Intelligence researchers don't use IQ, they use raw data from testing.
As you pointed out, IQ is not usable for research across time or across countries or cultures. You can only compare individuals in the same time and same population.
Its further biased by how many iq tests the testee has done before.
Honestly, iq tests are pointless unless you're selecting for people that are willing to invest time into worthless knowledge in order to win in a contest.
Which is a valid criteria, considering that these are the most motivated people... Its just not "intelligence", though that itself is just as pointless to measure.
IQ tests are not pointless, the scores have strong correlation with lifetime achievement and are useful for population statistics about things like educational outcomes and the harms of childhood malnutrition. The meaningfulness of the test score breaks down if someone carries out a campaign of preparation, but that doesn’t make the tests useless. IQ testing gets a lot of flak from people who seem to have an axe to grind, in much the same way that BMI measurements get a lot of flak from people who fall well within the range where it’s useful. Sure, MENSA is stupid and BMI isn’t a useful measurement for professional athletes, but so what?
IQ testing gets a lot of flak because its usefulness is misunderstood and overstated, and because historically it has been used by adherents of scientific racism.
I get the sense from the comment about BMI and "axe grinding" that you're really trying to make a dig at what conservative leaning people might call "SJWs". If that's the case, you're doing yourself a disservice by letting ideology obscure the very real scientific problems with IQ testing.
I don't broadly have beef with "SJWs", though I wouldn't use that term. BMI happens to be an easily recalled second metric that is useful for population statistics even if it's not necessarily always useful for an individual. Without some measurement like IQ we would miss things at the population level like the Flynn effect, or the massive improvements in intelligence brought about by the introduction of iodized salt.
Seems you're misinterpreting my comment. Though I'm not sure how, considering I literally wrote at the end that selecting for it can make sense
As I said before, the iq test mainly measures how much the participant is motivated... Or so many other reasons which are loosely correlated with professional success such as enjoying puzzles and figuring things out etc.
It just doesn't say anything about "intelligence", and measuring that is pointless, because it's not even possible to clearly define it... like so many terms, there are as many definitions for it as there are people in the room.
But even if you use the official definition of it being the ability to apply knowledge I'd still disagree with the usual iq tests measuring that.
They're puzzles at best and measuring how someone can apply knowledge is not that easy to standardize.
> As I said before, the iq test mainly measures how much the participant is motivated... Or so many other reasons which are loosely correlated with professional success such as enjoying puzzles and figuring things out etc.
This is wrong, and somewhat obviously so. Most people taking an IQ test have never taken one before, and have no preparation. Some of the biggest IQ datasets come from military enlistees. If IQ were not correlated with nebulously defined "intelligence" and were instead some measure of "motivation" and "enjoying puzzles" we wouldn't expect to see it improve generationally with access to better nutrition and early-childhood education. We also probably wouldn't expect to see significant improvements from the introduction of iodized salt, which alleviated shortage of iodine, critical for early brain development, on a population scale.
"Iodine deficiency during development impairs motivation and enjoyment of puzzles later in life" is a much less plausible claim than "IQ correlates with what we commonly understand to be 'intelligence'".
>Its further biased by how many iq tests the testee has done before.
For a population studies this does not matter at all.
For individuals, practicing for IQ test might help a little but there seems to be a clear limit IQ limit that individuals can't overcome with practice.
As you pointed out, IQ is not usable for research across time or across countries or cultures. You can only compare individuals in the same time and same population.