> It is a highly contested assertion that IQ tests accurately measure I.Q. It's completely possible that if you take a reasonably smart person and make them study for a specific type of I.Q. test, that he will score higher than he would have otherwise, even though his intellectual ability would remain unchanged over a broader spectrum of skills than the test involves. Therefore, it may not be a reliable measurement of I.Q.

It is not contested in the area in question; psychologists routinely use IQ tests without a qualm, and it is a consensus in the field that they are meaningful. See for example the consensus paper on IQ released in the wake of _The Bell Curve_ controversy or look at more recent review articles like Nisbett's "Intelligence: new findings and theoretical developments". Whatever the layman or politicians may think, the debate is over: if you make a good IQ test, it will estimate accurately general performance on all sorts of cognitive performance. If you destroy the accuracy of a given IQ test by training and then measure performance on the original variety of cognitive performance, this will immediately show up in the factorization and demonstrate how the IQ test's accuracy has been destroyed, and IQ tests developed with different kinds of questions will not show the spurious increase, just like if you took a different thermometer and put it in the person's armpit, it would show a different reading from the thermometer stuck in the mug of hot water.

> Your example makes no sense whatsoever, and you should have already known that before you typed it out.

My example is exactly analogous to the argument that was made.

Your example isn't remotely close to being analogous to the argument that was made. If you stick a thermometer in hot water, it is measuring the water's temperature accurately. If an individual studies for a specific type of IQ test, that particular IQ test fails to accurately measure his general intelligence.

The IQ test is generally accepted because there aren't any practical applications where a near-perfect measurement of a person's intelligence is going to be a matter of life and death, the same cannot be said for the measurement of temperature.

Basically, it doesn't matter that an IQ test isn't perfect. It is accepted because it does a merely adequate job in most cases, and even if it happened to be manipulated by someone who studied for a specific version of the test, no significant damage will be done to anything or anyone.

Just to be clear, I don't have a grudge against IQ tests, in fact, I scored in the 140s on a test administered by a psychologist. I'm just saying that they are highly susceptible to manipulation (Don't worry, I didn't even know I was taking it until I arrived at his office).

The entire field of psychology is in its infancy, it is one of the least developed of all sciences. We are making quite a bit of progress, but there's still a long way to go. There are a lot of really strange ideas that are accepted by experts that are going to be proven wrong as soon as our understanding of the mind matures sufficiently.

> Your example isn't remotely close to being analogous to the argument that was made. If you stick a thermometer in hot water, it is measuring the water's temperature accurately. If an individual studies for a specific type of IQ test, that particular IQ test fails to accurately measure his general intelligence.

Yes, it is. IQ tests are designed to reliably measure intelligence under certain reasonable, but not adversarial or universal, conditions. Just like a reading off a thermometer is a reliable way of measuring body temperatures under certain reasonable, non-adversarial, non-universal conditions. Memorizing the answers or training by taking the test repeatedly is akin to a kid pretending to be sick and dunking the thermometer in his hot chocolate to get out of school. It's still reporting something, but not what you think it is.

> The IQ test is generally accepted because there aren't any practical applications where a near-perfect measurement of a person's intelligence is going to be a matter of life and death,

Indeed. Your standard IQ test like a RAPM is not used in adversarial contexts (sadly, 'publish or perish' increasingly means that research is an adversarial context as well), and failure to understand this seems to be leading to a lot of confusion in these comments. If you want to handle even adversarial contexts, you need a procedure way more complex & costly than a 10 minute pen and paper RAPM - you need something like a proctored SAT or GRE.

> The entire field of psychology is in its infancy, it is one of the least developed of all sciences. We are making quite a bit of progress, but there's still a long way to go.

Intelligence and measuring it via IQ tests is some of the oldest and most conceptually & statistically deep and commonly-used parts of psychology, going back a century at this point, which is something few parts of psychology can claim. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for psychology to abandon it because it's in 'its infancy' and 'is one of the least developed of all sciences'. At this point, it's roughly like expecting the spacing effect to go away.