A lot of psychology is bad research. There's a reason there's a reproduction crisis. Statisticians are to blame for that, too. They've been teaching and using NHST, even though all arguments point away from it.
But statisticians can't fix a bad design, because they rarely know the factors involved, and they can't fix errors in the methods, because they've got no idea about the subject matter. The statistician in your argument comes across as some kind of totem.
> There's nothing there.
There's something there, but since we don't know what, it's best to take it with a grain of salt. However, if even the bloody HR department looks at IQ scores, it gets a lot of attention. And one explanation is that it predicts better than nothing. If you have to choose between two candidates, and one has an IQ of 80 and the other of 120, you know who (on average) who fits best.
A score of 80 suggests a possible clinical issue with mental retardation. Few such people apply to roles who compete with people at average or above scores.
What is much more the case is people 95-145 "competing" with each other based, effectively, on what star sign they have.
The test probably breaks down at some level since it is hard to test higher intelligence, but it seems to me like it is still valid below about 120 IQ.
None have PhDs in statistics. They're all people who got into psychology and were given GUIs by the maths department. Their papers are a symptom of what happens when you press the "ANONVA" button and print the results.
The entire field is an egregious testament to pseudo-intellectual pseudoscience. It's shocking.
There's nothing there. It's unfathomably bad.