So, this: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2013-04-24/finance/38773627_1_billionaires-u-s-senators-graduate-school
My
first reaction was to just be appalled that someone with a job at a
major research university was doing something this idiotic:
Billionaires are among the world’s cleverest people, according to new
research. In “Investigating America’s Elite,” Jonathan Wai, 33, a
research scientist in psychology and member of Duke University’s Talent
Identification Program, looked at the correlation between wealth and
brains — or at least, brains as measured by education. Some 45% of
billionaires rank among the smartest 1% of people in the U.S., the study
found. Other groups with high representation in the smartest set: U.S.
Senators (41%), federal judges (40%), and Fortune 500 CEOs (39%).
Wai
looked at five groups of America’s business and political elite,
totaling 2,254 subjects. The majority of Fortune 500 CEOs, federal
judges, billionaires, senators and members of the House of
Representatives had attended either a selective undergraduate
institution or graduate school, Wai’s research found. And if they
attended one of the 29 “elite colleges,” they were considered to be
among the top 1%. Wai chose the schools based on their average SAT
scores and American College Test scores, as tracked by the “U.S. News
& World Report.” Average SAT scores of 1400 or greater — a combined
score on the math and critical reading sections — put a school in the
top 1%, he says.
No seriously, he comes to the conclusion that "America’s elite are largely drawn from the intellectually gifted, with many in the top 1% of ability" (from the abstract)
based entirely on the fact that graduates of top colleges and grad
programs tend to end up in powerful positions. The problems with that
are so extensive I can't even think about it.
But that's not the part that makes this a classic. This article brings in someone to criticize the study - one Steve Siebold. "A
former professional tennis player who coaches Fortune 500 executives
on mental toughness, Seibold has been interviewing multi-millionaires
and billionaires since college, and he says many of the world’s
wealthiest people have little or no formal education." Now, he does make
a few of the relevant points (about e.g. that college admissions and
the SAT are not perfect proxies for "intelligence" to put it mildly).
But that's not the bone he primarily wants to pick. Well, let me quote:
Siebold: This is based on a faulty premise. If I
have a lot of money, I can get into one of the country’s elite schools.
Family connections are a big part of attending colleges too. George W.
Bush got into Yale. I’d love to see him get into Yale without the Bush
name. I say that after 29 years interviewing the 1,200 wealthiest people
in the world. I was broke and I wanted to be rich. I just wanted to
follow the wealthy so I could be one of them. I found that anyone can be
rich if they can find a problem and solve it.
Siebold: In terms of what separates the wealthy
from the average person, it starts with their beliefs about money. Guys
like Trump and other rich people tend to have positive beliefs about
money. The average person tends to believe that rich people are
narcissists. America wouldn’t exist without rich people.
Siebold: ...I’m more
interested in how successful people use their use their emotions to
work long hours that no rational human being would work and take chances
that no ordinary person would take.
In other words, we get this bogus research
pushing one version of the American meritocratic ideology, and they
bring in to oppose it some guy pushing the contradictory ideological
alternative that "you can make it if you try!"
