In terms of intelligence

[sloop]

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I would also respectfully disagree with the invocation of "emotional intelligence", which has no predictive power whatsoever and should not even be considered a concept. Being able to socialise with patients is obviously a must, but most medical students will be able to do this anyway, having been interviewed. Taking a history and making a diagnosis, like many other things in medicine, actually requires you to be able to follow an algorithm and use your IQ. A history taking session actually depends greatly on working memory, which is one component of general intelligence (which is what IQ measures).

It’s worse than this. It’s not so much that “emotional intelligence” isn’t predictive, but that it does predict positive outcomes but these disappear when you control for IQ. It’s not even like “emotional intelligence” measures captured nothing about the determinants of social success, what they actually captured was IQ itself.

There is a strong emotional attachment to the idea that if you’re not high on IQ, you get to be high on something else as a consolation prize. Sorry, but nature doesn’t conspire to generate things that are consistent with your politics. People who are high on IQ tend to be better at a whole bunch of other things having to do with status and success. People think they can look at examples of high functioning autistic people and generalize that there’s some sort of cosmic trade-off principle.

 

[TheIllusionist]

^ Licensing exams should be more gloaded, if what you are saying is true about how much general intellect is needed to be a physician. I know a lot of cases of people who probably can't even long divide with consistent accuracy that UFAPed their way to a 250+, while failing to crack a MCAT 30 on several occassions. Many of these people are post baccs that were seeing the material a 3rd time or people that obsessively UFAPed and firecrackered all day long but couldn't explain simple physiology principles.

If IQ is in fact the best predictor of success in medicine and conscientiousness second, I largely would be in favor of more aptitude style licensing exams, insofar as they are now used as selection and screening tools rather than just a pass/fail hurdles.

With regards to spatial intellect and anatomy, well yeah maybe as a surgeon but certainly not as an M1 in anatomy lab. There it's just visual memory in a single plane. Don't get me started on EKGs...I know several kids that just crammed the shapes and the accompanying treatment algorithms and can't even explain the basics of the directionality of deflections, heck most don't know the difference between an anode and a cathode...

Also, I would disagree that there is no trade off between intellect and social skills. To an extent it's true but once levels around 150 are reached, there does appear to be a negative correlation between the two. I'd say some of the most successful doctors are in the gifted to borderline genius range and tend to have great social skills and work ethic. This ain't high level math, physics, chemistry, philosophy, or economics...and it certainly doesn't require the creativity of art or literature. I think what makes medicine tough is the very hybrid skill set it requires.

Don't get me wrong though, medicine does have it's share if super geniuses, especially those in the research or other innovative realms in general, just in lower proportions relative to the theoretical streams of the aforementioned fields.

 

[sloop]

^ Licensing exams should be more gloaded, if what you are saying is true about how much general intellect is needed to be a physician. I know a lot of cases of people who probably can't even long divide with consistent accuracy that UFAPed their way to a 250+, while failing to crack a MCAT 30 on several occassions. Many of these people are post baccs that were seeing the material a 3rd time or people that obsessively UFAPed and firecrackered all day long but couldn't explain simple physiology principles.

If IQ is in fact the best predictor of success in medicine and conscientiousness second, I largely would be in favor of more aptitude style licensing exams, insofar as they are now used as selection and screening tools rather than just a pass/fail hurdles.

With regards to spatial intellect and anatomy, well yeah maybe as a surgeon but certainly not as an M1 in anatomy lab. There it's just visual memory in a single plane. Don't get me started on EKGs...I know several kids that just crammed the shapes and the accompanying treatment algorithms and can't even explain the basics of the directionality of deflections, heck most don't know the difference between an anode and a cathode...

Also, I would disagree that there is no trade off between intellect and social skills. To an extent it's true but once levels around 150 are reached, there does appear to be a negative correlation between the two. I'd say some of the most successful doctors are in the gifted to borderline genius range and tend to have great social skills and work ethic. This ain't high level math, physics, chemistry, philosophy, or economics...and it certainly doesn't require the creativity of art or literature. I think what makes medicine tough is the very hybrid skill set it requires.

Don't get me wrong though, medicine does have it's share if super geniuses, especially those in the research or other innovative realms in general, just in lower proportions relative to the theoretical streams of the aforementioned fields.

Licensing exams (and the MCAT, and a whole bunch of other exams by the way) are intelligence tests and are definitely correlated with IQ. The difference is that they are crystallized intelligence tests, so there is a component of sustained effort (and thus conscientiousness) in all of them. But to pretend that crystallized intelligence is not mostly a function of fluid intelligence is dumb. People who process complex information quicker are going to score higher on crystallized intelligence measures. Working hard is important on these tests but, despite your anecdote, working hard alone won’t get you to score high on these tests because the stakes are high (even medium conscientiousness people can be motivated for a month by this) and the test is standardized by people with much higher capacities for information processing and abstract reasoning. Just like an intelligence test, the hard questions on board exams require novel applications of patterns and principles.

If you are looking for a test that tests intelligence primarily and conscientiousness secondarily, your answer is a crystallized intelligence test (of which board exams are an example).

 

[mehc012]

Licensing exams (and the MCAT, and a whole bunch of other exams by the way) are intelligence tests and are definitely correlated with IQ. The difference is that they are crystallized intelligence tests, so there is a component of sustained effort (and thus conscientiousness) in all of them. But to pretend that crystallized intelligence is not mostly a function of fluid intelligence is dumb. People who process complex information quicker are going to score higher on crystallized intelligence measures. Working hard is important on these tests but, despite your anecdote, working hard alone won’t get you to score high on these tests because the stakes are high (even medium conscientiousness people can be motivated for a month by this) and the test is standardized by people with much higher capacities for information processing and abstract reasoning. Just like an intelligence test, the hard questions on board exams require novel applications of patterns and principles.

If you are looking for a test that tests intelligence primarily and conscientiousness secondarily, your answer is a crystallized intelligence test (of which board exams are an example).

Plus, tbh, if you can learn the material more thoroughly in less time, it requires less hard work from you to score equally well on an exam even if there's no reasoning component on the exam itself...so saying that the amount of work put in is more important is silly. If I learn 3x faster than someone, they can spend 2x as long studying as I do and I will still be more prepared.

 

[TheIllusionist]

I'll agree to disagree again. I agree the MCAT follows your definition but not the STEP1. MCAT is an aptitude test first. STEP1 is a licensing exam and therefore made to be an achievement test. The rate limiting step for the reaction of success on the MCAT is reasoning ability and reading comprehension. The rate limiting step for STEP1 is memory and sustained effort. Memory is a component of intelligence, so I will give you that.

From what my professors tell me, in our class at least, the hard questions on STEP1 don't differentiate the top scorers from the good/average ones. The accuracy on medium and easy questions tends to be the difference maker. Yeah the STEP1, including my exam, had some beautifully crafted questions that involved a healthy amount of abstract reasoning, but those formed a minority of the test. Most of the exam was high yield stuff that you one had to know on the spot.

Even the toughest questions, deduction took away some but not all of the choices, especially on "what is the possible mechanism." I had 2 questions, where they literally put the two most popular hypotheses in recent studies on why something happens. The answer was one of the hypotheses. So literally reasoning might get you to what top level researchers in the field might have guessed but in reality, you had to have read the answer somewhere and remembered it to get it right.

I did well enough on both tests, but I felt like my brain definitely worked harder on the MCAT. Yeah STEP1 had some cool questions, but for the most part, I was just chugging along. When I got my STEP1 score report, my worst areas were, unsurprisingly, anatomy and microbio...

 

[sloop]

I'll agree to disagree again. I agree the MCAT follows your definition but not the STEP1. MCAT is an aptitude test first. STEP1 is a licensing exam and therefore made to be an achievement test. The rate limiting step for the reaction of success on the MCAT is reasoning ability and reading comprehension. The rate limiting step for STEP1 is memory and sustained effort. Memory is a component of intelligence, so I will give you that.

From what my professors tell me, in our class at least, the hard questions on STEP1 don't differentiate the top scorers from the good/average ones. The accuracy on medium and easy questions tends to be the difference maker. Yeah the STEP1, including my exam, had some beautifully crafted questions that involved a healthy amount of abstract reasoning, but those formed a minority of the test. Most of the exam was high yield stuff that you one had to know on the spot.

Even the toughest questions, deduction took away some but not all of the choices, especially on "what is the possible mechanism." I had 2 questions, where they literally put the two most popular hypotheses in recent studies on why something happens. The answer was one of the hypotheses. So literally reasoning might get you to what top level researchers in the field might have guessed but in reality, you had to have read the answer somewhere and remembered it to get it right.

I did well enough on both tests, but I felt like my brain definitely worked harder on the MCAT. Yeah STEP1 had some cool questions, but for the most part, I was just chugging along. When I got my STEP1 score report, my worst areas were, unsurprisingly, anatomy and microbio...

Both the MCAT and the board exams involve crystallized intelligence and a fund of knowledge that gets applied in new ways through abstract reasoning. I think they both involve a similar amount of abstraction, although the boards involves more logical reasoning while the MCAT might involve more direct mathematics. The boards definitely require a much larger fund of knowledge, certainly.

In any case, it doesn't matter. Fund of knowledge is a function of intelligence. The more intelligent you are, the better you are at encoding and retrieving information. Less intelligent people struggle with encoding large amounts of complex information in a useful way. This is actually a major function of intelligence.

What you are talking about regarding the difficult boards questions not determining high scorers makes no sense if you understand how standardized testing works. As you get to higher scores, by definition the people capable of scoring that high becomes increasingly rare. At some point on the curve, all of the testers beyond that point will have a general basic mastery of the material. The idea that you can score high on these exams while only knowing the knowledge base that is commonly known by most test takers is ridiculous. To score high, you will need to be both accurate and know the answers to difficult questions. There are people out there who are good at both of these things and sort of by necessity in standardized testing, these are the people who will occupy the extreme high part of the range.

 

[smalltownpsych]

After reading through this thread, I feel like some might need a refresher course on the properties of the normal distribution. It seems pretty clear from the stat reported here and elsewhere that some doctors are in the average range on an IQ test. A better question to ask might be how well an IQ test really measures cognitive abilities that might be important for practicing medicine. It also seems like some might want to look into the old arguments about a global intelligence factor vs. multiple intelligences.

It is also important to understand that IQ in and of itself can be a meaningless number. A simplified way of looking at it is this. On the Wais III, if someone had a Verbal score of 110 and a Performance score of 90, they would end up with an IQ of 100, but that person is going to function much differently than someone who had the converse or even someone who had a 100 and a 100. Consequently, we now have four domains in the WAIS IV and I rarely place much emphasis on the IQ in my reports because of this.

 

[GadRads]

You guys are placing way too much emphasis on IQ and standardized tests, and whether they predict eventual achievement. They are not unimportant, but not as important as many in this thread seem to suggest. The USMLEs do require significantly more studied knowledge than the MCAT. However the MCAT, at least when I took it, seemed to place more value on reading comprehension and quickly integrating information. I strongly believe that in most cases and with sustained effort, these are skills that can be honed. Usually people who have read regularly and widely will find the MCAT easier than others who have not spent time developing the skills tested on this test. Of course there are outliers such that these general rules do not apply, but for most of us they do.

I find these obsessions over test scores pretentious and frankly worthless. Tests are mainly filters to get to the next level and in some cases (not all) to assess for minimal competency. High creative achievement is not based on being able to quickly a read a passage or question and come to an understanding that will enable convergent thinking or facts that will enable answering questions on a multiple choice test. Carol Greider, based on her GRE scores, would never have won a Nobel Prize in Physiology if standardized test meant much, or maybe she is one of the outliers to which these rules not apply.

The more I take tests, the more disenchanted I am. Maybe that was one reason internists revolted against the ABIM shenanigans regarding testing and MOC recently.

 

[TheIllusionist]

Both the MCAT and the board exams involve crystallized intelligence and a fund of knowledge that gets applied in new ways through abstract reasoning. I think they both involve a similar amount of abstraction, although the boards involves more logical reasoning while the MCAT might involve more direct mathematics. The boards definitely require a much larger fund of knowledge, certainly.

In any case, it doesn't matter. Fund of knowledge is a function of intelligence. The more intelligent you are, the better you are at encoding and retrieving information. Less intelligent people struggle with encoding large amounts of complex information in a useful way. This is actually a major function of intelligence.

What you are talking about regarding the difficult boards questions not determining high scorers makes no sense if you understand how standardized testing works. As you get to higher scores, by definition the people capable of scoring that high becomes increasingly rare. At some point on the curve, all of the testers beyond that point will have a general basic mastery of the material. The idea that you can score high on these exams while only knowing the knowledge base that is commonly known by most test takers is ridiculous. To score high, you will need to be both accurate and know the answers to difficult questions. There are people out there who are good at both of these things and sort of by necessity in standardized testing, these are the people who will occupy the extreme high part of the range.

MENSA doesn't use licensing exams for entry for good reason. It has strict policies against achievement tests. The USMLE is more of an achievement test than the MCAT. I don't really care for MENSA. But it does speak volumes that the most well known high IQ society that literally bases everything off of IQ tests values achievement tests far less; achievement is by definition lacking in g loadedness.

The hard questions form too small of a volume of the questions to be the difference makers, for the most part. Generally it's the easy and medium questions that make up the bulk of the test. Even if the difference in performance between high and low performing groups is smaller on these question types relative to the difference on hard questions, the easy and medium questions are still the difference makers.

You guys are placing way too much emphasis on IQ and standardized tests, and whether they predict eventual achievement. They are not unimportant, but not as important as many in this thread seem to suggest. The USMLEs do require significantly more studied knowledge than the MCAT. However the MCAT, at least when I took it, seemed to place more value on reading comprehension and quickly integrating information. I strongly believe that in most cases and with sustained effort, these are skills that can be honed. Usually people who have read regularly and widely will find the MCAT easier than others who have not spent time developing the skills tested on this test. Of course there are outliers such that these general rules do not apply, but for most of us they do.

I find these obsessions over test scores pretentious and frankly worthless. Tests are mainly filters to get to the next level and in some cases (not all) to assess for minimal competency. High creative achievement is not based on being able to quickly a read a passage or question and come to an understanding that will enable convergent thinking or facts that will enable answering questions on a multiple choice test. Carol Greider, based on her GRE scores, would never have won a Nobel Prize in Physiology if standardized test meant much, or maybe she is one of the outliers to which these rules not apply.

The more I take tests, the more disenchanted I am. Maybe that was one reason internists revolted against the ABIM shenanigans regarding testing and MOC recently.

I agree. This is why I used the "if what you're saying is truly correct about IQ" disclaimer to indicate I was entertaining a thought experiment.

Licensing exams need to go back to a pass/fail scheme during residency appraisal processes or better tests need to be made.

 

[throw_away5122]

You guys are hallucinate if you think only genius or smart ppl can be physician. Anyone can be physician nowadays, just need to put in the work

 

[TheIllusionist]

^seconded. Like I mentioned from the begin and several times over, a good chunk of average IQ people can and do become physicians. People under an IQ of 102 makeup a good 15% of doctors.

Perhaps the USMLE is good the way it is outside of the thought experiment that IQ is so valuable. I am of the opinion it isn't for medicine. The licensing exam should test medical knowledge first and foremost which it does.

Can intellect help with acquisition of that knowledge? Sure. But I've seen some very average people do it and beast through and some real smart kids **** up badly.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. But even hard work alone gets nearly comparable results relative to talent that works hard, in my experience. I know kids with 260s that never did well on another standardised test in their lives but basically took the same med school class 3 times (undergrad, grad, med school) so their background was amazing and worked super hard during school.

 

[GadRads]

^seconded. Like I mentioned from the begin and several times over, a good chunk of average IQ people can and do become physicians. People under an IQ of 102 makeup a good 15% of doctors.

Perhaps the USMLE is good the way it is outside of the thought experiment that IQ is so valuable. I am of the opinion it isn't for medicine. The licensing exam should test medical knowledge first and foremost which it does.

Can intellect help with acquisition of that knowledge? Sure. But I've seen some very average people do it and beast through and some real smart kids **** up badly.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. But even hard work alone gets nearly comparable results relative to talent that works hard, in my experience. I know kids with 260s that never did well on another standardised test in their lives but basically took the same med school class 3 times (undergrad, grad, med school) so their background was amazing and worked super hard during school.

I don't believe just anyone can be a physician; or maybe the bar to entry is quite high that primarily the more intelligent people do it. In any case, I do think you have to be reasonably intelligent to be a physician. I have hardly met a physician I would call below average or plain dumb.

There are several domains of intelligence. For example, Richard Feynman supposedly had an IQ in the low 120s, but his mathematical ability was very high, possibly at the expense of his verbal IQ. Or maybe he developed this skill since this was his special interest. Some say he did not care for grammar or spellings, however his books are well written. In another case, some people sweat to break a 9 on the MCAT no matter what they do, but easily score 12-15 on the science sections. Again, it is not clear if this is due to IQ or years of honing scientific reasoning at the expense of verbal reasoning.

Overall, it appears that some people are multi-talented/gifted in multiple domains, others not as much. However, as long as one works in an area that matches his/her talent, which can be difficult to know a priori, the difference in domains should not matter in the long term. This is why some people are naturally better than others in specific areas. Lebron has a great basketball IQ that is unmatched by many NBA athletes who work just as hard or harder, but Lebron will never shoot a basketball as well as Stephen Curry, but both are great basketball players. I think the same is true in specific domains of knowledge and other life's affairs. Some people are really good at technical or mathematical reasoning and will obtain PhDs in physics and mathematics with the routine effort expected in these pursuits, but would struggle with the volume of information in medical school. Some could handle both types of intellectual demands with the typical effort.

By the way, getting a 260 does require hard work and intelligence. These people are not unintelligent, but maybe their intellectual talents were not matched to the previous standardized tests they took. I know a former med school buddy who scored 28 on the MCAT and slightly above average on the SAT, but scored >260 on all steps. He also scored in the top 10 percentile nationally in his specialty. He won multiple awards in his program, published well in his field as a resident, and was well regarded at a top department where he trained. His prior testing clearly did not predict his future performance in medicine.

 

[TheIllusionist]

I don't believe just anyone can be a physician; or maybe the bar to entry is quite high that primarily the more intelligent people do it. In any case, I do think you have to be reasonably intelligent to be a physician. I have hardly met a physician I would call below average or plain dumb.

There are several domains of intelligence. For example, Richard Feynman supposedly had an IQ in the low 120s, but his mathematical ability was very high, possibly at the expense of his verbal IQ. Or maybe he developed this skill since this was his special interest. Some say he did not care for grammar or spellings, however his books are well written. In another case, some people sweat to break a 9 on the MCAT no matter what they do, but easily score 12-15 on the science sections. Again, it is not clear if this is due to IQ or years of honing scientific reasoning at the expense of verbal reasoning.

Overall, it appears that some people are multi-talented/gifted in multiple domains, others not as much. However, as long as one works in an area that matches his/her talent, which can be difficult to know a priori, the difference in domains should not matter in the long term. This is why some people are naturally better than others in specific areas. Lebron has a great basketball IQ that is unmatched by many NBA athletes who work just as hard or harder, but Lebron will never shoot a basketball as well as Stephen Curry, but both are great basketball players. I think the same is true in specific domains of knowledge and other life's affairs. Some people are really good at technical or mathematical reasoning and will obtain PhDs in physics and mathematics with the routine effort expected in these pursuits, but would struggle with the volume of information in medical school. Some could handle both types of intellectual demands with the typical effort.

By the way, getting a 260 does require hard work and intelligence. These people are not unintelligent, but maybe their intellectual talents were not matched to the previous standardized tests they took. I know a former med school buddy who scored 28 on the MCAT and slightly above average on the SAT, but scored >260 on all steps. He also scored in the top 10 percentile nationally in his specialty. He won multiple awards in his program, published well in his field as a resident, and was well regarded at a top department where he trained. His prior testing clearly did not predict his future performance in medicine.

I think your friend is the exact type of person I was talking about before. I think there are a few possibilities.

1. Your friend may or may not have applied himself fully before, and therefore the more general aptitude tests, such as the SAT and less so the MCAT, did not fully measure his ability.
2. Your friend had poor early schooling which rendered his reading comprehension and deductive reasoning skills below what they could have been at, and he caught up later on.
3. Your friend has a near photographic memory. This would help on those other tests but not nearly to the degree as on the licensing exams, where ability to retrieve discrete facts point blank is of prime importance. This is why many of those prep books, especially for STEP, aka First AID, is filled with mnemonics for crap like lymph nodes, embryology, HLA markers, and what structures are retroperitoneal.
4. Your friend has an absolutely insane work ethic.
5. Your friend has psychological issues, such as test taking anxiety, that affected his performance early on, but he learned, over time, how he could largely overcome those issues.
6. Some combination of the above

What I find a bit sad is that many of my friends, especially former engineering/math/CS majors and even a few philosophy majors, really struggle with medical school standardized tests, despite breezing through other standardized tests early on in life. Of course this is not always the case. But this group seems to be disproportionately represented among those who did well in the past but less well in medical school.

Just anecdotal and not sure how it fits into the discussion: Most of my friends that were brilliant at math/physics/math heavy econ/CS/philosophy could take biology classes and still do pretty well, maybe they wouldn't get an A but they would get Bs. On the other hand, I knew plenty of premeds, some of whom are currently in medical school and doing well, that failed to even crack a B in entry level physics or Calc 2.

I've stated before that "medicine smart" doesn't necessarily mean smart in other areas. Different posters have fervently disagreed, stating that they only knew of those with visibly autistic tendencies that seemed to do well above the average in medicine and were relatively mediocre performers early on in education, all things held equal. I am glad that others have noticed people who happen to pretty much be exceptional (relative to other fields) at medicine/biology yet are "normal."

I think people who happen to be genetically gifted at one specific thing and enjoy that thing are really lucky. Their skill set is at near max utility.

I just want to say that I love the mostly respectful tone throughout this thread. These discussions an get very emotionally charged in real life. Everyone here has been really mature. Thanks guys

 

[sloop]

^seconded. Like I mentioned from the begin and several times over, a good chunk of average IQ people can and do become physicians. People under an IQ of 102 makeup a good 15% of doctors.

Perhaps the USMLE is good the way it is outside of the thought experiment that IQ is so valuable. I am of the opinion it isn't for medicine. The licensing exam should test medical knowledge first and foremost which it does.

Can intellect help with acquisition of that knowledge? Sure. But I've seen some very average people do it and beast through and some real smart kids **** up badly.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. But even hard work alone gets nearly comparable results relative to talent that works hard, in my experience. I know kids with 260s that never did well on another standardised test in their lives but basically took the same med school class 3 times (undergrad, grad, med school) so their background was amazing and worked super hard during school.

And every year about 6 percent of people go unmatched in the NRMP. Even if you become a resident and a practicing doctor there are a decent number of doctors who practice bad medicine.

I’m not saying that this is perfectly correlated with IQ but given that IQ is one of our better predictors of success, especially in complex jobs (and medicine is a complex job, there can be no doubt), far more of these low IQ people are going to struggle than people with higher IQs. People with IQs of 100 or lower are going to have a hard time in medicine. They just are.

I agree that it is possible to have an average IQ and be a doctor, but that is different from being competent. I’m not talking about the bare minimum competent/incompetent binary standard involved in the licensing, either. I’m talking about being a decent doctor and most physicians who have been practicing more than a month know that there are a bunch of incompetent licensed providers out there.

Your anecdotal examples notwithstanding, people with high IQs tend to be highly competent in multiple domains. This is especially true of conscientious intelligent people. It’s not like it is the rule for people good at science to have serious weakness in other domains or for people good at philosophy to have weaknesses in science. In fact, it is the rule that people with intellectual prowess in one domain tend to have prowess in all of them. As I have admitted, there are exceptions to this and there is more divergence as overall IQ increases, but it’s not typical. My step 1 and 2 scores average in the mid 250s (and are within less than 10 points of each other). I did well in science and math. I also studied philosophy and my philosophy GPA was 4.0. I also authored some religion studies papers that won awards and was competitively selected as a writing tutor. There are people way smarter than me in medicine, too, and my experience has been that the people excelling in medicine tend to excel at other complex domains.

Most people work pretty hard on the board exams, even the medium conscientiousness people (I grant you that low conscientiousness geniuses are not going to perform to their potential). Even people who are not normally motivated by stakes can be motivated by high stakes. Given this, the effect of intelligence dominates, as it does in most standardized testing. I think it would be very hard to get a 260 with an IQ of 100—extremely anomalous, in fact.

 

[TheIllusionist]

And every year about 6 percent of people go unmatched in the NRMP. Even if you become a resident and a practicing doctor there are a decent number of doctors who practice bad medicine.

I’m not saying that this is perfectly correlated with IQ but given that IQ is one of our better predictors of success, especially in complex jobs (and medicine is a complex job, there can be no doubt), far more of these low IQ people are going to struggle than people with higher IQs. People with IQs of 100 or lower are going to have a hard time in medicine. They just are.

I agree that it is possible to have an average IQ and be a doctor, but that is different from being competent. I’m not talking about the bare minimum competent/incompetent binary standard involved in the licensing, either. I’m talking about being a decent doctor and most physicians who have been practicing more than a month know that there are a bunch of incompetent licensed providers out there.

Your anecdotal examples notwithstanding, people with high IQs tend to be highly competent in multiple domains. This is especially true of conscientious intelligent people. It’s not like it is the rule for people good at science to have serious weakness in other domains or for people good at philosophy to have weaknesses in science. In fact, it is the rule that people with intellectual prowess in one domain tend to have prowess in all of them. As I have admitted, there are exceptions to this and there is more divergence as overall IQ increases, but it’s not typical. My step 1 and 2 scores average in the mid 250s (and are within less than 10 points of each other). I did well in science and math. I also studied philosophy and my philosophy GPA was 4.0. I also authored some religion studies papers that won awards and was competitively selected as a writing tutor. There are people way smarter than me in medicine, too, and my experience has been that the people excelling in medicine tend to excel at other complex domains.

Most people work pretty hard on the board exams, even the medium conscientiousness people (I grant you that low conscientiousness geniuses are not going to perform to their potential). Even people who are not normally motivated by stakes can be motivated by high stakes. Given this, the effect of intelligence dominates, as it does in most standardized testing. I think it would be very hard to get a 260 with an IQ of 100—extremely anomalous, in fact.

I think a 120 versus a 100 makes a big diff on STEP1. A 120 vs. 140 doesn't make nearly as much of a difference. Other fields like math and physics, I think it would make a much larger difference. But this is all me talking out of my ass, under the assumption that those fields are far more gloaded. Anecdotally, for what it's worth, I know some 250s and 260s that grew up with every advantage and worked hard but didn't shine on tests till med school board exams. So I don't think extremely superior intelligence is a requisite, at the very least, but perhaps a decent level of intellect is.

What I found interesting is our Dean and another one I spoke to at a conference stated that the most common undergrad major among those who fail out of med school is engineering.

 

[smalltownpsych]

I think a 120 versus a 100 makes a big diff on STEP1. A 120 vs. 140 doesn't make nearly as much of a difference. Other fields like math and physics, I think it would make a much larger difference. But this is all me talking out of my ass, under the assumption that those fields are far more gloaded. Anecdotally, for what it's worth, I know some 250s and 260s that grew up with every advantage and worked hard but didn't shine on tests till med school board exams. So I don't think extremely superior intelligence is a requisite, at the very least but perhaps a decent level is.

What I found interesting is our Dean and another one I spoke to at a conference stated that the most common undergrad major among those who fail out of med school is engineering.

120 vs 140 is pretty much meaningless. The higher or lower you go in the distribution the less discriminatory the results are because of ceiling and floor effects. Also, anecdotally speaking, the 140 plus IQ scorers that I have known and the 120 IQ folks seem to do about the same academically and I have seen those 120 folks seem to be the more normal functioning as far as other aspects of functioning.

This whole thread is kind of humorous to me. Obviously to be a good doctor you have to have some skills and some of those are cognitive abilities. Just like the example of Lebron is basketball. We could argue alll day about who is better, Lebron or Michael Jordan or whoever and never have an answer. It is kind of the same as saying who is smarter doctors or physicists. A great example of how a (conceivably) low IQ doesn’t hold people back from achievement is found with our current president.

 

[Wilf]

120 vs 140 is pretty much meaningless.

This is incorrect. Someone with a 140 IQ is not going to have to work as hard to achieve the same level of academic success as someone with a 120. If an educated person were to speak with two individuals, one with a 120 and one with a 140 IQ, most would be able to tell which is which.

A great example of how a (conceivably) low IQ doesn’t hold people back from achievement is found with our current president.

Hopefully this comment will make intelligent people take your posts with a grain of salt.

 

[sloop]

120 vs 140 is pretty much meaningless. The higher or lower you go in the distribution the less discriminatory the results are because of ceiling and floor effects. Also, anecdotally speaking, the 140 plus IQ scorers that I have known and the 120 IQ folks seem to do about the same academically and I have seen those 120 folks seem to be the more normal functioning as far as other aspects of functioning.

This whole thread is kind of humorous to me. Obviously to be a good doctor you have to have some skills and some of those are cognitive abilities. Just like the example of Lebron is basketball. We could argue alll day about who is better, Lebron or Michael Jordan or whoever and never have an answer. It is kind of the same as saying who is smarter doctors or physicists. A great example of how a (conceivably) low IQ doesn’t hold people back from achievement is found with our current president.

Wait, seriously you don’t think having an IQ of 140 is an advantage over having an IQ of 120?

Also, I don’t like Trump’s politics but I don’t think he’s unintelligent. I don’t think he’s spectacularly intelligent but he’s done several different complex jobs in his life and ran a successful and unorthodox presidential campaign. The idea that he is “low IQ” seems absurd to me.

 

[TheIllusionist]

Trump is no genius, but he isn't average. I second Sloop.

 

[smalltownpsych]

The difference between 120 to 140 is splitting hairs and IQ has a high correlation with vocab and Trump’s vocab appears average. Just pointing out that IQ is a limited measure that has little predictive validity and using a little humor to do so. Hmmm, I wonder if humor is a cognitive ability and I wonder if the WAIS captures that? That’s rhetorical as I clearly know that it doesn’t assess that skill. 😛

 

[Brorthopedic]

post to like ratio checks out

most savage post I've seen, RIP

 

[Ender1]

The idea that there is no difference between people with IQs of 120 and people with IQs of 140 is false. There is plenty of evidence against the so-called "threshold" beyond which there is no difference in outcomes. In the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, which included participants such as Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, those with IQs in the top 0.01% of the population (IQ 155-156) were much more likely to have doctorates and MDs, to own patents, to have incomes in the top 5% of the population, to have gained tenure at university, to have been published in academia, and so on, than those who were "merely" in the top 1% of the population (IQ 135).

The differences between people with very high IQs - all in the top 1% - won't be seen so much in academic work but will be seen in stuff even more advanced than that - winning Nobel Prizes, owning patents, gaining tenure, being published, and so on.

Again, I'm not claiming that IQ is the only important factor in determining success, but there's no evidence that beyond a certain threshold, there is no improvement in outcomes. The outcomes that are most visibly improved upon are simply outcomes that are more advanced than university grades.

I also agree with the other posters about Trump. My intuition is that his IQ is in the 115-125 range; he's not below average or average, he's probably comfortably above average, but he's no genius either.

A study of 64 eminent scientists by Roe (1952) also demonstrates the importance of high IQ at the very top of science. The mathematics results for the physicists were excluded because they found the mathematical ability test too easy, but even then, the median mathematical IQ for the group as a whole was 154, the median verbal IQ was 166, and the median spatial IQ was 137.

 

[iqe2010]

I went to high school with people who didn't know a circle was 360 degrees and a line was 180 degrees.

How can a high school senior not know that?

Now apply that to calculus or biochem. How can a person not know how to graph a simple line and find the limit? How can you not know the significance of coenzyme Q?

My point is that there are levels. Some people just don't have the recall ability to do certain things.

So while the algorithms learned during 3rd year might not seem that bad, it's going to go over some people's head.

Throughout school, I'd say I was probably "smarter" than 70-80% of my classmates. That's not saying much since I went to crappy underfunded public schools. I was consistently the only kid in my class that had two parents in the home who both had jobs and worked and gave a damn about my education.

When I first got to college I struggled, it was discouraging because there were some absolutely brilliant people there who seemed like geniuses to me. They never seemed to study and got A's. I had to work harder than them to barely crack a B.

After a while, I gained my footing and actually learned how to study and manage my time efficiently.

I'd say that 50% of medicine is just raw intelligence. Either you have it or you don't. The other 50% is how hard you're willing to work and the effort you're willing to put in.

We all know that guy who doesn't study, shows up to class and gets a 100%. That's not the norm.

I think that most physicians are of above average intelligence and also very hard workers.

If you think about it, plain old medicine is limiting for those super intelligent, high-IQ people.

Those people should be the innovators, creating the cutting-edge technology of tomorrow and discovering the next medical breakthroughs.

They shouldn't be stuck putting in orders all day and getting hosed by insurance companies like us normies. 😛

 

[smalltownpsych]

The idea that there is no difference between people with IQs of 120 and people with IQs of 140 is false. There is plenty of evidence against the so-called "threshold" beyond which there is no difference in outcomes. In the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, which included participants such as Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, those with IQs in the top 0.01% of the population (IQ 155-156) were much more likely to have doctorates and MDs, to own patents, to have incomes in the top 5% of the population, to have gained tenure at university, to have been published in academia, and so on, than those who were "merely" in the top 1% of the population (IQ 135).

The differences between people with very high IQs - all in the top 1% - won't be seen so much in academic work but will be seen in stuff even more advanced than that - winning Nobel Prizes, owning patents, gaining tenure, being published, and so on.

Again, I'm not claiming that IQ is the only important factor in determining success, but there's no evidence that beyond a certain threshold, there is no improvement in outcomes. The outcomes that are most visibly improved upon are simply outcomes that are more advanced than university grades.

I also agree with the other posters about Trump. My intuition is that his IQ is in the 115-125 range; he's not below average or average, he's probably comfortably above average, but he's no genius either.

A study of 64 eminent scientists by Roe (1952) also demonstrates the importance of high IQ at the very top of science. The mathematics results for the physicists were excluded because they found the mathematical ability test too easy, but even then, the median mathematical IQ for the group as a whole was 154, the median verbal IQ was 166, and the median spatial IQ was 137.

I didn’t say there was no difference and actually 120 to 140 could be enough of a split to have some actual significance in some cases. The Terman study, from what I recall argued in my favor that the higher you go on the scale, then the less useful are the differences and by useful, I mean predictive of other outcomes.

Where do you get intuition about Trump’s from? How many IQ assesments have you actually conducted? Again, vocabulary is one of the strongest predictors of IQ and his appears low. There is a reason IQ is not a very predictor of financial outcomes. Also, you are conflating a lot of different types of tests and referring to them all as IQ. Mathematical IQ is not a thing as far as I know. Typically measurements of mathematical ability are understood as achievement tests as opposed to aptitude.

 

[smalltownpsych]

Maybe I like to argue this stuff cause my own IQ is so low. 😛 After all, my Working Memory score is right smack dab at 100. Of course, on the other test items I get super high scores because I have the teachers edition.