Are scientists sabotaging intelligence research? Behind the myth lies a previously unacknowledged methodological flaw
In recent years, information has occasionally surfaced on social media claiming that scientists are “sabotaging” research on intelligence because it is a highly heritable trait with the potential to lead to discrimination. This claim is based, among other things, on a 10-year-old study by German scientists on the so-called “reverse publication effect” in research on the relationship between intelligence and school grades. In his recently published article in the journal Intelligence, Hynek Cígler of the Psychology Research Institute at Masaryk University’s Faculty of Social Studies demonstrated that the cause is in fact an undescribed methodological shortcoming in certain meta-analyses (i.e., studies that synthesize the results of dozens or hundreds of individual source studies).
