This Just In—Kerry's IQ Likely Lower than Bush's!
By Steve Sailer
"Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead."
Howell Raines
- Former Executive Editor of the New York Times
"The 'Dumb' Factor"
Washington Post, August 27, 2004
Oh yeah?
On this tenth anniversary of the publication of the much-denounced The Bell Curve, it's amusing to reflect on one of the enduring ironies of American political life. Liberals tend to believe two things about IQ:
bullet First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.
bullet Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have much higher IQs.
Thus back in May, hundreds of liberal websites, and even the prestigious Economist magazine, fell for a hoax claiming to show that states that voted for Al Gore in 2000 have higher average IQs—by as much as an incredible 28 points—than states that voted for George W. Bush.
(In reality, no such data exist. But, for what it's worth, Bush and Gore voters were identical in educational level, and the states they won were almost dead even in 8th grade achievement test scores.)....
Similarly, in 2001, many liberals, including Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau and The Guardian newspaper, fell for the notorious "Lovenstein Institute" prank, which absurdly claimed that the IQ of Bush, a man with two Ivy League degrees, was a sub-average 91, while Bill Clinton's was a Galileo-like 182.
But now I've turned up some hard facts about the IQs of Kerry and Bush.
Most significantly, at the age of 22, both men took the IQ-type tests required of candidate military officers. (The U.S. military, which has studied the predictive power of IQ in vastly more detail than any other institution, remains intensely dedicated to the value of intelligence testing.)
Bush's scores on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test have been briefly mentioned in the press. But no-one before now has fully explained what they mean.
And, even more important, this is first article to publish Kerry's score on the Navy's Officer Qualification Test.
The two tests aren't perfectly comparable. But they provide no evidence that Kerry is smarter. If anything, Bush is smarter than Kerry.
By Steve Sailer
"Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead."
Howell Raines
- Former Executive Editor of the New York Times
"The 'Dumb' Factor"
Washington Post, August 27, 2004
Oh yeah?
On this tenth anniversary of the publication of the much-denounced The Bell Curve, it's amusing to reflect on one of the enduring ironies of American political life. Liberals tend to believe two things about IQ:
bullet First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.
bullet Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have much higher IQs.
Thus back in May, hundreds of liberal websites, and even the prestigious Economist magazine, fell for a hoax claiming to show that states that voted for Al Gore in 2000 have higher average IQs—by as much as an incredible 28 points—than states that voted for George W. Bush.
(In reality, no such data exist. But, for what it's worth, Bush and Gore voters were identical in educational level, and the states they won were almost dead even in 8th grade achievement test scores.)....
Similarly, in 2001, many liberals, including Doonesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau and The Guardian newspaper, fell for the notorious "Lovenstein Institute" prank, which absurdly claimed that the IQ of Bush, a man with two Ivy League degrees, was a sub-average 91, while Bill Clinton's was a Galileo-like 182.
But now I've turned up some hard facts about the IQs of Kerry and Bush.
Most significantly, at the age of 22, both men took the IQ-type tests required of candidate military officers. (The U.S. military, which has studied the predictive power of IQ in vastly more detail than any other institution, remains intensely dedicated to the value of intelligence testing.)
Bush's scores on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test have been briefly mentioned in the press. But no-one before now has fully explained what they mean.
And, even more important, this is first article to publish Kerry's score on the Navy's Officer Qualification Test.
The two tests aren't perfectly comparable. But they provide no evidence that Kerry is smarter. If anything, Bush is smarter than Kerry.
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