What is your evidence? IQ tests undoubtedly measure something, and that something correlates with things like academic performance and certain types of job performance. What’s flawed about that?
The quickest Google search for "flaws of IQ tests" comes back with so many studies showing that IQ is not correlated to intelligence that at this point the burden of proof is on anyone who says IQ is relevant. Even if IQ does measure something, it's not an indicator of anything other than the ability to pass a standardized test. It certainly is not an indicator of intelligence.
In other words: what is your evidence that IQ measures anything actually relevant?
I never said anything about IQ tests measuring intelligence. No doubt the “something” that is measured is, at least in part, “intelligence,” at least as it applies in an academic setting. However, for you to dismiss them outright is simply not supported by the literature. For example:
> Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in conventional measures of success in life: academic achievement, economic success, even greater health, and longevity.[0]
Yes, you can improve your performance on IQ tests with practice and motivation, but that does not make them “scientifically invalid” in any way. The fact is that so many things are correlated to IQ that it’s a useful theoretical construct, even if it’s misnamed and has little to do with what you’d call “intelligence.”
If IQ can be improved through education, then you cannot use it to argue that lower IQ people cannot be educated to be better at STEM jobs as the parent was arguing.
Sure, I'll give you that IQ measures something. The question is, is that something relevant to the argument that you can only be competitive in STEM with a higher IQ and therefore many people cannot be educated into STEM careers? Does IQ make you better suited for those jobs, or does the training for those jobs cause you to score higher on IQ tests?
It's no shock that richer and healthier people do better in school. If you want to call that "IQ" then fine, but saying the correlation goes the other way is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof. Without proof that a higher IQ makes you richer and healthier rather than the other way around, then yes, it is entirely scientifically invalid. Especially if you're not exactly sure what IQ is actually measuring.
If the parent wants to argue that some people can never be trained in STEM careers because STEM careers require too high of IQ, I demand proof that this psuedo-science malarky is defined and that it is proven to be inherent and cannot be trained during the course of STEM education.
If IQ isn't relevant to the parent's comment, then it shouldn't have been brought up. If it is relevant, then there should exist some proof that IQ actually matters.
The parent is making the claim that, because of IQ, certain segments of the population are at a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to STEM careers. For this to be anything more than pure poppycock, there needs to be proof that IQ measures anything actually relevant to the success of those jobs. And not only relevant, but measures something that cannot be trained, cannot be explained by differences in education of astronomy majors vs home economics majors, something that fundamentally bars elementary education majors from succeeding in electrical engineering.
Prove that IQ measures anything that says an accountant could not have been otherwise trained to practice chemistry because they're 10 IQ points short. If IQ measures anything relevant to the job you perform, there has to be some proof.
There doesn't have to be absolute proof, just decent evidence. While it's absolutely true that IQ tests aren't perfect (the very idea that intelligence can be measured on a single axis is suspect), there is plenty of evidence that shows correlation between IQ and success in certain fields.
If all good accountants or chemists have relatively high IQs, it doesn't prove that a good IQ is necessary, but it certainly provides some evidence. It's classic causation/correlation, but in this case, there are mountains of evidence of correlation.
The biggest argument against that is the question of "is that IQ score inherent or trained"? Yes, it seems some professions have higher IQ scores. But is that because they're actually smarter? Or is it that they're better educated in the things that score well on an IQ test? It's no coincidence that the professions where people have higher IQs are also professions that are monumentally harder than the ones further down the list. If IQ correlation means STEM causation, we could just as easily flip that around and say that STEM education means IQ increases.
If we are making the statement that certain sections of the population cannot be trained for STEM careers because they don't have the IQ to be competitive, then we'd better be damn sure that IQ isn't something that can be taught. And there is mounds of evidence showing that intelligence is not assigned at birth.
Does IQ measure intelligence, or education? And are either of those static throughout a person's life?
