ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ: Everyone wants to be somebody, even researchers who toil over studies no one may care about—except if it's something sexy, like IQ and spanking. Then the research has, as they say in the entertainment field, legs and the researcher can run with it. Consider the recent research that purported to indicate that spanking lowered children's IQ scores. Does it? Is it really that simple? So, stop spanking kids and their IQ scores will go up?

Well, what about locking kids away in closets or tents in the backyard, would that also lower IQ scores? So, give kids their own rooms and don't spank them would seem a good solution. The problem remains, however, that everyone is too eager to find out how to raise IQ scores or too willing to see parents as aggressive toward their children. Makes great theater, I guess, but not great research.

Right after WWII, psychologists were faced with a similar problem; they wanted to know what made people willing to hurt, maim or kill others. Who could be so cruel and how could we stop them "with science." Yes, they were blinded by science and believed therein lay the answer to a world of harmony and peaceful existence for all.

So, the researchers sat down with all the Nazi bigwigs they had in prisons and began to give them hour upon hour of psychological testing just to see what they were made of. One psychologist came up with something interesting, the Authoritarian Personality. Seems these guys just believed everyone should listen to them or be like them and, if you were born in the wrong religion or ethnic group, it was okay to torture or kill you. Simple as that.

Another researcher, years later and working at a prestigious American university, tried to replicate the study to see if ordinary citizens could be made to do terrible things to complete strangers. Guess what? Yeah, they would and they weren't necessarily afflicted with this personality. It really had to do with the person in charge and how powerful they were in terms of those ordinary citizens. Put on a white coat; powerful. Stand closer; powerful. Demand that they go on even when the subject was screaming; powerful.

More interesting than those who complied, I find, is those who didn't comply and guess who they were; women. So, women's results were thrown out of the study because they were seen as somehow messing it all up.

Now, as to parents and spanking, what might we learn? For one thing, we need to get our information from something other than parents' reports. I believe this researcher asked parents about their spanking habits. I'm not sure if they under-reported or overdid it. And where did the information about IQ scores come from? I think they looked at spanking of toddlers and IQ scores of child in the lower grades.

Let me give the researcher a break here. I am willing to say that spanking may be related to IQ scores, but I am also willing to say that there are other factors that would have brought on the spanking in the first place. For one thing, how about economic hardships in the family and the level of stress as a result. Also, what about the sense of hopelessness or helplessness that both the child and the parents develop as a result of their situation? Kids who feel hopeless or helpless are kids who are anxious and anxious kids have a hard time concentrating and this affects memory. Voila, low IQ scores. Also, how about vocabulary and creativity and how they are involved in IQ scores? IQ scores aren't written in stone and you can raise them with a little mentoring.

Word to the wise: Question all research.

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