What's wrong with this article from Science Now: Here's the photo showing the top IQ countries (purple is the smartest, red the dumbest): <img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2886874"> Anybody have an alternative explanation for why the children have higher IQ's on average in the countries shown in purple? Link to the original article: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/06/do-parasites-make-you-dumber.html
Yes. I had read somewhere that children that are exposed to some kind of trauma will affect their IQs. As you can see, Africa has the lowest IQs, but you notice that they live in countries where the violence is very high. If a child sees his parents killed, or sees his sister get raped, or some other kind of traumatic experience, it stays with them for the rest of their lives. Even in the united states, you will notice that children that live in violent neighborhoods are generally the ones with the lowest IQ. Children that live in peaceful neighborhoods where they are not exposed to traumatic violent events have higher IQs. This pretty much holds true in most of the world. You will also notice that sometimes a child from a violent neighborhood will rise up and be shown to have a very high IQ. If you look at the way the kid lives, you will notice he doesnt socialize well with his more violent surroundings and tunes them out and generally keeps to himself. This is why you sometimes see a smart kid come from a bad area.
Autocorrelation problems. Low income / political instability / resource limitations -> disease -> poor performance > etc etc The people who tend to get sick are poor. And poor tend not to have great access to education (a resource that costs $$$). Sickness helps reinforce lack of learning... The causations are all intertwined. Only controlled experimental techniques can seperate this out. And those aren't quite practical... So until then we'll have to use common sense. ie, start with babies of different ethnic groups. control for sickness, wealth, cultural values, etc... Adopted kids into foreign environments could best answer the question.
Yes, the Italians do seem to be a bit smarter than other Europeans. I have a KISS explanation (keep it simple stupid): Asian children are genetically smarter. That's why China and Japan are purple. And the trend holds true even if you remove them from their native countries and transport them to a far away place, like North America. You see it the universities in North America, where the top students are dominated by Asians. That's why MIT is jokingly referred to as "Made in Taiwan".
Don't worry, USA will not become red.. coz many intelligent people from all across the world migrated there but now the trend is changing a little bit.. many intelligent people love to migrate to Europe, Canada or Asia.
What's wrong with this article from Science Now: ----------------- A biologist is going to correlate IQ to infectious disease. A transportation engineer is going to correlate IQ to the automobile and a theologist is going to correlate IQ to religion. Adopted kids into foreign environments could best answer the question. What is common is brain trauma within the first few years of life. (Disease, violence, etc). The pathways to development are impaired or broken. These can be repaired with various therapy but by no means introducing a child into a different environment by itself is going to repair the damage.
Another explanation is IQ is linked to the culture of hard work. That's why China and Japan with Confucian views on importance of education rate high.