Debunking the 10,000 hour theory

In research made famous by Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, K. Anders Ericsson observed that the difference between amateurs and masters in any given field is typically hard work, not natural talent. Gladwell explains that "once someone has reached an I.Q. of somewhere around 120, having additional I.Q. points doesn’t seem to translate into any measureable real-world advantage." Although, according to some, we have reason to question this contention:

Vanderbilt University researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow...tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13. (Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it as a “thinly disguised” intelligence test.) The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage. 

Gladwell's work, by the way, is well worth reading. But you've probably read it already, right?