Word: benda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...James B. Benda...
...mating habits of people, the facts are clear, and clearly different from Dr. Benda's unusual impressions of the matter. Husbands and wives correlate in I.Q. by about .5, which is roughly the same as the value for brothers and sisters. As a result, there is likely to be a greater tendency for high or low I.Q.s to run in families than there would be if marriage were independent...
...estimates of I.Q.s genetic ingredient--they are firmly established and widely cited. I know of no published technical refutation, nor even any major criticism, by a quantitative geneticist, of I.Q.'s substantial heritability, though there are countless allusions to such refutations or criticisms in articles like Dr. Benda's. The technical literature contains a veritable chorus of agreement on the fact that the I.Q. is heritable--not as heritable, let us say, as physical height, but more heritable than any other broad human psychological trait yet measured. Without a doubt, the confusion about I.Q.'s heritability is the controversy...
...about the I.Q. itself? Dr. Benda says, "Early I.Q. testing and its modifications by Stanford, Wexler, Terman et all are all based on the studies of Binet and Simon at the end of the last century." Stanford? Could this be Stanford University, where Lewis Terman was when he developed the "Stanford-Binet"? Wexler? Could this be David Wechsler, developer of the Wechsler-Bellevue, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and other modern tests? (Note, incidentally, that this Wechsler has not heard that the testing of adults is meaningless.) Reading that sentence, I thought for a moment that the entire piece...
...Benda said that some people who had low I.Q.s made enormous contributions to society. I do not doubt it. The little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike may not have been exceptionally bright, though he may well have been exceptionally brave. While perhaps interesting, such unusual cases are beside my point. My theory calls only for a substantial correlation between I.Q. and status, for which the evidence is overwhelming...