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IQ: The Brilliant Idea That Failed

IQ: The Brilliant Idea That Failed

by StephenMurdoch (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2007

    $3.32
Synopsis

In this, the first popular history of the intelligence test, Stephen Murdoch reveals how universal education, mass immigration into the U.S. in the early 20th century and the demands of mobilisation in the First World War created the need to rank populations by intelligence. In the following decades, the tests were used to decide whether people could settle in a new country, whether they could reproduce, even whether they lived or died. While IQ tests have some predictive power, they don't explain people's capacity to think and understand the world around them. What has only ever been a rough guide to ability has, through the seductive power of a single, all-explaining number, come to be seen as an objective and infallible measure of intelligence, even of human merit. Just as bad, we've often tried to reshape society based on exam results alone. Is that the smartest idea anyone ever had?

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 352
 Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
Published: 28 Jun 2007
ISBN 10: 0715635980
ISBN 13: 9780715635988

Media Reviews
With fast-paced storytelling, freelance journalist Murdoch traces now ubiquitous but still controversial attempts to measure intelligence to its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He takes readers back to 1905 when French psychologist Alfred Binet first formulated tests to measure reasoning, language, abstract thinking and complex cognitive abilities. However, many psychologists began to use the tests as a device to separate the mentally retarded from the rest of society. As Murdoch points out, the tests were often administered unfairly to members of various races, offering proof to the test's administrators of their own theories that intelligence was linked to race. Murdoch also demonstrates that the tests were often used as eugenic devices. In the landmark case of Carrie Buck, faulty IQ testing was used as a justification for involuntary sterilization as part of a move to eliminate feeblemindedness in future generations. Murdoch concludes that IQ testing provides neither a reliable nor a helpful tool in understanding people's behavior, nor can it predict their future success or failure. While much of this material is familiar, this is a thoughtful overview and a welcome reminder of the dangers of relying on such standardized tests. (June) ( Publishers Weekly, April 2, 2007)
Author Bio
Stephen Murdoch, has been working as a journalist and writer since 1999. He has contributed to Newsweek, Marketplace, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Lawyer, The Boston Globe and other publications. Before becoming a writer, he was a human rights lawyer in Cambodia and practiced civil litigation in Washington. He lives in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and two daughters.