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Central to the paper by Edward Dutton and Richard Lynn reporting that social scientists are dimmer than physical scientists (¡°Who¡¯s naturally the smarter?¡±, 20 February) is an ancient IQ study conducted in Cambridge by John Gibson and Phyllis Light (1967).

A few things should be noted:

• their ¡°social sciences¡± category consisted of only 10 male academics drawn from the Faculty of Economics and Politics
• the overall sample size was 131, not 148, as a close reading of Gibson and Light reveals
• the title of their paper is misquoted
• those who had read agricultural sciences appear to have been the dimmest of all.

The good news is Gibson and Light¡¯s conclusion that ¡°IQ seems not to be related to success as a scientist, provided that it is greater than a certain threshold which varies according to the particular scientific discipline¡±.

R.?E. Rawles
Honorary research fellow in psychology
University College London

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A couple of decades ago, I had to give a light-hearted talk on science and scientism at a graduate conference. In the psychology department¡¯s library, I dug out without much difficulty a couple of ancient papers that allowed me to construct a case that physical scientists were introverted and anal-retentive, compared with social scientists, who were extroverted and free-spirited. Should I?revisit this compelling evidence and publish it in a serious journal?

Keith Richards
Department of Geography
University of Cambridge

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¡°The paper also argues that scientists¡¯ higher intelligence accounts for their political moderation.¡± Reminds me of that famous mathematician and moderate Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber ¨C though there was no doubting his intelligence, for a?given value of ¡°intelligence¡±.

Darren Stephens
Via timeshighereducation.co.uk