Those clever professions not as clever as you thought

I found this on a newspaper. It has the average IQ of professions. There is quite a few shocks Medical doctors iq is 111. University lecturers 107.5. Read below.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

So does this mean the mediocre should not worry as they can rise to any level? What happened to the clever people?

werewolf99
I found this on a newspaper. It has the average IQ of professions. There is quite a few shocks Medical doctors iq is 111. University lecturers 107.5. Read below.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

So does this mean the mediocre should not worry as they can rise to any level? What happened to the clever people?

With the concentration on exams I can see why. Some people can have mediocre IQ yet be good at the exams. They cant apply the knowlage just parrot it.

I have had a few Medical doctors I have run rings round and Im only a Microbiologist with only a Bsc so I can beleive this.

Of cause the majority of professers I have met have been brilliant so I thinks its a exception rather than rule.

werewolf99
I found this on a newspaper. It has the average IQ of professions. There is quite a few shocks Medical doctors iq is 111. University lecturers 107.

500 years from now:

Idiocracy

But seriously, IQ tests are not an exact science in determining intelligence. And afaik a Mensa test isn't part of a medical school curriculum, if (more likely when!) I have a heart attack, I want the doctor who treats me to know how to restart my heart, not guess the missing shape on a bit of paper.

reply to post by doorhandle


But you also dont want a doctor that know the name of ever little cell of you body but cant adapt quickly to a random or unexpected situation.

reply to post by crazyewok


True, but the medical profession is not all like episodes of House, most of it is following tried and tested rules and procedures, keeping a calm head following such rules is what's more important than being some kind ofgenius savant Einstein. Beside 111 isn't that low, and same with lecturers, there job is to teach not be clever.

This would be pretty hard in Canada.

To become a physcician or specialist, ie dentist, pyschiatry, surgeon, in Canada, you have to have 90% on all you subjects or higher, ie. english at 89% will cost you the ablity to be a physcician. We had articles in the paper about this, and a very gifted, and very intelligent doctor forced to practice in South America I believe due to one 89% mark.

To obtain 90% and higher averages across board, put in overtime in hospitals and practicums, for years, with nearly ideal health, because you can't miss, would make you nearly ET. Considering those standards, and a natural superman health, wonder how they can even relate to their patients, have empathy and give good care, rather than misfire health care. because of ego.

werewolf99
I found this on a newspaper. It has the average IQ of professions. There is quite a few shocks Medical doctors iq is 111. University lecturers 107.5. Read below.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

So does this mean the mediocre should not worry as they can rise to any level? What happened to the clever people?

This relates to the real world how?

I know brilliant people that are horrible at tests..I know people of average intelligence that are amazing at taking tests.

If you make some correlation between IQ and what a professional person can do in their chosen field then you are using a flawed equation.

doorhandle
But seriously, IQ tests are not an exact science in determining intelligence. And afaik a Mensa test isn't part of a medical school curriculum, if (more likely when!) I have a heart attack, I want the doctor who treats me to know how to restart my heart, not guess the missing shape on a bit of paper.

IQ tests are not determining the intelligence/knowledge, but the learning speed.

Human mind works on patterns / connections between things. The faster one´s mind is able to find the pattern between different things, the faster he/she is able to learn the thing.

The missing shapes "puzzles" on a bit of paper are quite efficient at how fast a person is able to notice the pattern. There are different kinds of patterns of course(from visual spatial (3d thinking) and abstract thinking to numerical (number-based)), IQ tests try to derive the average of different kinds of intelligences.

Overally IQ tests are efficient in determining one´s learning speed, although you might be able to learn fast, but if you do not want to learn or do not learn, then learning speed does not matter much. Knowledge is the most important and having higher IQ simply means you are able to acquire knowledge faster.

When there are 2 people with similar memorisation skills are trying to learn something and they work exactly the same amount of time, it is very likely the one with higher IQ knows more at the end.

In the end I would prefer having a doctor with higher IQ. There are many on-the-spot decisions in critical situations and the faster they are able to determine the cause, they higher the chance is they will find the issue the person has.

Although 107 is not that bad. I would become worried if the average IQ of doctors was 90 though.

So basically the average iq for the clever professions aren't very clever. It does seem to me that this really shows the power of private education and social class. You can't increase iq that much but you can learn them to pass exams better. The thing is that amazes me if that if anyone points out when anyone of certain professions is making a mistake or is downright stupid: people protect them out of a belief in their monster high iq: even when it is obvious it is not.

It also bring up the question that are many lecturers at university there mainly because of a specialised brain? If the average lecturer only has the iq listed above, then how the hell could they have gotten a phd in the first place: or function at that level? Is it OK to have a lecturer of mathematics who is almost iliterate, or an english lecturer who cannot do algebra?

Have we created a system where those with brains that seem to be made for one area are really being artificially pushed up. Subjects change and evolve and we therefore have two choices:
1. The subjects are being held back by the narrow ness of the people in them.
2. The subjects by pure coincidence will only go along that narrow path.

I suppose that is why the idea of the renaissance man went. Because most of those that are thought of as intelligent in their subjects could not match up to it.

I guess my first thing to find out would be to ask those of you across the pond from the US if a Uni lecturer in the UK is different from a professor because at Unis in the US a lot of our Uni lecturers are the professors who do research, write papers, etc., in other words, they are supposed to the THE academic elites, the best and brightest.

So unless there is a difference between your unis and ours, I'd be a little concerned that academic profs are really not all that super smart because so many people hold the academics in their ivory towers in such high esteem and refuse to even think of questioning them because they're just sure they're that much smarter than the rest of us.

But it doesn't really surprise me. Anyone with half a brain can look at the research many of them put out and spot flaws in it if they really try.

In the Uk our university lecturers are supposed to do research as part of their job. We use the title lecturer because a professor in a uk university is reserved for those that have a chair: those at the very top in their subject in their university. It also concerns me that many government policies are influenced by these people: many are in policy institutes which are otherwise known as think tanks. What is the point with a think tank with people of average intelligence in it. The newspaper does define however average as 90-109 whereas normally you would take one standard deviation from the norm either was which would be 85-115 in which case all the professions mentioned had on average people of average intelligence.

reply to post by werewolf99


no surprises there then , reminds me of the old saying all brain but no nous

The thing is that university lecturers are regarded as the intelligensia of society: they are supposed to be more intelligent and better educated than everyone else. Theye sit on think tanks and decide government policy. They also decide the policy of the UN, WHO(world health organisation), EU(european union), USA, middle east, they also will indirectly help decide foreign policy, write papers on terrorism or the sociological state of other countries, in universities (most obviously oxford and cambrinde although others such as durham ... probably most universities) they are used to filter out students who may make good spies.

Is it any wonder that the world is buggered up. Remember the iq of 107 for university lecturers is an average, there will be ones well below that.

As most academics in the UK come from privately educated backgrounds is this defecit in the IQ of university lecturers (iq of 107), is this really about public schoolboys(the name for boearding schools educated people in the uk) keeping much cleverer people out so that they can pretend at having the high iq that they clearly do not?

How much better would these subjects be if these privately educated people could not keep the better people out?