Men are more intelligent than women, claims new study (idiot study alert)

[The Straight Story]

Men are more intelligent than women, claims new study

By BEN CLERKIN & FIONA MACRAE Last updated at 13:38pm on 14th September 2006

It is research that is guaranteed to delight men - and infuriate the women in their lives. A controversial new study has claimed that men really are more intelligent than women.

The study - carried out by a man - concluded that men's IQs are almost four points higher than women's.

British-born researcher John Philippe Rushton, who previously created a furore by suggesting intelligence is influenced by race, says the finding could explain why so few women make it to the top in the workplace.

He claims the 'glass ceiling' phenomenon is probably due to inferior intelligence, rather than discrimination or lack of opportunity.

The University of Western Ontario psychologist reached his conclusion after scrutinising the results of university aptitude tests taken by 100,000 students aged 17 and 18 of both sexes.

A focus on a factors such as the ability to quickly grasp a complex concept, verbal reasoning skills and creativity - some of they key ingredients of intelligence - revealed the male teenagers had IQs that were an average of 3.63 points higher. The average person has an IQ of around 100.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405056&in_page_id=1770

Well, the guy that did this study proved the study wrong because he is less intelligent than most the rest of humanity...

[bamacrat]

1. Ha, I knew I was right. My girlfriend will rue the day she thought she

could think. ha ha ha haha ha hayh ah

[Crabby Appleton]

7. Tell her that's why

we get more pay for less work!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

56. Guess who's not getting laid tonight?

or ever, if your GF is as smart as I know she is. :evilgrin:

[madmusic]

66. Well, there's always dumb blonds to fill in.

:)

[Clark2008]

73. They may be dumb, but they don't like chauvinistic pigs, either.

:evilgrin:

[whistle]

2. Another study by Newt Gingrich

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

3. Well, the females are too busy...

"giving it up" to get themselves as edjumatcated as the males.

[niyad]

4. codswallop

[The2ndWheel]

17. I don't care what the study says

If it gets more of that word into a discussion, I'm for it. Definately in my top 5.

[slackmaster]

5. 3.63 IQ points doesn't mean jack shit

Really.

[ThomCat]

13. IQ doesn't mean jack shit.

Every standardized test ever created only tests how similar you are in culture and attitudes to the people (white, conservative men) who created the test.

The IQ test is one of the worst standardized tests. IQ hasn't been considered a serious measure of intelligence in decades.

[cliss]

16. Thanks - you

beat me to it. IQ tests are stupid, literally.

And since they're using 'tests', why not use mortality tables then? women outlive men, by about 10 years (?). Doesn't that mean they're smarter than men???

Smarter = Survive Longer!!!

[Finder]

25. Not true...the latest use of IQ was in 2002 regarding the Death Penalty.

Also, employers use IQ testing often. There are ongoing studies in just about every major university today.

IQ studies have been used unethically in the past and if this article is any indication, will be misused in the future.

In the US, the MSM stays away from most controversial results such as lower IQ for the more religious of society or higher IQs for breastfed babies etc...

[ThomCat]

57. If you can site any of that research

at any of those major universities that supports the use of IQ as a significant measure of intelligence I'd be interested in seeing it. It wasn't so many years ago IQ was thoroughly discredited.

[Finder]

78. Here is a good overview of the current debate...

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris1998b.html

and this one...

http://www.personalityresearch.org/intelligence.html

[aikoaiko]

85. any major university? There are a lot... see the names below.

This came out just after the Bell Curve and it does represent mainstream thought on IQ and race. I'd like to see a citation for thoroughly discrediting the notion of IQ by an academic from someone with credentials measurement.

Wall Street Journal, Dec. 13, 1994, p A18 http://www.psychpage.com/learning/library/intell/mainstream.html

Mainstream Science on Intelligence

Since the publication of "The Bell Curve," many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as discredited are actually firmly supported.

This statement outlines conclusions regarded as mainstream among researchers on intelligence, in particular, on the nature, origins, and practical consequences of individual and group differences in intelligence. Its aim is to promote more reasoned discussion of the vexing phenomenon that the research has revealed in recent decades. The following conclusions are fully described in the major textbooks, professional journals and encyclopedias in intelligence.

The Meaning and Measurement of Intelligence

1. Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings--"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

2. Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments. They do not measure creativity, character personality, or other important differences among individuals, nor are they intended to.

3. While there are different types of intelligence tests, they all measure the same intelligence. Some use words or numbers and require specific cultural knowledge (like vocabulary). Others do not, and instead use shapes or designs and require knowledge of only simple, universal concepts (many/few, open/closed, up/down).

4. The spread of people along the IQ continuum, from low to high, can be represented well by the bell curve (in statistical jargon, the "normal curve"). Most people cluster around the average (IQ 100). Few are either very bright or very dull: About 3% of Americans score above IQ 130 (often considered the threshold for "giftedness"), with about the same percentage below IQ 70 (IQ 70-75 often being considered the threshold for mental retardation).

5. Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English well can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native language.

6. The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little understood. Current research looks, for example, at speed of neural transmission, glucose (energy) uptake, and electrical activity of the brain, uptake, and electrical activity of the brain.

Group Differences

7. Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level. The bell curves of different groups overlap considerably, but groups often differ in where their members tend to cluster along the IQ line. The bell curves for some groups (Jews and East Asians) are centered somewhat higher than for whites in general. Other groups (blacks and Hispanics) are centered somewhat lower than non-Hispanic whites.

8. The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered.

Practical Importance

9. IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. Its relation to the welfare and performance of individuals is very strong in some arenas in life (education, military training), moderate but robust in others (social competence), and modest but consistent in others (law-abidingness). Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance.

10. A high IQ is an advantage in life because virtually all activities require some reasoning and decision-making. Conversely, a low IQ is often a disadvantage, especially in disorganized environments. Of course, a high IQ no more guarantees success than a low IQ guarantees failure in life. There are many exceptions, but the odds for success in our society greatly favor individuals with higher IQs.

11. The practical advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life settings become more complex (novel, ambiguous, changing, unpredictable, or multifaceted). For example, a high IQ is generally necessary to perform well in highly complex or fluid jobs (the professions, management): it is a considerable advantage in moderately complex jobs (crafts, clerical and police work); but it provides less advantage in settings that require only routine decision making or simple problem solving (unskilled work).

12. Differences in intelligence certainly are not the only factor affecting performance in education, training, and highly complex jobs (no one claims they are), but intelligence is often the most important. When individuals have already been selected for high (or low) intelligence and so do not differ as much in IQ, as in graduate school (or special education), other influences on performance loom larger in comparison.

13. Certain personality traits, special talents, aptitudes, physical capabilities, experience, and the like are important (sometimes essential) for successful performance in many jobs, but they have narrower (or unknown) applicability or "transferability" across tasks and settings compared with general intelligence. Some scholars choose to refer to these other human traits as other "intelligences."

Source and Stability of Within-Group Differences

14. Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both their environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1), most thereby indicating that genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals. (Heritability is the squared correlation of phenotype with genotype.) If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin.

15. Members of the same family also tend to differ substantially in intelligence (by an average of about 12 IQ points) for both genetic and environmental reasons. They differ genetically because biological brothers and sisters share exactly half their genes with each parent and, on the average, only half with each other. They also differ in IQ because they experience different environments within the same family.

16. That IQ may be highly heritable does not mean that it is not affected by the environment. Individuals are not born with fixed, unchangeable levels of intelligence (no one claims they are). IQs do gradually stabilize during childhood, however, and generally change little thereafter.

17. Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it to raise low IQs permanently. Whether recent attempts show promise is still a matter of considerable scientific debate.

18. Genetically caused differences are not necessarily irremediable (consider diabetes, poor vision, and phenalketonuria), nor are environmentally caused ones necessarily remediable (consider injuries, poisons, severe neglect, and some diseases). Both may be preventable to some extent.

Source and Stability of Between-Group Differences

19. There is no persuasive evidence that the IQ bell curves for different racial-ethnic groups are converging. Surveys in some years show that gaps in academic achievement have narrowed a bit for some races, ages, school subjects and skill levels, but this picture seems too mixed to reflect a general shift in IQ levels themselves.

20. Racial-ethnic differences in IQ bell curves are essentially the same when youngsters leave high school as when they enter first grade. However, because bright youngsters learn faster than slow learners, these same IQ differences lead to growing disparities in amount learned as youngsters progress from grades one to 12. As large national surveys continue to show, black 17- year-olds perform, on the average, more like white 13-year-olds in reading, math, and science, with Hispanics in between.

21. The reasons that blacks differ among themselves in intelligence appear to be basically the same as those for why whites (or Asians or Hispanics) differ among themselves. Both environment and genetic heredity are involved.

22. There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups. The reasons for these IQ differences between groups may be markedly different from the reasons for why individuals differ among themselves within any particular group (whites or blacks or Asians). In fact, it is wrong to assume, as many do, that the reason why some individuals in a population have high IQs but others have low IQs must be the same reason why some populations contain more such high (or low) IQ individuals than others. Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too.

23. Racial-ethnic differences are somewhat smaller but still substantial for individuals from the same socioeconomic backgrounds. To illustrate, black students from prosperous families tend to score higher in IQ than blacks from poor families, but they score no higher, on average, than whites from poor families.

24. Almost all Americans who identify themselves as black have white ancestors-the white admixture is about 20%, on average--and many self-designated whites, Hispanics, and others likewise have mixed ancestry. Because research on intelligence relies on self- classification into distinct racial categories, as does most other social-science research, its findings likewise relate to some unclear mixture of social and biological distinctions among groups (no one claims otherwise).

Implications for Social Policy

25. The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They can, however, help us estimate the likely success and side-effects of pursuing those goals via different means.

The following professors-all experts in intelligence an allied fields-have signed this statement:
Richard D. Arvey, University of Minnesota
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota
John B. Carroll, U.N.C. at Chapel Hill
Raymond B. Cattell, University of Hawaii
David B. Cohen, U.T. at Austin
Rene W. Dawis, University of Minnesota
Douglas K. Detterman, Case Western Reserve U.
Marvin Dunnette, University of Minnesota
Hans Eysenck, University of London
Jack Feldman, Georgia Institute of Technology
Edwin A. Fleishman, George Mason University
Grover C. Gilmore, Case Western Reserve U.
Robert A. Gordon, Johns Hopkins University
Linda S. Gottfredsen, University of Delaware
Richard J. Haier, U.C. Irvine
Garrett Hardin, U.C. Berkeley
Robert Hogan, University of Tulsa
Joseph M. Horn, U.T. at Austin
Lloyd G. Humphreys, U.Ill. at Champaign-Urbana
John E. Hunter, Michigan State University
Seymour W. Itzkoff, Smith College
Douglas N. Jackson, U. of Western Ontario
James J. Jenkins, U. of South Florida
Arthur R. Jensen, U.C. Berkeley
Alan S. Kaufman, University of Alabama
Nadeen L. Kaufman, Cal. School of Prof. Psych., S.D.
Timothy Z. Keith, Alfred University
Nadine Lambert, U.C. Berkeley
John C. Loehlin, U.T. at Austin
David Lubinski, Iowa State University
David T. Lykken, University of Minnesota
Richard Lynn, University of Ulster at Coleraine
Paul E. Meehl, University of Minnesota
R. Travis Osborne, University of Georgia
Robert Perloff, University of Pittsburg
Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Cecil R. Reynolds Texas A&M University
David C. Rowe University of Arizona
J. Philippe Rushton U. of Western Ontario
Vincent Sarich, U.C. Berkeley
Sandra Scarr, University of Virginia
Frank L. Schmidt University of Iowa
Lyle F. Schoenfeldt, Texas A&M University
James C. Sharf, George Washington University
Julian C. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
Del Theissen, U.T. at Austin
Lee A. Thompson, Case Western Reserve U.
Robert M. Thorndike, Western Washington University
Philip Anthony Vernon, U. of Western Ontario
Lee Willerman, U.T. at Austin

[aikoaiko]

26. Actually, IQ is a really good predictor of various measures of success

graduating high school
graduating college
staying out of jail
staying out of poverty

etc.

Where do you get this "hasn't been considered a serious measure of intelligence in decades"? Intelligence research is heating up more now than ever.

[ThomCat]

54. Sociology Graduate courses

especially the Sociology of Education courses. It's been a few years, but the literature I read was all pretty clear. Only corporations were supporting IQ tests, and only because it was an economical short cut.

[aikoaiko]

70. Well there are disciplinary differences in these things.

Sociologists as a whole are not interested in statistical measurement of mental constructs, but academic psychologists still are.

Oh, maybe you meant that sociologists of ed asserted that only corporations were administering IQ tests? If so there were flat out ignorant of the massive amount of IQ testing going on in schools as well as theoretical and empirical work being done my academic psychologists. Corporations are administrating IQ tests too because there are efficient predictors of cognitive abilities in work performance.

[fishwax]

61. IQ tests are a remarkably accurate indicator of intelligence

But only if you define intelligence exclusively as how well one does on an IQ test.

I agree with you completely. IQ means jack.

[aikoaiko]

28. yes and no

Put a 100 IQ person next to a 104 IQ person and you won't see much of a difference in everyday life. But (and this is what I am sure he is arguing), it does start to make a difference in the tails of the normally distributed populations. At the tails the distribution you have competition among the brightest of two groups for very few of the top slots in society and that is where, in principle, you would see the effect of even small average differences. The same is true in the other end of the distribution as well. Men and boys are more troubled by low intelligence and more find themselves institutionalized.

IQ obviously isn't the only variable involved, but it does seem to be involved in a lot of important life decisions.

[sweetheart]

6. Men are not men

and women are not women,
knowledge is not knowledge,
and time is not real,
death is the end,
and nothing will stay,
that you don't already have today.

[Orrex]

8. Damn--there goes my last excuse

All this time I've been successfully playing the "Dumb Card," and now even that's been taken away from me.

[CTyankee]

9. This was produced by rotting testosterone

in an ugly man's body.

[Finder]

10. Average IQ of 100????? Sounds like a White House survey.lol n/t

[Orrex]

11. And half of all people are of below average IQ! Imagine!

:rofl:

[Donald Ian Rankin]

50. That's not true!

Half of people are below the *median* IQ.

Average is usually used to refer to the mean average, not the median, and in an asymmetrical distribution like IQ that's not likely to be the same, although they're probably fairly similar.

Imagine an island with 9 IQ 10 morons and one IQ 210 genius. The average IQ will thus be 30, and 90% of the population will have lower than average IQ.

[ThomCat]

55. While that is technically true

In any large population, testing for any characteristic that is randomly distributed, the median will be the same as the average.

The median and average differ only in small groups or when dealing with non-random factors.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

60. No, that's *seriously* wrong.

Any characteristic that is *normally* (or otherwise symetrically) distributed will have roughly equal mean and median.

Many naturally-occuring distributions *are* approximately normal (any form of aggregate of lots of independent identically distributed contributory factors is likely to be), but a good many are e.g. skewed normal or poisson, or something else, and will have mean and median non-trivially different.

[Orrex]

69. Yes, but I was *seriously* joking

It was a riff on the old tale about, I believe, Eisenhower being shocked to hear that half of all Americans are of below-average IQ.

It was a joke, see.

:rofl:

[Donald Ian Rankin]

108. Sorry; you got one of my pet crusades.

Lack of understanding of statistics and economics is something that particularly worries me - far too many people are shockingly ignorant of what numbers mean, and it's *incredibly* important - there's no other way to understand a great many subjects.

As you were making a joke about someone else's lack of understanding of statistics which itself contained a misunderstanding, I figured I had a fair excuse to go off into a rant.

If you knew all this already, sorry, but please try to set a good example for the ignorant; if not, at least you (and others) have hopefully learned something.

[Betsy Ross]

12. Once again, a biased test

The test looked at "grasp a complex concept, verbal reasoning skills and creativity" but did not look at other aspects of the mind. I believe that women tend to have more emotional knowledge and instinct than do men. These too should be included in intelligence otherwise it is once again relegating women's skill and work to a secondary status. I believe there are differences between men and women but 4 points is squat anyway.

[ThomCat]

19. I would be more concerned about what they consider

to be complex concepts, verbal reasoning and creativity. How culturally determined are the concepts? What examples do they require of reasoning? How specific is the creative answer they're looking for?

For example: I remember taking tests that were loaded with sports metaphores. I hate sports and couldn't make heads or tails out of those questions. I imagine a lot of girls had the same difficulty. So the jocks were guaranteed to score higher just because they were jocks.

[Betsy Ross]

29. This reminds me of a statistics exam I took

If the chances of a Cincinnati win in any game is 65%, what are its chances to win the World Series in four games? The professor had to through out the question when one of the students asked "what's a Cincinnati(sp?)?" I didn't know much more.

[Sparkly]

36. I've known men unable to grasp the "complex concept" of laundry machines,

and without the "verbal reasoning" to understand the words "leave me alone," or the "creativity" to - well... We won't go there...

No offense to guys in general. I'm sure they were just exceptions to the big 4-point advantage.

[Triana]

76. Women are better at multitasking...

...and analyzing, too

[kwolf68]

14. Wow

I thought this type of thinking died out in the 1800s...you mean there are people out there who are doing studies to prove one sex, or one race is superior/inferior to the other?

OK, let us say women on average are not quite as smart...now what?

It would NEVER mean there are NOT some women smarter than MOST men or that many women are prevented from climbing the corporate ladder because they don't play golf with the boys or tell sexist jokes in the locker room.

That all being said, as we've seen time and time again from studies on this very topic, the person doing the study almost ALWAYS has an agenda and thus is producing results that tends to his thinking.

[valerief]

18. I concur. Well said. n/t

[Poll_Blind]

15. What the hell does a 4-point spread equate to, even if true?

  I mean, I doubt that's even the difference between "Speaking English good." and "Speaking English well.", even if enhanced linguistics were somehow associated with IQ which may be arguable but tenuous in a number of respects. Besides, look at the terrible debilitation that testosterone is responsible for in the average male psyche. Men, almost exclusively, have historically (and men even write the history books, generally) been distracted by chest-thumping and chest-staring. If we have, on average, slightly-higher IQ's than women, on average, does that in someway disprove the fact that men are, in a superlative understatement here, responsible for much more than their fair share of fucking up the world?

  I would be interested in seeing similar studies referencing the interference of ego in cognitive thinking. I think women would likely come out on top on that one. Still, of course, "On top" in either case in somewhat meaningless.

PB

[Orrex]

20. Four points grants the ability to "write" your name in the snow with ease

Other than that, not much.

[kwolf68]

21. LOL

Yes and to have the ability to piss while standing up.

Studies like this just piss me off.

[Poll_Blind]

22. LOL! A man may be able to write his name in the snow but...

...I've never met a man who could throw down a MAXICODE UPC symbol in the snow like only a lady can!



  Accuracy in both cases is only as important as the inverse proportionality of alcohol-consumed will allow in either case.

PB

[Orrex]

23. It's just a matter of bit-rate and bandwidth

Will this lock the thread? My +4 IQ points tell me "maybe!"

[Rex]

24. Inferior intelligence? This guy do his 'research' from Mein Kampf?

Ya'll pardon my French - what a fucking loser! I think I lost 4 IQ points, just for reading that.

[BlueJazz]

27. Men have many faults...Women have but Two.....

..Everything they say and everything they do.


JK...JK...JK

[CTyankee]

45. Whut? Care to "splain that? n/t

[BlueJazz]

111. The JK (s) at the bottom mean Just Kidding. It was my feeble..

...attempt at being sataric in regard to the idiotic "Study" that Women are not as intelligent as Men... :)

[aikoaiko]

30. This article may be a fair representation of the work, but I doubt it.

Its truly amazing how a journalist can butcher a scholar's work. My experience is that journalists often already have an idea of what they want their subjects to say and keep asking questions until they say it.

Like the Bell Curve, this research is incendiary and its difficult to depict accurately in a article written to the length of time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

[Finder]

32. Agree. n/t

[LeftishBrit]

34. Good point

There are enough problems with the actual paper (see my other post); but this report distorts and over-simplifies it further. The "Daily (Hate)-Mail" is one of our worst tabloids.

[OneBlueSky]

31. personally, I think it's just the opposite, particularly when . . .

it comes to emotional intelligence . . . I've long believed that having the female perspective and outlook represented in public policy would result in a lot less war and in governmental policies that were a lot more nurturing and less punitive . . . bwdik? . . .

[Triana]

77. that's what scares 'em (men)

thus their insecurity and control freakishness and constant need to 'keep us in our place' and out of public policy. We might run things better than they would and show them up. They can't have THAT! Many men are incredibly insecure. I've known few who aren't.

Any dolt who would put out a bogus chest-beating "study" like this one is EXTREMELY insecure. Arrogant, alpha-male, much? I think so. I wonder if his knuckles still drag the ground when he walks.

[LeftishBrit]

33. There are a lot of problems with the study

Here's a link to a paper in "Nature" which points out many problems with the 'science' in it.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7064/full/438031a.html;jsessionid=76F56324ABD89197CD2E50C65CEA3613


Rushton has been publishing fairly outrageous papers on sex, race and intelligence for quite a number of years. Maybe he really has prejudices that get in the way of his science; maybe he wants to be controversial in order to attract comments and citations (in the academic world, it's advantageous to your career to be cited as much as possible, and hostile citations count for just as much as favourable ones in the citation indices!) He is not exactly treated by most people in the field as a great scientific authority.

[Sparkly]

35. "- as long as they work harder."

"Women needn't feel despondent, however, as the scientists believe women can achieve just as much as men - as long as they work harder."

Hey "scientists," grasp THIS:

[donco6]

37. Pity the women . . .

whose noses will be rubbed in this for the next 50 years. Regardless of whether it's worthless or not, the Bubbas of the world aren't gonna care. "Woman! I'm smarter 'n you - them thar Canadian doctors done proved it. Now gimme a beer."

[newspeak]

38. the glass ceiling, primarily

is because people (in most cases white men) usually promote those who are like themselves. Instead of, valuing people (both men and women) who resolve problems differently or think outside the box, many in management promote people like themselves (yes men); thereby, having less diverse thought and less creative concepts. I would like further details of this study. One thing that my math teacher stated is that many women while in school were told that they did not have the "head" for math and science--repeat it enough times and one may become intimidated and believe it is true. He further stated that math is like playing the piano, if you practice it enough times, you become more adept at solving it--he showed us, in algebra, different ways to solve the equation so that we could better understand how to come to the correct answer using different approaches. The divisiveness of these so-called studies today, leave me suspect of their motives.

[sendero]

39. This stuff is all moot..

... because it always depends on how you define "intelligence". Crunching numbers and pattern recognition are not the only forms of intelligence humans can use to their advantage.

Studies like this are useless.

[Imagevision]

40. Bottomline: Women do some things better then men & Men

do some things better then women...

[Sparkly]

42. Or, how about: SOME women do SOME things better than SOME men

and SOME men do SOME things better than SOME women...

(And there are some things ONLY women can do, and some things ONLY men can do.)

It's all a lot more complicated than "men are smarter."

(Besides, everybody knows women are smarter. :P)

[Donald Ian Rankin]

51. You can go slightly further than that.

You can say "most", rather than "some", in some cases - apparently including IQ, if this study is valid, and I see no reason to believe it isn't - which is a more useful claim (although 4 IQ points will probably not be "most" by much).

[Sparkly]

59. "I see no reason to believe it isn't"

Have you seen the details of the study? (Methods, samples, blind/not blind, reliability & validity, etc...)?

I haven't. So I say, "I see no reason to believe it IS."

My undergrad psych profs emphasized this point: "You'll see many news reports of 'studies' and their conclusions; do not believe them automatically. Look at the study itself for the following factors...."

Since then, I've come to understand why they made such a point of that.

[Truthiness Inspector]

41. Ridiculous study

The "glass ceiling" is created by insecure men, not by "less intelligent" women.

[Tactical Progressive]

43. Wimmens just ain't that smart.

That's just a fact. They have to spend all that time fixin' their hair and doin makeup to bother tryin to get smart. I mean, you ever see a woman rebuild a carburetor, which takes alot of smarts? No you haven't. And that's just one example. I could come up with alot more.

But that's OK because they leave the hard thinkin up to us, which we know how to do. That way they can concentrate on picking a pretty dress to wear, though they usually need to ask our help for that too.

And now we got this scientific study which shows what we already know from experience. It says men are four percent smarter, which is about four times as smart. I wouldn'ta thought it would be that much, but it doesn't surprise me.

[WinkyDink]

44. Men ARE smarter! Every husband has married UP!

[newspeak]

48. it's so funny that society has been shoving men and women

in certain roles throughout history. I wonder how many people know that during the Civil War, women went in drag and fought beside men in battle. That they were only caught when they were wounded and some were buried and their commanders never knew they were women. My daughter has a very analytical mind, and very militaristic (sergeant-could make a great drill sergeant)-very adept at math, sciences. My son, is very creative; painting, music (play guitar), and writes lyrics--he's the arbitrator, pacifist. Society has perceived male-female roles-yet, we are all different-for centuries, society has attempted to hammer square pegs into round holes. It doesn't work, we're all different, and those differences make us who we are; thus unique.

[TahitiNut]

46. I thought that was obvious. After all, men make the important decisions ..

... like who'll be President, what our national policies should be, and so on. Women make the less important decisions like how to raise the kids, what to eat, where to get health care, how to manage a household budget, and so on.

:dunce:

[WinkyDink]

96. I said something similar to a smug little Republican h.s. senior who

denigrated his at-home mother while bragging about his corporate father. I told him yeah, she's ONLY raising a HUMAN BEING, nothing IMPORTANT about THAT.

[TahitiNut]

100. It's a topsy-turvy society that elevates the exploitation of the market

... above making our children and communities better places to live. For a long, long time it has seemed to me that we men were left with the dirtier, more soul-sucking jobs because were weren't anatomically-equipped to bear children and nurse them at our bosoms. So we engaged in creating a mythology that, somehow, our jobs were worthy of more respect. Nonsense. While I've heartily and conscientiously worked for gender equity in all areas of endeavor, it has perplexed me that becoming a kiss-ass corporate slave is somehow equated with 'liberation.' But mine is not to reason why - it's but to work for equitable treatment.

[leesa]

47. Yeah. I see evidence of that in our government and corporate leaders

every day.

[msmcghee]

49. Rushton has spent most of his life trying to prove that . .

. . genetics predicts such things. He's an Evolutionary Psychologists for God's sake.

For example (referring the IQ testing in a book review) Rushton said: "These findings in Lynn's latest book have profound geopolitical significance. They imply it may simply not be possible to transmit Western-style democratic and economic systems to the populations of Latin America and Moslem North Africa and the Middle East, let alone sub-Saharan Africa. They mean that the world's long-term problems will stem from its populations' capabilities-much deeper and more intractable than any "Clash of Civilizations"-style competition between different political concepts."

So, he's not just a sexist he's a racist. And he uses his science to his ideological beliefs.

[Marie26]

52. I think this guy has an agenda

He's done lots of off-the-wall studies on intelligence, i.e.:

"Rushton has stated that the evolution of intelligence is inversely related to the evolution of penis size, representing a genetic trade-off saying "it's more brain or more penis. You can't have everything." :rofl:

"Prof Rushton, who four years ago triggered a scientific row by claiming intelligence and behaviour are influenced by race, with blacks being more likely to be involved in crime and Asians having a greater chance of high IQs, however, stands by his results."

He's also suggested that different social classes are really determined by intelligence levels (Bush is just smarter than us, that's all). With the additional suggestion that lower class people who had more babies brought about the end of ancient civilizations, until the superior supermen could re-establish dominance.

The Univ. of Western Ontario isn't Yale, but he's made quite a name for himself by releasing these controversial studies. If he found the same thing every other study has, he'd lose the headlines.

"Rushton has been considered by many scholars to be more of a self-promoter than serious scientist. After mass mailing a booklet to psychology, sociology and anthropology professors across North America based on his racial papers, Hermann Helmuth, a professor of anthropology at Trent University, said, "It is in a way personal and political propaganda. There is no basis to his scientific research."<29>

He's also got some interesting friends: "Since 2002, Rushton has been the president of the controversial Pioneer Fund, which aims "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences." Rushton's work has received grants from the fund totalling over $1 million USD since 1981. Rushton has been associated with American Renaissance, a white nationalist monthly magazine. He has also written articles for VDARE, a right-wing anti-immigrant website. Rushton is accused by critics of advocating a new eugenics movement <27>, and is openly praised by proponents of eugenics.<28>" The Pioneer Fund was established by eugenicists in 1937, & had many ties to the Nazi Party. The Pioneer Fund produced movies on eugenics for the Nazi Party, encouraged segregation, and promoted forced sterilization. Currently, the group funds anti-immigrant groups, white nationalists, and studies on IQ and race. It is considered a hate group.

Conclusion: Self-promoting, racist, angry white male using biased science as a means of spreading his particular ideology. I'm just a girl, though, so this thinking thing is a strain.

J. Philippe Rushton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton

Pioneer Fund: http://www.pioneerfund.org/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund#Current_funding

[bobbieinok]

67. many of Bell Curve's sources were funded by Pioneer Fund

(what I remember from NY Review of Books review of The Bell Curvce)

[aikoaiko]

87. The main data set was collected by FED money for NLSY....

... the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, with over 10000 respondents. The original researchers collecting the data had no relationship to Herrnstein or Murray, the authors of the Bell Curve.

[bobbieinok]

112. see among many others this about the Pioneer Fund + The Bell Curve

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1271

Racism Resurgent:
How Media Let The Bell Curve's Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race

By Jim Naureckas

....

...Nearly all the research that Murray and Herrnstein relied on for their central claims about race and IQ was funded by the Pioneer Fund, described by the London Sunday Telegraph (3/12/89) as a "neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics." The fund's mission is to promote eugenics, a philosophy that maintains that "genetically unfit" individuals or races are a threat to society.

The Pioneer Fund was set up in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a millionaire who advocated sending blacks back to Africa. The foundation's charter set forth the group's missions as "racial betterment" and aid for people "deemed to be descended primarily from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States." (In 1985, after Pioneer Fund grant recipients began receiving political heat, the charter was slightly amended to play down the race angle--GQ, 11/94.)

The fund's first president, Harry Laughlin, was an influential advocate of sterilization for those he considered genetically unfit. In successfully advocating laws that would restrict immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, Laughlin testified before Congress that 83 percent of Jewish immigrants were innately feeble-minded (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94). Another founder, Frederick Osborn, described Nazi Germany's sterilization law as "a most exciting experiment" (Discovery Journal, 7/9/94).

The fund's current president, Harry Weyher, denounces the Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools, saying, "All Brown did was wreck the school system" (GQ, 11/94). The fund's treasurer, John Trevor, formerly served as treasurer for the crypto-fascist Coalition of Patriotic Societies, when it called in 1962 for the release of Nazi war criminals and praised South Africa's "well-reasoned racial policies" (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94).

One of the Pioneer Fund's largest current grantees is Roger Pearson, an activist and publisher who has been associated with international fascist currents. Pearson has written: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide" (Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party).


....

(Long discussion about Pioneer-funded Rushton, the author of the study in the OP---'British-born researcher John Philippe Rushton, who previously created a furore by suggesting intelligence is influenced by race, says the finding could explain why so few women make it to the top in the workplace.'

....

Anyone who flipped through the footnotes and bibliography of Murray and Herrnstein's book could see that there was something screwy about their sources. And there is hardly a proposition in their book that had not been thoroughly debunked more than a decade ago by Steven Jay Gould's classic work on the pseudo-science behind eugenics, The Mismeasure of Man.

....

The connection between the book and the anti-immigrant movement is, once again, the Pioneer Fund; the fund has always feared immigrants, although its concerns have shifted from Poles and Italians to blacks and Latinos. The leading anti-immigration group in the U.S. is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (unfortunately sharing an acronym with the media watch group FAIR); the federation has received more than $1 million in Pioneer money, which was critical in getting the organization off the ground. (See Extra!, 7-8/93.) Pioneer also funds the American Immigration Control Foundation, a more overtly racist group whose work is cited by Murray and Herrnstein.

....

It was left to John McLaughlin, of all people, to say the obvious about The Bell Curve: "It is largely pseudo-scientific and it is singularly unhelpful."

*****

And note especially

'Anyone who flipped through the footnotes and bibliography of Murray and Herrnstein's book could see that there was something screwy about their sources. And there is hardly a proposition in their book that had not been thoroughly debunked more than a decade ago by Steven Jay Gould's classic work on the pseudo-science behind eugenics, The Mismeasure of Man.'

[aikoaiko]

113. Respectfully, the FAIR article is not a fair piece of journalism

I'm not going to defend every silly thing the Pioneer fund people have said or written, but that article clearly misrepresents the data set and many of the people involved in intelligence research.

They even smeared Hans Eysenck. :(

Gould did not debunk much in the field of intelligence testing although he did describe some problems as well as red herrings. People who no very little about intelligence testing often cite Gould's work.

[Cleita]

53. So we were told when I was in high school.

How odd it was that we could always outsmart the boys.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

58. The title severely misinterprets the study.

"Men are more intelligent that women" is a massively different claim to "men are, on average, more intelligent than women", and also to "Men have higher IQ than women".

"Men have, on average, higher IQ than women" is something I'm perferctly willing to believe. A 4-point difference in average, while very small, is statistically significant over a sample of 100,000.

The difference in average is not really relevant to the glass ceiling - for that, you'd want to be looking at what fraction of the top n% are male, for some small value of n; it's also not clear to me how good a measure of employability IQ is, although I suspect it's generally underrated. For what it's worth, my own experience looking at maths departments in the UK has left me fairly sure that a relatively small fraction of the most mathematically able members of the population are women (of the maths departments I've seen, figures of about 25% undergraduates, 15% postgraduates and 10% staff being female, or fewer, seem about typical, and that's in departments which, far from discriminating against women, are desperately trying to recruit more of them), and I suspect this may be a non-trivial contributory factor.

The choice of university aptitude tests means that the tests will probably be designed not to discriminate against either gender better than random internet tests, which is good; on the other hand, it does mean that it only applies to university applicants, which could bias the study one way or the other somewhat (although I see no reason to assume it would).

The problem I have with this study is the interpretation, not the actual result. I'd be interested to see the results displayed as a pair of graphs of IQ distribution, rather than a simple average.

[ThomCat]

63. You're jumping the gun

How about first establishing a definition of what is Intelligence and how to measure it, and then determining whether or not an IQ test actually measures it accurately?

As a previous poster mentioned, and IQ test only measures intelligence if you define intelligence as how well you did on an IQ test. Biasses have been measured so systematically and consistently in all standardized tests that it's been known for quite a long time that IQ tests mostly test cultural familiarity.

The level of bias against women, against black men, and against certain other groups (taken as a group) was measured and documented quite a long time ago. And while the tests have been altered and changed since then, I've never seen anything that backed up the impartiality of new standardized tests.

So, if a test starts girls out with an automatic penalty because they aren't raised the same way as boys and don't learn all the same things to the same extent, then that cultural penalty does not actually mean they are less intelligent.

Until there is a culturally independent test there is not going to be a diffinitive answers about anyone's intelligence. I'm guessing that test will be medical, along the lines of monitoring brain activity, rather than a paper and pencil test.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

72. What the IQ test measures is IQ.

I think you're rather missing the point by saying "first define intelligence" - intelligence *isn't* well-defined; there are lots of abilities that could be termed "intelligence", and while they correlate different people will be better at some than at others.

IQ, on the other hand, is a reasonably well-defined notion: it's "the result of IQ tests".

Saying "it's biased against women and black men" is missing the point. Women and black men may well have lower average IQ than white men; it may well also be true that women and black men will, on average, score better on other measures of mental functions ("intelligence") compared to their IQ than white men will. But all an IQ test is measuring is IQ, and it does that completely unbiasedly.

Studies to measure the correlation between gender and IQ (or any other measurable and defined ability) are far more worthwhile than studies to measure the correlation between gender and "intelligence", but they shouldn't be reported as measuring intelligence.

[ThomCat]

84. That is the heart of the problem.

People use IQ as a measure of intelligence and it isn't.

If your definition of IQ is simple, "how well people do on this particular test," that that has no other meaning than how well people do on that particular test. The problem is, people think an IQ test (Intelligence Quotient) measures intelligence.

It is supposed to measure people's abilily to quickly absorb new information and learn from it (one limited aspect of intelligence). But it doesn't even represent that very well because of the built-in biases. At most, it is a culturally influenced measurement of how well people respond quickly to certain selected patterns and questions.

As a gross, crude measurement it may have some value in the sense that any measurement is better than no measurement. But measuring length in hand-spans is not the same as using a calibrated rule. The problem is that people treat IQ as if it means something significant. IQ is treated as if it truly measures intelligence and it doesn't.

Any discussion about the significance of people scoring on average 3 points less on a test like this implies that the test is accurate and that 3 points is significant. Both of those assumptions would be wrong.

[Finder]

82. I agree with this...

and much of the research today is using neurobiological results(structure, chemical, etc) and other medical tests. A good example is the study of lead levels. We never would have known that lead affected intelligence without research into IQ etc..

[KamaAina]

62. Biased study: All his female subjects were blonde.

Well, what else could explain it? :P

Oh, right, the guy is a professional bigot. That'd do it.

[ljm2002]

64. Well, when IQ tests were first used...

...researchers were surprised to find that the girls who took them did better, by and large, than the boys.

Well the solution was simple: they modified the tests, until they got what they expected, which was for the boys to do slightly better than the girls.

Of course, the reason the IQ test was invented was not to measure intelligence, per se, but to identify people who were having difficulty learning.

So now we actually believe we can measure something amorphous like "intelligence", we tune the tests to our expectations, and then use the results to verify that our expectations are correct.

Must have been Republicans in charge. :-)

p.s. Facts referenced are from Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man", where he has some great discussion of the "reification" of measurements: basically, just because you can extract a measurement, doesn't necessarily mean you are measuring something of significance. But we do tend to "reify" measurements, and then put our faith in the numbers, without necessarily understanding what they signify, or even if they signify anything at all.

[bobbieinok]

68. highly recommend everyone read this book by Gould

(Isn't this the one that has a lot about the use of IQ tests in WWI and how the results were used to support view that non-whites and non-northern European immigrants were significantly less intelligent than northern Europeans?)

[ljm2002]

79. It's been a long time since I read the book...

...but yes, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in this discussion. Very erudite and eye-opening.

[Finder]

81. Good book...and...

although I agree it is terrible that some of the studies have been misused and at times stats outright fudged...I disagree with the political correctness doctrine that throws the baby out with the bathwater.

[aikoaiko]

92. Gould's book is good but also has many red herrings.

One of his criticism is that because one will always find differences among groups with IQ, this will inevitably lead to discrimination of inferior groups (as it has in the past) and therefore IQ testing is not useful. I find this line of logic repugnant from a evolutionary biologist who's own disciplinary history includes social darwinism and eugenics.

Plus he attributes fallacies of logic to the way some people discuss intelligence (intelligences as a reification, correlation and causation), but most researchers do not make those mistakes. Its other people talking about the research that make those mistakes.

But there is lots of good historical info Mismeasure of Man.

[msmcghee]

95. As I was reading your fine post . .

. . I was thinking to myself, I'll bet ljm2002 has read "The Mismeasure of Man". But then, you confirmed it in your PS.

I'd add that the design and selling of IQ tests to school districts etc. is big business with lots of taxpayer dollars involved. IQ tests subtly evolve over the years as a question is dropped here, a new question added there. Tests that produce results that are markedly different from the expectations of those purchasing them - will probably not be purchased the next time. (I learned this from the book.)

An interesting paper could be written, I think, on the "evolutionary" aspects of IQ test design.

Apparently, tests that show males about 3 points ahead of females are not outrageous enough to raise the ire of female school board members, especially if they are conservatives, but are just enough to let the men on the board know who is still ahead. :thumbsup:

[insane_cratic_gal]

65. Key words: IQ May be higher but what about plain

common sense? Like not buying into useless bullshit?

[entanglement]

71. So we're exporting freepers now...

;)

[distantearlywarning]

74. 3.6 pts is nothing in real world terms

IQ tests have a confidence interval of 5 pts. And you can make practically anything statistically significant with 100,000 subjects. Not to mention the problem with correlation vs. causation. This study is not worth getting bent out of shape about - the results are really pretty meaningless.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

109. It's statistically significant.

I don't know what you mean by "you can make practically anything statistically significant with 100,000 subjects" - that's a large enough sample to effectively eliminate random errors (whether or not you think the study systematic bias depends on what you interpret it as, but provided you don't try and read it as something it isn't I suspect it's pretty free of that, too).

To give you and idea, assume that IQ is normally distributed with mean 100 and standard deviation 50 (it isn't, but that's a weaker claim than I need), and that that's true for both men and women. Then the average difference in IQ will be the sum of the IQs of 50,000 men - 50,000 women divided by 50,000.

This will be normally distributed with mean 0 and variance 0.01. The probability that that will be greater than 4 is... well, I can't find a lookup table that goes that far, but the odds of a study finding this great a difference in averages if there isn't a difference in distributions is unbelievably minute.

It's not a *big* differene at all - the odds of a given woman having a lower IQ than a given man are only very, very slightly less that 0.5 (note: this is not actually strictly deducible from the fact that women have a slightly lower average, but it's areasonably safe assumption given what we know about IQ), but they *are* less than 0.5; the study is statistically significant.

[mr_hat]

75. Well, I'm a man. And I'm at least smart enough

to disagree.

[seabeyond]

80. being female, since i have 134

not the best certainly, but nothing to sneeze about.....

i say f* them, who cares, i am sittin pretty

[Zodiak]

83. Most Americans graduating college are women

So if this asshole had sampled college graduates, he would come up with the opposite conclusion.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4654635

http://www.time.com/time/education/article/0,8599,90446,00.html

http://www.glennsacks.com/mysterious_decline_where.htm

So what happens between high school and college? THAT would be an interesting study.

[ComerPerro]

86. This thread would look VERY different if the study said the opposite

that women are proven smarter than men.

Women here would be jumping all over that. And men who said the test was probably bullshit would be called misogynists.

[Cerridwen]

91. You mean after millenia of being degraded, demonized and

taught we're somehow less than men we might celebrate the novel concept of women being "better" somehow and take offense at anyone who would piss on our celebration?

Gee, why the hell would we do that?

:sarcasm:

edit: spelling and a smiley

[lukasahero]

102. You know

your post adds nothing to the discussion except to perpetuate the false divide many women and men are trying to bridge. What exactly do you have against the women on this board?

Note: I am not calling you a misogynist. I am asking why you specifically feel the need to come into a thread like this only to hurl insults specifically at the women who frequent this board?

[ComerPerro]

106. Cause I've seen it personally

Trust me. I can't tell you how many insults I've taken for doing something like, fairly recently, saying that if I was in PA I would support Casey over Santorum

[lukasahero]

107. Well, you are free to do what you wish.

Personally I don't feel the need to do unto others what I hated they did to me.

Yes, people are mean to each other. Do you want to be part of that and become one or let go of it someday? Sooner or later, if you don't let go, you become the very thing you hate.

[LeftishBrit]

88. Most mainstream studies in the area suggest that in fact...

men are slightly better, on average at (only some) spatial tasks, and women at (only some) verbal tasks. There is a lot of debate about whether the reasons for these differences are genetic, environmental, or a bit of both. In any case, the differences are small, and apply only to some tasks.

There is little evidence in most studies that either gender has a higher overall IQ. Since IQ testing has been going on for nearly 100 years, and during the earlier part of that time there was no pressure on researchers (or anyone) to promote gender equality, I suspect that if there was real evidence for a lower overall IQ in women it would have been put forward long ago.

[Cerridwen]

89. OMG! I think I feel my uterus atrophying...

I have a college degree. That's what another "renowned" scientist said would happen to me.

"The monthly
activity of the ovaries, which marks the advent of puberty in women,
has a notable effect upon the mind and body; wherefore it may become
an important cause of mental and physical derangement."<22> With
regard to the physiological effects of arrested development of the
reproductive apparatus in women, Dr. Maudsley uses the following plain
and emphatic language: "The forms and habits of mutilated men approach
those of women; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain for some
cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits
of men. It is said, too, that, in hermaphrodites, the mental
character, like the physical, participates equally in that of both
sexes. While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily be feebler
than man, and, having her special bodily and mental characters, will
have, to a certain extent, her own sphere of activity; where she has
become thoroughly masculine in nature, or hermaphrodite in
mind,--when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of her
sex,--then she may take his ground, and do his work; but she will have
lost her feminine attractions, and probably also her chief feminine
functions." SEX IN EDUCATION; Or, A Fair Chance for Girls.

by

EDWARD H. CLARKE, M.D.,

Member of the Massachusetts Medical Society;
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;
Late Professor of Materia Medica in Harvard College,
Etc., Etc.

Dr. Edward Clarke, a respected professor at Harvard University, stated in his widely read tract of 1873 called Sex in Education, or a Fair Chance for the Girls, the female system is not able to do two things well at once. When a woman studied, he explained, blood would be diverted to her brain, robbing essential organs of a precious life force. The organ that was in direct competition with the brain, was of course, the uterus. Clarke's book, which was so popular in the 1870s that it had to be reprinted 17 times, warned that higher education would cause a woman's uterus to atrophy and she would be rendered sterile. THE METHODOLOGY OF WOMEN'S HISTORY

Why are there so many "researchers" throughout history who are intent on making women out to be "dumber" than men? Why the need for so much propaganda against women? What are they afraid of?



"The (gentlemen) doth protest too much, methinks." William Shakespeare


edit: formatting

[Greyhound]

98. There ya go! This dumbass was pretty well discredited further up-thread

he apparently suffers from an inferiority complex with multiple dimensions from racism to concern about his tiny penis, and has wasted his life trying to justify his, and many others like him, shortcomings.

The scientific and academic communities are full of these, small minded, insecure, paranoid sociopaths.

:kick: Sorry I can't recommend a reply.

[phylny]

90. What's the margin of error, dipwads?

Edited to add, the "dipwads" aren't here on DU ;)

[devilgrrl]

93. Let's face it people - Women are fucking useless....

why doesn't someone just kill us all? :eyes:

[Cerridwen]

94. Give 'em time.

Some of them sure seem to be trying.

[ComerPerro]

97. Be patient, dammit

the Republicans are working on it. Give them time, and soon they will...

[lukasahero]

103. One reason and one reason only

that this hasn't actually crossed some people's mind: women reproduce.

[ItNerd4life]

104. Nah youse not useless. Boobs be good for starin at.

}(

[AngryAmish]

99. Women's brains are half the size of men's

It's science.

<>

[TahitiNut]

101. They use less oxygen, too.

:evilgrin:

That's an old scuba-diver's joke.

[Yavin4]

105. IQ Tests Are Completely Useless

Human beings are animals, and all animals have one thing in common, a survival instinct. Animals will do whatever it takes to survive the environment that they're in. For some groups, survival means excelling in school and in education. For other groups, it means working a job to put food on the table. For other groups, it may mean learning to live off of the land or excelling in physical competition or physical labor.

IOW, we do what we have to do to survive, and our intelligence develops to assist us in that survival. A university professor will score higher on an IQ test than an NFL player because that professor will develop the cognitive abilities needed to survive in an academic institution.

[slackmaster]

110. Pretty big tempest in this teapot

Most impressive.