Ohio State responds to atheist IQ question, blames text book publisher
The Ohio State Psyco 1100 test which correlated higher IQs to atheists over Christians went viral across the Internet, especially on conservative sites. Now the university has responded, pushing the blame on the text book publisher, Worth Publishing.
Richard Petty, chairman of the Psychology Department at Ohio State University, says this wasn’t a quiz they published. “Nobody in our department, no faculty, staff, students – anybody had anything to do with this,” he said.
Petty blames a text book publisher, Worth Publishing, that offers online sample quizzes as a supplement for students.
“I’m pleased the publisher took swift action, acknowledged it was a mistake and it doesn’t reflect the content of the course or the book or anything like that,” he said.
While he hasn’t found out who wrote the question, Petty says they clearly are inexperienced and don’t have a good knowledge of the field.
The quiz question was: “Theo has an IQ of 100 and Aine has an IQ of 125. Which of the following statements would you expect to be true?” with “Aine is an atheist, while Theo is a Christian” being the correct answer over: “Aine earns less money than Theo, Theo is more liberal than Aine or Theo is an atheist, while Aine is a Christian.”
The publisher of the quiz released a statement to WTVN.
“Worth Publishers deeply regrets the question that was included on our online quiz for General Psychology and apologizes to the students at The Ohio State University for the error. As soon as we became aware, we removed the question from our online quiz bank.”
“The question comes from a published research study meant to test students on external factors impacting intelligence testing. The question as written, however, was flawed methodologically and ethically in its presentation.”
“The content for Worth Publishers quizzing and testing comes directly from Psychology educators and we work hard to ensure each question is thoroughly examined, vetted, and meet our high standards. However, in this case, we did not meet those standards.”
“This question was included in error and does not represent the opinions or viewpoints of any employee, author, or partner of Worth Publishers.”
[…] 04 August, 2014 Breaking News > Hometown News, […]