Some things are associated with others. Some things you eat make you ill. Some animals attack you. Some places are dangerous, some people likewise. On a brighter note, some foods are tasty and healthy. Some animals can be domesticated, or at least are easy to hunt or trap. Some places are safe, and some people... Read More

Thank you to all those who commented on the “Swanning About: Fooled by Algebra” blog and associated tweets. A number of themes came up, so here are individual responses I made to some comments, and also some general points. Since Taleb thought he could dismiss a century of psychometry, there are rather a lot of... Read More

To the 12th Century Church of the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem, as is my custom, to celebrate the habits of my tribe. This time the service of the Nine Carols was in the evening under a full moon veiled in winter’s hazy clouds, though enough to light the road past the carp pond. The church... Read More

The early months of 2018 were taken up with dealing with hostile press coverage of the London Conference on Intelligence, attacks which intended to prevent evidence-based discussion of group differences in intelligence, and sought to grossly misrepresent any discussion of genetic components in behaviour, lest new readers think for themselves. Stain the source: obscure the... Read More

"Scientific Racism" is an oxymoron. The truth cannot be racist, and lies cannot be science. If you say something truthful about a racial difference then that is true, not a lie, and not racism. If you say something about racial groups which is untrue, then that is not science, it is false, and science has... Read More

A bit of back history: I started learning about intelligence and intelligence tests when I was an undergraduate in 1964-1968. This included taking group intelligence tests at the beginning of my psychology course, and giving face to face Wechsler tests in my final year. I then started my first research project leading to my PhD:... Read More

Disinviting is an awkward word for a disagreeable act: inviting someone, and then once they have accepted, withdrawing the invitation. Naturally, this is more hurtful than not being invited at all. I have not been invited to many things, and ignorance is bliss. To have been invited, and gone through the process of preparing for... Read More

After the furore, farrago and stramash of Prof Alessandro Strumia talking about sex differences, I went back to the BBC last night to read about other news. Of course, my eye was caught by a story entitled: The Women standing up for Science There were 3 interviews with women university researchers, apparently selected because they... Read More

The closest I have ever been to Big Physics was the Stanford Linear Accelerator, in the company of Prof Theodore Postol, who felt it would be a good antidote to my jet lag, as we discussed anti-ballistic missile defence strategy. Postol also went down the corridor to see if I could meet Amos Tversky, but... Read More

Linda Gottfredson, author of the most supported and cited statement on intelligence, and the researcher who has done most to explain what intelligence means in everyday life, in terms of specific tasks, training needs, and occupational choices and achievements (https://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf) has just been dis-invited from an occupational conference in Sweden where she had been invited... Read More

Prof Zhang, Economist, Peking University says, regarding the results in his paper about the effects of pollution: We are also puzzled by the difference in math and verbal tests as well as the gender difference. Prof. Chew of National University of Singapore found similar results for college students, greater impact on male than on female... Read More

News has come in from China that air pollution has a large and cumulatively damaging effect on intelligence, particularly on older people with less education. Perplexingly, the effect is on Vocabulary, but not Maths. Even more specifically, the verbal decrement hits men harder than women. What is going on? How could bad air have such... Read More

I intended to tell you about this paper some days ago, but for some reason didn’t get around to it. It was not procrastination on my part. Nothing so energetic as that. Why is procrastination so prevalent? Why is it that I, of course not you, tend to postpone tasks, even on matters which are... Read More

This play is about James Stagg who was in overall charge of predicting the weather for the D-Day landings. He had four days in which to provide his advice, and was up against a successful American forecaster, who already had the ear of the Supreme Commander, Dwight Eisenhower. You may quail at the thought of... Read More

I think I started with “In a Free State” (1971) which captivated me. Then “The Loss of El Dorado” (1969),“The Enigma of Arrival” (1987) and many of his essays. There must have been some others, perhaps even the early novels. Some of those books must be kicking around in the cottage somewhere. That’s enough to... Read More

You may wonder why I have stooped to the filthy practice of ripping off the gullible public. Although described as gullible, they are bright enough to know that there is advantage to being brighter, and are willing to pay for intelligence boosting techniques. Their gullibility, such as it is, is based on believing that most... Read More

It is usual to bemoan the way newspapers report science, but that criticism is amply justified when they make major errors. You may have heard of Carl Zimmer’s “She has her mother’s laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity”, and probably read some reviews. Greg Cochran did one for Quillette. The book has now... Read More