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French Scientists Link Higher BMI with Lower IQ
Xemu writes "French scientists have linked obesity to lower IQ reports the Telegraph. In a new five-year study of more than 2,200 adults, people with a low body mass index (BMI) could recall 30% more words in a vocabulary test than those who were obese. The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later. In the United States, 30% of the population is obese according to OECD. That's the highest rate of obesity anywhere. Do these high obesity rates affect the average IQ of the population?" (Of course, this sidesteps discussion of whether IQ tests measure anything significant at all.)
The Body Mass Index is not accurate. It is basically mass vs height, and makes no distinction between fat and muscle, both of which increase mass measurements.
During the rainy season, I don't exersize, so I lose muscle mass and get skinny, and I look - pardon me for saying it - like a geek. And my BMI is normal ( and allegedly healthy ). But during the other ten months, I am more muscular ( and probably a lot healthier ) and yet I am technically obese, according to the BMI.
Do I feel smarter? Heck, I'm a slashdotter - I think I'm smart all the time.
(Of course, this sidesteps discussion of whether IQ tests measure anything significant at all.)
This also seems to sidestep discussion of whether BMI measures anything significant at all.
=Smidge=
This wasn't a general purpose IQ test. It was a specific test of people's ability to recall words. They're talking about memory in particular, not some fuzzy idea of general intelligence.
Indeed, Timothy does oversimplify the matter.
It is slightly beside the point though because the study noticed a drop in 'cognitive function' in obese people, not IQ. Cognitive function most certainly is significant, albeit specifically to the function measured (which in this case was primarily arthmimetic and vocabulary). It was only the reporting newspaper which introduced IQ, probably for the benefit of dumber/fatter readers.
Not the study, but rather the first linked article.
First, they make the classic error of attributing causation when the study found correlation. If that was in the original study, then I'd question the researcher's methodology, but I suspect the blame lies with whoever wrote the article. Testing people's intelligence and comparing their weight does not show a causitive link between wieght and intellect. It could just as easily show that poor judgement translates into bad eating habits and low IQ.
Second, the criticism they reported came from a politician who tried to use anecdotal evidence to debunk the link. That's right, she said she knew witless skinny people and clever fat people, so the study must therefor be wrong. Someone ought to tell her that the plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I can speak for certain that I am not as dumber as other people.
Seriously, though, I test pretty well for intelligence, but being fat is part of a vicious cycle with laziness and depression, leading to a lack of achievement. I wonder, in fact, if the results would be similar in the population of people with untreated major depression regardless of BMI. Based on no scientific data at all, I would suspect increased BMI as being a symptom of another problem which could be the causative factor in the poor IQ showing.
Can we draw any real conclusions without knowing their testing methodology, etc etc etc. How'd they normalize their data?
This last bit from the TFA sums up how I feel about it:
"But Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister, said that the research seemed unsustainable. "You just need to look around the world and you will see hundreds of thin nitwits and clever fat people,""
It is worth pointing out that good looks & a tall height can be as relevant to your success in life as your weight.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yes I have a weight problem but I don't blame it on IQ, I blame it on american diet and adverting on TV and in magazines.
Which you aren't smart enough to ignore.
KFG
IQ testing issues aside, the summary suggests results for memory recall... not IQ.
IANAOR (I am not an obesity researcher), but it seems to be that this does not indicate lower IQ, but rather a lower energy level. I think it is a rather uncontroversial statement that those suffering from obesity have a much lower level of energy. I have experienced it myself during extended periods (several weeks or more) of not having regular exercise: You become lethargic, tired, and find it difficult to concentrate on things. I would imagine that this is a good indication of why those suffering obesity would score poorer on an IQ test.
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
In most industrialized countries and especially in the US, obesity is strongly correlated with low income. Since there is also a strong link between low income and low IQ scores, there may be no causal relationship at all between obesity and a lowered IQ.
How much do you want to bet that the words weren't types of food?
That can't be true. Modern medical advances, as well and sanitation, have raised the average life expectancy in the U.S. considerably over the past hundred years. So, an average certainly can be raised or lowered, but it still doesn't change the fact that half the population lies on either side of it (well, that's really the median, but I'm not going to be that picky.)
wow, you must be fat!!
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
I know of no comprehensive definition of intelligence that is agreed upon by a majority of scientists, but if you have evidence to the contrary feel free to provide it. Obviously, there isn't going to be any scientific definition of "success in the real world".
The French are calling us fat, lazy, and now stupid. Great, well at least we aren't a bunch cheese eating surrender monkeys. Time to eat some more pork rinds and watch American Idol. I hope I don't have to get out of my chair to find my remote. Found it. It was under a fold of fat. I also found my car keys.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Sorry, fatty, but everybody thinks they're smarter than everyone else. Everbody. It's okay though, you can take solace in the fact that everyone has the same lame excuses for their short comings.
Yeah, what no one bothers to go into is that the Americans tried pencils, but realized that broken pencil points would float away and get into everything, possibly harming delicate electronics...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
There are probably other factors involved here. For example, poverty has also been linked to obesity (in America.) And less intelligence can also be linked to poverty.
So does obesity somehow lead to mental decline? Or are people who are less intelligent more likely to let their physical health deteriorate?
Or maybe less intelligence leads to poverty which leads to obesity. Then again, it could be the other way around...
Correlation does not equal causation. If I had to place a bet, I would say that the link between obesity and intelligence isn't biological like the article is inferring. There may be some kind of link there, but I bet that other factors are more influential.
This is probably mistaking causality.
Being overweight doesn't make you stupid,
being stupid means you have higher chance of getting over weight because you don't monitor diet/understand proper eating.
There are decades of data to prove the corellation between IQ and actual, demonstrated intelligence and success in the real world. Maybe you would like to clarify yourself, Timothy?
The disproportionately high representation in groups like MENSA of lonely singles who earn below average salaries in unsatisfying jobs seems to counter your "decades of data" (which I have never seen.)
Or are you defining "demonstrated intelligence" as the ability to recite Star Trek dialog by rote and "success in the real world" as having your very own crafts store at the local Renaissance Festival?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Those experiments are not the first of the kind, and not the best explained for sure. In different ones link between obesity (it was percentage of fat not BMI) was also linked with IQ. Difference was that somebody who conducted experiments thought for a while over results (apparently that person wasn't fat - pun intetended). And result was:
Fat people need more oxygen that goes to fat tissues, so less goes to brain. Second: less blood with nutritions goes directly there.
They published also some proper tables with sugar and oxygen levels to prove their point. Other thing is total lack of excercise - that effectively slows down your heart, kidneys, liver, and so on. Not to mention that processing food in stomach requires a lot of energy. You know that feeling after eating a lot of food, especially fatty.
That explains why best geeks are good at what they do plus they have a dozen of intresting hobbies and not so uncommonly train some martials arts or something similar.
So go to the gym, NOW!
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
Obesity leads to poor health which leads to diffuculty in concentration, stress, lower attention span etc. Also obese people are (statistically) less educated, with lower self-esteem etc. All of which correlate very well with the findings of this study. In otherwords obesity correlates well with doing badly in tests (IQ or any) for various reasons - it does not lower your IQ.
Any qualified sociologist could've made a fairly accurate hypothesis for the results of that study. But that's boring so people will want to see something in it ...
Oh well..
Dr. Doh! (NIMNO)
National reseach Institute for the Mind Numblingly Obvious
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You're right, IQ is incredibly meaningless. A well-socialized individual with a good work ethic, who is willing to parlay whatever gray matter they have into the task at hand will always prove successful at life. Many of the under-20 uber-nerds who cling to their IQ scores as proof positive of their superiority over others haven't figured this out yet, and to their credit, it's something that's only realized with time: Intelligence is both nature and nurture--the daughter of a doctor and lawyer becomes a bum if she has no direction or commitment. The daughter of a field hand and a grocer becomes the world's most well-respected biologist if she has direction and commitment.
-------------
Funny story: The guy downstairs had his "MENSA Bulletin" delivered to my mailbox by mistake (probably due to the innerwebs and lack of blue mailboxes!), so of course I kept it. I've been leaving it prominently near the john for some high brow bathroom reading. And man oh man, have I been disappointed. The articles are poorly conceived and written, the letters from readers absolutely dumb. The pictures of "smart people" show them not even badly dressed, but incapably dressed--as in , for example, they clearly missed belt loops when they were putting on their belts (Is looking accidentally slovenly for nationally distributed photographs the mark of a genuinely intelligent person who likes themselves? I submit that it is not.)
So my friends have been coming over, and when they inevitably have to use the restroom, they see the magazine and go "You're in MENSA?" all accusingly. And of course I pretend to be, and mutter something about how "we're trying to reform the government under our own intelligent rule" (did you see that episode of The Simpsons too?)
And as I can feel their opinion of me lessening, lessening...I finally let on that, no, of course I'm not a part of fucking MENSA. And every time, they respond with something like "Oh I was gonna say, because those people are idiots!" And then we page through the magazine together, mocking it the entire time. And we live happily ever after. The end.
people with a low body mass index (BMI) could recall 30% more words in a vocabulary test than those who were obese
Then perhaps people get fat because they can't remember they have already eaten.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I'm never hiring a fat person again. They have no self disipline.
I don't believe you're in a position to hire anybody. Otherwise you would realize that:
- what you just said is against the law (equal opportunity employment laws)
- you're implying that 30% of the United States have no self discipline, which is obviously stupid
I'll tell you another thing, something that I know first hand: I tend to gain weight easily. Before I left the US, I was very careful with my diet, but still had a hard time not making lard. Why? because it's just not very easy to find healthy food in the US. Now that I'm in Europe, I have easy access to healthier food and I have no trouble maintaining a decent weight.
You have to realize healthy food is hard to come by in the US: lean meat is virtually non-existant, dairy products from from hormone-injected cows, veggies have all kinds of pesticide on them, packaged products are laced with all kinds of unhealthy fat and sugars, etc... So while it's definitely not an excuse for fat people, the food available in the US is an additional hurdle if they try to loose weight.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
She remains a brilliant (slightly biased opinion, but not by much) chemist (pretty much disproving the original article), and now that the hormone is regulated, she has lost most of the weight she gained, though she remains scarred from the experience. And trust me, were she looking for a job from you, you bet your butt you would be sued under EEO and ADA laws. You can probably plan on that anyway. Hope you've got a good lawyer.
May the Maths Be with you!
Specifically, IQ measures how slim you are!
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It also depends how you define success.
To be honest, although most MBAs might be successful at gaining money, they are often not particularly successful in terms of being contented. There's not much point in being rich if the result is stress and unhappiness.
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This is simply not true. If you actually take an IQ test, you will see that it does not test your memory as had been done in the study, but rather your cognitive thinking skills. In fact, there are many people who can memorize history or math equations or whatever, but they come up far short when they have to apply the concepts they memorized.
Again, memorization is not critical thinking, and memorization != IQ.
I think their little "test" failed to consider that people with larger BMI have Balanced Multiple Inputs, and their brains are more "distributed". It is a FACT that distributed nodes have slightly longer data pathways in fuller people than in smaller people.
Their test is quite inflammable and uncindiary.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Mensa is full of the haughty smart people who like to do inane mind-bending puzzles and brag about their high IQ. They piss off almost everybody else on the planet, including the managers that could promote them.
to someone speaking dutch. (for the non-dutch, 'slim' means smart in dutch)
For starters, let me disabuse you of the notion that I spend my evenings looking through the dirt-stained glass of an abandoned feed factory, breath frosting up the glass, spying on the secret meetings of the local MENSA chapter and hoping against hope that this week--oh god let it be this week--will be my chance to finally get admitted.
I actually have received invitations to attend MENSA meetings in the past, but have always declined. (Is that how recruitment is done? God only knows.) I politely say that I have a "differing philosophy". Namely, I believe that intelligence and success should be measured in terms of real, humanistic achievement in the real world, and not by corny metrics that determine whether or not a person should be admitted to a shamelessly self-promotional smarty-pants club. But of course I don't say all that. Politely declining the invitation is really enough.
I know that must just fry you--that there are people out there in the world who are at least reasonably smart and reasonably socialized, and who look at their introverted and prideful intelligent brothers with pity. It may seem at odds with what I read as teenage angst, but I assure you we exist.
And speaking of teenage angst, you might want to stop using the lexicon of a teenager. "Jocks"..."frat guys"...it's the language of someone who still thinks of people in terms of symbolic high school lunch tables (i.e. somebody not all that smart after all). If you're just some silly immature kid (I understand that about half of Slashdot readers fit that description)--then you get a free pass, because that's all you've seen so far in terms of how people organize themselves. But if not, then, well, there's that whole pity thing again. To phrase this in terms you've voluntarily adopted, I am no jock, or frat-guy, or anything else. I sit at everyone's lunch table, and I don't use their interests as some kind of bogus reason to judge and dismiss them.
So I guess to be more crass about things, that, my boy, is why I haven't joined your fruity little club.
Good luck--may your false pride and wanton disdain for others take you to great new heights.
I'd imagine that "success in the real world" implies high earning and/otr high aademic qualifications. And there probably is a correlation between this and a high IQ.
It is also true that some people are extremely intelligent by most tests, but have a low IQ. Of course, BMI is similar. Power lifters have an abnormally high BMI, but that weight is all muscle, so could not possibly be considered obese. But it doesn't matter when you have a large enough sample. These anomolies are statisically insignificant.
But some of those people are actually right. Take me for example - I'm smarter than pretty much anyone else out there. I even figured that fact out on my own! The fact that everyone else disagrees with my conclusion just proves how ignorant they all really are.
I love my sig.
Hey! I'm a Mensa member and ... Oh, never mind, it's acutely accurate. *sigh*
Illegitimi non carborundum
BMI and IQ aren't perfect measurements of their stated goal. They at least provide an approximation though.
It is the people who don't think they mean anything at all usually are either fat or stupid.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
...but I am glad to hear it :o)
Let all be punished in heck, I say!
Wikileaks, no DNS
My father by most peoples definition is brilliant. He is a scientist, he speaks several languages, he is a published author of several highly regarded books both fiction and nonfiction.
Despite all this intelligence he refused to take care of himself, got obese, had several heart attacks and then a series of massive strokes. For decades his doctors told him to lose weight, to stop eating junk food, to drink more water, to exersize and he ignored not only his doctors but his family and friends too.
Now he can barely talk, his mobility is severly limited, he has problems reading and all he does is watch tv.
Was my dad smart or dumb? I used to think he was brilliant but now I realize that he was dumb. Too dumb to prioritize, to take care of the important things in life. The time he took to learn that one more language or to write that one more book should have been spent taking walks or something.
I know lots of "smart" people who are actually dumb like that.
evil is as evil does
I mean consider the cost of good food vs bad food. I can go to McDonalds and get 2 double cheese burgers for $2 and some change. That's enough to fill me up for lunch and I'm a big guy. It's also a ton of fat and calories. Now let's say I want to go get a nice chicken salad from any of the number of places that serve them. That starts at about $6 and can be as much as $10. Also it's not going to fill me quite as much as the burgers.
Is it any wonder those with lower income would opt for the McDonalds food?
Addi tonally, many lower wage earners need to work longer hours or more jobs to make ends meet, which again tips the scale in favour of unhealthy food. Sure I can make a nice chicken and rice dinner that's pretty healthy for not too much money. However, it'll take me an hour or so to do. Not a problem if you work 40 hours a week, but if you are just ending a 10+ hour day? Forget it, you stop at the first fast food place on the way and grab that.
So if I were to guess I'd say that is a major factor. The less you make the harder it is to eat well. There also may be something to lower IQ translating to worse decision making capabilities, but I'm betting the economic reality of the situation is the main factor.
And I'm not just saying that cause I was rejected. No, really.
It has some power to predict academic performance, but that is not what it is designed to measure. Nor is it particularly good at it. Just as in business, non-IQ abilities (hard work, emotional strength, social skills, mental stamina, valuing achievement and status) play a role in academic success. Predicting academic performance from IQ is like predicting a car's range from its engine efficiency.
It depends on what you mean by success :-) If by success you mean money and coercive power over people, then yes, MBAs tend to be more successful than PhDs. When they say that academic politics are nasty because the stakes are so small, they mean that there is less of that kind of "success" to go around, and people with an appetite for it are bitterly unhappy in academia.
Fortunately, most academics measure themselves differently :-)
It's Body Mass Index, not Body Fat Index.
All the BMI measures is your risk for a variety of heart related ailments. The theory is that the more massive you are, the harder your heart has to work.
The issue is most people lack the ability, the financial resources, and the discipline to gain an extraordinary amount of muscle mass. So, in the vast majority of cases, the BMI does measure body fat. But, it has nothing to do with the percentage of your body that is fat or how toned you are.
Just thought I would add that to what you are saying.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
The score on an IQ test is relative to the sample the scoring method was calibrated against. If I go into a room and take an IQ test by myself, will I automatically be assigned a score of 100? No. I'll be given a score that indicates how I compare to a reference sample. Since some popular tests remain in use for decades, and correlations between new tests and old tests are carefully studied, it is quite possible to assign IQs to members of a sample S according to a scale calibrated for a mean of 100 on a different sample S'. Then there is no guarantee that the mean IQ over S is 100.
That means you can estimate (presumably by some statistical method based on correlations between modern IQ tests and those given fifty years ago) the mean IQ of current testees on a scale calibrated to data from fifty years ago, or vice-versa.
Well, I've received an invitation to Intertel, and depending on which IQ test you prefer, I qualify for the Triple 9 Society, but not Prometheus. So, from the eyrie of my formidable intellect, I judge BeeBeard to be the more articulate, thoughtful poster.
Smart people who don't realize that intelligence is only one dimension of a well rounded person - who are arrogant about their intelligence - truly are stupid.
Speaking of arrogance, I'm 43, my BMI is 20, my body fat is 10% and my resting pulse is under 50bpm. So Pthththththt!
Even that oversimplifies the situation. The study tied memory recall to high BMI, not to obesity. A high BMI does not necessarily make someone obese. I'm 5'8" and 190 pounds (173cm and 86kg for those outside North America), and my BMI says I'm not far from being obese. But I wear size 33 jeans (84cm). A lot of people I know have similar proportions.
So the question is, did this researcher choose people who were visibly obese for his high-BMI subjects, or did he mix in any muscular participants? Were all of the "fat people" pear-shaped, or were there a representative number of beer guts? Without that information, his results are worthless because they do not compensate for body morphology.
Then again, maybe the fact that steroids make you stupid would cancel some of the bias. ;)
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Aargh! For crying out loud, the test was ability to recall words, not IQ. People with amnesia/altzheimers aren't necessarily "stupid", eg, you wouldn't ever see them looking into loaded guns' barrels..
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
There is a correlation between obesity and poverty. The average IQ of those in poverty is lower than that of those not in poverty. Simply based on those two facts, one would expect the average IQ of obsese individuals to be lower than that of non-obese individuals.
It seems more likely that a low IQ would, in general, contribute to a persons lack of self control and cause a higher chance of being ob ease. Rather than a persons BMI affecting there intelligence.
I've visited the Calista Flockhart jet propulsion lab here in Tasmania, they're working on a new solid vomit booster.
Task Mangler
So BMI isn't perfect. But it's clearly better than pure weight numbers, since it's adjusted for height.
Do you have an alternative easily computed number you think better measures obesity?
Or do you just think we should not try to measure it?
30% of Americans fat and stupid
Bush approval ratings still around 30%
Coincidence?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It took me a few minutes to decide the best comment to attach to.
It appears to me that one point of this discussion is not having the correct terms to separate our concepts with. Memory and its related processing is data/knowledge/information. No action is implied.
Standard IQ, measured on the classical tests, tests for conceptual throughput capability in areas such as math, language, spatial, and so on. However, thundering mountains of things are not gauged on the classical tests.
Daniel Goleman publicized his term for the missing elements. "Emotional Intelligence". Now that more accurate terms are present in the discussion, I would describe the poster's father had a very high conceptual ability indeed. However, his "Emotional Intelligence" was indeed very poor, and evenually caused a tragic loss of his former abilities. Please, recall his former glories, and treat him as a mixed character whose faults finally outweighed his gifts.
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I always thought that the phrase "real world" excluded academic achievement by definition.
I know of no comprehensive definition of intelligence that is agreed upon by a majority of scientists, but if you have evidence to the contrary feel free to provide it. Obviously, there isn't going to be any scientific definition of "success in the real world".
This is not true.
There certainly is a pretty well established definition of general intelligence 'g' used
in psychometric studies which has, contrary to what some people may desire, withstood many
challenges, and is logically and empirically consistent.
Essentially: you have a test of a multitude of widely varying tasks all of which are at some level, obviously "mental", and you measure the performance of people on all these varying axes.
Intelligence is the projection along the first principal component, reflecting the fact that people who do well on some of them, tend to do well, up to some degree, on most of the other ones.
This is a highly consistent phenomenon among all human groups tested.
It is correlated with numerous, objective, biological measurements in prospective, controlled experiments.
This is also a falsifiable hypothesis as well, as for example, performance on a number of
*other* tasks, most of which are probably less mental, significantly less
correlated with 'g', except probably among the very lowest tail which reflect significant disease or genetic disabilities with systemic effects.
Obviously, there isn't going to be any scientific definition of "success in the real world".
No not in a comprehensive sense but you can definitely come up with specific proxies which approximate it, and quantify it fairly well. For example, 'felony imprisonment' is clearly 'not successful' by almost everybody's standards.
First, because I haven't seen anyone point it out yet, the actual journal article is Neurology 2006;67:1208-1214. Go to http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/01.wnl.0000238082.13860. 50 and the server will redirect you appropriately. The journal's Web site should let you read the abstract for free. To read the whole article, you have to pay, or find a suitable institution with online or print access to this journal.
Now, some comments. The idea that correlation doesn't imply causation is correct, but this paper used a multivariate analysis to attempt to control for several possible confounding factors. I count twelve that the authors thought about and included in some of their models: age, sex, educational level, diabetes, systolic blood pressure, daily alcohol intake, physical activity, perceived health score, perceived stress score, energy, social isolation, and region of residence. It looks like the paper acknowledges more confounders than anyone's mentioned here on Slashdot so far. Ultimately, though, this paper is a cohort study, so you can still argue that they missed a confounding factor. If you can think of a legitimate one, you stand a good chance getting it published in the journal Neurology.
Next, naming intelligent friends with high BMIs or famous thin people with questionable smarts does not change what this paper says, of course. Let's even pretend to add those people to the data. Now we have 2243 subjects instead of 2223. I doubt that changes the results much, but I admit I can't prove that. Counterexamples do tell us something very important, though. If high BMI really causes worse word-list learning, it is still one of a staggering number of other effects on this measure, and it by no means excludes anyone from higher intelligence.
Lastly, people are right to wonder what cognitive tests like word-list learning really measure. This paper didn't use IQ directly, but the point still stands. The authors know this and address it, too. "The functional significance of cognitive changes in our sample is difficult to assess.... We did not collect any direct index of work performance." In fact, they don't know whether differences in these psychometric test scores apply to "this healthy working population." BMI, too, may represent a surrogate marker. The association in this paper still stands, although I don't see anything about whether active weight loss attempts change cognitive point measures or decline. Yes, there are other markers of cardiovascular risk, and these include waist circumference (Am J Cardiol 2006;98:1053-1056), which someone could study in the same way that the Neurology paper studies BMI.
So what's the point? The point is, the differences in these cognitive tests concern some people. The results suggest that some real effect on cognition exists, and the authors mention a few reasonable mechanisms for the effect. If you agree that a normal BMI leads successively to less diabetes, less coronary artery disease, and less chest pain when you walk around, then it makes sense to try for a normal BMI if it's even possible that it will save blood vessels in your brain, or your brain cells directly, or whatever mechanism you believe. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if weight loss merely slows cognitive decline or lessens the risk, rather than positively improving intelligence or some similar claim. The other point is that newspapers check sources and strive to do it very well, but they rarely offer substantial analysis of original research. They will quote authorities regarding the research but leave item-by-item discussion to commentary articles in specialty journals. Even my couple hundred words here only begin to address the reasonable analysis of this or any scholarly article.
Emotional range.
Specific insight (the lack of which leads to that haughtyness you mentioned).
Empathy.
Self awareness.
Social skills.
I figure if I just drop some of the above, and reserve most of my mental capacity for the taking of IQ tests, then I would be a genius also.
You are where you are at the time you are there.
No, of course not. We're fat BECAUSE we're stupid.
I've read that the people who are most successful - at least in the commercial sense of getting rich or being the head of a large company - tend to be well above average in intelligence but not the most intelligent. The reasoning behind this observation is that those in the second tier feel they have something to prove, and are driven to succeed. Those in the first tier do what they like, which tends to be academic or scientific pursuits. In this they are satisfied, and they are not driven toward financial supremacy.
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Not at all. Doctors and nurses use charts; most people use charts or web calculators like this one.
Mostly "quick and dirty" applies to medical research, where it's quick, cheap, and routine to record a patient's height and weight. You don't need extra funding or specially trained staff to measure height and weight consistently, and in many cases, that data is already recorded as a matter of course. It's an easy statistic to use in a study or to apply retroactively to existing data. The extra complexity of dealing with inches and pounds doesn't matter, since the data is handled in bulk by software.
Interesting post - I don't think fat people are dumb. I just think they're lazy.
My friends and I have an ongoing argument about 'metabolism'. I've always been had a relatively skinny/athletic build, and my friends keep saying it's only because I have a 'high metabolism', and that I'm lucky I'm not like them because otherwise I'd be fat.
I take exception to this because from my perspective, I'm really careful not to get fat. I eat a balanced diet - sure, I have a Big Mac now and then, but much more often I'm eating Subway. I drink a bit, but not every night and rarely to excess. I excercise several times a week - lots of soccer and when I'm not to tired from work (a relatively demanding IT job, which I think also helps) pushups and stuff.
Most of the fat people I know aren't dumb - they just don't care that they're fat. Sure, they're prepared to whine and complain and blame heaps of different things, but at the end of the day - they're just not actually prepared to do anything about it. Fad diets, half-assed excercise regimes - none of that crap is EVER going to work unless you WANT to lose weight, and until you get to that point, nothing will happen.
There's no such thing as wisdom. It's a concept invented by non-smart people who resent smart people. It makes them feel better to be able to say "he might have been smart but he wasn't wise".
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Well, you *are* reading slashdot comments. Might I suggest more fruitful areas in which to seek insightful commentary on statistical analysis?
Like....uh... hm.
Well, crap.
This explains the state of the world today, huh?
(or maybe it's just strongly correlated)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Ah ha! You have a BMI of 21 but are a complete and utter moron! His point is that he DOES weigh a heck of a lot for his height, he's a short guy but weighs as much as a big guy should weigh. But he also is not fat, 84 cm is a tiny circumference for an 86kg dude and unless he's got a gut the size of a bathtub above his pants he must just be dense for some reason. Even without fat, people just have different shapes and densities, some people float in water whereas some people sink. This dude however would sink in the dead sea. The point is, someone is fat when they have a lot of fat in their body, not when a ratio is over a threshold.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
In particular, they broke up BMI's into five groups: (1) 15-21.5, (2) 21.5-23.4, (3) 23.4-25.2, (4) 25.2-27.7, and (5) 27.7-45, where BMI's up to 25 are considered normal, up to 30 are considered overweight, and over 30 are considered obese. Even within the final group, not all the participants are obese.
It begs the question of why they didn't compare "normal" weight IQ's to "obese" weight IQ's, as this would be a big story and a more impressive research finding! It's likely that either they didn't have enough obese participants to satisfy statistical significance (so most of group (5) is actually individuals with BMI's of 27.7 to 30), or they didn't find that obese people had lower IQ's. When the BMI groups that they break up their data into as strange as this, and not at all the groups that are normally used in research papers, it begs the question of what kind of data massaging they had to do to find their conclusions. Did they try 100 different breakdowns of BMI groupings until they found one that (barely) satisfied statistical significance?
I remain skeptical as to the conclusions of this paper.
is not what it measures - if you put it together with "How often do you work out?" you have a pretty good idea how much is fat, and how much is muscle. People who want to delude themselves will always find a way (try blaming your metabolism, your hectic life style, "you'll never see me in the gym with those" jockophobia etc). The biggest problem is that people decide to "get in shape" and use weight as their result metric. That typically means eating less and more exercise - except more exercise means more muscle and often a greater appetite. The difference between losing two pounds of fat versus losing five pounds of fat and gaining three in muscle, both for a net loss of two, is huge. Hell, even losing two pounds of fat and gaining three pounds of muscle would typically be an improvement both to your health and your figure, even if it's a net gain. For example a good way to "offset" the focus on weight could be for example taking your waist measure - if you've lost five cms of belly and put it anywhere else, chances are you look a lot better no matter your weight. For women this should hardly come as a surprise (combine with chest and hips for the classic three). That should get the measuring straighted out a bit.
The other question is what your BMI "should" be, but in my opinion it's fairly easy to tell when you have low body fat. People might be slender or muscular, but it's hardly a problem seeing if they have the kilos in the right place or not. It's simply a rough estimate of where your body should be given average muscles. Want to add 20 pounds of muscles? No problem. Just be sure you're not making it an excuse not to lose those last twenty pounds of fat. Check your abs, your measures, try the "jiggle" test and see if it's as firm as you want. There's plenty good metrics to use, and BMI is a good one used in conjunction with others. People that are problematizing measuring healthiness is using a Chewbacca tactic - that's not where the problem lies at all. Most of them just want a way to say "Because the metrics are imperfect, we can ignore the conclusions." That might work to disregard one dissenting metric, but if your BMI is too high AND your waist is too wide AND you aren't working out enough to build that kind of muscle AND everything jiggles when you walk then no way.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
To be honest, although most MBAs might be successful at gaining money, they are often not particularly successful in terms of being contented. There's not much point in being rich if the result is stress and unhappiness.
The notion that rich people are unhappy is a myth. In reality, rich people are generally happier than middle- and low-income earners. The idea that money makes people miserable is a fairy tale perpetuated by poor people to try and console themselves regarding their own unhappiness.
Money can't buy happiness, but poverty guarantees misery.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Yeah. I suspect that really smart people don't perceive themselves as smart. The more you know, the more you realize how little you know. If you don't know anything, you're not capable of estimating your own knowledge - you don't know enough to know whether you know anything. Stupid people probably think they're pretty smart, while smart people probably constantly doubt their own intellect.
In order to be attracted by Mensa, you need a certain amount of stupidity which prevents you from understanding that being able to solve a bunch of IQ tests doesn't make you smart. It just makes you good at solving those tests.
As far as I can tell - and I don't think I actually know any Mensa member - Mensa members seem to be proud of their intelligence, which kind of proves that they aren't that intelligent.
Been there, done that... but I wore size 36 at that time. Trust me, it's possible for a slashdotter-computer geek to get in shape. Just find a form of exercise you enjoy doing.
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