Men are smartest and dumbest, say scientists

[AngryAmish]

"Psychologists have found a justification for the male strangehold on Nobel prizes – there are twice as many men as women in the brightest 2% of the population.

But although men may win the top prizes, they cannot claim a clear-cut victory in an intellectual battle of the sexes. The study shows that men also cluster at the opposite extreme, with twice as many men as women stuck in the least intelligent 2%.

Seeking to compare inherent male and female intelligence has proved perilous for academics – last year Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, lost his job after he suggested women might not scale the same intellectual heights as men.

Comparisons have been flawed because of the difficulty of accounting for unequal opportunities. But the new findings, in research by four British-based psychologists – all men – claim to untangle the effects of family background."



Read the whole thing. Thoughts?

[Richardo]

1. "We are so smart! S-M-R-T!!"

[BOSSHOG]

2. Click and Clack the two brilliant philosophers on Car Talk nailed the issue this weekend

They stated it clearly:

Men have a need and a desire to do stupid things and women just don't understand it. Sometimes men just have to be allowed to experience stupid stuff.

[Annces]

3. Men are much more achievement oriented

A woman who chooses to achieve can reach the heights, but many find satisfaction in more emotional-based ways. A problem in our society is that emotions and nurturing have been devalued. However go into any situation, and take the people in charge. Throw a big party but ignore the bosses. Then you see fireworks, because everyone needs attention.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. the problem with IQ tests is that you cant make a causation out of a correlation

so yes, men score higher but is it innate intelligence or socialization. are men socialized to be academically curious and challenging, or is it inate.

many studies have shown that boys are actively invited to participate in math/science classes whereas women are not.

i think a lot of what we consider "male vs female" intelligence/traits are just socialized differences.

[sarge43]

5. "..... the male strangehold on Nobel prizes ..."

Those four British-based psychologists might want to summon up the ghost of Rosalind Franklin about the whole nature vs nurture thing. There's an overwhelming cultural factor to be considered.

[aikoaiko]

12. IIRC, Rosalind was dead (from her work) by the time Crick and Watson were

awarded the Nobel and the Nobel is not awarded posthumously.


Not that you major point is wrong, that there are plenty of women out there doing Nobel quality work.

[sarge43]

14. I know about the posthumous pass, but even today the woman has never

received the recognition she's due.

I could and have done a whole rant about blaming the victim and the glass ceiling trap vis-a-vis the military. Suffice to say, Adm Grace Hopper is a perfect example. She should have been running the US Navy's R&D after Rickover left, but thanks to a butt load of restrictions she was in her late seventies before she even received the grade she earned and deserved.

And I submit Amazing Grace qualified for a Nobel. She's the grandmother of our cyber world.

[TahitiNut]

16. I knew Grace from attendance at EDP conferences and seminars.

I probably had a total of 2-3 hours of personal interactions with her over the years, going back to the late 60s - not really enough to call her a 'friend.' I doubt she'd remember my name a week after any conference where we'd chat, but I enjoyed the privilege of being vaguely recognized. Grace was NOT a 'politician' ... and had very little apparent interest in exorting folks to "follow me!" That said, she received quite a lot of recognition and respect within EDP/IT circles. Outside such circles? Hell, few people could even spell 'computer' in those days. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, when I told people I was a computer programmer I was met with blank stares in return. The most exposure people had to such things was the movie "Desk Set" or handling an "IBM card."

[sarge43]

17. You were fortunate to know her.

I saw her once doing a tv interview - brilliant, wry and no bs.

I'm sure she was recognized and honored in the EDP/IT field; how could she not. I was referring to her naval career.

[TahitiNut]

18. When I first met her, she was "Commander Grace" as I recall - "Captain Grace" the rest of the time.

The Navy is, first and foremost, an armed service. Like all of them, it grants promotions primarily to people with leadership and combat experience. Sea duty is virtually obligatory in the Navy. EXCEPTIONAL people are recognized on their left breast, not on their sleeves - according to the "military mind." Having been a cadet at the USCGA and, later, having been in the Army in Viet Nam, I remember knowing it was enormously remarkable that she was a Captain. For me, that was quite a "wow' ... but her wit and incisiveness made it evident why she was.

I used to get a kick out of seeing her sit in the audience at the conferences, doing her knitting. The combination of a gray-haired woman in a Navy Captain's uniform doing knitting at a conference of computer nerds was just too, too much for me to not get to know her a little bit. That's even before I knew "who" she was (in the "Who's Who" sense). She wasn't honey-tongued - 'acerbic' is more like it - and I liked that. She'd obviously dealt with enough of us nerds that she 'handled' casual interactions (and hero-worshipping butt-kissing) quite adroitly.

[sarge43]

19. She had to have made O-6 after the mid-seventies

Until then, women officers were capped at O-5, only one woman line officer per branch could be an O-6 (captain or colonel) and she was head of women's componet of that branch (WAC, WAVE, etc)- one of the glass ceilings. Yes, sea duty was/is the Navy's fast track - yet another ceiling which didn't crack until late seventies. Don't know about the Navy's, but AF R&D and Intell were/are the exception to "no wings, no stars" promotions.

[Warpy]

6. Check out how some Nobel winners got theirs

and I'm talking about Crick & Watson.

A lot of potential female Nobelists were stuck in the background or watching all their hopes go down the drain with the dishwater.

Men aren't getting all the prizes because they're inherently smarter.

Anyone who's ever studied IQ distribution knows that is not the case.

[edhopper]

7. Define "Smart"

Intelligence is whatever a particular intelligence test measures. This is just a circular discussion.

[BoneDaddy]

8. I think

the key is "all men claim to untangle the effects of family background".

Men, in most modern cultures are still encouraged to deny fear, pain. The positive of this is that in denying the emotional experience we are able to be productive even if we came from the most horrific situations.

Women, on the other hand, are encouraged and conditioned to be the opposite. Feeling and emotions are great but the negative side of being more in touch with emotions can be an obstacle to "getting the job done", so to speak.

Of course these are generalizations. I happen to be a male more in touch with my emotional life and it has pros and cons. Sometimes I wish I didn't feel so deeply.

[sendero]

9. I dunno....

... I've long had a problem with the idea of "smart". There are lots of different kinds, and being able to spot patterns in a succession of graphics or numbers is only one of them.

Most intelligence tests are pretty limited in what they can discern.

And, working in the information technology field, I've met many people who could keep a quadruple-nested programming loop or a triple-indirection pointer scheme in their heads, but in the real world cannot find their own ass with a map.

[melody]

10. This is old, old Aristotelian nonsense that has floated around for years

The acceptance that mars it is the idea that specialization connotes excellence and/or extreme ignorance. Obviously, a balanced brain approach overall (the putative female way of things,
according to them) is less likely to be as stupid but can never be as smart as the smartest men.
I hate to tell them this but specialization with a balanced brain approach amounts to a different
but equal form of extremes -- there are just as many brilliant (and stupid) women as men. It's
just a different form of intellect, in this school of thought.

They spin the results by determining that -- de facto -- the specialization of the man's brain is the "better" one. What a surprise that a conditional survey run by white men would determine that! They build a test that they run best and then we are to be surprised when they run it best.

[Annces]

13. The people who wrote the test, do best on the test

Yep.

[Javaman]

11. So in other words, women are moderates. nt

[LeftishBrit]

15. It's virtually impossible to untangle the effects of family background..

Boys and girls within a family can be treated very differently.

It's not news that *overall* males tend to be closer to the extremes in all sorts of tests. If there's a genetic basis, it would presumably be due to the fact that unusual recessive genes on the X chromosome will usually be suppressed by dominant genes on the other X chromosome in a woman, and won't be expressed. A man has only one X chromosome, so unusual recessive genes are more likely to be manifested. This is why men are more likely than women to be colour-blind; and why haemophilia is almost exclusively found in men. There are some disorders that specifically affect the brain and cause low IQ, such as fragile-X syndrome, which are caused by an abnormal gene on the X-chromosome, and which are much commoner in males than in females. In theory, it's also possible that unusual genes on the X-chromosome could cause outstandingly *high* ability, and this would be commoner in males. However, there's no real evidence for this, and it seems a bit unlikely, as variations in ability in the normal and gifted range seem to be due to multiple genes interacting with environmental factors, rather than to any one single gene.

Two important reasons for males being more 'extreme' than females are likely to be that (1) it's more acceptable for males to stand out from the crowd, whereas females are more likely to wish to conform and not appear too noticeable; (2) men are more likely to take risks, which, in the case of tests, tends to mean that they are more likely to come up with a brilliant idea that raises their score *and* more likely to fail completely, whereas women tend to play safer.

As regards specific abilities, it is generally found that females are a bit better verbally and males are a bit better spatially, though the differences are not huge. There are very conflicting findings about gender differences in arithmetic, with lots of variations over time and place, which suggests a strong influence of social factors. Gender differences in arithmetic and other aspects of maths are much smaller now than 20 or 30 years ago. Elizabeth Spelke published an interesting article about this in 2005.