Low IQs of Scientists: Francis Crick & More

[Astronuc]

. . . . And IQ declines with age. That should be common sense. Is it not harder to learn a new language when you are 30 rather than when you were 7?

My grandfather was sharp as a tack and quite mentally proficient at 100. He read everyday, kept up with current events and world affairs, and provided meals and services for younger people (in their 80's and 90's) who were less capable (mobile) than him.

I have found it much easier to learn a new language in my 40's and 50's than I did at 7. I have context and knowledge now that I didn't have in primary school.

 

[Howers]

I am not advocating in any way that IQ be used in place of achievement. It is a measure of innate intelligence and not something that an individual can control. What I am saying is IQ definitely is needed to produce good work - or it at the very least increases the odds of producing good work. Not that employers should use it in screening applicants. Even though they currently do, as do medical and grad schools - what do you think is the point of admission tests?

To maze, some have theorized that everyone is born with an IQ "scale". This means if you exercise your brain often and are brought up in a good enviornment, you can score at the higher end of this scale and it wouldn't be surprising to see your score go as high as 15 points. In your case, I am assuming you had not dealt with 3d imagines much before and after exposure they seemed more natural.

There are different forms of originality and creativity. IQ tends to predict the academic ones. The reason I am so cynical about this is because of what I learned from tutoring high school students. Some students pick up on math really fast, and others need to be reminded constantly of what we are doing. There was even a girl who didn't truly understand the concept of division. She was in grade 12, and after a week of teaching her the basic operation from scratch she still did not follow. All she knew was the divison table she memorized years ago. Even to this day, if you ask her what 5/0 is she will say zero. Something I mentioned to her atleast 90 times. Sadly, I just gave up on her. Not surprisingly, the better students were naturally more logical as well. You can guess how logical she was. So if there is a threshold to pass in understanding concepts, it is natural to infer that there is another threshold to pass to create ideals. If you can show me an original academic with a low IQ, which this thread aims to do, I will happily throw out any importance to the score. Until then, I must let facts govern my judgement.

Note: My own score is not particularily high, just a mere "above average". I am not defending IQ on the basis of defending my intelligence. I hate the idea of IQ - something one has no control over, just as I hate the idea of genetic disease. But I have read enough about it to see it is actually quite accurate.

 

[Astronuc]

There are different forms of originality and creativity. IQ tends to predict the academic ones. The reason I am so cynical about this is because of what I learned from tutoring high school students. Some students pick up on math really fast, and others need to be reminded constantly of what we are doing. There was even a girl who didn't truly understand the concept of division. She was in grade 12, and after a week of teaching her the basic operation from scratch she still did not follow. All she knew was the divison table she memorized years ago. Even to this day, if you ask her what 5/0 is she will say zero. Something I mentioned to her atleast 90 times. Sadly, I just gave up on her. Not surprisingly, the better students were naturally more logical as well. You can guess how logical she was. So if there is a threshold to pass in understanding concepts, it is natural to infer that there is another threshold to pass to create ideals. If you can show me an original academic with a low IQ, which this thread aims to do, I will happily throw out any importance to the score. Until then, I must let facts govern my judgement.

I can sympathize with teaching or being a tutor. I taught freshman students in an introductory engineering class. They struggled with simple word problems that 8th or 9th graders should understand! That was 20+ years ago, and I see no improvement since, and it reflected a problem I had identified when I was in high school 30+ years ago. (When I was a senior in high school, I got pulled out of my AP chemistry class for a few days to substitute teach the regular chemistry class because the teacher was ill.) The educational system in the US is fundamentally flawed to the point that a majority of students fail to achieve their full potential.

However, with respect to the 12th grader, how does one differentiate between innate capability and the achievement (or lack thereof) of the educational experience. Perhaps she was never challenged or never taught in a way that was conducive to her learning. Clearly some people lack the ability to learn, but most do have the potential, although it varies widely. Then we must consider that different people learn differently, and this reflects on one of the greatest failures of the US (and perhaps elsewhere) educational system - that being 'one size does not fit all'. In general, we use an assembly line approach to education that attempts to move everyone at the same rate - and that doesn't work. Each student needs a customized education!

My kids needed help outside of the normal class, and we had to go to great effort to get that supplemental help. My wife works with kids who need extra help in school, and that appears to be an exception than the norm, and it seems to work on a school by school, district by district basis.

Now getting back to the OP, I think it shows that folks with relatively average (not exceptional IQ) can achieve great work, and it does not require a high IQ. Having a high IQ may be sufficient, but it's not necessary to achieve.

 

[vociferous]

On a lot of IQ tests, a score of around 130 will put you in the top 98th or 99th percentile. None of the scores you posted are "low", as in below average.

In fact, I would expect that the average score for someone with a PhD in a field of Physics would be somewhere between 118-135 depending on the test, so the scores for these supposed "low scorers" actually looks pretty average, or if anything, slightly below average for people in their fields.

Einstein, for instance, certainly had a high IQ, but not nearly as high as many of his more famous (at the time) contemporaries, which just goes to prove that genius simply is not measured simply by a score on a test, it is also hard work, creativity, luck, and a certain je ne sais quoi.

 

[scientiavore]

This game claims to boost your IQ: http://dual-n-back.com/

IMHO intelligence is not something that is fixed, it's always changing, granted, some people are "naturally" better than others at specific things, but that does not mean anything, practice makes perfect, if you really care about something, you can do it, it's just a matter of time.

 

[turbo]

Huh?

 

[lisab]

wait...what?

 

[Negatron]

What is going on, where am I?

 

[Attraction]

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

Agreed. No matter how high your intuitive aptitude is, if you don't put forth the necessary effort, you will not achieve as much as someone of a lower intuitive aptitude who puts in many more hours. It's all about ATTITUDE and GOALS. I've seen it and also been a victim of it. People who I naturally excelled past in high school, have better qualifications than me now because I had the wrong attitude and didn't apply myself like I should have. The shame of it all is that I really have the ability, I really do. However, I am much smarter now and on the right track.

 

[Attraction]

Then we must consider that different people learn differently, and this reflects on one of the greatest failures of the US (and perhaps elsewhere) educational system - that being 'one size does not fit all'. In general, we use an assembly line approach to education that attempts to move everyone at the same rate - and that doesn't work. Each student needs a customized education!

This is the key point. Teachers tend to teach in THEIR OWN LEARNING STYLE. Some students are predominantly auditory learners, others are predominantly visual, others are predominantly physical and so on. Generally we have all three aspects but are more dominant in one. Teachers tend to only use ONE style of teaching which is supposed to fit every student in the room. It just doesn't work like that and it's no wonder you get students who "hate" that class or find it boring. The teacher is not catering to their styles of learning. It is difficult and maybe unrealistic to expect teachers to teach each individual selectively for optimized results. A good start would be to engage the different modalities a lot more when teaching a large group, rather than just focusing on one.

 

[j93]

I don't understand how people could speak of IQ tests as if it had a 100 % scientifically proven correlation to intelligence. I for one don't know where in between 0 and 100% correlation it has but the one thing I can be sure of it is that it is not 0 and 100 % percent yet nobody believes it has 0 % correlation but there are a decent amount of those believing blindly as if it was some religion that it has a 100% correlation with intelligence.

 

[elfboy]

IQ scores are a valid way of measuring abstract thinking- skills necessary for advanced physics & math. If you don't score high enough don't blame the test, blame yourself for not being that smart. Feynman, who only scored 126, was described as 'slow' , and 'lacking in rigor' by some of his lesser known contemporaries. He was smart, but by no stretch of the imagination a genius.

 

[Jack21222]

Away, foul necromancer!

 

[leroyjenkens]

IQ scores are a valid way of measuring abstract thinking- skills necessary for advanced physics & math. If you don't score high enough don't blame the test, blame yourself for not being that smart. Feynman, who only scored 126, was described as 'slow' , and 'lacking in rigor' by some of his lesser known contemporaries. He was smart, but by no stretch of the imagination a genius.

Since when is IQ the end all be all for deciding who's a genius and who isn't?

 

[Gokul43201]

Feynman, who only scored 126, was described as 'slow' , and 'lacking in rigor' by some of his lesser known contemporaries. He was smart, but by no stretch of the imagination a genius.

No stretch of your imagination, perhaps! My imagination needs very little stretching to accommodate that idea.

PS: From your dismissal of his intellectual capabilities - one that is contrary to common estimation - you are claiming, at the minimum, a comprehension of most of his notable scientific work. How many of Feynman's papers have you read and understood, and which ones?

 

[elfboy]

No stretch of your imagination, perhaps! My imagination needs very little stretching to accommodate that idea.

PS: From your dismissal of his intellectual capabilities - one that is contrary to common estimation - you are claiming, at the minimum, a comprehension of most of his notable scientific work. How many of Feynman's papers have you read and understood, and which ones?

I define IQ as the ability synthesize abstract concepts relative to ones peers for a respective field. Being that I'm not a theoretical physicist I'm in no position to judge the works of Feynman, but some of his contemporaries have judged him to be 'slow' and I attribute this to his IQ.

 

[lisab]

I define IQ as the ability synthesize abstract concepts relative to ones peers for a respective field. Being that I'm not a theoretical physicist I'm in no position to judge the works of Feynman, but some of his contemporaries have judged him to be 'slow' and I attribute this to his IQ.

Where did you read that anyone judged Feynman to be 'slow'? I've never heard this.

The Feynman case is en excellent example of why IQ measurements, as a way to measure high intellect, are pure BS.

 

[Gokul43201]

Being that I'm not a theoretical physicist I'm in no position to judge the works of Feynman, but some of his contemporaries have judged him to be 'slow' and I attribute this to his IQ.

Names and citations please!

 

[mugaliens]

Since when is IQ the end all be all for deciding who's a genius and who isn't?

For that matter, what is genius, anyway? Top 1%? In what? Doing what?

I do not subscribe to a generic "genius" category, as some I've met may be brilliant in many areas, but not so much in others.

 

[Leptos]

I define IQ as the ability synthesize abstract concepts relative to ones peers for a respective field. Being that I'm not a theoretical physicist I'm in no position to judge the works of Feynman, but some of his contemporaries have judged him to be 'slow' and I attribute this to his IQ.

Where are you coming up with all this drivel?
It turns out that guys like Feyman hit the ceiling for logical-mathematical intelligence. However, Feynman scored low in verbal intelligence, which didn't really matter for his field of study.

 

[bp_psy]

IQ scores are a valid way of measuring abstract thinking- skills necessary for advanced physics & math.

Feynman manged to be in the first five on the Putnam competition.I think that is a valid test for exceptional "abstract thinking- skills necessary for advanced physics & math"

 

[Proton Soup]

IQ scores are a valid way of measuring abstract thinking- skills necessary for advanced physics & math. If you don't score high enough don't blame the test, blame yourself for not being that smart. Feynman, who only scored 126, was described as 'slow' , and 'lacking in rigor' by some of his lesser known contemporaries. He was smart, but by no stretch of the imagination a genius.

slow is an interesting thought. can one be a slow genius?

http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-Mi-So/Perelman-Grigory.html

Perelman entered Leningrad State University at age 16 and quickly was placed in advanced geometry courses. He impressed one of his teachers, Yuri Burago, who told Nasar and Gruber, "There are a lot of students of high ability who speak before thinking. Grisha was different. He thought deeply. His answers were always correct. He always checked very, very carefully. He was not fast. Speed means nothing. Math doesn't depend on speed. It is about deep ." For relaxation, Perelman played table tennis and sometimes played the violin, which was also his mother's instrument.

 

[George Jones]

Being that I'm not a theoretical physicist I'm in no position to judge the works of Feynman, but some of his contemporaries have judged him to be 'slow' and I attribute this to his IQ.

Names and citations please!

I agree: names and citations! Without this, what elfboy has written is worse than meaningless. I can produce anecdotal evidence that illustrates Feynman's speed, thus contradicting what elfboy wrote.

When Feynman was an undergraduate at MIT, he won the difficult Putnam mathematics competition (written by the best students at many universities). James Gleick, in his book Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, wrote

In some years the median has been zero - more than half the entrants fail to solve a single problem. One of Feynman's fraternity brothers was surprised to see him return home while the examination was still going on. Feynman learned later that scorers had been astounded by the gap between his result and the next your.

The cosmologist Fred hole, in his autobiography Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapter's from a Cosmologists Life, wrote

... the scientist who, among all whom I have met, was the fastest in his thinking: Richard Feynman.

Mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson (whose thinking speed terrified some people), in a letter to his parents, wrote

In the evening I mentioned that there were just two problems for which the finiteness of the theory remained to be established. ... many long and difficult papers running to 50 pages and more have been written about them ... Feynman ... proceeded to sit down and in two hours, before our eyes, obtain finte and sensible answers to both problems. It was the most amazing piece of lightning calculation I have ever witnessed, ...

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Mrs. Feynman always said so.

 

[elfboy]

I'm not sure what book it was.. I think it was the Mind's String or something like that where I got the quote. It doesn't reflect my own opinion of him, so don't take it the wrong way.

Feynman excelled at mathematics and was mediocre at verbal so the result was only an above averge score. That makes sense. Paul erdos never read non-mathematical texts so I can't imagine he would score high on a verbal reasoning test, but there's no doubt he's brilliant.

 

[eduard99]

> IQ doesn't picture everything about a human's cababilities
Straw man, no one claims that IQ measures everything, only that it's important.

> In that regard, they are very useful, but to try to apply them
> to the upper range of scores is sort of meaningless.
From http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-on-psychometrics.html -- "everyone thinks that test validity drops off for scores higher than their own IQ"

> Yes creativity is key, and is not measurable by an IQ test,
> that's a given.
Creativity is measurable, and it does correlate with IQ. Dec 2010: "Contemporary creativity research views intelligence and creativity as essentially unrelated abilities, and many studies have found only modest correlations between them. The present research, based on improved approaches to creativity assessment and latent variable modeling, proposes that fluid and executive cognition is in fact central to creative thought" -- www.citeulike.org/article/8465858
And re: "that's a given" -- what does that even mean?

> I mean it's anecdotal but let's face it so are IQ tests
The Feynman anomaly is anecdotal (and has been widely discussed on the www for years), but IQ tests as a whole are anything but anecdotal, as they are the result of hundreds of millions of individual test scores. Unless you consider that anecdotal.

> nowadays, with the work of people like paul torrance on creative
> intelligence, there are also other types of tests
Sure, lots of tests devised by Goleman, Sternberg, Gardner and others measure e.g. "emotional intelligence" or "intrapersonal intelligence", which is fine, except for the fact that the predictive value of these tests is basically zero. "Conventional" intelligence tests, on the other hand, are moderately to highly correlated with things like income, school/job performance, health, atheism, etc., and have been for decades.

> IQ tests are not like math tests with tasks and answers that are
> well defined
Except that many components of IQ test *are* like math tests, and *do* have answers that are well defined. A random one from the www: "John bought three books for five dollars each, and paid ten percent sales tax. How much did he pay all together?" -- I would say $16.50 is the correct answer, but you might go out of your way to devise alternative answers -- maybe John is actually a diplomat who is entitled to tax-free shopping in certain zones of the country where he's stationed, and thus pays $15.00 -- does that answer make you smarter than the test-makers? Or does it only indicate that you like to be seen as contrarian?

> 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.
Of course, that's their whole point, to rank people (however rank that sounds). Also, there is a lot of work being done to develop bio/neuro-based IQ tests with a cardinal scale, rather than a ratio scale (cf. Jensen's 2007 "Clocking the Mind").

> it used to be said that IQ was computed by dividing ones
> mental age by ones actual age.
Correct, with "used to" meaning "like a hundred years ago". In that sense "intelligence quotient" is an unfortunate misnomer, but it's part of the language now and would be hard to change (cf. Dawkins' "bright" campaign to re-brand atheism; well intentioned but so far not so effective).

> If brilliant scientists have low "IQ's", then the IQ test being used
> is not measuring anything interesting.
Another straw man. What "brilliant scientists" allegedly have low IQs? Unless, as some claim above, you consider 120 or 130 to be low.

> Do people still take them then? Why what is the point unless
> as MIH says it's to highlight potential difficulties in education?
Well, although they've largely been banned from various jobs because the results are found to systematically discriminate against some population groups, the military has been exempt from these PC-driven concerns because governments can't risk having extremey low-IQ people on the battlefield, however much that might hurt a potential recruit's feelings. And they're obviously still used as entrance exams to various schools (the SAT and LSAT, for example, are essentially IQ tests), because, lacking complete information, admissions boards have to make tough choices, and IQ/SAT/LSAT tests have demonstrably proven over the decades to be valid predictors of success, unlike touchy-feely "EQ" tests. Which is a good thing, unless of course you would prefer doctors and engineers to be "nice" and "empathetic" rather than "smart" and "effective".

> IQ tests measure people's itellectual potential and makes no
> pretension to predict if that potential will ever be realized.
That's definitely true, although IQ does correlate (moderately) with conscientiousness, i.e. elbow grease.

> High IQ is not a requirement to becoming a scientist.
Hmm nice notion, but sadly untrue. Try training someone with an IQ of 90 to become a theoretical physicist -- it won't happen. But books like Gladwell's "Outliers" -- which posits that anyone can achieve anything if they put in 10,000 hours of practice and have some good luck -- probably do have a positive knock-on effect for society in that they encourage people to "accomplish something", which is generally a desirable (if ultimately delusional) aim.

> I stopped caring about my IQ results when they started giving
> me lower results...
Haha they do drop a bit with age, nothing wrong with that.

> If IQ really measures some "intrinsic ability", then, at the
> absolute minimum, the scores you get on a test should
> stay relatively constant over time.
IQ tests, unlike "EQ" tests or personality tests, are notoriously difficult to game. You might be able to convince a test-giver that you're more extroverted or empathetic than you really are, but you can't score "better" on an IQ test just because you want to give the impression of being smart (though malingerers can make themselves seem more stupid than they really are, e.g. in order to be classified as retarded and thereby avoid the death penalty, but even this is more difficult than it might seem).
You might be able to add a few IQ points by assiduously practicing e.g. Raven's matrices, but even months of Kaplan-like SAT training can only only add maybe 40-50 SAT points (see e.g. the 2009 WSJ article "SAT Coaching Found to Boost Scores -- Barely", http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html)

> Your score shouldn't increase as you learn new things. This is
> not the case with actual tests.
As I mentioned above, IQ tests are a ranking. So of course the average 15-year-old has accrued more knowledge than the average 10-year-old, but his relative ranking among other 15-year-olds is probably about the same as it was when he was 10. That's what IQ tests are for.

> Look at virtually all Nobel winners and the quality of their work...
> pretty much all of them score above 120 and are closer to 140.
Exactly. And the top 1/4 of the top 1% of IQ scorers have 2x-3x as many Nobels and patents as the lower 1/4 of that top 1%; in other words, there's a significant difference in scientific success between an IQ 130 and IQ 145.

> I've heard there's a much larger scope for disorders and depression
> for those with an incredibly high IQ than there is for success
> relative to those of just above average IQ.
I think the evidence there is mixed. Though some disorders like schizophrenia and ADHD tend to skew low-IQ, depression and autism tend to skew high-IQ.

> Why is IQ such a secretive and elitist number?
Maybe that's a job for Wikileaks...

> IMHO intelligence is not something that is fixed, it's
> always changing
That's true, but it doesn't vary wildly, maybe a 10-point range. And it's largely fixed by age 11 or 12.

> For that matter, what is genius, anyway? Top 1%?
Well, by that standard (which equates in the US to an IQ of about 130), there would be about 3 million "geniuses" in the US alone, which kind of dilutes the value of the distinction.

 

[Evo]

Eduard, do you see the multi quote button at the bottom right? Please use that. Your post is really hard to read. Please figure it out.

Oh, and this forum full of scientists and mathematicians of high IQ don't hold IQ as an important factor in success. Interest, motivation, hard work, a drive to learn, those are what matters.

 

[DBTS]

My IQ was classified as 85 and I am going into the sciences. I plan on setting a record!

 

[eduard99]

Eduard, do you see the multi quote button at the bottom right? Please use that. Your post is really hard to read. Please figure it out.

I hadn't seen that feature.

Oh, and this forum full of scientists and mathematicians of high IQ don't hold IQ as an important factor in success. Interest, motivation, hard work, a drive to learn, those are what matters.

Is that your personal opinion, or more of a site-wide policy statement? A la, "I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees!" Anyway it seems that a lot of commenters on this thread would disagree with you about IQ's relevance to success (but maybe they are just dimwitted, and unlike yourself are not self-identified "scientists and mathematicians of high IQ"). And about "interest, motivation, hard work, a drive to learn" being "what matters," that's yet another straw man, since no one claims otherwise.

 

[Evo]

I am the lorax.

I'm neither a scientist nor a mathematician, I'm a tested high IQ slacker that never amounted to anything because I was too bored to continue my formal education.

 

[╔(σ_σ)╝]

I have an IQ of 70 :-).

 

[DBTS]

I think the evidence there is mixed. Though some disorders like schizophrenia and ADHD tend to skew low-IQ, depression and autism tend to skew high-IQ.

I was born stupid which skews my IQ score towards being low.

 

[lisab]

I was born stupid which skews my IQ score towards being low.

 

[Proton Soup]

i have no idea what my IQ is. and i have suspicions of it being an autistic quotient, anyhow.

 

[Klockan3]

i have no idea what my IQ is. and i have suspicions of it being an autistic quotient, anyhow.

Not really, people far out on the autism spectrum usually score very low.