Larger brains correlate with higher IQs. Brains in whites start getting smaller after age 25, in Asians after 35. Asians have larger brains, higher IQs and wider hips than do whites who in turn have larger brains and wider hips than some other groups.
Older women with higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had slightly less brain shrinkage than women with low fatty acid levels in a new study.
The results may suggest that omega-3s protect the brain from the loss of volume that happens with normal aging and is seen more severely in people with dementia, the researchers say.
“The brain gets smaller during the normal aging process – about 0.5 percent per year after age 70, but dementia is associated with an accelerated and localized process of brain shrinkage,” said James Pottala, who led the study.
Notice how it is OK in the Reuters article to talk about brain size and Omega-3s but it is not ok to notice the ethnic differences in brain size, which correlate with IQ.
The New York Times will talk about how lead poisoning and other things lower IQ, but in other sections of the paper will deny that IQ measures anything important.
Steve Sailer writes in 2009:
Have you ever noticed how in the New York Times’ universe, IQ is unquestionably valid and terribly, terribly important in the Health section of the newspaper? (See, for example, the NYT’s recurrent coverage of the effects of the exposure to lead in reducing I.Q.)
In this Health section article, for example, the Times is getting worked up over an IQ test given to 2-3 year olds, which is pushing the age limits of IQ testing. And the sample size is only 53. And yet, there’s absolutely zero quibbling about the usefulness of IQ testing in this article. It’s simply assumed that, of course, everybody knows that a difference in average IQ scores of about eight points is a big deal.
Yet, in the Education section of the Times, where you might think IQ would be even more relevant, it rarely comes up. And when it does put in an unwelcome appearance, it is often dismissed as discredited.
And here’s the headline in the Washington Post, “Epilepsy Drug in Pregnancy May Lower Child’s IQ,” which links to the AP’s article by Mike Stobbe. It too simply assumes that IQ is a valid and important thing.
I always love how the New York Times is oh-so-skeptical about IQ testing in general, except when it supports something they like, and then credulity is the order of the day. Look, there is no IQ test for 1-year-olds. What Levitt did in this paper is show that a test of infant liveliness (e.g., how often the infant babbles) that has a low but positive correlation with childhood IQ doesn’t show the normal differences between the races at age 8 to 12 months. Indeed, the highest IQ children (Northeast Asians) do the worst on this test of infant vivacity. With a typical Freakonomic leap of faith, Levitt and Fryer suggested that this shows that IQ differences aren’t genetic but are caused by environmental differences, presumably between age 1 and the earliest ages at which IQ tests are semi-reliable.
Of course, all Levitt actually did was show that this test of infant liveliness is a racially biased predictor of IQ. Why is it racially biased? Well, there are lots more ways for something to go wrong than to go right, but one obvious possibility is that the test of infant alertness might measure traits that differ on average between the races, but aren’t related to IQ differences between the races. For example, within a race, babies that babble more turn out to be a little bit smarter on average than more taciturn babies. Yet, Asian infants don’t babble as much on average as other babies, but that doesn’t mean they’ll turn out to have lower IQs on average than babies from races that babble more. But pointing out that this test of babies is racially biased is not as sexy a story as claiming it shows Nurture Triumphs Over Nature.
Steve Sailer writes in 2007:
NYT readers put a couple of articles on the recent Norwegian study showing a small average advantage in IQ for elder brothers at the top of the Most Emailed articles list for much of last week. So, the Times responded to public interest by publishing a third article on IQ: “Study on I.Q. Prompts Debate on Family Dynamics.” And now the new article is the most emailed of the day!
Hey, wait a minute, I thought that IQ was a discredited, obsolete, fraudulent, racist concept yada yada yada … This reminds me of 2002 when the NYT editorial board thought IQ tests were great when the Supreme Court mandated their use to save low IQ murderers from the death penalty.
Steve Sailer writes in 2013:
As part of my continuing series on the causes of the 60s, let’s consider Kevin Drum’s revival (”America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead”) in Mother Jones magazine of the recurrent theory that lead poisoning leads to the decline of civilization.
