That’s a pretty awful article. It cherry-picks the literature for convenient soundbites, and then proceeds to put even more spin on top of them. It also misinterprets various findings that demonstrate nothing except the restriction of range effect, etc., etc.
Trusting science reporters in the popular press is generally a bad idea, and when it comes to especially charged topics such as this one, they are probably less than worthless on average.
Edit: Just as one example, the authors of that 1987 German study about chess and intelligence themselves explain the result as a restriction of range effect. (“Dieses Ergebnis wird auf die Homogenität der Spielstärke der Bundesligaspieler zurückgeführt.”—“The result is explained by the homogeneity of the skill level of Bundesliga players.”)
And if the author of the Atlantic article had spent a few more minutes googling for newer results, he would have found this 2006 study stating that:
Correlation and regression analyses revealed a clear-cut moderate relationship between general (and in particular numerical) intelligence and the participants’ playing strengths, suggesting that expert chess play does not stand in isolation from superior mental abilities.
“Genes influence everything but determine almost nothing on their own.”—David Shenk, “The Truth About IQ.” A somewhat related article.
That’s a pretty awful article. It cherry-picks the literature for convenient soundbites, and then proceeds to put even more spin on top of them. It also misinterprets various findings that demonstrate nothing except the restriction of range effect, etc., etc.
Trusting science reporters in the popular press is generally a bad idea, and when it comes to especially charged topics such as this one, they are probably less than worthless on average.
Edit: Just as one example, the authors of that 1987 German study about chess and intelligence themselves explain the result as a restriction of range effect. (“Dieses Ergebnis wird auf die Homogenität der Spielstärke der Bundesligaspieler zurückgeführt.”—“The result is explained by the homogeneity of the skill level of Bundesliga players.”)
And if the author of the Atlantic article had spent a few more minutes googling for newer results, he would have found this 2006 study stating that: