[Lewis] Terman's "Stanford-Binet scale" was bionomics for humans, a test meant to summon general intelligence from within an individual, pulling it out where scientists could capture and quantify it. The test in fact did nothing of the sort, asking questions like "What is Christy Mathewson's job?" (Answer: pitcher for the New York Giants.) Sports trivia was a fine way to test what was a rickety trait in the first place. The idea of a unitary general intelligence is a convenient myth, one that collapses as a scientific concept the minute you put any critical pressure on it. Plenty of Terman's contemporaries said as much at the time. But the IQ tests sold very well, and he followed with a Stanford Achievement Test that sold even better. Together they made their lead author a star in psychology. Terman became department chair in 1922, and the president of the American Psychological Association the next year.
—Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris
