Anyone who has ever done field research knows that you have to sell authority figures on the merit of what you are doing. Social Scientists don't always like to think of themselves in this way, but it is a necessity. This book explores the brilliant insight that early intelligence testers adopted a medical metaphor, and did so in a way that was remarkably similar to their contemporaries in the dental field. And both established credibility first in the schools as a means towards social progress. I, for one, knew absolutely nothing about dentistry at the turn of the last century before reading this book. Nor did I ever suspect it was relevant to my interests in standardized testing and personality. This book neither criticizes testing, nor praises it. It merely explains the process by which a group of researchers established credibility of their field - and it does so very well.



{If history of testing is a topic of interest, I would rate higher - a 5}.



It is a good companion to The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy