Emotional Intelligence (El) has been embraced by many practitioners and academicians without clear empirical support for the construct. This paper highlights the importance of using methodologically defensible scientific criteria for conducting or evaluating research. It reviews literature demonstrating that El models are beset with problems concerning their validity and show that support for the El construct may be based more on tangential speculation than on empirical findings. It finds some common positions with El researchers and underlines contradictions and inconsistencies which may cast doubt on the necessity of El for understanding and predicting leadership effectiveness. [BNET Annotation]