Word: iq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...called their conclusions unwarranted and farfetched. And it's easy to understand why. The idea that intelligence is rooted in the genes has long been an inflammatory notion--witness the charges of racism put to Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, authors of The Bell Curve, their controversial study of IQ and race. Beyond that, the very concept of intelligence is slippery. It involves many qualities--some of them elusive, like creativity, others more clear-cut like the ability to solve problems. "This is a very important study," says Eric Kandel, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University...
...just for the sake of argument, suppose raising IQ didn't require any permanent, expensive genetic engineering at all. Scientists are studying brain-boosting compounds. Suppose they found something as cheap and easy as aspirin; one pill and you wake up the next morning a little bit brighter. Who could argue with that...
...seen these visions glinting in the distance for some time--the prospect that one day parents will be able to browse through gene catalogs to special-order a hazel-eyed, redheaded extrovert with perfect pitch. Leave aside for the moment whether scientists actually found an "IQ gene" last week or the argument over what really constitutes intelligence. Every new discovery gives shape and bracing focus to a debate we have barely begun. Even skeptics admit it's only a matter of time before these issues become real. If you could make your kids smarter, would you? If everyone else...
...only to those who can afford it? "Every parent in the world is going to want this," says Rifkin. "But who will have access to it? It will create a new form of discrimination. How will we look at those who are not enhanced, the child with the low IQ?" Who would have the right to know whether your smarts were natural or turbo-charged? How would it affect whom we choose to marry--those with altered genes or those without? If, as a parent, you haven't mortgaged the house to enhance your children, what sort of parent does...
...Stephen Bright. "In fact, science says just the opposite." And eyewitness testimony is only as reliable as the eyewitness. Two men sentenced to death for a Chicago murder and then freed by DNA evidence in 1996 were convicted largely on the testimony of a woman with a sub-75 IQ, who later said prosecutors promised to release her from jail if she testified...