"

Just as a point of clarification, I think we all have to keep in mind the difference between a reliable result and a valid claim.  I don't think it would be possible to claim that g is not a reliable result - as Bpesta said, it's been replicated far too many times to say it's just an artifact.  The debate is over what this reliable result means (e.g. which theoretical claim about the underlying cause of the effect is valid), and that is a complex, multi-sided, yet-to-be-resolved-if-ever question.  Frankly, I doubt science will have a decent answer to that question until it has a more analytic definition of what intelligence is (and being a bit of a developmentalist myself, I suspect that that definition will be much more subtle than can be captured by a simple measure like IQ), but as it stands, the best we are going to be able to do with this section is discuss g in its basics,and then lay out various interpretations with proper attributions, so that it doesn't look like the section is advocating any one amongst the several competing ideas.  Ludwigs2 "