Many psychologists believe IQ tests predict academic and vocational success with moderate efficiency. However, they are not intended to measure other important variables such as abilities responsible for art, music, cooking, mechanical invention, foreign languages, caring for a baby, defeating an enemy in war, and so on. In addition, all professional IQ tests have a degree of error derived from thorough statistical analyses of the standardization sample. It's important to keep in mind that since the tests in this book are not given under controlled conditions and have not gone through rigorous standardizing and normalization, they cannot give a true IQ score. The scores given on our tests are merely meant to be an indicator of how a person might perform on an IQ test. In short, your obtained score should only be interpreted as a broad estimate of your intelligence.
The world of intelligence testing is one of ongoing debate. Modern psychology has refined the intelligence test to a degree never thought possible even fifty years ago, yet there are still numerous detractors who make blanket dismissals about the current state of intelligence testing.
What's interesting to note is that the large majority of those who criticize the notion of IQ testing are not professionals in the field, but journalists, book reviewers, television personalities, and others in the media who have no expert knowledge in this field. In Snyderman and Rothman's book The IQ Controversy, the authors questioned more than 600 of the leading experts in all fields of modern psychometric testing and they found almost universal agreement amongst the professionals about what IQ tests measure and their value in assessing intelligence.