Says the research. In response to your point a few posts up about explaining correlations with IQ being the parents influence, IQ is also correlated to social mobility.
"Childhood IQ and achieved education level were significantly and independently associated with upward mobility between the ages of 5 and 49-51 years. Only education was significantly associated (positively) with upward social mobility between 5 and 25 years, and only childhood IQ (again positively) with upward social mobility between 25 and 49-51 years. Childhood IQ was significantly negatively associated with downward social mobility. Adult height, childhood housing conditions, adverse events in childhood and sex were not significant determinants of upward or downward social mobility in this cohort."
No one has claimed those facts are irrefutable. They are claiming that they simply haven't been refuted yet.
I can tell you exactly how to refute those studies. Perform a controlled scientific study that disproves those results. Let me tell you, if you really believe in it, you could be a superstar academic and you sell a lot of books. Disproving such a large body of research would be a big achievement, especially one as unpopular as IQ.
No one is arguing that IQ is invalid. It is not the be-all-end-all metric of intelligence and success, nor is it as accurate as people make it out to be. It measures a narrow spectrum of intelligence.
Treat IQ as a blackbox. It doesn't matter what people think it measures or what it actually measures. Those things are psychological not psychometric.
So let's consider it psychometrically:
1. Does it measure something? Yes it does. This something is consistent across time as people's IQs do not vary dramatically. It is "stable". So whatever it measures is not spurious.
2. Ok so we measure an actual thing. Is the thing it measures distinct? Yes it is. It's been controlled for against every conceivable variable like education, socioeconomic background, and family health. Whatever it is measuring, it is definitely an independent thing, not a representation of something else.
3. Is the real independent thing we're measuring even important? Maybe it's just like fingerprints, real but essentially random and inconsequential. It turns out it correlates with all kinds of things. It acts as a predictor in all kinds of outcomes. It is the strongest predictor available in psychometry. If you could only administer one test to a subject, testing this thing is the most revealing test.
So, regardless of what IQ is, we know what it isn't. We know it isn't fake, unimportant, random, or a combination of other factors.
This is deeply unpopular and goes against many people's core beliefs about society and education, but the science is well-founded.
It can be refuted but it has to be refuted with science, not quotes, metaphors, and anecdotes.
Again, no one is arguing that IQ is meaningless. It is less meaningful the closer you are to the middle of the Bell Curve though. And it is not an end-all measurement of human intelligence.
The reviewers shared a 20-point critique of the paper prior to publication that was ignored by the publisher and researchers. In fact, their results clearly showed the existence of a general intelligence until they performed an unnecessary rotation which is mentioned in Appendix B point 7.
Whether or not IQ has human meaning, social value, or is the "end-all" are subjective arguments that are not within the scope of IQ study. Statistically we know that so far out of all the psychometric scores that have been invented it is the strongest one. Better measurements will most definitely be invented, but they haven't so far.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248886/
"Childhood IQ and achieved education level were significantly and independently associated with upward mobility between the ages of 5 and 49-51 years. Only education was significantly associated (positively) with upward social mobility between 5 and 25 years, and only childhood IQ (again positively) with upward social mobility between 25 and 49-51 years. Childhood IQ was significantly negatively associated with downward social mobility. Adult height, childhood housing conditions, adverse events in childhood and sex were not significant determinants of upward or downward social mobility in this cohort."