Ken Richardson (psychologist)

Kenneth Richardson (born 21 July 1942) is a British psychologist, author, and former lecturer at the Open University, where he began working in 1972.^[1][2] He has written several books highly critical of IQ testing and related concepts in the field of psychometrics, such as Spearman's g.^[3][4] He contends that the definitions of intelligence, and the assumptions of its causes, "lie at the core of political ideologies", and has called for IQ tests to be banned.^[5] He has supported this position by arguing that IQ tests do not measure cognitive ability, but rather conformity with the culture of the tests' designers.^[6][7][8] Richardson debated the measurement of intelligence with philosopher of science Michael Ruse on the BBC's In Our Time.^[9]

Richardson's son, Brian Richardson, is a senior manager in the Science Web and Interactive Media Team at the Open University.^[1][10]

Bibliography

• Race, Culture and Intelligence (Penguin, 1972) (co-editor)
• Race, Education, Intelligence (National Union of Teachers, 1978) (pamphlet, co-authored with Steven Rose and the National Union of Teachers)
• Understanding Psychology (Open University, 1988)
• Understanding Intelligence (Open University, 1991)
• Models of Cognitive Development (Psychology Press, 1998)
• The Origins Of Human Potential (Routledge, 1998)
• The Making of Intelligence (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999; Columbia University Press, 2000)
• The Evolution of Intelligent Systems: How Molecules Became Minds (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010)
• Genes, Brains, and Human Potential: The Science and Ideology of Intelligence (Columbia University Press, 2017)

References