The difficulties of getting IQ research published

Below is an email circulated by eminent East German psychologist and geneticist, Volkmar Weiss [Volkmar-Weiss@t-online.de]

With great interest I have read Gelade's paper on "IQ and the technological achievement of nations", Intelligence 36 (2008) 711-718, in which he has come to the conclusion that the GDP of a nation depends upon the percentage of high-IQ individuals. Independently, La Griffe du Lion with his smart fraction theory and I myself with the "law of the vital few" are confirming his result, see page 137ff. of my paper "National IQ Means, Calibrated and Transformed from Edudational Attainment, and Their Underlying Gene Frequencies", Mankind Quarterly 49 (2008) 129-164. For the full text click here. Originally, in April 2008 my paper was submitted to "Intelligence", too, but was rejected by Dettermann. In September I wrote to Richard Lynn:
"Dettermann was even able to find a reviewer who did not understand the transformation of PISA scores (500;100) into IQ scores (100;15). I quote from this review: "The author mentioned the mean and SD of intelligence and at one point stated "in the relationship 100 : 15 = 6.67 ." I am not sure what to make of this. I know quite well how to perform linear transformations, but I am not sure how the 6.67 helps in this context." ... The author stated that he was able to "calculate . a world average IQ of 95". How can one make sense of this? What is the reference population? Typically, IQ is normed to have a mean of 100 in the population. If so, why wouldn't the world average IQ be 100?" - Richard, you could be happy that this anonymous reviewer did never review one of your publications. - A responsible editor would be ashamed to communicate such a "review" to the author and drop this reviewer from any further reviewing. However, I am sure, this will never happen.

In your book "The Global Bell Curve", I was very impressed by the foreword by the publishers: "We are distinguished by the fact that we are not a publisher of choice but one of last resort. We celebrate that status as it grows directly from our resolve not to tolerate the strictures of political correctness. Our authors come to us after having been worn to a nub by rejection slips from established houses that only a few years ago would have been figthing for their manuscripts. But now a velvet tyranny seeks to oppress the mind."

My original plan was to write a monograph on intelligence in English during the next two years, the rejected paper should already be a small part of this book. Now, I am sure that after reading this foreword and the rejection, I will have no chance to find an established house to print my book. I write in German at least three times faster than in English. Therefore, I will write this book in German. I have an offer from an established house in Austria and from two smaller publishers in Germany.

In the age of mass universities, where all over the world thousands of professors of psychology must publish or perish, the journal "Intelligence" and the "International Society for Intelligence Research" are themselves part of the problem of increasing mediocrity. Of course, next year I will not renew my membership in the so-called "Society for Intelligence Research".

Today, I would like to add and I am calling, that the adherents of Charles Spearman should found a journal "General Intelligence" and found a society of their own, free from the thousand multiple intelligences and even emotional ones. The editor of "Mankind Quarterly", Roger Pearson, is already an old man and, I am afraid, after him no journal all over the world will dare to print such a completely political incorrect paper as mine.

Attention: In the printed pdf-version the head of Table 1 is lacking, and the tables are not printed in the places where they should be inserted. 4 pages behind the tables are doubled. Otherwise the text is okay. (I had no possibility to correct the final pdf-version.)

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

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