A while ago I blogged about the makings of a successful PhD-candidate under heading ’How to be good’. I said that being smart helps, but that it is not quite enough. Few days ago – somewhere over Teheran – I stumbled on paper which after all seems to emphasise the importance of smartness.
In a paper published in Psychological Science, Lubinski et al. report results of a longitudinal study where they related the later-life publication record with the scores of the subjects’ math tests 25 years before. As it turns out, the performance in terms of publishing increased with increasing tests scores.
Hence, albeit not certainly the only means, it helps to be very smart to succeed in science.
Lubinski et al (2007) Contrasting intellectual patterns for creativity in the arts and sciences: Tracking intellectually precocious youth over 25 years. Psychological Science 18: 948 – 952. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.02007.x
[And where does the uninformative title of this entry come from? Smart ones will find the answer from one of the earlier entries in this blog]
One Comment
This sounds promising…