Dr. Ben Carson, being the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins joined at the head, is arguably the best neurosurgeon in America, at least at his peak. Given there are about 3500 neurosurgeons in America, Dr. Carson’s job performance is +3.47 standard deviations (SDs) above his occupation’s mean on a normalized curve.
Given that IQ and job performance correlate about 0.6 in complex jobs (though this number may have been inflated by range restriction correction), then simple regression predicts Carson’s IQ is 0.6(3.47 SD) = 2.08 SD above the mean of neurosurgeons.
Assuming neurosurgeons are like other doctors, they probably average IQs around 125, with an SD around 11. Thus Carson’s expected IQ would be:
2.08(11) + 125 = 148
Of course these stats are based on typical neurosurgeons, and typical neurosurgeons, unlike Dr. Carson, are overwhelmingly non-black.
What happens when race is factored in?
For as long as IQ tests have existed, blacks Americans have scored about 15 points lower than white Americans. One interesting fact is that (partly because of affirmative action) this same 15 point IQ gap exists even among high achievers. On page 374 of his book Coming Apart Charles Murray reported IQs for educated white and black Americans. Because Murray reported his IQ data using American norms, I converted to the preferred scale using white American norms:
Whites with a bachelors degree: IQ 111
Blacks with a bachelor degree: IQ 96
Whites with a masters degree: IQ 114
Blacks with a masters degree: IQ 99
Whites with a PhD or professional degree: IQ 123
Blacks with a PhD or professional degree: IQ 110
As can be seen, at each level of accomplishment, blacks score roughly 15 points lower than whites. Extrapolating this trend to the best neurosurgeon in America (expected IQ of 148), would have an expected IQ of 148 – 15 = 133 if he’s black.
However, Dr. Carson is not just black, he’s a black Republican, and these probably average IQs about seven points lower than the average African American so we might, very crudely, subtract another seven points from his estimated IQ, bringing him down to 126, which is still higher than about 96% of white Americans.
Keep in mind, this is just a rough estimate, with a large margin of error. I’m aware of no actual data on Dr. Carson’s IQ.
I suspect Dr. Carson has a lopsided IQ. His verbal IQ is probably only around 100 judging from his slow speech and lack of general knowledge, but his spatial IQ is probably in the brilliant range, and on balance, he’s probably about 126, very roughly speaking.
This is unusual for blacks, who typically have a higher verbal than spatial IQ, probably because blacks had less exposure to the ice age, and thus less need to evolve the spatial ability to build fires, create tools, construct shelters, and sew clothes. It’s unclear why the good doctor seemingly has such a unique cognitive profile, but commenter JS suspects, based on his appearance, that he may have some East Asian ancestry.
Pumpkin Person 
To be surgeon you have to be emotionnally and psychologically very masculine.
Surgeon is one of the jobs with the highest proportion of psychopaths which is not surprising given the nature of the job.
Verbal IQ is less useful than spatial IQ to be a surgeon for reasons we can all imagine.
It would be interesting to know the proportion of males surgeon, I have no idea of a more masculine job which dont require to be particularly physically strong.
At the end if this dumbass article I read, “Keep in mind, this is just a rough estimate, with a large margin of error. So you mean this is absolutely pointless and invalid? I’m black with an 8th grade education and last i was tested I had an IQ of 115 and I’m an idiot and frankly so are you
>8th grade education
>115 IQ
That’s your fault.
lol
I dont see the utility to supress 15 IQ points because successfully separate conjoined twins doesnt seem to have any link with affirmative action.
Well, the trend is that at every level of accomplishment I cited, blacks score 15 points lower than whites. I just extrapolated that trend to the highest level (separating the heads of conjoined twins).
Even if there were no affirmative action, something similar would still happen for statistical reasons. The reason is that achievements are imperfectly correlated with IQ, so the expected IQ of a high achiever regresses to the mean of his race.
And while affirmative action played no role in Carson’s achievement, it may have played a role in allowing him the OPPORTUNITY to prove his competence. That is one reason brilliant surgeons are so smart is they are good at two things: 1) getting into medical school, and 2) performing on the job.
Carson may only have good at the latter, but needed affirmative action for the former.
Getting into med school isn’t that hard.
Im sure neurosurgeons are smarter than your average doctor. Nonetheless, your estimate for Ben Carson seems about right . Like the token black in the last election, Herman Cain, Carson doesn’t very sophisticated verbally but you can only assume his intelligence is fairly high given his profession.
Argh…”doesn’t seem very high”. Always leaving out words…
Nevermind, that comment doesn’t make any sense either… dammit, typing on this phone is too hard…
seems about right
Doctor IQ SD of 11 seems high. Where did you get that from?
It would imply that some MDs have IQs as low as 100 or even lower.
The correlation between IQ & occupation is 0.7 which means 49% of the IQ variance should be removed when you hold occupation constant.
Of course that’s just theoretical not based on any actual data of the IQs of MDs. And regardless of the SD, the distribution could also be very skewed so these are all just rough estimates
Please explain that some more, Dr. Pumpkin. 49% of the IQ variance is roughly 7, no? (.49*15=7.35) So if you remove that from 15, you get 15-7.35=8.65.
So 8.65 should be the SD. Or maybe I’m missing something.
Keep in mind that the SD is the square root of the variance, not the variance itself.
So it should be .7*15=10.5.
But I’m still not sure what “SD is the square root of the variance” means. So the total variance of IQ is 15^2=225? And 49% of IQ variance is .49*225=110.25, which is the variance of IQ among doctors? That’s crazy huge.
Don’t mind me if my questions seem totally elementary.
Carson actually seems to have strong verbal capabilities-at the recent Republican debate, he more than held his own against seasoned politicians, one of them an ordained minister (Huckabee) and most of the rest lawyers, as well as the ever-bombastic Trump. Mike Huckabee is a Fox news analyst as well, adding to the competitive field. Carson drew applause for his witty remarks, at one point winning the audience over when he shrewdly implied that the moderators were ignoring him. I think his slow speech may have to do with the fact that he’s a senior in his mid-60s, or might just be a manifestation of his subdued personality-quiet, soft-spoken, careful. Regarding your general estimate, I know you have to stick to your algorithms for consistency, but 126 seems rather low (which I think you acknowledge) given that he was at the very top of what most consider to be one of the most demanding professions. While some get there by being the best at established procedures, he was an innovator, pioneering the separation of Siamese twins-a task that is still dangerous today, let alone 30 years ago when Carson had to figure out how to do it. Given his stature in this demanding field, I would be surprised if he wasn’t smarter than the average Harvard student. And not just in spatial terms, but overall–medicine/surgery strike me as fields that require quite high verbal intelligence.
He did do well towards the end of the debate, but it’s hard to say how much of that was thinking on his feet and how much was just well delivered lines he prepared for.
In general, I try to err on the conservative side when estimating IQ, mostly because so many people overestimate the role of IQ in achievements of any kind.
Yes, he probably did prepare some of his lines–but so did most of the others. That said, other candidates said things that showed they could think on their feet, but they had more opportunities because they were engaged by the moderators. Which made Carson’s comment about being ignored so telling–he was able to take advantage of the very fact that he was being marginalized, getting the audience to laugh with him.
I do agree with you that people overestimate the role of IQ in real world performance so you are right to err on the conservative side. But, I still think that people who are standout performers probably have average IQs that are higher than people who are merely successful but otherwise undistinguished. The other possibility is that the latter’s IQs are artificially inflated–this would make sense for Harvard students, since they are self-selected for test-taking ability. By the way, don’t you think the estimates for Hillary or Kelly are too high given a conservative approach? Their achievements do not seem to be in the same league as Carson.
But, I still think that people who are standout performers probably have average IQs that are higher than people who are merely successful but otherwise undistinguished. The other possibility is that the latter’s IQs are artificially inflated–this would make sense for Harvard students, since they are self-selected for test-taking ability.
Well in any group of outstanding achievers, their IQs are going to average higher than merely successful people, but not as much higher as their achievements would imply, because achievements in even highly g loaded fields are imperfect proxies for IQ
So while the average neurosurgeon has an IQ of at least 125, the best neurosurgeon in
America likely has an IQ around 148…way higher than the average neurosurgeon but nowhere near as high as the smartest neurosurgeon
By the way, don’t you think the estimates for Hillary or Kelly are too high given a conservative approach? Their achievements do not seem to be in the same league as Carson
Well based on achievement alone, Carson likely has an IQ of 148 (higher than Hillary & Kelly who seem to be around 140 & 133 respectively)
However when estimating Carson’s IQ i factored in the 2 other most salient facts about him. His blackness & his conservatism; because these are both negatively correlated with IQ yet also negatively correlated with each other, anyone rare enough to be both would be especially at risk for low IQ, so i shaved nearly two dozen points from his expected IQ
You could argue my final estimate was too low, but odds are against you because it’s just so rare to find black Repuicans with extremely high IQs & no amount of achievement short of building a time machine can overwhelm those tough odds
Yes, I understand how you got your final estimate-I noted in the previous post that you have to stick to your algorithms. A good scientist has to stick to methodology, just like Terman did when he left out two kids who each went on to win the Nobel, because they didn’t meet his IQ threshold. Incidentally, this is consistent with the idea that achievements overestimate IQ (which I did note in the comment before last). Or, it could mean that IQ tests fall well short of capturing intelligence, including general reasoning ability.
It’s not a stretch to believe that IQ tests underestimate the reasoning ability of blacks more than whites-even Jensen noted that blacks who tested at 70 were typically far more functional than whites who tested at 70. If one accounts for this, it would mean that thepepnegative correlation is smaller in magnitude. That would bring Carson’s figure up significantly. This is key because my issue wasn’t about an exact number per se, but that it seemed on intuitive grounds that a pioneer in the quinessential brainy profession (no pun intended) is very likely to be smarter than the average Harvard student (mean 125). That comes from experience-I’ve been around such kids. Yes, you account for this by noting that on achievements, his IQ would be 148. But I think the correction based on his background is too great both because of what I note above about IQ tests under-predicting functionality in blacks and because the result just makes him a bit above-average. Even if IQ tests are imperfect, there should be some consistency in where people of known real world ability fall on the scale.
The upshot is that it’s important to stick to algorithms, but sometimes it’s appropriate to look back and see if the result jives with intuition. I’m not 100% on this, and I suppose I might be protecting Carson (have to admit my bias, as an amateur scientist) but I still think this could be one of those times in light of Carson’s breakthroughs. Of course you are exaggerating about the time machine, but separating twins joined at the head is way, way up there-and was only one of several procedures he pioneered. So Carson could pose an exception to the algorithm- because he is so exceptional.
I suppose we may agree to disagree, but in this case it’s a matter of degree. Thanks for listening, PP. Look forward to meeting you in other posts.
Christoph, it’s quite possible that my little algorithms are not accurate for people as exceptional as Carson. I use very simple linear assumptions that might not apply to people at the extremes. More research is needed.
Also, even within my algorithm i might have underestimated Carson because I regarded him as the best neurosurgeon in America but given that there are only a few thousand American neurosurgeons, even that distinction might not do him justice
Again, the 2 smartest black republicans, Ben Carson and Alan West are mixed individuals, with apparent Mongoloid ancestry. Carson appears to have some Mongoloid ancestry, and that allows him to perform as a neurosurgeon. Take it as a grain of salt!
Also, for Pumpkin’s black fetishism, Elijah Muhammad, who was Malcolm X’s mentor, and the leader of the Nation of Islam, was also from Georgia. He was also very “Asiatic” looking. This picture of his youth, makes him an Asian person.
He was a great visionary and planner. He was also ruthless in a cunning sense (allegedly killed his apprentice, Malcolm, like a scene in a Mafia movie), a behavior which is atypical of blacks, but typical of Asians. A black, fu manchu, would be an appropriate term to describe him
Carson is probably not Asian at all, you make this guess because he’s intelligent and has vaguely slanted eyes. Two features that naturally happen much more often than you think in full blooded Subsharan Africans
Relationships between Chinese coolies and African American women were common in Georgia of the past.
Here is a black woman who claims she has Chinese ancestry. Do you see it? How is her phenotype different from Carson’s or any other black person?
http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/harlem-china-author-traces-family-tree/story?id=30455711
So what ? My points were that both slanted eyes and very high intelligence naturally happen in full blooded blacks and don’t need to be explained by admixture. When you see a redbone behind bars, do you put it on his apparent Eurasian admixture ?
At this point, we don’t know what’s Ben Carson’s racial makeup.
His ancestry from Georgia, his slanted eyes, forward pointing cheekbones, humble attitude, and neurosurgeon profession, all point fingers to someone who is not your typical black, but someone who fits an East Asian type.
Both Ben Carson and Allen West, are outliers, when it comes to the black phenotype and character, and they call themselves “black”.
And notice Allen West’s demeanor, which is very atypical black. He acts if he’s almost too socially aware, devious and cunning for the general population, let alone the black population, which is also a sign of high IQ.
Well, I’m a black native of Haiti, I did humanitarian work in Haiti and some West African countries and what I can say Carson is only unusual for being a neurosurgeon, not a black neurosurgeon since this speciality is rare in every populations. Otherwise, being balanced, reasonable and well behaved is the normal state of the overwhelming majority of black individuals around the world.
And race is about self identification, if Carson says he’s black, he’s black. Those who report IQs that give an 85 mean for African Americans are not full blooded sub-Saharan Africans. And moreover, since race is a matter of self-identification, we can argue that the major part of humanity has no race at all since their cultures do not acknowledge this concept. On the other hand, you should start investigating the hundreds of “races” that are self-reported in Latin America.
As far as genetics, there exists no “black genes”, “white genes” or “Asian” genes that are common and exclusive to the people labelled as black, white or Asian.
Ben Carson is too soft or too balanced to be a pure bred black man.
I have met quite a number of Jamaican blacks who claimed to have Chinese ancestry. They blend very well physically, with other blacks, who don’t claim as such.
Do you think of Africa as a place where almost everyone is somewhat thuggish, psycho, with no morals and senseless behavior ?
No, but a large sector of the population is, given the high dysfunctionality and crime in that part of the world.
laughable,
First of all, sky high pathological crime rates are only a reality in southern African, the majority of other African countries have average or low crime rates whereas the most criminal region of the world is Latin America and even in Latin America, Haiti just looks like a safe haven when compared to Honduras or Colombia. So crime is definitely not a black “behavioral phenotype”.
Second thing, I don’t know what you call dysfunction. If you talk about corruption, yes it does happen in Africa as it happens in other poor or not so poor countries. If you talk about war, yes it happens that there is always one of the 54 African countries that experiences war in a given year and these wars are not senseless explosions of instinctive violence at all. And moreover, African civilians do not like war, they are caught between factions and always get the worst of conflicts, so you must stop thinking that wars happen in Africa just because Africans are primitive beings who enjoy slaughter. War in Africa is just like war in every other country and African nations are just made more unstable by the fact that they are recent artificial creations that correspond to no ethnic and cultural reality whatsoever and that they have lots of natural resources that local elites and foreign powers and corporations want to control.
But maybe you were thinking to poverty, and slums where people live in extreme conditions that sometimes require extreme behavior to survive. You see that all around the third world and there is nothing specifically African in that. More importantly, slum life contrasts with rural African life which is peaceful, harmonious and resourceful. You obviously know nothing of it.
There is no empirical or scientific evidence that full blooded Africans have more psychopaths and morons among them than other populations do. And most importantly, there is no evidence that being a bright or at least respectable individual requires some non-African admixture.
Carson has an i.q. of 128?? That is surely a bad joke, or is it a direct reflection upon your diminutive i.q?
I don’t know what his IQ is, I’m just trying to show what might be statistically expected based on his unique combination of genius achievements but low IQ demographics and politics.
I liked your reasoning. I am a doc myself and I can tell you that this notion that neurosurgeons are more intelligent than other surgeons (or docs in general) is bologna. This is a creation of the media—the media’s thinking is that to operate on the brain you need a big brain. Rather, the extreme characteristic one needs to make it through neurosurgery residency is stamina since the training is so intense from a time perspective.
Many of the smartest people in medical school go into internal medicine. It likely is true that a doc who goes into neurosurgery is smarter than the average doc. And it is likely true that the margin he is smarter than other docs is small.
This is a creation of the media—the media’s thinking is that to operate on the brain you need a big brain
Although in fairness that’s a logical assumption. The brain is the most complex known object in the universe.
However I have no data on the IQs of different types of doctors so for the purpose of my analysis, I treated them as a single occupation.
I believe your estimation of Carson’s IQ is completely off-base. It is known that those with higher IQ tend to not believe in god, and Carson’s own Christian faith and statements that the pyramids were for storing grain indicate a fairly limited mentality. It is also fairly likely that he was affirmative-actioned throughout schooling and promoted socially. The fact that he took the high-risk option to separate the twins says nothing other than he takes risks he doesn’t need to take. Also, it wasn’t such a successful operation if you base the success on the actual results and not on his mythological book. I checked out his doctor stats online and his very high ranking is due to people actually reviewing and loving his book. The only positive comments about his actual medical care are from ONE patient. I know from doctors and hospitals having worked in them for most of my adult life and with doctors like Carson, there was a lot of “eye rolling” and grimacing going on. Unless you could get medical professionals who actually worked with him (but not his assistants, etc. who would be so influenced), but those who could be objective to say he was a brilliant surgeon and not just a careless one, I’d be careful in assessing his intelligence by comparing him to others.
Something isn’t quite right about this man and I suspect he is someone who is easily trained and managed by the powers that be, hence his sudden backbone once Trump took off.
It’s possible my estimate is way off. I must admit that if I didn’t know he was a surgeon and just met him on the street, I would probably think he was mentally retarded because he talks so slowly. But until there is objective evidence that his accomplishments are overrated, I continue to believe he’s very bright (IQ 125).
If he was a liberal or a democrat you folks would think he was a genius. Is the page own by google or yahoo. It’s a shame that liberals didn’t have their own planet.
If you are a Carson fan you have more in common with the liberals than the Trumpkins.
Join us.
Economic conservatism is dying now it’s all the Democratic Socialism of Bernie (Hillary has adopted) and the National Socialism of Trump.
It’s about the rates of change of course.
“The only thing constant in life, is change”. Liberal words of wisdom.
I do like Carson though.
Maybe Hillary will make him her administration’s token Republican and appoint him Surgeon General.
I wish him the best.
Even if all his accomplishments came after affirmative action, the ability to succeed is independent from it. He is a Yale grad and was a top neurosurgeon. By those accomplishments alone lends him to have an average IQ for successful PhD caliber STEM grads.
I think your assessment is off-base. What you are attempting to do here is prove a negative.
Even if there was no affirmative action, you would still expect high achieving blacks to score lower than high achieving whites, simply because they regress to a lower mean
True. I was referring to Windy Girl – while she tries to make an argument for objective analysis on his accomplishments, she relies on what seems to be presumptions on her part.
You forgot one factor: blacks on average have better fine motor skills. Also in the current USA some affirmative action would have helped a skilled black person get up the ladder.
Ben is truely a loving and a lovable christian. He has the attributes of a Christian one who loves his Lord. He has such a strong hold on God and that differentiates between him and others. He has a deep grasp of things spiritual and has a nobility of character and breadth of mind rarely seen in others.
That’s a ridiculous article. It’s all wrong.The easiest to debunk is the ‘create tools’ during ice age. Tools were first invented by Africans in Africa. As a matter of fact, there is a correlation between the origin of language and the creation of tools. And Language was first originated in Africa. To be more precise, in the area where the Hadzabe tribe currently lives, somewhere on or off the coast of Tanzania. This is drawn from genetic research done on the ‘Mutation 168’, which traces back all males of all cultures to have it. For the laymen, this is shown in a National Geographic documentary readily available on youtube. Since the academic world only trusts what comes from the academic world and that world is filled with non-African people, who don’t get a chance to contribute with their knowledge, this idea that African descent people are inferior in one way or another. That’s an erroneous conclusion. I hope this will change some time soon. Meanwhile, one has to put up with articles such as these. Just ridiculous. If it was a piece of paper I would tear it up.
That’s a ridiculous pitiful article.
Hey man, I’m not a statistician but I have the impression that regression to the mean is systematically misused and abused when it comes to IQ measurements and estimations in HBD crowds.
Regression to the mean is a statistical tool if I’m right and we don’t know to what extent it can be applied to human characteristisc(height, intelligence,..Etc) and in what direction. Let’s imagine that regression to the mean can be used in this fashion…What mean are we considering? The mean of his apparent population(blacks)? or the mean of his sub-population(high IQ black)? or the mean of all humans? americans? All in all I think the regression to the mean is a good predictive tool, but not in this direction( here we already know the guy is a genius, high achiever). Also, the regression to the mean although it sounds legit doesn’t take in consideration genetics( and genetic clusters: blacks, high IQ blacks like tutsi perhaps or european africans, chinese,asians,.Etc), environement, epigenetics. IQ is the result of both three of them. I might also add that outliers exists and mutations exists. Another thing is that we don’t know how intelligence is genetically transmitted(certainly not a linear transmissions).. Although there are plenty of white people with average IQs who have achieved greatly; I figure that this in an insult to the black crowds to assume that one of the highest black achievers in history only has above average IQ(just because statistics is against them)… Especially considering your erroneous and simplified calculation. What does your calculation means? That whatever the outstanding marks, academic achievements, nobel price a black person can have… He will never be smarter than the under-achieving high IQ of the white or asian. Lol. That’s ridiculous, arrogant and ignorant. I believe that graduating from an intellectually challenging program is a feat and a proof of high intelligence, wether you are black, asian, white, HIghIQ or LOw IQ,..Etc point. Matter of fact academic achievement in higher studies is actually more of a mark for intelligence than is the marginalized IQ…. always lols at the ” You(the black man) can achieve as highly as you want, we will always have higher collective IQs than you.. monkeys :p”. I liked that one commenter implied that IQ doesn’t exactly capture the pathways of black people’s intelligence, and I concure. What If tomorrow I invent an IQ test that is geared towards black intelligence? :p To make it brief, I don’t disagree with the possibility of Carson being just above average intelligence since IQ is an imperfect estimate of ahcievement measurement above a certain treshold- I believe 125( and above average is largely enough to become a neurosurgeon anyway..)… I strongly disagree with the calculations, the reccurent abuse of statistical lies( regression to the mean) and the prejudice and minimisation of black people achievement( “He’s black, so although he made it big, he must be low IQ anyway because of screwed genetics and statistics”). Now, I’m wondering, are black people with IQs above 150 even imaginable to you?
It’s just basic probability. Carson belongs to one group that tends to have super high IQs (top doctors), but he belongs to two groups that tend to have low IQs (blacks and conservatives) so on balance we’d expect him to have a very high IQ, but not as high as you’d expect from his brilliant accomplishments.
This post is astoundingly idiotic. His IQ is subtracted based on AVERAGES of races? He clearly is not average by any means so subtracting him for being African American is perhaps something a middle schooler would do. In addition, subtracting for being a republican? Another idiotic move by the writer.
I read this article and stsrted losing brain cells.
I vaguely recall reading this in depth chart about Republican support of their primary candidates, a table entailing whether supporters of candidate x had an unusually high number of people with a certain demographic characteristic, about average, or unusually low.
I can recall that Ben Carson supporters were ironically, unusually White (that’s saying something in the GOP), but also unusually well educated among Republicans.
I suspect less tribal, more educated Whites were voting for him, which makes sense.
Well, this is a new one for me. I have not heard that conservatives (Republicans) have lower IQs than liberal (Democrats)! I think not!
Everyone was born equal
Citation needed.
why
So Ben Carson has very high visual IQ and a lower verbal IQ. For blacks, this seems like an anomaly. And he’s also very beta or docile compared to the average black as a result. Higher visual IQ is needed for civilization development. blacks are not of this nature.
And they said white liberals can’t be racist……
This is all bs……….it’s 132 because I said so……I intuited it. My IQ is almost as high as Bam’s…………..323.
OMG I remember the Lion of the Judahsphere days. Those were good times. Anyhow, I was rereading the Ben Carson Wikipedia page and found the following:
“Carson’s SAT college admission test scores ranked him somewhere in the low 90th percentile, which according to him resulted in a Detroit Free Press article “Carson Gets Highest SAT Scores in Twenty Years” of any student in Detroit public schools.”
I had never seen that about his SATs before. Where would that put him on the pre-95 SAT?
Wow! Great find! Super busy now but will write a super brief article about this imminently.
Great! can’t wait
Can someone with an IQ of 110 get a PhD, or an MD?