I just read the “IQ’s of eminent scientists” and realized I really need to get my IQ tested.
I’ve been relying on my younger brother’s test (with the knowledge that older brothers tend to do slightly better but usually within an sd) to guesstimate my own IQ but a) it was probably a capped score like Feynman’s since he took it in middle school and b) I have to know if there’s a 95% chance of failure going into my field. I’d like to think I’m smart enough to be prominent, but it’s irrational not to check first.
Thanks for the information; you might have just saved me a lot of trouble down the line, one way or the other.
I just read the “IQ’s of eminent scientists” and realized I really need to get my IQ tested.
I’d be very careful generalizing from that study to the practice of science today. Science in the 1950s was VERY different, the length of time to the phd was shorter, postdocs were very rare, and almost everyone stepped into a research faculty position almost immediately.
In today’s world, staying in science is much harder- there are lots of grad students competing for many postdocs competing for few permanent science positions. In today’s world, things like conscientiousness, organization skills,etc (grant writing is now a huge part of the job) play a much larger role in eventually landing a job in the past, and luck is a much bigger driver (whether a given avenue of exploration pays off requires a lot of luck. Selecting people whose experiments ALWAYS work is just grabbing people who have been both good AND lucky). It would surprise me if the worsening science career hasn’t changed the make up of an ‘eminent scientist’.
At the same time, all of those points except the luck one could be presented as evidence that the IQ required to be eminent has increased rather than the converse. Grant writing and schmoozing are at least partially a function of verbal IQ, IQ in general strongly predicts academic success in grad school, and competition tends to winnow out the poor performers a lot more than the strong.
Not that I really disagree, I just don’t see it as particularly persuasive.
whether a given avenue of exploration pays off requires a lot of luck. Selecting people whose experiments ALWAYS work is just grabbing people who have been both good AND lucky
That’s just one of the unavoidable frustrations of human nature though; an experiment which dis-confirms it’s hypothesis worked perfectly, it just isn’t human nature to notice negatives.
At the same time, all of those points except the luck one could be presented as evidence that the IQ required to be eminent has increased rather than the converse.
I disagree for several reasons. Mostly, conscientiousness, conformity,etc are personality traits that aren’t strongly correlated with IQ (conscientiousness may even be slightly negatively correlated).
IQ in general strongly predicts academic success in grad school, and competition tends to winnow out the poor performers a lot more than the strong.
Would it surprise you to know that the most highly regarded grad students in my physics program all left physics? They had a great deal of success before and in grad school (I went to a top 5 program) , but left because they didn’t want to deal with the administrative/grant stuff, and because they didn’t want to spend years at low pay.
I’d argue that successful career in science is selecting for some threshhold IQ and then much more strongly for a personality type.
Mensa apparently doesn’t consider the SAT to have a high-enough g loading to be useful as an intelligence test after 1994. Although the website’s figure are certainly encouraging, it’s probably best to take them with a bit of salt.
True, but note that, in contrast with Mensa, the Triple Nine Society continued to accept scores on tests taken up through 2005, though with a higher cutoff (of 1520) than on pre-1995 tests (1450).
Also, SAT scores in 2004 were found to have a correlation of about .8 with a battery of IQ tests, which I believe is on par with the correlations IQ tests have with each other. So the SAT really does seem to be an IQ test (and an extremely well-normed one at that if you consider their sample size, though perhaps not as highly g-loaded as the best, like Raven’s).
But yeah, if you want to have high confidence in a score, probably taking additional tests would be the best bet. Here’s a list of high-ceiling tests, though I don’t know if any of them are particularly well-normed or validated.
I just read the “IQ’s of eminent scientists” and realized I really need to get my IQ tested.
I’ve been relying on my younger brother’s test (with the knowledge that older brothers tend to do slightly better but usually within an sd) to guesstimate my own IQ but a) it was probably a capped score like Feynman’s since he took it in middle school and b) I have to know if there’s a 95% chance of failure going into my field. I’d like to think I’m smart enough to be prominent, but it’s irrational not to check first.
Thanks for the information; you might have just saved me a lot of trouble down the line, one way or the other.
I’d be very careful generalizing from that study to the practice of science today. Science in the 1950s was VERY different, the length of time to the phd was shorter, postdocs were very rare, and almost everyone stepped into a research faculty position almost immediately.
In today’s world, staying in science is much harder- there are lots of grad students competing for many postdocs competing for few permanent science positions. In today’s world, things like conscientiousness, organization skills,etc (grant writing is now a huge part of the job) play a much larger role in eventually landing a job in the past, and luck is a much bigger driver (whether a given avenue of exploration pays off requires a lot of luck. Selecting people whose experiments ALWAYS work is just grabbing people who have been both good AND lucky). It would surprise me if the worsening science career hasn’t changed the make up of an ‘eminent scientist’.
At the same time, all of those points except the luck one could be presented as evidence that the IQ required to be eminent has increased rather than the converse. Grant writing and schmoozing are at least partially a function of verbal IQ, IQ in general strongly predicts academic success in grad school, and competition tends to winnow out the poor performers a lot more than the strong.
Not that I really disagree, I just don’t see it as particularly persuasive.
That’s just one of the unavoidable frustrations of human nature though; an experiment which dis-confirms it’s hypothesis worked perfectly, it just isn’t human nature to notice negatives.
I disagree for several reasons. Mostly, conscientiousness, conformity,etc are personality traits that aren’t strongly correlated with IQ (conscientiousness may even be slightly negatively correlated).
Would it surprise you to know that the most highly regarded grad students in my physics program all left physics? They had a great deal of success before and in grad school (I went to a top 5 program) , but left because they didn’t want to deal with the administrative/grant stuff, and because they didn’t want to spend years at low pay.
I’d argue that successful career in science is selecting for some threshhold IQ and then much more strongly for a personality type.
No kidding.
Are you American? If you’ve taken the SAT, you can get a pretty good estimate of your IQ here.
Mensa apparently doesn’t consider the SAT to have a high-enough g loading to be useful as an intelligence test after 1994. Although the website’s figure are certainly encouraging, it’s probably best to take them with a bit of salt.
True, but note that, in contrast with Mensa, the Triple Nine Society continued to accept scores on tests taken up through 2005, though with a higher cutoff (of 1520) than on pre-1995 tests (1450).
Also, SAT scores in 2004 were found to have a correlation of about .8 with a battery of IQ tests, which I believe is on par with the correlations IQ tests have with each other. So the SAT really does seem to be an IQ test (and an extremely well-normed one at that if you consider their sample size, though perhaps not as highly g-loaded as the best, like Raven’s).
But yeah, if you want to have high confidence in a score, probably taking additional tests would be the best bet. Here’s a list of high-ceiling tests, though I don’t know if any of them are particularly well-normed or validated.