posted October 29, 2004 03:22 AM              

That, at least, is the conclusion of Steve Sailer, a conservative columnist at the Web magazine Vdare.com and a veteran student of presidential I.Q.’s. During the last presidential campaign Mr. Sailer estimated from Mr. Bush’s SAT score (1206) that his I.Q. was in the mid-120’s, about 10 points lower than Al Gore’s.

Mr. Kerry’s SAT score is not known, but now Mr. Sailer has done a comparison of the intelligence tests in the candidates’ military records. They are not formal I.Q. tests, but Mr. Sailer says they are similar enough to make reasonable extrapolations.

Mr. Bush’s score on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test at age 22 again suggests that his I.Q was the mid-120’s, putting Mr. Bush in about the 95th percentile of the population, according to Mr. Sailer. Mr. Kerry’s I.Q. was about 120, in the 91st percentile, according to Mr. Sailer’s extrapolation of his score at age 22 on the Navy Officer Qualification Test.

Linda Gottfredson, an I.Q. expert at the University of Delaware, called it a creditable analysis said she was not surprised at the results or that so many people had assumed that Mr. Kerry was smarter. “People will often be misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can’t understand,” Professor Gottfredson said.

Posted by Dan Spencer at October 24, 2004 01:07 PM | TrackBack

posted October 29, 2004 11:53 AM              

Yay!

Me for President!! ... WAIT... wtf am I saying? I don't want to be President!

posted October 29, 2004 12:10 PM              

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Institutional Implications

The claim that the APA and the AERA had no knowledge of Cattell's past is itself curious. It suggests that either the organizations and their leaders consistently separate their research from social context or that a racist and eugenicist approach is so common in the profession of psychological testing that Cattell simply did not stand out. Another researcher who has argued that IQ tests prove genetically-based racial inferiority, Linda Gottfredson, released a survey a few years ago noting that most "intelligence researchers" agree with her position. (Ironically, this came at a time when evolutionary biologists have reached wide agreement on the meaninglessness of race as a genetic concept.) Thus, the APA award to Cattell is a reminder that the racist history of testing is by no means over, but remains pervasive in at least some areas of mental measurement, despite condemnation by others in the profession.

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Question: What do William Shockley, Arthur Jensen, Michael Levin and Linda Gottfredson, academics who have espoused theories of race-based inferiority, have in common with the Center for Individual Rights, the conservative Washington, D.C., law firm that is suing to dismantle the University of Michigan's affirmative-action policies?

Answer: The Pioneer Fund, a notoriously racist and blatantly white-supremacist organization that over the course of its 61-year history has been a leading underwriter of research that purports to show the genetic inferiority of African-Americans.

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So, I guess a more accurate title for this string would probably be: