Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

PRETEND INTELLIGENCE 73

In meeting that prob lem, the idea of IQ as a scientifi c mea sure of
mental power, refl ecting biological in equality, has had a crucial part to
play. Most of the nature- nurture debate, including the recent hunt for
genes for IQ, has revolved around it. So I show in this chapter what a
peculiar kind of mea sure IQ is. I hope you will then begin to see what a
slippery notion the con temporary concept of human intelligence is, and
how its very vagueness has permitted the kind of ideological infi ll dis-
cussed in chapter 1.
Th is is a side of psy chol ogy of which most people are quite unaware.
Th e general public seems impressed by the huge amounts of money being
spent on the search for genes for IQ and by the publicity accompanying
it. Funding bodies and even government advisers seem convinced that
the mea sure tells us something about diff erences in human potential. Yet,
amazingly, there is still little agreement about what is being mea sured
and the nature of the potential being predicted.
For example, in a letter to the Psychologist (March 2013), the journal of
the British Psychological Society, the prominent theorist Mike Anderson
complained of the “disgraceful ignorance of lack of theoretical grounding
for the validity of the tests.” For that reason, he says that “the use of intel-
ligence tests has been a stain on psy chol ogy’s character,” and that “it is
tragic that too many of my most intellectually brilliant colleagues have
frittered away their talents on largely trivial pursuits instead of focusing
on the key question of ‘What is intelligence?’ ”
In the following issue of the journal, John Raven— son of the designer
of the famous Raven Matrices test (on which, more below)— argued that
“most practical uses of ‘intelligence’ tests are unethical because they
contribute to, and cement, an environmentally destructive hierarchical
society.” As mentioned earlier, Ian Deary is searching for genes for intelli-
gence, yet tells us that there is no “grown-up” theoretical model of intel-
ligence diff erences. And in chapter 1, I quoted a number of contributors to
the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (2011) with similar conclusions.^1

NOT A TRUE MEA SURE

In fact, IQ is almost unique in the fi eld of scientifi c inquiry for the ab-

sence of agreement about what is being mea sured. Defenders will of

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