Insanity

I have a saying: “I know how we can tell the truth. We’ll vote on it!” Like many of the things I say, this is best appreciated when viewed through a lens caked with sarcasm.
Why do I bring this up? I was recently reading through the August 2003 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology and came upon an article called “Controversy and Consensus Regarding the Use of Cognitive Ability Testing in Organizations” by Kevin Murphy, Brian Cronin, and Anita Tam. In it, they discuss how they surveyed I/O Psychologists about the use of cognitive ability (i.e., intelligence) tests and found a “reasonable degree of consensus” that such tests are “valid and fair” (among a few other things).
Excuse me? When did opinion become an acceptable proxy for scientific research?
Granted, there’s no dearth of either to support the use of these tests. But this just seems a little odd to celebrate this kind of research as a Feature Article. This is the friggin’ Journal of Applied Psychology –one of the top outlets for scientific research in the whole field! This might be a good conversation piece while nibbling on cheese cubes at the next SIOP happy hour, but a JAP article?
If I had come up with this kind of thing as a dissertation proposal in graduate school, my professors would have laughed and kicked me in the nuts. Twice. It was a tough program. But I guess that some people can just bang their foreheads against a keyboard and get it accepted.