This public statement, written and signed by 52 internationally known scholars, was published in the Wall Street Journal on December 13th, 1994 to clear up the major misconceptions the public has about intelligence testing. An alphabetical listing of the scholars and their home institutions are given at the end of the statement.

Many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as discredited are actually firmly supported.

This statement outlines conclusions regarded as mainstream among researchers on intelligence; in particular, on the nature, origins, and practical consequences of individual and group differences in intelligence. Its aim is to promote more reasoned discussion of the vexing phenomenon that the research has revealed in recent decades. The following conclusions are fully described in the major textbooks, professional journals and encyclopedias in intelligence.

Intelligence is a very general ...

After McNaught, I met Guy Mayraz, a 31-year-old Israeli who has been in England for five years and has spent two of them organising the London Mensa Under-35s Group. Mayraz joined Mensa in June 2001 and found that most members at the social gatherings were older than he would have liked, so he took it upon himself to create a group that was happy to go to movies and pubs without wearing tweed.

Mayraz, who runs his own software company, is one of about 26,000 Mensans in the UK (there are almost 100,000 worldwide) who pay an annual fee of £40, in return for a magazine and the invitation to expand their social and mental horizons. He says the organisation does not deserve its fusty, elitist image, and he mentions the array of special interest groups - scuba-diving, poker, breadmaking - that suggest not everyone is obsessed with finding the next number in the sequence. He is sceptical about the internet address of the IHIQS. 'The fact that it's set up as ".org" [rather than .com] might suggest that it's not out ...

Mensa used to be the only place for bright sparks. Now a young New Yorker is challenging the old guard of the IQ world - and turning his mega-mind from puzzles to world peace.

by Simon Garfield
Sunday October 26, 2003
The Observer

You may not recognise the name Andrew Nierman, but he is the World's Smartest Person, a title bestowed upon him earlier this year by the International High IQ Society, after he correctly answered 22 out of 25 questions in the Haselbauer-Dickheiser Test for Exceptional Intelligence. Among the things he knew was the maximum number of one-inch diameter spheres that can be packed into a box 10 inches square and five inches deep. He also knew how many pieces a doughnut can be cut into using three simultaneous plane cuts, and he determined the breeding strategies of the Furble, both dominator and sharer types, while analysing their territorial habits and attitudes with particular regard to bravery and cautiousness.

Nierman is an American, and he was one question cleverer than Hakan ...