“Life Paths and Accomplishments of Mathematically Precocious Males and Females Four Decades Later [Gelman Commentary]”, Andrew Gelman2014-01-08 (SMPY)⁠:

Anyway, I was interested in this paper (by David Lubinski, Camilla Benbow, and Harrison Kell) because …I’m one of the kids in the study. I was 11 years old at the time.

What’s happened since then? According to the abstract of the paper:

Across the 2 cohorts, 4.1% had earned tenure at a major research university, 2.3% were top executives at “name brand” or Fortune 500 companies, and 2.4% were attorneys at major firms or organizations; participants had published 85 books and 7,572 refereed articles, secured 681 patents, and amassed $478.22^$358₂₀₁₄ million in grants…

Wow, we’ve really cost the taxpayer a lot of money!…Recall that the “mathematically precocious youths” were identified by scoring high on the SAT. So it could well be labeled a study of “youths who were talented at standardized tests.” (But it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Back in the 1970s, we didn’t see standardized tests very often, so we were taking the SAT cold. It’s not like we were sitting there in elementary school taking practice tests every year.)