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Heiner Rindermann strikes back with a new study of immigrants in Germany:

• Rindermann, H., Klauk, B. & Thompson, J. (2024). Intelligence of refugees in Germany: levels, differences and possible determinants. Journal of Controversial Ideas, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.35995/jci04020020; https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/4/2/281

Intelligence is the best predictor and the most important causal factor in job performance. Measuring intelligence therefore provides information about future job performance and employment. This applies to different professions and social groups, including immigrants and refugees. Two previous German studies with N=29 and N=552 refugees found average intelligence scores of IQ 92 and 86, respectively. A newer study with N=499 refugees and immigrants from N=15 countries conducted in 2017 to 2018 using the BOMAT, a German non-verbal and purely figural matrices test, found an average IQ of 90 (using the norms of the manual, 84 using a recent German comparison sample). Overall (as a result of our “mini-meta-analysis”), refugees’ cognitive abilities are about (5 to) 10 IQ points higher than the average abilities of people in their home countries (measured by student assessments or intelligence tests and compiled by various research groups), but 12 (to 15) IQ points below the German average. Positive selection, people that are more intelligent being more likely to leave their countries of origin, and accessibility to testing all likely play a role. At the individual level, refugees’ IQ was correlated with education: Each additional year of schooling corresponded to about 2 IQ points (r=.41). At the cross-national level, education was again significantly correlated with immigrants’ average IQ, but so were the level of cognitive ability in the home country (five different measures), income (GDP per capita as indicator of standard of living), positively valued policies (e.g., democracy), indicators of evolutionary ancestry, and culture (religion is used as a measure here). Individuals’ cognitive abilities could be better predicted with individual-level data than with country-level data (multiple R=.50 vs. .34). However, if individual predictors are not available, group predictors are not useless. Path analyses at different data levels showed indirect effects of country of origin cognitive ability on refugee intelligence via income and level of education.

The intelligence of nations is very important for projecting its future level of development. As such, examining both the internal and external forces on the evolution of intelligence is important. Internal forces meaning the direction of natural selection within the population (fertility correlation with traits). External forces meaning changes to the population, either from immigration or emigration. Even if a population has neutral natural selection (no correlation between intelligence and fertility), the genetic level of intelligence may go up or down depending on who is leaving (elites? criminals?) and who is entering (elites? criminals?). Rindermann and colleagues report a new study of about 500 immigrants in Germany. Their new result indicates a nonverbal IQ of about 85. This compares with an IQ of 86 from another recent study of 552 immigrants. Using the Danish army test data for male second/third generation immigrants in Denmark, I found an average of 87 IQ. Denmark and Germany have a similar similar profile of immigrants, so we are happy the results are also similar.

The test was another matrix reasoning test (‘Raven clone’) called BOMAT, with 15 tiles:

Their main table of results gives the scores by country of origin:

Most of the sample consists of ‘Syrians’, while many of the other samples are quite small. Still, most of them find reasonable estimates, e.g., the 6 Somalis obtained a score of 78, which when using proper norms is about 73. This compares with a home country IQ of about 70. They helpfully list several estimates of home country IQs. On the other hand, the 24 Polish refugees (?) obtained a score of 86 or so, strangely low (authors do not provide any speculation as to why). The standard error is 3 IQ, so this value is highly incongruent with the typical results of ~98 IQ in Poland. Despite the small samples, the correlation between sample IQs and country of origin IQs was about .70. Regarding the norms, the authors say:

Comparison with the additional new German BOMAT sample of adults: In raw values, the average result of the immigrant sample was 12.04 solved BOMAT tasks (Klauk, 2019, p. 68). The two adult samples chosen for comparison, those predominantly working people and those entirely working people, solved on average 17.03 tasks (using a weighted average would result in a harder norm). The average standard deviation is 4.82. Using these two samples and their standard deviation would result in 84.47 IQ points (instead of IQ 90.03 in Table 2).16 The applied BOMAT norms from young persons therefore do not lead to an underestimation of migrant IQ, but rather to an overestimation. We then varied the group composition (working people, age) and also looked at newly collected data again later (October/November 2023). Everything indicates that such variations would tend to lead to even slightly harder norms (lower migrant IQ). Over and beyond, it should be borne in mind that the norms obtained from samples from North Rhine-Westphalia (BOMAT manual, majority in the comparison sample) can be somewhat lenient relative to Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia always performs somewhat weaker in ability studies within Germany). In any case, there is no evidence of an underestimation of migrants’ IQs. Finally, it should be pointed out that questions of standardization have no consequences for the later correlative analyses (correlations are independent of the mean).

In short, the test manual used a too young cohort for comparison and from a German state with somewhat below average performance. They therefore collected new adult data, which resulted in a 5 IQ decrease in scores. Nothing mysterious about this correction. Remember that the IQ metric is only a relative metric. It’s not like grams or Kelvin degrees. It just means how well a given person performs relative to his age peers on a given test. International norms are obtained by designating some sample as the reference group (usually the British, Greenwich mean IQ) and comparing everybody else to them. Since European samples are generally used for norms, non-Europeans generally obtain scores below 100.

The study itself is pretty basic. The more interesting thing is that it took 3 years to get published. Why? The editorial by the editors of Journal of Controversial Ideas, Jeff McMahan , Francesca Minerva , Peter Singer, explain:

We are also publishing a paper that deals with one of the most controversial topics in academia: group differences in IQ. Academic freedom exists (or should exist) to protect exactly this kind of discussion, the kind that makes many of us uncomfortable, angry, shocked, and even disgusted. This doesn’t mean, of course, that this kind of discussion, or any discussion on a controversial topic, should be taken lightly. Indeed, we think the opposite is true: taking it lightly means automatically dismissing it, rather than responding to it with good counterarguments.

This paper was originally submitted to the journal in September 2021, so it took us an unusually long time to complete the review. In part, the delay was due to the fact that the paper involves empirical research and analysis of raw data in German, which required us to find a trusted German-speaking data analyst to check the raw data and ensure the results could be reproduced. We had also sent the paper to an English-speaking data analyst who had conducted a preliminary analysis and provided the authors with some initial feedback about the more technical parts of the paper, which the authors incorporated, but we felt that it was important to find someone who could rerun the analysis in the original language.

As we understand it, not all journals go to these lengths when reviewing a paper. But we believe that having an external data analyst rerun the analysis of the raw data is good practice, and we plan to continue to do this in the future to guard against faulty or distorted analysis of data. The topic itself adds a second layer of complexity. Because the topic of group differences in IQ is so taboo, there are not many qualified academics working in this area, so it took us some time to find qualified reviewers. But we are confident that the four reviewers were highly qualified for the task. The paper went through three rounds of reviews, and at each round of review, the paper was amended and sent back to the reviewers. After three rounds, the four reviewers were satisfied with how the authors had addressed their comments. We editors also read the paper twice and sent our comments to the authors at various stages of the review process.

The paper argues that asylum seekers coming from some Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and African countries have a lower average IQ than Germans. The authors consider various possible explanations, from genetic factors to trauma and lack of education in the country of origin, but they don’t come down in favour of one or more of these explanations. They also find that refugees who moved to Germany have a higher average IQ than their co-citizens who didn’t flee the country, and consider at least two plausible explanations: the people who found a way to flee the country have higher IQs, or education in Germany is of better quality and facilitates an increase in IQ. It makes sense that in countries ravaged by war, where schools are often closed for reasons of safety or are destroyed by bombs, children don’t develop their full cognitive potential. According to the authors, each year of education is associated with two additional IQ points, so it’s not surprising that people who haven’t attended school for several years don’t fare as well as those who attend school regularly. In the paper, the authors report an interview with a teacher, in which it is said that “About 80% of these young people have missed nine years of schooling”. There could also be something about the quality of the education system in these countries that makes the education less effective even when it’s regularly provided. At the very least, this paper raises the important issue of education in countries where the education system does not provide continuous (and perhaps not high-quality) education.

The authors also argue that people scoring relatively low on IQ tests are less likely to be economically productive than people who obtain higher scores. The implication of the second claim seems to be that immigration to Germany from groups whose members have lower average scores on IQ tests should be restricted, because it is economically costly. The authors don’t explain how and to what extent these groups’ immigration should be restricted.

So, what should we make of the claim that recent asylum seekers have not contributed as much as expected to the German economy, possibly because of lower cognitive ability than that of the general German population? We genuinely don’t know if these claims are true: we don’t know if it’s true that asylum seekers haven’t helped German economic growth, and we don’t know if it’s true that their cognitive capacities are lower than those of the general German population. The authors have presented some evidence, but, as is the case for almost all academic articles, the evidence they have presented is not beyond dispute.

This level of scrutiny was unnecessary for such a simple study. It seems there is little point in submitting to this journal unless one has all the time in the world. We have also found that it rejected our papers. A pity. Yet another useless ‘heterodox’ journal that indirectly makes it nearly impossible to get work done.

Amusingly, they also solicited some egalitarians to reply. Naturally, their sentiment, here represented by Eric Turkheimer and former student Kathryn Paige Harden is that we need less science and more censorship:

One of the commentaries is by K. Paige Harden and E. Turkheimer, two respected psychologists who are familiar with the literature on IQ testing and group differences in IQ. Harden and Turkheimer are critical not only of the authors’ methodology and analysis, but also of our editorial decision to publish the paper, which they argue should not have passed peer review. We would like to clarify that the decision to publish the paper was made by the three editors (not by the editorial board, which is not involved in editorial decisions) on the basis of the comments of four reviewers and two data analysts. It’s possible that all these reviewers were mistaken and failed to detect the problems raised by Harden and Turkheimer, but as already explained, the paper passed a strict process of peer review (three of the four reviewers are also respected psychology professors), and we had no reason to reject the paper on the basis of the peer-review process. We could have rejected the paper only because of fear of criticism for publishing it, which obviously would be contrary to the mission of the journal.

I didn’t bother reading their commentaries, but in case you want to, they are here:

• Controversy Requires Competence: Comment on Rindermann et al. (2024), Eric Turkheimer , K. Paige Harden
  • Rindermann, Klauk, and Thompson (2024) purport to give evidence regarding the determinants of intelligence test scores among refugees who have immigrated to Germany from different countries of origin, and they speculate these intelligence test score differences have negative implications for future economic development in Germany. We describe critical flaws in their measurement, statistical analysis, and interpretation of individual- and country-level differences among the immigrant participants, particularly regarding the authors’ specious reference to “evolutionary ancestry.” We contrast their pseudoscientific approach with valid scientific methods. Human intelligence and human evolution are controversial areas of scientific inquiry that require the highest levels of scientific rigor and editorial discretion, which are absent here.
  • Read: authors are stupid, their science is fake, and we are morally righteous
• Intelligence and Immigration, Christopher Heath Wellman
  • The relative intelligence of prospective migrants likely does little to move the needle on the central issue in the ethics of immigration, namely, whether states are morally entitled to forcibly exclude outsiders. Even so, I argue that varying levels of intelligence may be relevant to a number of theoretically interesting and practically pressing issues. In particular, such variations may in some cases (1) affect the number of refugees a country is obligated to accept, (2) be relevant to the advisability of encouraging refugees to resettle rather than attempting to help them where they are, and (3) have implications for relational egalitarians who are especially concerned with inequalities among fellow citizens.
• On What Matters for Obligations to Refugees, Bradley Hillier-Smith
  • Rindermann et al.’s article concludes that certain refugees may have a lower IQ and as a result may not provide as significant an economic contribution to host states compared to the average citizen, and so may be an economic cost. This commentary first casts doubt on this conclusion. It then, and most importantly, demonstrates that even if this conclusion were true, it would be irrelevant insofar as it would have no moral or legal significance in mitigating or defeating obligations towards refugees. The commentary shows that any normative view that IQ and economic contributions can mitigate or defeat obligations to provide protection has unacceptable implications. The commentary then demonstrates that legal and moral obligations to refugees are in no part contingent on IQ and economic contributions and to suppose otherwise would simply represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature, grounds, and weight of obligations towards refugees. Hence, supposed IQ or economic contributions are entirely irrelevant to, and cannot undermine the strength of, refugees’ claims to protection nor states’ obligations to provide it.

Certainly, the JoCI bent over backwards to satisfy the egalitarians, and they are still not happy. Who is surprised? No one I hope. Their goal is not science, so they cannot be made happy with science. They can only be made happy with silence.