Terms and Conditions

1. The Service

The Service consists of "The IQ Debacle," a video- and text-based course together with writing prompts, discussion features, and a certificate of completion, delivered online. Course content, feature availability, and pricing may change at any time, including before a Part or Lecture is released.

2. Eligibility and Accounts

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction, to purchase or use the Service. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your sign-in method and for all activity under your account. Notify us immediately at intellect@scideology.com of any unauthorized use.

3. Purchases and Payment Methods

Prices are stated in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted and are due in full at the time of purchase, except where an invoice specifies otherwise. We may offer more than one payment method, described below; the method available to you may vary based on how you purchase and on what we currently support.

3.1 Individual Purchases

Individual course purchases are processed by our payment processor. Completing a purchase creates or upgrades an individual account tied to the email address used at checkout.

3.2 Team / Organization Purchases

A Team purchase provisions a set number of seats for an organization at the per-seat pricing quoted at the time of purchase (corporate and institutional pricing may differ). Our automated Team checkout is processed via Plaid as an ACH bank transfer and therefore requires a U.S. bank account; it is available to U.S.-based organizations only. International Teams, and any Team for which our automated checkout is temporarily unavailable, may instead be invoiced directly by us — see Section 3.3 and Section 6.

3.3 Bitcoin (BTC) Invoices

Because our automated Team checkout can only debit a U.S. bank account, we invoice international Teams directly and accept payment in Bitcoin (BTC). We may also, at our sole discretion, offer the same BTC invoicing to a U.S. Team while our automated checkout is temporarily unavailable. If you pay by BTC:

• The invoice will state a price in U.S. dollars and, for reference only, an equivalent BTC amount fixed at the time the invoice is issued. That BTC amount does not update for later price movement; an invoice may expire and require reissuing if not paid within its stated validity window.
• You are solely responsible for network ("gas"/miner) fees, for sending the exact invoiced amount, and for any loss caused by sending funds to the wrong address or network. We are not responsible for transactions that fail due to wallet, network, or user error.
• Payment is considered received only once the transaction has the number of network confirmations we specify as sufficient; seat access and provisioning follow confirmation, not initiation, of payment.
• BTC payments are final once confirmed on the network. Section 4 (No Refunds) applies equally to BTC payments; we cannot reverse a blockchain transaction, so any refund we agree to make at our discretion will be made in U.S. dollars or BTC at then-current value, at our option.
• A "complimentary seat" or similar promotional offer advertised alongside BTC invoicing is offered at our sole discretion, is subject to change or withdrawal at any time without notice, may be limited in quantity or to purchases made within a stated period, and has no cash value.

4. No Refunds; All Sales Final

Except where required by applicable law, all purchases — individual seats, Team seats, and BTC-invoiced purchases alike — are final and non-refundable once payment is confirmed, regardless of whether the course, a Part, or a feature is subsequently used, and regardless of payment method. This applies to unused Team seats: we do not prorate or refund seats that a Team does not assign or that a member does not use.

5. Team Seats and Organization Accounts

The individual or organization that purchases Team seats (the "Team Owner") is responsible for inviting members, managing the seat pool, and removing members who should no longer have access. We may rely on the Team Owner's instructions for adding or removing members. A member's access is tied to their seat and ends if the Team Owner removes them or the organization's subscription lapses. The Team Owner is responsible for ensuring members' use of the Service complies with these Terms.

6. Offline / Invoiced Arrangements

Where a Team purchase is arranged directly with us (by email, invoice, wire, or BTC as described in Section 3.3) rather than through automated checkout, these Terms still govern that purchase and that Team's use of the Service, together with any specific terms stated on the invoice itself; if the two conflict, the invoice's specific terms control only as to the matters it expressly addresses.

7. Intellectual Property; License to Use

The Service, including all course video, text, graphics, and the "IQ Debacle" name and materials, is owned by Scideology or its licensors and protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Subject to your compliance with these Terms and payment of applicable fees, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service for your own personal (or, for a Team member, your own) educational use. You may not copy, redistribute, publicly perform or display, sell, sublicense, reverse engineer, or create derivative works from the Service or its content, except as we expressly permit in writing.

8. Certificates

A certificate of completion may be issued upon finishing the course and is linked to a public verification page. You are responsible for the accuracy of the name displayed on your certificate. We may revoke or invalidate a certificate obtained through fraud, account sharing, or violation of these Terms.

9. Your Course Submissions

Your writing submissions, discussion messages, and other responses you enter within the course ("Course Submissions") are used to operate the Service for you — checking your writing against the corrections knowledge base, tracking your progress, and, where you use the AI discussion feature, generating a response to your question. We do not sell Course Submissions.

9.1 Default: no research or training use

Unless you opt in under Section 9.2, we do not use your Course Submissions to conduct research, to run experiments, or to build, train, or fine-tune any dataset or machine learning model, ours or a third party's. This is the default for every account and requires nothing from you.

9.2 Optional research consent

You may opt in, from your account settings, to let us use your Course Submissions to conduct research, run experiments, and build datasets — including datasets we release publicly under an open licence. If you opt in:

• The permission covers your Course Submissions generally, including ones you made before opting in.
• You may withdraw it at any time from the same settings page. Withdrawal stops all further use from the moment you make it. It cannot retract work already published or remove a contribution from a dataset already released, and we say so at the point you opt in rather than afterwards.
• We remove direct identifiers — your name, email address, and account identifiers — before any public release. We cannot guarantee that free text is anonymous, because what you write may identify you on its own. Do not include personal details you would not want published.
• Opting in is never a condition of access. The course, its feedback, and its certificates work identically either way, and we will not ask you again if you decline.

9.3 Team seats

Where your seat was bought by an organisation, the choice in Section 9.2 is still yours alone. Your organisation cannot give it on your behalf and cannot withdraw it, we will not accept it from anyone but you, and we do not tell your organisation what you chose — your answer does not appear on the team dashboard. Neither your seat nor your access depends on it.

9.4 Paid contributions

Separately from the course, we commission and pay people to write, review, and annotate material for research and dataset construction. That work is engaged under its own written agreement, is paid for, and is not a Course Submission. Nothing in this Section 9 governs it, and it does not change how your Course Submissions are treated.

10. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• Share your account or a Team seat with anyone not authorized to use it;
• Copy, scrape, or redistribute course content;
• Interfere with, disrupt, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service or its underlying systems; or
• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose.

11. Educational Content and Opinions

The course presents the instructor's analysis and opinions on psychometric methodology, including critiques of specific statistical models and published claims. It is offered for educational and discussion purposes and does not constitute professional, statistical, clinical, or legal advice about any individual assessment, test, or diagnosis. Statements about named models, publications, or third parties reflect the instructor's professional opinion and interpretation of publicly available material.

12. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE.

13. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SCIDEOLOGY AND ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE.

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold Scideology harmless from any claim, loss, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your violation of these Terms or misuse of the Service.

15. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time for violation of these Terms. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, and 14) survive.

16. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will update the "Last updated" date above when we do; continued use of the Service after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

17. Governing Law; Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in Delaware, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts.

18. Miscellaneous

These Terms are the entire agreement between you and Scideology regarding the Service and supersede any prior agreements. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.