Low IQs of Scientists: Francis Crick & More

[Simfish]

So we know that...

Feynman's IQ was 126 (bio)
Watson's IQ was 124 (bio)
William Shockley's was 129, then 125 when tested a year later (his 2007 bio)
Luis Alvarez's was below 135 (he failed to qualify for Terman study)

But then I hear from some sources that Francis Crick's IQ was 115. Does anyone know where that figure came from? None of those sources referenced any of Crick's bios, and an entry on Wikipedia (the entry was on Stereotypes regarding Asian Americans, which mentioned Crick's IQ, that was weird :p) only referenced two articles that were not authoritative.

Also - does anyone else know of low IQs by other scientists?

 

[Smurf]

115 is still high

 

[ranger]

An IQ test score is meaningless. Does a scientists with a "low" IQ make him any less of a scientists? Certainly you won't agree that this is the case; especially with Shockley.

 

[BobG]

Average IQ is 100. They didn't have low IQs. They had high IQs. They just didn't have "genius" IQs.

IQ matters, but a person just has to be smart enough. Beyond a minimum (which I'm sure varies by activity), effort and opportunity play a bigger part than difference in IQ.

 

[Guna82m]

IQ doesn't picture everything about a human's cababilities...believe me..i'v seen people with very high IQ looks more dull like a cartoon character than normal human. IQ test is linear way of determining one's brain power.. There is no algorithm way to define one's IQ... so don't be surprise to see people with low IQ become world famous scientist...

Formula to become worls famous scientist = Huge amount of hard work + small amount of luck ...can anyone give a scientific eq from this formula?

 

[G01]

I don't give IQ tests merit. Your work ethic and attitude are much more important in the end.

 

[christianjb]

Many people disregard IQ tests out of hand without using any evidence whatsoever- just a gut feeling that it must be all meaningless and vapid.

Anyway- the OP was asking for data regarding famous scientist's with lowish IQ's. Simfishy wasn't asking for our opinions on IQ testing in general.

 

[Math Is Hard]

The thing about IQ tests and scales is that they weren't developed to measure "brilliance". These were tools designed to identify mild to severe deficits in cognitive ability. In that regard, they are very useful, but to try to apply them to the upper range of scores is sort of meaningless.

 

[Moonbear]

M
Anyway- the OP was asking for data regarding famous scientist's with lowish IQ's. Simfishy wasn't asking for our opinions on IQ testing in general.

As MIH pointed out (in the quote below), the meaning of IQ scores is important to the question being asked. If simfishy is considering an IQ of 115 to be low, then the question is flawed, because IQ is not good for making meaningful comparisons among people in the average to above average range. The tests were never designed to do that.

The thing about IQ tests and scales is that they weren't developed to measure "brilliance". These were tools designed to identify mild to severe deficits in cognitive ability. In that regard, they are very useful, but to try to apply them to the upper range of scores is sort of meaningless.

Exactly. A "low" IQ score would be something below 70, which indicates some functional deficits in mental abilities. And, no, I would not expect there to be any scientists with that low of an IQ score, because someone with that low of an IQ score would be challenged just to get through secondary school. For that matter, you're not going to encounter bankers, social workers, historians, journalists, etc., with that low of an IQ either.

 

[christianjb]

The Q is not flawed in any way that I can see.

1) An IQ <130 is surprisingly low for someone of the caliber of Feynman who would easily be in the top percentile by other measures of intelligence (e.g. math ability).

2) If it's true that Nobel prize winners do indeed score no higher than the average PhD then that is interesting evidence for suggesting that IQ tests can't discriminate genius. (Maybe it's not- I'm not entirely certain.)

In any case- most posters here are quite willing to offer their opinions without actually considering the data or looking at the evidence. Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

3) I agree that IQ tests were initially developed in part to select problematic (i.e. low-scoring) children. That's neither here nor there. The tests have obviously moved on beyond their original intention and they are now commonly used to measure high IQ's (e.g. in Mensa applications).

 

[mathwonk]

i think really smart people like feynman may tend to score lower on IQ tests because they are so much smarter than the people who make up the tests. they say that galois too failed an entrance exam to university.

even i myself scored less than an honors pass on a prelim at university of washington on a topic (advanced calculus) i had just taught the semester before, because the quetions were so trivial to me i anwered too briefly to suit the examiner, and i finished a 2 hour test in 30 minutes laughing on my way out.

when tutoring my 12 year old kids for sats i had to constantly teach them not to be too imaginative, because the possibilities they were coming up with in multiple choice question were far too intelligent to be anticipated by the relative imbeciles who make up and score the tests.

if you ask me to rank the intelligence of someone who is much smarter than I am, I cannot be expected to get it right. Unfortunately, while I think I do usually notice the person is indeed smarter than me, IQ tests do not even succeed in this, but report that they are less smart instead.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

People are obsessed with IQ, but then as we all know it directly corresponds to intelligence to such a high degree they may as well be one and the same thing. In fact if you ever received a low score in your life say at age 8 you should just give up and resign yourself to perpetual duncehood. Perhaps you could wear a hat, letting everyone know your IQ is only say 105, so that people could point and laugh at you in the streets.

To reiterate IQ is 100% about intelligence and nothing about education, social economic advantage, or anything else, and it does not encourage elitism or snobbery.

Let's try the opposite tack this time, see if anyone will actually agree hehe. IQ is a load of old widdleplop and everyone knows it, the OP proves that to be a scientist you need more than IQ, you need perserverance, intangibles, not a bloody redundant test.::::::::::::)

 

[hypnagogue]

Here's one scientific result supporting the hypothesis that effort is more important than IQ for academic success:

http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/07/high_iq_not_as_good_for_you_as_1.php

 

[hypnagogue]

i think really smart people like feynman may tend to score lower on IQ tests because they are so much smarter than the people who make up the tests. they say that galois too failed an entrance exam to university.

when tutoring my 12 year old kids for sats i had to constantly teach them not to be too imaginative, because the possibilities they were coming up with in multiple choice question were far too intelligent to be anticipated by the relative imbeciles who make up and score the tests.

I don't know if I buy that. The idea is that you're so much smarter than the test maker that you wind up with the wrong answer? Sounds like you're outsmarting yourself, not the test maker.

What I would buy is an argument that, although IQ seems to index intelligence in some manner of speaking, the word "intelligence" is not completely describable in terms of those skills that help one perform well on an IQ test. So you if you perform poorly on an IQ test, no, you're not smarter than the testmaker-- you're just not great at performing those kinds of tasks, period. But that doesn't imply that you are not great at other kinds of cognitive abilities that one might call intelligence either.

 

[ZapperZ]

All I can say is that for all the surveys that the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics have ever conducted (and there have been A LOT), not once were there any question about the person's IQ.

I would hazard a guess that the same can be said about other professional scientific organizations. Thus, the question in the OP cannot be answered with any reasonable and sufficient data.

Zz.

 

[christianjb]

http://www.mines.utah.edu/geoeng/people/faculty/jarrard/Text/sm10.htm

above-average intelligence: This characteristic is almost essential, but a scientist with only average intelligence can succeed by excelling in the other traits of scientists. Genius is not required. Among those with an IQ > 120, IQ shows little relation to either scientific innovation or productivity [Simonton, 1988]. Genius without the other needed qualities is insufficient for scientific success.

Simonton, D. K., 1988, Scientific Genius, Cambridge Univ. Press: New York.(Not a very good source, but the best I could find using Google)

 

[Moonbear]

The Q is not flawed in any way that I can see.

1) An IQ <130 is surprisingly low for someone of the caliber of Feynman who would easily be in the top percentile by other measures of intelligence (e.g. math ability).

2) If it's true that Nobel prize winners do indeed score no higher than the average PhD then that is interesting evidence for suggesting that IQ tests can't discriminate genius. (Maybe it's not- I'm not entirely certain.)

In any case- most posters here are quite willing to offer their opinions without actually considering the data or looking at the evidence. Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

We've had a ton of past threads at this site regarding IQ, and have examined a good deal of the evidence, most of it highly flawed. There's a lot of circular reasoning employed of the following type:
X group of people are smarter than Y group of people.
X group of people has a higher IQ than Y group of people.
Therefore, higher IQ is a good measure of distinguishing smartness between X and Y groups of people.
BUT...how did someone determine initially that X group of people is smarter than Y group of people? Oh, because in the past, X group was determined to have higher IQ than Y group.

It's also flawed to think that Nobel winners are necessarily smarter than the "average" Ph.D. How would you assess that?

While they certainly do have to be good scientists, often the discovery that wins them an award is accidental. The thing they are good at is recognizing the importance of it to follow it up, not so much that they were thinking way beyond the level of other scientists at the time.

3) I agree that IQ tests were initially developed in part to select problematic (i.e. low-scoring) children. That's neither here nor there. The tests have obviously moved on beyond their original intention and they are now commonly used to measure high IQ's (e.g. in Mensa applications).

Common usage does not mean correct usage, and is as unscientific a claim as that you are accusing others of. That people use the tests for purposes beyond their original intention does not mean that they are validated for those purposes.

How do you rank "smartness" independent of an IQ test? What criteria are used to validate such a test in the average to above-average range? All it really tests are measures that the test writer considers important for intelligence. Who is smarter? The person capable of doing complex math problems, or the person who is good at social networking who can find someone else to do those problems for them when they need it? Who is smarter? The architect who draws up a set of blueprints for a building, or the construction workers who have to read and interpret those blueprints and turn them into an actual building?

There is a lot of observer bias in interpreting these numbers too. You see a famous scientist with a high IQ and say, "Oh, he's really smart, and has a high IQ, so high IQ must be consistent with smartness." But, all the people with high IQ who never became anything because they completely lacked motivation are ignored, as are those with lower IQs who are successful (because who is going to publicize that their IQ is 98). Those with high IQs AND big egos are the ones trying to promote that their high IQ has significance other than to say they are not mentally deficient.

 

[wildman]

The top level scientists I have met are all very creative people. They are smart yes, but also very creative. IQ does not measure creativity. It may be that the top scientists are not any smarter then the rest of us, just a lot more creative.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Yes creativity is key, and is not measurable by an IQ test, that's a given.

AAMOI Feynman says he didn't score well because his language skills were poor at school, but I think we all agree that his language skills or at least his ability to convey meaning to science were far and away better than many scientists at an older age, thus you never stop improving your skills, but IQ becomes redundant a short time into adolescence? What does that say about the accuracy of the test? I mean it's anecdotal but let's face it so are IQ tests

I would say without question IQ tests do not denote intelligence, just suggest your ability in education, beyond that it's up 2 you.

Like those crafty Far Easters say it's not about intelligence as such but about effort, and persistence. I like that philosophy, you get nothing for sitting back and hoping the world will fall in your lap.

 

[mathwonk]

hynagogue, have you ever taken a IQ test? they often have questions like: "which of the following does not belong?" or "which of the following is analogous to XXXX?",

this discriminates against people who can imagine ways that all the given choices do belong, or more creative analogies than the average bear.

and do you know who makes up these tests? do you think they are smarter than people like feynman?

IQ tests are not like math tests with tasks and answers that are well defined, they are often subjective, with answers which are less clear the more imaginative you are.

nowadays, with the work of people like paul torrance on creative intelligence, there are also other types of tests, with open ended questions which measure this better.

my second son seemed to us and to his school teachers as not too swift in the IQ department, until he was tested by one of these modern tests. Then he scored the highest creativity score of anyone they had ever tested.

try the following question out on yourself: "name as many words as you can in 30 seconds".At the age of 7 or 8, our son answered by counting rapidly: "one, two, three, four, ..."

and when he got to 20 or so, he just stopped and laughed at the examiner. and began to answer with words ike "pig, dog, cat,.." Having outsmarted the question, he lost interest in scoring as many words as possible.

compare that to an IQ question from my own high school test like:

"which of the following words best completes the sentence: ... it was cloudy, the sun was shining" {although, while, until, unless.}another question from paul torrance was "think of as many uses as you can for a junked car."

the definition of IQ, is whatever the particularexaminer is measuring, usually conformity to the most common response (indeed the "correct" answer to the question on my high school test is whatever most people say it is), but torrance meaures inventiveness and originality. feynman would probably have scored 200 on torrances test.

 

[mathwonk]

in fact there is no such thing as IQ. It is a number measured by a specific test, and scored by person in some cases. so it is only a relative concept, relative to the test used.

in feynmans and my childhood days the tests were very different from many in use today so the numbers mean little in comparison to numbers obtained today.

saying ones IQ is 79 or 140 is like saying ones height is 56 without saying if it is measured in feet, inches, or metres. you have to know which test was used, like a stanford binet, and what year it was, as they are always changing.

moreover the scores are "normalized" to make a certain number of people come out with a certain score, as there is no intrinsic menaing to getting 25 out of 26 word analogies "correct" on a test.

it used to be said that IQ was computed by dividing ones mental age by ones actual age. but how to measure mental age? so they compared your score to those of a sample group of people of various ages. to me it means little.in particular, anybody who thinks feynman had an intelligence quotient of 125 or so, in any meaningful sense, seems naive to me.

what do you think gauss' IQ was? what does it count to make the test one of finding a construction of a regular 17 gon, and noting that he was the only person to do it in 2000 years? does that make his IQ a million? a billion?

in fact i conclude this is a meaningless discussion. If brilliant scientists have low "IQ's", then the IQ test being used is not measuring anything interesting.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Precisely you summed it up in words even I could understand. A very competent couple of posts Mathwonk.

Even so it's still impossible to test creativity in any set test in any given scope. But I hope one day people will actually realize that intelligence is so broad that a test can only be as broad as human intelligence, and our understanding of it right now is so poor, that it loses all meaning.

By the way a lot of your meaning got mixed about and the words were a little hard for me to understand, I had to read it at least twice before I understood what you meant. Alphabetic characters kept jumping around: literally, at points it all got mixed up, so I needed to find meaning out of it by repetition, finally got it through context? Wasn't easy but I got there in the end. Welcome to my world

 

[mbrmbrg]

Wow... That's awsome!

Reminds me of the time I was trying to teach my little brother (also about 7 at the time) the difference between "many" and "much". I gave him a couple of examples (so much stuff so many toys; so mcuh money so many dollars; etc.), and then asked if he got it. Without missing a beat, he said: "So many cents so much sense".

 

[mathwonk]

out of the mouths of babes.

 

[fourier jr]

what about the opposite? (people with high IQs who think they're scientists) marilyn vos savant outwitted the mathematicians of the world by explaining that monty hall problem, but fell on her face when trying to criticize wiles' proof of FLT.

 

[mathwonk]

since we are discussing productive scientists and what is relevant, namely IQ and other factors, let me mention encouragement.

Paul Torrance mentioned above as the great pioneer of measuring creativity as a part of intelligence, was a professor at UGA for a while in his later years and I took my older son to meet him hoping for some sage advice.

Dr. Torrance put his arm around my young son and made him feel at home, as I talked about my hopes for his education and my frustration at my own relatively poor childhood education, mentioning that although its too late for me perhaps i could give him better than I had.

Dr Torrance just said quietly, he didnt think it was too late for me at all.

Just that quiet sincere encouragement sent me out of there with new enthusiasm and I plunged into my own creative work again with fresh energy.

THERE IS A BIOGRAPHY OF HIM written by a Canadian, Garnet Millar, whom I also met while he visited UGA to do research.

 

[mathwonk]

here is a reprint of some of the wikipedia blurb on torrance:

"Torrance on creativity

Professor Torrance was best known for his pioneering research in the study of creativity.
He developed a benchmark method for quantifying creativity and invented in 1974 the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, which showed that the IQ test was not the only way to measure intelligence.
Building on Guilford's work, they involved simple tests of divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills, which were scored on:
Fluency. The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus.
Flexibility. The number of different categories of relevant responses.
Originality. The statistical rarity of the responses among the test subjects.
Elaboration. The amount of detail in the responses.
[edit]Torrance and the threshold hypothesis

There has been debate in the psychological literature about whether intelligence and creativity are part of the same process (the conjoint hypothesis) or represent distinct mental processes (the disjoint hypothesis).
Evidence from attempts to look at correlations between intelligence and creativity from the 1950s onwards, by authors such as Barron, Guilford or Wallach and Kogan, regularly suggested that correlations between these concepts were low enough to justify treating them as distinct concepts. Some researchers believe that creativity is the outcome of the same cognitive processes as intelligence, and is only judged as creativity in terms of its consequences, i.e., when the outcome of cognitive processes happens to produce something novel, a view which Perkins has termed the "nothing special" hypothesis.
A very popular model is what has come to be known as "the threshold hypothesis", proposed by Ellis Paul Torrance, which holds that a high degree of intelligence appears to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for high creativity. This means that, in a general sample, there will be a positive correlation between creativity and intelligence, but this correlation will not be found if only a sample of the most highly intelligent people are assessed.
Research into the threshold hypothesis, however, has produced mixed results ranging from enthusiastic support to refutation and rejection."

 

[christianjb]

Well, I got flagged as offensive presumably because I stated that I didn't think that just offering opinions on this subject was very pertinent or scientific.

Thanks for those who actually mentioned studies or linked to articles. Guess I'll leave this topic.

 

[moe darklight]

in fact i conclude this is a meaningless discussion. If brilliant scientists have low "IQ's", then the IQ test being used is not measuring anything interesting.

wow, you must have an IQ of like a million to come with such a great response!

IQ tests are unnaturally unimaginative.

people who develop standardized tests seem to forget that great thinkers are those who think beyond the standard, not just above it.

 

[Math Is Hard]

IQ tests are unnaturally unimaginative.

people who develop standardized tests seem to forget that great thinkers are those who think beyond the standard, not just above it.

OK, one more time:

Standardized IQ tests and scales weren't developed to measure "brilliance". These were tools designed to identify mild to severe deficits in cognitive ability. IQ tests weren't designed to predict if a student will be successful in grad school, but rather, if a student will have a shot at finishing high school.

To give a more real-world example: I have a brother with severe learning disabilities. His IQ scores gave us a better idea of what we could do to help him plan for his future as far as education and employment. I have another brother who is getting ready for law school. His IQ has never been tested because it is unnecessary. He will go as far as his motivation takes him.

 

[J77]

IQ tests are for school kids who like to have a measure of how apparently more clever they are over their peers.

They're meaningless in adult life.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Do people still take them then? Why what is the point unless as MIH says it's to highlight potential difficulties in education? And even then its a private matter. Might as well take an internet IQ test, because a real one won't tell you much about anything either other than how well you'll do in maths and English, which is of course vital knowledge you couldn't possibly have any inkling of.

 

[moe darklight]

OK, one more time:

Standardized IQ tests and scales weren't developed to measure "brilliance". These were tools designed to identify mild to severe deficits in cognitive ability. IQ tests weren't designed to predict if a student will be successful in grad school, but rather, if a student will have a shot at finishing high school.

To give a more real-world example: I have a brother with severe learning disabilities. His IQ scores gave us a better idea of what we could do to help him plan for his future as far as education and employment. I have another brother who is getting ready for law school. His IQ has never been tested because it is unnecessary. He will go as far as his motivation takes him.

I understand that. but the sad truth is that sometimes things turn into pathetic misrepresentations of what they were originally designed (and are apt) to do. There is an understandable need for testing the difference between someone who would score 70 on an IQ test and someone who would score 130— but then human nature takes over and it turns into a pissing contest of "genius" and "average" and "above average" and all that unnecessary BS.

And, while IQ tests are not necessary for most people, tests of a similar air form a part of school and high school.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

Right got you it's a childish pissing contest.

Don't do it over here. Although they do have tests at various ages to see how high up the league table your school is- Oh no wait...

 

[J77]

Don't do it over here. Although they do have tests at various ages to see how high up the league table your school is- Oh no wait...

Yeah, but the teachers can "help" the kids with these tests