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We're All Getting Dumber, Says Science (fastcompany.com)
dryriver shares a report from Fast Company: Researchers at Norway's Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research now have scientific proof of something we've long suspected -- we're all getting dumber. In their paper, "Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused," which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg report that IQ scores have been steadily dropping since the 1970s.
The study consisted of analyzing 730,000 IQ test results gleaned from young men entering Norway's compulsory military service from 1970 to 2009. They found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" where IQ was seen to be rising during the first part of the 20th century. The decline may be due to environmental factors, but because the researchers couldn't find consistent trends among families, Bratsberg and Rogeberg discounted factors like parental education, family size, increased immigration, and genetics as significant causes.
The study consisted of analyzing 730,000 IQ test results gleaned from young men entering Norway's compulsory military service from 1970 to 2009. They found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" where IQ was seen to be rising during the first part of the 20th century. The decline may be due to environmental factors, but because the researchers couldn't find consistent trends among families, Bratsberg and Rogeberg discounted factors like parental education, family size, increased immigration, and genetics as significant causes.
IQ tests no such thing, and this study does no such thing.
This study shows a persistent trend in the cogitative capacity of enlistees in the general Norwegian population over several decades using a (mostly) consistent measurement battery of standardized test scores.
It makes no connection to education level.
IQ measures how quickly a person is able to grasp a concept or detect a pattern, and how well they are then able to apply that concept or make use of that pattern to solve a problem. It does little else. Its main detraction is that there are issues in communication, since the tests are tailored for people who are English speakers, and who are literate, which biases the results of illiterate people who are otherwise VERY intelligent. It itself does not actually measure your education level.
So, thats two strikes. Care to go for three?
Having done the army test in 2003, as all Norwegian 18 year-old males had to even if they didn't end up serving, I can tell you it was a three part timed test.
1) Mathematics
2) Linguistics (In Norwegian)
3) Logic/Pattern analysis.
Education comes into play in the first two, and the third one is more about figuring it out as you go.
You are then scored 1-9 in each of them as well as all the other testing such as hearing, vision and colorblindness.
I suggest that you review the definition of the word "Compulsory."
It means you don't have a choice in the matter. Or, that the tests are applied to *ALL MALE CITIZENS*. Since this is literally a sample size of "All male citizens of service age in Norway from the start year, to the terminus year", you are talking a very large and unbiased (by ethnicity, race, cultural upbringing, religious practice, affluence level, ... etc.) sample. The only demographic excluded is likely to be female gender, which I explicitly lamplit. Unless you want to make a compelling argument that women are intellectually inferior to men (*gigglesnort*) in the face of a wide number of well reviewed studies to the contrary of that assertion, there is no grounds to claim systemic bias of the sample.
Hence unbiased.
IQ is actually defined as the common component of mental performance that is independent of domain and education. There are IQ tests that are independent of education and culture, but such tests are lengthy, costly, and tedious. That's why mass testing uses simpler tests that are calibrated for particular populations and are dependent on education, age, and culture.
Your test is calibrated for Norwegian 18 year olds; a Norwegian 18 year old that has more education than average would score better on the test, but the fact that he has more education than average would also strongly correlate with a higher IQ. If you give the same test to a Norwegian 30 year old, the results would be meaningless.
Well ya, if they gave English IQ tests to young Norwegians entering military service, I suspect they wouldn't do as well as they could
My guess would be that the difference would be extremely low, Norway is consistently ranked in very top for English proficiency, you start with English in first grade and we don't dub English shows except for little kids. With Internet, YouTube etc. kids also get exposed to lots of material that's neither dubbed nor subtitled. The Harry Potter books sold ~1 million in Norwegian, ~200k in English so one in six preferred English and that's for kids. If you take any kind of higher education, expect English textbooks. Even though English doesn't have an official status, with a high number of immigrants and foreign workers pretty much everything exists in an English translation. Now if you go as far back as this study it would be different, but apart from cultural reasons we could easily make English our official language.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
For example when is the IQ test conducted? Before they are conscripted into service of before that as an evaluation of their abilities?
During the intake ("sesjon"), up until 2009 all males had to go through that even if they'd be dismissed afterwards as not fit for service, conscientious objector or whatever. Then they'd choose to draft some of the people deemed fit for duty. That's probably why the study is to 2009, from 2010 they added a pre-screening because they did have a lot more candidates than they actual needed. And now the process is gender-neutral, everybody goes through the same pre-screening but in practice you don't get called into service unless you want to. Though it theory they can now draft all men and women of service age if shit happens, of course we'd never have time to equip and train them in an actual emergency.
That debate was actually quite funny, originally it was mostly men complaining that why should they waste a year living in bunk beds and digging trenches and the women don't while the women were generally against it. The turning point was certain people taunting like "awwwww, of course us big strong men will protect you delicate little flowers" and feminists going "oh heeeeeeeeell no we can defend ourselves thankyouverymuch where's that's uniform?" Once it became their own cause then it was pretty much a done deal. Kinda like sex and porn, if it's women being what men want it's all hiss boo, if it's women embracing their sexuality then yeah hurrah. Even if it's doing exactly the same...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You will not be exempt from the service due to low scores in either, instead what happens is that the scores determines which kind of service that you will be sent to if you are included. So if you score low on IQ and low in physical then you will be spending your entire military service sorting laundry and other incredible dull tasks. And there is also no bragging rights in "Hey I score low in the military IQ test!!!".
Don't know how the situation is in Norway but back when we had compulsory military service in Sweden you would include your service record score (after the service you would be graded on your performance) when you applied for a job and if you haden't performed your service then some employers would see that as suspicious (aka are you a mad hippy stoner or are you simply unfit for anything).
Not "is messing up", but "could mess up in the future" in that very specific way, should CO2 trends continue.
The idea is that food crops will grow faster and pack on more sugars (starches) in their seed, thereby diluting the amount of nutrients per calorie. They tested this by pumping in additional CO2 and confirmed their theory, grains grown in enhanced CO2 environments have greater yields with more calories per hectare, but less nutrients per calorie.
This all assumes a static set of strains, with no action taken by farmers and seed producers to create different varieties that better exploit the conditions, and that grains are important for providing things beyond their core starches.