Stephen Murdoch

As far as academic histories go, I would consider IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea by Stephen Murdocch to be a fairly entertaining and engaging read. The author writes in a very conversational style and in a way that kept me interested in both the information that he was presenting and also in finding out what his overall conclusions were.
The book is a history of the development and advancement of the idea of way to actually measure human intelligence. The reader is taken on a journey through time from the days when measuring the size of a person’s head was thought to be an acceptable gauge of that individual’s intelligence to the modern day where we have a plethora of assessments which some, including the author, argue are just as effective as the former
The book tells of the first intelligence tests which were set up as almost a carnival sideshow type affair, the first paper tests which were created in France and formed the basis for much of what was to come, the first IQ test developed for the US Army in World War I in an attempt to sort soldiers into the job that would best fit their mental capacities and on to the SAT, psychological assessments and other assessments that we incorporate today. Murdoch presents the reader with many frightening ways that psychologists in the US and around the world have used intelligence testing to weed the mentally unfit out of society through institutionalization, forced sterilization and in some extreme cases (Nazi Germany for instance) as a basis for execution.
Murdoch’s main focus is to point out that, while trying to accomplish something to benefit society; psychologists have been very misguided in their attempts thus far to quantify human intelligence. He illustrates exactly how the assessments developed thus far actually are more of a measure of actual knowledge and to an extent some advanced reasoning skills. He very effectively points out the bias towards lower class and those of minority ethnicities that are inherent in the tests and illustrates how when the playing field is even, those groups that traditionally score lower than the dominant members of society actually equal and at times exceed the scores of the dominant group.
My only real complaint with this study is that, at times, it feels very one sided. Mr. Murdoch does a very good job of presenting both sides of things, but the tone used when looking at things from the side of the proponents of the current IQ assessment system is at times mocking or condescending. There is no question that he feels that many of the developments throughout the years in the field of intelligence testing are pure rubbish and he is of the opinion that the entire system should be scrapped and started anew. He does make a few concessions in the afterward of the book to tone things down a bit, but for the most part, he seems to feel that these tests were created in a very unscientific and almost buffoonish manner.
Overall, I did feel that this was a successful book. The author did a good job of making his point clear and provided many, many examples of the failures of IQ testing. He illustrates that many people are capable of so much more than their supposed IQ scores indicate and that throughout history these people have been unfairly maligned, mistreated and abused. After reading the book, I do feel that more research needs to be done to change the current assessments that we use to gauge intelligence if we are going to continue to base so much on these scores. Lives are made or broken because of how a student scores on an SAT or ACT test and we need to make sure that whatever assessment we are giving, that it accurately reflects the potential of the person who is taking it.… (meer)

Even though I've read about cases like Carrie Buck and the Kallikaks, this book has made the difference between considering intelligence one innate, unchanging quality and a multitude of fluctuating abilities crystal clear. Some experiments, like the one discussed in the chapter on race and IQ where vocabulary-replacement was shown to wipe out race differences, were especially interesting. I could do without some of the author's more pithy comments, but overall this book is a well-written, thought-provoking chronicle of the development of the IQ concept, as well as of the consequences of viewing intelligence in this narrow way.… (meer)