Article on IQ: The Inappropriately Excluded

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I saw an article on high IQ people being excluded from elite professions. Because the site seemed to have a particular agenda related to the article, I wanted to check here for other independent supporting evidence for the claim.

Their fundamental claim seems to be that P(elite profession|IQ) peaks at 133 and decreases thereafter, and goes do to 3% of peak at 150. If true, I'd find that pretty shocking.

They indicate this diminishing probability of "success" at the high tail of the IQ distribution as a known effect. Anyone got other studies on this?

The Inappropriately Excluded

By dividing the distribution function of the elite professions' IQ by that of the general population, we can calculate the relative probability that a person of any given IQ will enter and remain in an intellectually elite profession. We find that the probability increases to about 133 and then begins to fall. By 140 it has fallen by about 1/3 and by 150 it has fallen by about 97%. In other words, for some reason, the 140s are really tough on one's prospects for joining an intellectually elite profession. It seems that people with IQs over 140 are being systematically, and likely inappropriately, excluded.

Their fundamental claim seems to be that P(elite profession|IQ) peaks at 133 and decreases thereafter, and goes do to 3% of peak at 150. If true, I'd find that pretty shocking.

They indicate this diminishing probability of "success" at the high tail of the IQ distribution as a known effect. Anyone got other studies on this?

The Inappropriately Excluded

By dividing the distribution function of the elite professions' IQ by that of the general population, we can calculate the relative probability that a person of any given IQ will enter and remain in an intellectually elite profession. We find that the probability increases to about 133 and then begins to fall. By 140 it has fallen by about 1/3 and by 150 it has fallen by about 97%. In other words, for some reason, the 140s are really tough on one's prospects for joining an intellectually elite profession. It seems that people with IQs over 140 are being systematically, and likely inappropriately, excluded.

WOW!! I have heard that Lesswrong.com is at the intellectual pinnacle of the Internet. Very little here is even worthy of refutation. The general population has a mean IQ of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. The elite professions have a mean IQ of 126 and a stand deviation of 6.5. If you don't believe the latter, I provided the evidence in the bibliography. Do the math. If you can't, than who cares what you think? In the article I reference the Robert Hauser work that suggests a lower mean but a higher standard deviation. If used solely, it would lower the extent of exclusion, but not by much.

The study of precocious math students shows that a talent is generally rewarded in Western society. But, if you look at the verbal scores of this group, it is clear that their quantitative SAT scores are not primarily the result of g.

Actually, this inverse correlation between very high IQ and career success is well known among top researchers. Robert Sternberg, Miraca Gross, Linda Gottfredson have all speculated on its cause. BTW, I enjoy quality criticism. However, there is none of it here.

Michael W. Ferguson
Author of the article

8gjm5y

The article says: [...] and I'm sorry but this is complete nonsense unless you have good evidence that (even at the tails) the "elite professions" IQ distribution is close to being Gaussian with the mean and standard deviation you cite. I bet it isn't. To reiterate: the point is the shape of the distribution, not its mean and standard deviation. Lots of different distributions have mean 126 and standard deviation 6.5. Some of them lead to curves like the one you plotted. Some don't. Toy model: the "elite professions" simply reject everyone with an IQ below 120 and sample at random from those with higher IQs. This gives a mean of almost exactly 127 and a standard deviation of 6.1 -- very close to the ones you quote, and if you redid your calculation with those figures you would get an even worse "exclusion" for higher IQs. But in a world matching this model, there is no real "exclusion" at all. So, show us your evidence that the distribution of IQs in "elite professions" is close to Gaussian or, alternatively, your evidence that your analysis still works if you use a more realistic estimate of that distribution. If you can do that, then you'll have some evidence that people with very high IQ have less success in (or maybe less interest in) entering "elite professions". Otherwise, not. The argument in your actual article, as it stands, is 100% hopeless, I'm afraid.

1Jay5y

IQ tests are designed to produce a bell curve with a mean at 100 and a standard deviation of 15. That's inherent to the definition of IQ. Actual implementations aren't perfect, but they're not far off.

Sure. But that doesn't tell us anything about the distribution of IQ among people in "elite professions", and that's the key question here.