I've spotted four different IQ stories in the last four days, divided neatly into two categories. In the first category are the medical reports: Low Birth Weight Affects IQ Into Teen Years and [anti-epileptic] drug warning on child's IQ. (The drugs in question are those taken by pregnant epileptic women to prevent seizures.) Both reports accept IQ as a given, perhaps because the factors affecting it are purely environmental.

Then there's the other side: in Illinois, an education professor says 'there's no such thing as IQ' at a workshop sponsored by the Heart of Illinois Down Syndrome Association; further north, Smarter ways to measure intelligence than IQ, says University of Alberta researcher. The researcher is J. P. Das of the J. P. Das Developmental Disabilities Centre. If anyone knows of a good on-line summary of his PASS theory of intelligence, please leave a comment.

At first it surprised me that people dealing with such obvious mental disabilities would doubt the significance of IQ measurements. Now I wonder whether there's a point on the IQ range beneath which it ceases to be a useful measure for them; other factors may come into play.

More on IQ outliers coming soon...