledge questions (who was Bismarck? who discovered America? how many pfennigs are left when a mark is paid for a purchase of 80 pfennig? etc), administered verbally. The physicians had wide latitude in how (or if) answers were recorded. These instruments were of dubious value either in selecting or rejecting eugenics program internees. And again, they were thoroughly useless in dealing with the "Jewish Problem".
Had Murdoch really researched his book, he would have been forced to concede that the only true IQ testing done under the Third Reich -- and this was merely tolerated -- was done by the military and by large corporations like Krupps. This testing was at least as useful as similar testing carried out in the USA (which is to say, quite useful in predicting job performance and trainability).
Murdoch blamed IQ tests for the severest crimes of bureaucracies over the last century, but the aforementioned inconvenient facts kick the legs out from under the foundational theses of his book. For this and for reason of Murdoch's clear "unscientific" bias, I would judge this book to be low grade "pop science" which, unlike some examples of the genre, has virtually no educational value.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Muckraking Intelligence, September 14, 2008
This review is from: IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea (Hardcover)
Stephen Murdoch begins his book "IQ: A smart history of a failed idea" reminding the reader that it is all about him - the author. We hear of his educational background as he laments that his is not a "rags to riches" story of someone who started out with an IQ of 69, etc. etc. Then we have to sit through clever interludes of describing what interviewees are wearing (as if it is relevant) while the author proceeds in a self-congratulatory manner to point out that an entire discipline is intellectually bankrupt (although he did not study the discipline so I wonder about some of his interpretations). What the author doesn't seem to get is that the very tests he did well on and is criticizing are likely related to the fact that he has succeeded in getting a book contract from Wiley for a popular book.
While he does give a good summary of the history of the evolution of Intelligence Quotient, he fails to mention that there are some very strong correlations between IQ scores and verbal/reading ability and that these abilities have strong generalization to succeeeding in settings as diverse as 4-year universities and technical training. The author bemoans the hideous eugenics practices and beliefs of the 20th century but then goes on to describe the very problems those misguided beliefs were supposedly addressing. The author does not seem to have any answers, mostly complaints relying on extreme stories rather than admitting that sometimes people are appropriately screened out of lower-stakes situations due to lack of mental ability.
The book ends with what appears as a liberal "rant" against some people being able to send their children to better schools and psychology in general. It is not that psychology doesn't need some heavy-duty criticism but the author seems to have no clue how to remedy the the problems psychology creates (although at times I feel his solution is what Charles Murray recently dubbed "educational romanticism").
A little less Murdoch and a little more fact-finding could have made this a winner.
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