In the field of psychology, the study of intelligence is a constant source of controversy. If the concept is so hard to pin down, can sweeping judgements based on it really be reliable?

Tall people are smarter.

This is a phenomenon with scientific research to back it up. It's a small effect, it's not an absolute; I'm not saying Andre the Giant was the intellectual superior of Robert Hooke, you'll still find plenty of smarter-than-average shorter people, and many tall people who clearly … aren't. But the effect does appear to be persistent.

There are numerous explanations for this. Are the genes that determine height and intelligence associated? Is height a result of a healthier upbringing meaning an individual had more biological resources during development, ergo were able to develop a greater intelligence too? Perhaps it's some population-wide manifestation of the Pygmalion effect, where people actually perform better if greater expectations are placed upon them. Rosenthal and Jacobson demonstrated this in the classroom where teachers were told that some pupils were of above-average intelligence, and taught/interacted with them accordingly. These pupils were actually chosen randomly, and yet started performing better as a result of the teachers' actions. If individuals are above average height from an early age, perhaps teachers are perceiving them as older and treating them as such, thus accelerating intellectual development?

Or perhaps people who were both taller and smarter get more mating opportunities, making it an evolved tendency? Stranger things have been suggested.

But claims like this again bring up the question of what intelligence is. I've addressed this before, via the bizarre context of smart chickens. But it bears repeating how slippery a concept it is, especially as it keeps coming up, from the recent A-level exam results coverage, to a bizarre Comment is Free poll that asked "Do you believe religious people are less intelligent than atheists?" A strangely worded question, essentially saying "do you have an unsubstantiated belief that people with unsubstantiated beliefs are less intelligent?"

How do we even measure intelligence? IQ tests are an obvious answer, there are several types that have been extensively refined and are regularly used in legitimate tests and experiments. However, there are still plenty who argue that they're relatively useless, and cite data to back this up. One issue is that early IQ tests were designed to measure what scientists thought intelligence was, and the definition of intelligence was increasingly informed by how people performed on these tests. Thus, there's a somewhat circular logic to the whole thing.

Still, IQ tests are often used, and inform a lot of what we know (or think we know) about intelligence. And there are many who say that this is wrong and the tests are meaningless. But the data generated by these tests has led to numerous theories, such as psychometric analysis which led to the theory of a single general factor that determines intelligence known as Spearman's "g". Others adopt a model that features multiple intelligences. These theories are mutually exclusive, so this leads to much friction.

How many scientists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, any more than that and they'll just keep arguing in the dark about how it should be done.

There are other approaches too, from the biological to the computational. The latter is often associated with artificial intelligence, although is that a valid term when we are still so unsure about what intelligence is? It might be like saying you're trying to create artificial whimsy.

Intelligence also has a strong cultural context. The atheist v religious thing mentioned earlier is a good example. Devoutly religious people are more likely to be from a background where critical thinking and analysis doesn't feature a great deal, so tests that assess these abilities would logically be more difficult. That's not to say they're incapable, but such straightforward tests can't really account for the myriad factors that can affect someone's perceived intelligence.

There's also a well-known example of Cole et al and their dealings with the remote Kpelle tribe. Cole and the other researchers presented people in the tribe with abstract reasoning tasks, but they failed to do them, and it was concluded they were less intelligent. It was later discovered that they could do them fine, but just didn't because they thought it was foolish. Turns out if you live off the land on a day-to-day basis, abstract thinking isn't something that gets you anywhere. In our more privileged western society, we tend to think the opposite.

So it's probably not wise to think you're less intelligent because a single test or analysis says so; odds are there are many professionals out there who would happily argue otherwise. The overall impression is that society in general seems to recognise intelligence when it sees it, even if it is a bit inconsistent. I've met people who think they're idiots compared to someone who works in an obscure area of science, but these people will then casually discuss their favoured football team with reference to stats and performances going back years, with a level of complexity that is frankly baffling.

Some would probably think that writing a piece for the Guardian science section about the various complexities of intelligence would itself be something an intelligent person would do. Well, I'll let you in on a secret; earlier on when I said "psychometrics", I first wrote "psychrometrics". Ha, what an idiot, right?

Also, I've just discovered that for the entire time I was writing this, I've been sat on a fork. That's not especially clever either.

You can follow Dean Burnett's attempts to disguise his own idiocy on twitter, @garwboy

Or you can experience his rambling via the podcast he does with co-blogger Dave Steele.

