Science Fictions

The podcast with Stuart Ritchie isn't up at Insitome yet, but it is downloadable at the usual places. He talks about his new book Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth. His first book Intelligence: All That Matters was controversial and hated in some places. He now wishes he had made the title a bit milder, but stands by it all. From the book's blurb:

There is a strange disconnect between the scientific consensus and the public mind on intelligence testing. Just mention IQ testing in polite company, and you'll sternly be informed that IQ tests don't measure anything "real", and only reflect how good you are at doing IQ tests; that they ignore important traits like "emotional intelligence" and "multiple intelligences"; and that those who are interested in IQ testing must be elitists, or maybe something more sinister. Yet the scientific evidence is clear: IQ tests are extraordinarily useful...

He does not take the usual out in his second book of blaming all the scientific misunderstanding on the media hyping results and overclaiming, but puts more blame on the scientists themselves, including the hard sciences (though less there).  Publication and funding structure research, not to the advantage of the search for truth.  Fun stuff

Update: There is a mostly-positive review over at Quillette