The NYT article's header is telling: "NEARLY 15,000,000 SCHOOL CHILDREN ARE DEFECTIVES"

15 million kids -- in a nation whose population at the time was just under 100 million -- is an unrealistically high number. Assuming a 50% population of children, that puts the number of "defectives" at 30 percent.

This might be what Gould was referring to in his The Mismeasure of Man, when he suggested that IQ testing is not a valid means of assessing intelligence and is, more often, simply a political or social-manipulation tool.