The rising tide of I.Q.

The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell has a short but worthwhile column about James Flynn’s observation that worldwide I.Q. test scores are rising, and its implications for the interpretation of I.Q. in general. Gladwell takes the opportunity to snipe at William Saletan’s recent defacement of Slate.com with a series of columns on race and I.Q., which (after stirring up a hurricane of scorn on Slate’s reader forum) culminated in a sad non-apology when Saletan’s main source turned out to be a known white supremacist.