Malone's founding result, a general collective intelligence factor that predicts how well a group does across many tasks, is not yet independently confirmed. A 2021 meta-analysis found every reproduction attempt by independent authors partly or completely failed while every attempt by the original team's affiliates succeeded, and most studies were underpowered. We should not cite the c factor as established; what the book can still lend us is the narrower finding that groups where a few people dominate the conversation did worse.

Evidence 3 passages

• groundsUntitled source

  When one or two people dominated the conversation, the group was, on average, less intelligent than when participation was more evenly distributed.

• groundsUntitled source

  All attempts to reproduce the *c-*factor under independent authorship either partially or completely failed, while all Woolley-affiliated attempts to reproduce the *c-*factor succeeded.

• groundsUntitled source

  We caution against prematurely embracing notions of the *c-*factor unless it can be independently and robustly replicated and demonstrated to be incrementally valid beyond the *g-*factor in group performance contexts.

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