From: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa
Subject: Re: IQ Stats
Date: 17 Apr 92 19:59:19 GMT
Article-I.D.: nntpd.1992Apr17.195919.14558
Reply-To: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

In article <1992Apr16.175346.4601@cbfsb.cb.att.com>, rrp@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (rakesh.r.patel) writes:
>
> I know this kind of a question is not politically correct but I have to ask.
>
> Has an IQ survey ever been conducted to determine IQs on a national basis?
> What I am trying to say is:  Has there every been an IQ survey for entire
> countries (on a random sampling, of course) to determine the average IQ of
> an entire country?   If yes, what were the results?

One of the best books on  this  topic  is  Stephen  Jay  Gould's  "The
Mismeasure  of Man".  It is basically a treatise on the history of the
use of various tests to compare nations or races or sexes.

The simple answer to your question is:  Yes.  Such surveys or  studies
have  been  done  many times in the past couple centuries.  Almost all
have been fraudulent attempts to show that "My group  is  superior  to
yours".   They  have  been  repeatedly  used by governments to justify
exclusion and oppression of groups of people.

As a result,  few  reputable  scientist  these  days  will  touch  the
subject.   It  is very dangerous to your reputation.  Even if you do a
good study, the reactions to it will come in  a  variety  of  flavors,
none of them pleasant. Some people will take whatever your results are
and twist them so that you appear to support  their  political  and/or
social  agenda.   Others will not even bother reading your papers, but
will condemn you for being a racist because you wrote about race, or a
sexist  because  you  wrote about sex.  But you can forget about being
treated as a serious scientist.

This is rather unfortunate, actually. Consider some medical parallels.
The  disease  known as "cycle-cell anemia" happens primarily to people
with African ancestry.  Tay-Sachs disease mostly affects Jews.  Nordic
people  are  more  susceptible  to skin cancer than most other groups.
American black people are have higher incidence of  hypertension  than
do  whites  (or  black Africans).  I can state these facts without any
fear that I will be accused of being a racist or an anti-Semite.   But
more  importantly,  medical  people  can  use  this  knowledge  to our
benefit, by targeting testing programs to  the  populations  that  are
most at risk.

The situations with regard to education is less pleasant.  Suppose  it
were  true  that  some  group G had a particular problem with learning
subject S.  You'd think that the education system would want  to  make
use  of  this in a similar way, paying special attention to members of
group G on S-type portions of tests, and targeting the victims of this
"learning disorder" with special help in S.  Nope.  What our educators
would say is "Well, group G is known to be deficient in  S,  so  let's
not even bother trying to educate them. Let's just exclude ALL of them
from S classes."

It's rather like a doctor refusing  to  treat  a  black  kid  who  has
cycle-cell  disease because it's so common in black people.  You don't
see much of  this  sort  of  insanity  in  medical  circles,  but  the
equivalent is rampant in education.

There was a recent study  that  purported  to  show  that  girls  have
somewhat less aptitude for math than boys. This has had two effects on
the people who heard  of  it.   Half  of  them  jumped  all  over  the
researchers  for being sexist.  The other half think that there is now
no reason to educate girls in math, because "scientists  have  proved"
that they can't handle it.  There is no sign that the results (if they
are valid, which will require further studies  to  verify)  will  ever
lead to any improvement in math education for girls or boys.

Given this sort of reaction, it's tempting to say that we shouldn't do
the studies at all, if they will be misused in such a manner.
Xref: sparky rec.org.mensa:2787 alt.atheism:8071