Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children
Interesting read, but I have one major qualm about this.<p>There seems to be a confirmatory bias among the academic community that a measure of intellectual success can be found in the percentage of individuals who earn a PhD. Sure, it&#x27;s true that you need to be reasonably smart to earn a PhD, but I think that someone can have a lot of intellectual success (potentially just as much or maybe more) if they don&#x27;t earn a PhD.<p>I think you could even argue that, depending on the field of study, a PhD is the &quot;easy&quot; route for someone who is intellectually gifted - it&#x27;s a simply a continuation of what you have been doing. I would be more impressed by the intellectual who not only realizes that they can conduct their own independent research, but also has the creativity to come up with a use case that can improve and contribute to the world (and presumably, make a living doing so).<p>My point here is that, given two gifted cohorts, one which has a 45% PhD graduation rate and one which has a 50% PhD graduation rate, I don&#x27;t know that you can conclusively say that one is more gifted than the other without looking at other metrics associated with intellectual accomplishment.