Slashdot Mirror
Young Men Who Smoke Have Lower IQs
Hugh Pickens writes "Science Daily reports on a study that has determined that young men who smoke are likely to have lower IQs than their non-smoking peers. In the study, conducted with 20,000 Israeli Army recruits and veterans, the average IQ for a non-smoker was about 101, while the smokers' average was more than seven IQ points lower at about 94, and the IQs of young men who smoked more than a pack a day were lower still, at about 90. (These IQs all fall within the normal range.) 'In the health profession, we've generally thought that smokers are most likely the kind of people to have grown up in difficult neighborhoods, or who've been given less education at good schools,' says Prof. Mark Weiser of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychiatry, whose study was reported in a recent version of the journal Addiction. 'Because our study included subjects with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, we've been able to rule out socio-economics as a major factor. The government might want to rethink how it allocates its educational resources on smoking.' Prof. Weiser says that the study illuminates a general trend in epidemiological studies. 'People on the lower end of the average IQ tend to display poorer overall decision-making skills when it comes to their health,' says Weiser. 'Schoolchildren who have been found to have a lower IQ can be considered at risk to begin the habit, and can be targeted with special education and therapy to prevent them from starting or to break the habit after it sets in.'"
Smarter people know its not a good idea to start smoking.
A bit offtopic but I enjoyed the overtly blue-collar ill lit picture that a site called Science Daily employed.
An unshaven sun-reddened face focuses all its concentration on a cigarette protruding directly in front of his nose. His lips are pursed as if to indicate that connecting the tip of that cigarette with that flame requires all of his concentration. If his eyes weren't hidden to prevent us from identifying him (or to keep us from identifying with the subject) we might see them as cross-eyed staring down his nose intent to satiate his addiction. His shirt (which is plain white) and knuckles are smeared haphazardly with grease and his skin glistens with a workingman's sweat. Whatever iconography that hangs from his neck (Isreali dog tags? a Star of David?) can only afford a cheap black cord. The subject is off center to the right with the background as a pitch black. Nothing but a single source of light coming from the left.
It amuses me that the site employs such a suggestive picture of smoking so that it almost screams to be a blue collar, unintelligent, near evil addiction. I understand this image adds to the effect of the article but if ever there was anti-marketing for smoking here it is at a site that claims to be objective in its name. Movies of yore portrayed the beautiful, the rich and the strong smoking. I can walk outside my office building and see well paid people smoking. It's disingenuous to portray it as only a blue collar problem no matter what statistics about IQ say. This only tells me that, on average, low IQs are more likely to succumb to well funded advertising or lack information about smoking. Not that they are any less powerful at breaking an addiction.
I find smoking abhorrent and disgusting but I also think that it detracts from your goals to say that smoking destroys your beauty when young people can see beautiful celebrities smoking. And I also think that a "Science" site shouldn't have such goals or propaganda baked into its articles (one way or the other).
My work here is dung.
Nobody in the article was even IMPLYING one caused the other, so the tag is pretty pointless. Every time a controversial study result is posted here, people have this Pavlovian rush to post "correlation!=causation".
At least on the low side. Those with low IQ tend to have low incomes, though high income does not correlate very well with IQ at all, meaning smart people may or may not do well in life. So since smoking correlates to low IQ and low IQ correlates to low income, it may be true that smoking correlates to low income as the author states in TFS.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Cigarettes have provided you with an excuse to get away from everything and focus your mind. No offense, but I'm sure you could achieve the same mental experience without a cigarette. Grab a cup of tea instead.
Hate all you want, but neither the summary nor the article implied in any way that smoking caused a lowering of IQ. In fact, the article went on to say that this correlation indicates that gov't should use this information to adjust the way anto-smoking education should be directed. This indicates that they agree with you -- low IQ's tend to smoke, not the other way around.
So, what you are hating is your predisposition to make assumptions.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The GP may be referring to Smokey and the Bandit where the girl was running away from marriage to the Sheriff's son and has jumped into the Bandits's Pontiac Trans Am with her wedding dress on, and lights up a cigarette.
I now have moved to pipe tobacco that is all natural with no chemicals
Yep, those chemicals will kill ya'. In other news, I've moved to all-natural plutonium to put in my morning drink.
Or, (since I'd be forbidden from having a water boiler at my desk) simply take a couple of minutes to make the tea and then walk away somewhere quiet for a few minutes. There are a dazzling number of possibilities for things to do to give oneself a break to clear the mind that don't significantly increase the likelihood of chemo and radiation treatments later in life and that don't cause one to drag around a foul stench in the more immediate point in time.
They chose to smoke; I didn't. They don't have to either. They have to live with the consequences of being a smoker.
I am more than happy the fuckers have to go outside now. For the last 15 years, I couldn't go out and eat in a restaurant because of my asthma.
To paraphrase the old adage, your rights end where my nose begins. I'm not happy that it took the government* to ban smoking inside restaurants, etc, but I think a restaurant owner has the same responsibility to give smokers the boot outside as they do drunken, filthy, stinky vagrants. You can be either, and more power to you, but not in here.
*my state, at least, had a referendum and 70% voted to ban smoking. Not exactly anti-democratic.
This goes against all claims that you become addicted very quickly.
Some studies have indicated the tendency to get addicted with nicotine is hereditary (ditto with heroin): some people (around 70% if memory serves) get addicted very easily, others rarely or not at all. Maybe you're one of the latter group.