Letters to the Editor
-
The Flynn Effect
The New Yorker recently published a book review of "What is Intelligence?" by James Flynn (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell ) that illuminates and disproves the foundational assumption behind all IQ-based theories of racial inferiority, namely that the IQ test actually measures innate intelligence, instead of being primarily a cultural metric.
In the 80's, Flynn did an analysis of IQ test scores over time and found that across virtually every demographic in every area of the world, from the inception of the test through today, IQ scores have been steadily and dramatically rising, to the tune of about three points per decade. This phenomenon is called the Flynn Effect.
The absurdity of any conclusions about the intellectual superiority/inferiority of one group compared to another is shown when you look at the Flynn Effect in reverse. If you accept the idea that the IQ test reliably measures actual intelligence, then naturally, someone scoring higher must be more intelligent than someone scoring lower. But the upward creep in IQ score is so strong that by today's standards, the average US schoolchild of the year 1900 would have an IQ of 70--which would qualify him today for a diagnosis of mental retardation. Which is completely ludicrous, unless you believe that the average US schoolchild in 1900 really was mentally retarded.
But even if you do accept that as true, it still disproves any claims of inherent racial inferiority, since the descendants of that nation of imbeciles are much smarter today than their great-grandparents were. Which shows that a group defined by shockingly low IQ scores are not inherently limited from greatly increasing those scores in future generations.