Suckiologists: Isn't it funny that much of the skepticism about the validity of IQ tests has come from sociologists? These are people who often take ONE question from a survey as their measure of whatever it is they are studying, and then don't make any more effort to validate that it captures what they think it captures.
Psychometricians, by contrast, have obsessed for a very long time about questions of reliability and validity. IQ is typically measured with many, many items, each of which hase been tested extensively. There are subtests on top of subtests, and sophisticated statistical techniques like factor analysis and structural equation modeling have been developed to address these kinds of questions.
Psychologists have a reputation of going crazy over measurement issues on a puny sample of, say, 30 subjects. Sociologists, on the other hand, will measure their concept with one survey question asked of 10,000 respondents. And these jokers are complaining about IQ measurement?
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
The conclusions psychometricians come to are untenable in the PC world we live in. Sociologists reject their claims a priori because of the noxious conclusion. Further, IQ tests and genetics as a predictive measure of real-world performance undermines the sociologists preferred explanation of social phenomenon. Ultimately, IQ tests are a danger to their work.
ReplyDeleteIts probably exceedingly difficult to get to be a doctoral sociologist these days and be anything near a conservative. They'll root you out and oust you from grad school using whatever means necessary. A tenured conservative sociologist would be about the only safe kind.
ReplyDeleteI think the whole discipline has just become a front in the culture war for the left, almost as much as a discipline like "gender studies" is going to be in the bag for the left.
There is a solution to all of this..........accredidation for schools that DONT have Sociology and gender studies and womens studies courses. The right has got to find a way to stop funding the left with everyone's tax dollars or we will never get rid of it.
The right has got to find a way to stop funding the left with everyone's tax dollars or we will never get rid of it.
ReplyDeleteThat's easy.
Place price controls on university tuition.