I can also give a personal citation of my own if that might help convince you. My Dad is a clinical psychologist who gives lectures on Conduct Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder, and does work for the courts evaluating the mental competency of defendants. He's the one who first told me there is no correlation between serial killers and intelligence.
The piece you linked to seems to have an explicit political agenda of disproving the popular image of a serial killer as a young white male. And that makes the entire database questionable because if that is the goal, then you explicitly define things as broadly as possible so as to accomplish your political agenda.
I'm aware there are legitimately different profiles of serial killers. For example, your typical female serial killer has murdered multiple relatives by poisoning for the insurance money. This is very different from your typical male serial killer.
At this point I am tired and frustrated and I don't know how to sort out the answer to this question. I know we have IQ scores for a number of high profile cases that clearly fit my understanding of what a serial killer is and those IQs are on the high side, fitting my general understanding. I don't know where to look for data that doesn't have a political agenda of explicitly rebutting popular perception. For the moment, I feel stymied. And the reality is this is not important enough for me to keep digging into the question indefinitely. It's already eaten an excess of my time.
Even more so than confirmation bias?
>And even in that small data set, the average IQ trends up as the number of victims trends up. It comes a lot closer to average IQ than the overall number of 86, but it does trend up.
Obviously, duh. It's not because serial killers tend to be of higher IQ, but because serial killers of higher IQ can get uncaught for longer, and thus manage bigger "number of victims".
Correlation != causation and all.
Your understanding is incorrect. But I read How to Lie With Statistics too, so I'm happy to help you with more sources for your perusal. Keep in mind that merely invoking How to Lie With Statistics does not refute a statistical analysis, you actually have to identify the problem.
1. This document goes into much greater depth about the statistics you're criticizing: http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Serial%20Killer%20Information..., including a coverage of serial killers with 2 or more versus 3 or more victims.
2. The FBI's profile of serial killers, from their behavioral science unit, in which they explicitly call out the popular conception of high IQ serial killers as being a myth: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murde...
3. This study conducts a meta analysis of published literature that finds no correlation between verbal intelligence and traits traditionally associated with psychopathy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28836093/ (also on bioRxiv if you'd like to read the non-paywalled version).
4. This study finds that, for a set of intelligence metrics and psychopathy checklist traits, psychopathy and intelligence are orthogonal: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093854807309806
5. For good measure, since you like popular media like true crime TV, I'll throw in a Scientific American article for you: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/5-myths-about-ser...
> But I'm really not finding your source compelling. So my mind has not been changed.
I suppose I should be transparent with you: I don't debate with people online to persuade them, I debate with people online to persuade the audience. I don't particularly mind if you're convinced, but it is important to me that misinformation not be spread unchallenged. So now we're at a crossroads. I've provided empirical evidence from a variety of cited sources, and you've provided an anecdote from an undergraduate course you took years ago. My sources might be incorrect! The beauty of science is that you can challenge its findings. I welcome you to challenge the sources I've provided as well (though I'd remind you that you've continually abstained from providing any of your own). But if you don't, that's also totally fine, because I think I've sufficiently demonstrated my point either way. Considering your lukewarm dismissal of an academic dataset based on a disagreement with one particular data point out of 206, it appears true crime television and your recollection of an old psych class are better authorities than published research.
I can't find info on the other 204. I see 2 names listed, one a famous case I already had heard about. So I tried to find details on the only other data point where I was provided a name and came up short on the kind of info I would like to see.
Your comments are not written in a good faith fashion. I don't plan to engage you further.
The piece you link to lists the lowest IQ as Simon Pirela with an IQ of 57. I found the following two pieces about Pirela:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-3rd-circuit/1874807.html
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-05-02/news/040502046...
He was apparently involved in four murders, but I am failing to find good details. From what I am reading of the one case where I can find a few details, you could conclude he was pressured into helping commit murder by other people and this occurred in part due to his low IQ. They commuted the death sentence due to his disability. So even the law doesn't hold him fully responsible.
The research you cite lists people as serial killers who killed at least two people. I don't think this is really what most people have in mind when talking about serial killers. Other research defines it differently, only including people who have killed at least three people.
Saying that someone typically has a high IQ doesn't mean they always have a high IQ. If you drop the very low figure of Simon Pirela's 57 IQ from the data, I imagine that would substantially change the means, medians, etc. cited.
My best understanding is that serial killers are typically bright. And the link you have provided is not really compelling evidence to the contrary.
I have spent part of my afternoon looking at this information because a. I did take Intro to Psych a long time ago, so perhaps what I know is outdated and b. I have a sincere interest in knowing what the truth is. That matters far more to me than winning internet arguments. I'm not here to argue with anyone anyway. That's not what motivates me.
But I'm really not finding your source compelling. So my mind has not been changed. I see no reason to believe the stated conclusion of this piece is better information than what I have previously been told. In fact, it looks pretty sketchy to me.