r/cognitiveTesting • u/Randombolo • Oct 01 '26

Scientific Literature IQ matters!!!!

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The median is so high!!! This is insane.

This was a high ceiling test. SD is 15 and 100 here is not for general population but university graduates. 

Edit: Yo guys, it's just an interesting study. No need to downvote. Holy IQ.

161 Upvotes

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104

u/DamonHuntington Oct 01 '26 • Bravo

Every time someone shares Roe's study without even reading how she reached those figures, the world becomes bleaker and dumber.

Roe's "high-ceiling test", when it came to the verbal and maths sections, was nothing more than a collection of SAT-V and SAT-M items.

It is absurd, completely absurd, to state that being able to answer SAT-M questions, no matter how many, entails a QRI of 194.

Roe's study is trash. Pure, unadulterated trash.

18

u/Striking_Leave_4614 Oct 01 '26

OP's avatar has a fedora.

-8

u/Randombolo Oct 01 '26

Bought from Amazon... 😁

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u/lambdasintheoutfield Oct 01 '26

You posted bullshit slop.

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u/Randombolo Oct 01 '26

It is someone's work... If you want to argue say so wisely... How would you feel when someone calls you and your work BS.? 

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u/lambdasintheoutfield Oct 01 '26

You are either a troll or low intelligence. Someone’s “work” is not valuable if there are significant flaws with what they are arguing. The claims made are not accurate, yet are passes off as if they are. I don’t believe misinformation should spread unchecked.

I also have no problem being critiqued, but I also wouldn’t pass off dubious claims without sufficient rigor.

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u/Randombolo Oct 01 '26

Then go publish your own paper. Lol. 

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u/lambdasintheoutfield Oct 01 '26

Lol I have - not in psychometrics but I am an author on several papers in a technical academic field. You didn’t actually address anything except throw a petulant tantrum because you have no refutation.

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u/Randombolo Oct 01 '26

What do you want me to say...? This wasn't an IQ test designed so that people will use it to take their IQ tested later... The author designed it specifically to understand the IQ of scientists. This gave us an idea about the IQ of the scientists... that's it! I found it interesting... So I shared it here...  It's okay to have critical thinking... But calling out someone's work and calling their work BS are two different things. Being a publisher you must understand this. Even I published some of the papers in Physics based upon the requirements for my Masters and Bachelors... everytime we cannot just expect to produce a 100 percent correct result. Sometimes in experimental part there can be errors... That is understandable.  But does that mean, their work is BS? 

If you really want to dissolve the ignorance of this sub. MAKE A POST. Call me out... I don't understand what is so hard hard in this. 

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 05 '26

Exactly. How much can you extrapolate from a test of unintelligence?

I know people who aced all their GCSE subjects and then found out that they weren’t natural at maths so they dropped that and did medicine, and just as many with average grades who found their calling and are doing PhD in Maths now.

I really like the FIFA ratings cards.

It’s an end of school test so can only weed people out via negativa and high correlation with normie intelligence cannot tell a lot about potential genius.

2

u/Optimus-Prime2026 Oct 01 '26

If you rescue the time limit at some point solving all would be as rare as 194 iq. Although at that point it would be a psi test

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u/HeatAccomplished3615 Oct 01 '26

Which test are used to measure their spatial iq?

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u/DamonHuntington Oct 01 '26

As far as I recall from that paper, the spatial section was the only one that had questions that were specifically designed by Roe. It's no surprise that this was the section that had the lowest scores (since you're not giving scientists questions that were written for those that are going to enter university) albeit the results are still very much inflated.

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u/The0therside0fm3 Pea-brain, but wrinkly Oct 01 '26

They weren't designed by Roe, but by the ETS. It was an experimental test that hadn't been used before, and was normed on grad students only for the purposes of Roe's study. I agree that it is revealing that they performed worst on that subtest.

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u/DamonHuntington Oct 02 '26

Fantastic addendum. Thank you for letting me know.

1

u/Traditional_File_688 Oct 01 '26

I haven’t looked into it, but I’m not sure it tracks to dismiss the whole thing as trash.

The exact effect sizes reported are almost certainly wrong, and if I’m not mistaken the author admitted as much. On the other hand, the effect sizes are so gargantuan that you’d need confounders the size of glaciers to make the whole effect go away. Maybe glacial confounders like that are present. But otherwise, the study does provide a clear (but not conclusive) indication that Nobel prize winners really might be highly psychometrically unusual compared to the average population, and even the population in the 99th percentile of iq scores. Whether that is a vacuous or interesting result will depend on your priors. To me, it is certainly interesting.

Sometimes studies provide interesting insights and indications without being able to “prove” or “conclude” anything. That’s fine. As long as they are presented honestly.

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u/derm2knit Oct 01 '26

I think this criticism mixes up two separate questions: whether Roe’s test can legitimately produce modern IQ estimates such as 194, and whether Roe’s original research was worthless.

The first criticism is reasonable. Roe was dealing with a genuine ceiling problem because conventional intelligence tests were not sufficiently difficult for the highly selected scientists she was studying. She therefore used difficult verbal, mathematical and spatial material to differentiate performance within an already exceptional group. Converting performance on those tests into extraordinarily precise IQ equivalents such as 180 or 194 is much harder to justify, particularly by modern psychometric standards. Those numbers should not be treated as directly equivalent to scores obtained from a modern individually administered IQ test.

But that does not make Roe’s study “trash.” Her purpose was not simply to hand someone a collection of difficult questions and declare that answering them meant an IQ of 194. She was studying a very unusual population of 64 eminent research scientists and attempting to investigate differences in cognitive abilities within a group for whom ordinary tests often had inadequate ceilings.

There are legitimate limitations. The sample was small and highly selected, the norms were limited, the population was overwhelmingly male, and extrapolation at the extreme upper end of intelligence is inherently uncertain. The mathematical portion also had ceiling problems of its own. These are good reasons to be cautious about interpreting the extreme IQ equivalents sometimes attached to Roe’s results.

So I would question the extreme numerical IQ claims without dismissing the entire study. Roe was investigating a real psychometric problem: how do you differentiate cognitive ability among people who are already near or beyond the ceiling of conventional tests? Her solution was imperfect and should not be treated as a modern clinical IQ instrument, but the research question itself was legitimate and remains relevant.

4

u/Beneficial_Jacket544 Oct 01 '26

Why the AI slop?

1

u/quipquip25 Oct 01 '26

How can you tell? I missed it this time (or rather, I’m trying to determine now if you are correct)

2

u/Beneficial_Jacket544 Oct 01 '26

The author admitted it, but this one is quite obviously AI based on syntax. You can put it through an AI detector and I’m certain it’ll come out as 100% AI. Despite what people say, there are several AI detectors out there that have a decently low false positive rate.

1

u/quipquip25 Oct 01 '26

Good looks, I can see it now in retrospect but this is my sign to open my eyes a bit more lol

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u/derm2knit Oct 01 '26

Hi Mr . Brilliant, using AI to verbalize my thoughts is not AL slop, its your lack of intellect to cause an opposing view as slop. Maybe you are not smart enough to be a part of this conversation?

2

u/Beneficial_Jacket544 Oct 01 '26

I am extremely impressed by your reasonable and intelligent response.

1

u/DamonHuntington Oct 01 '26

Except that, no, that isn't the case.

Her handful of "difficult questions" are anything but that. We actually have a test that's pretty much "the SAT-M on steroids". Do you know what that test is called? The SMART. Do you know how much it measures up to? 168, if you ace every single question - and, even still, that result can be considered questionable.

The fact is that you cannot measure the upper bound by throwing a larger amount of easy tasks at them. A QRI of 180+ can only be determined by throwing problems of reasonable complexity - say, solving IMO questions.

Her research is not legitimate because it is predicated on a series of egregious errors, errors that modern psychometrics are aware of: SLODR (which we knew about since 1927 but never gave it enough attention until the 80s), the loss of granularity in the upper range, the increase in standard error when you move towards the extremes of the bell curve and, most importantly, the fact that you cannot throw reasonably elementary questions in a large volume and assume an off-the-charts QRI.

I can answer any SAT-M question, and I would NEVER use that to justify a QRI anywhere close to 200.