As someone who teaches psychology, I can tell you that it never ceases to amaze me how students overgeneralize, oversimplify, and get offended by these types of studies. The typical response is outrage because people hastily assume that the author of the article is saying that all big-brain people are smarter (or even BETTER) than small-brain people. Or that, if you randomly select any two people on the street, that you can know which one is smarter by weighing both their brains. This article says NONE of that. And the author's conclusions don't preclude Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawing from having relatively small brains.
But the article does suggest that, based on the data mentioned, the odds are that if you randomly select a million people from the general population, then the average IQ of the 500,000 with bigger-than-the-median brains will be higher than the average IQ of the 500,000 with smaller-than-the-median brains.
Remember, this is based on the data he looked at, not on some other data. That's important, because he tells the reader which data he used. You or anybody else can look at the data for yourself and decide whether or not he was wrong. Then you, too, can submit a paper to the editors of the journal Intelligence just like he did, contradicting what he wrote. Or, if you find that his conclusions or meta-analyses were correct based on the data, but that he should have used different data, then that would also be a reason you might go ahead and submit your own article saying that. Hello, that is how science works.
Of course, I understand why a person (particularly a non-academic) might read part of that article and say, "OK, the author didn't actually come out and state that all big-brain people are better, but that's what he's hinting at. He's speaking in code--just like they all do. He's saying that my Aunt Gladys, who is a dwarf, is stupid and that she's not as good as all the other people in the world and that we should exterminate her... and that's WRONG. That sonofabitch never met my Aunt Gladys and he doesn't know how wonderful she is."
I do understand why people have those sentiments. It is true that people oftentimes speak in code for political reasons. I'm thinking, in particular, of some simpleminded radio talk-show hosts or politicians. An appropriate--in my opinion--response to that type of stuff, is to say, "Here's what you're stating explicitly, but here's what I think you're actually implying, and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong to imply such a thing." And that's when you give him all your evidence and close your comments by telling him a little story about your wonderful Aunt Gladys.
Of course this reminds me of the outrage over the comments made by Harvard's Larry Summers earlier this year.
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But the article does suggest that, based on the data mentioned, the odds are that if you randomly select a million people from the general population, then the average IQ of the 500,000 with bigger-than-the-median brains will be higher than the average IQ of the 500,000 with smaller-than-the-median brains.
Remember, this is based on the data he looked at, not on some other data. That's important, because he tells the reader which data he used. You or anybody else can look at the data for yourself and decide whether or not he was wrong. Then you, too, can submit a paper to the editors of the journal Intelligence just like he did, contradicting what he wrote. Or, if you find that his conclusions or meta-analyses were correct based on the data, but that he should have used different data, then that would also be a reason you might go ahead and submit your own article saying that. Hello, that is how science works.
Of course, I understand why a person (particularly a non-academic) might read part of that article and say, "OK, the author didn't actually come out and state that all big-brain people are better, but that's what he's hinting at. He's speaking in code--just like they all do. He's saying that my Aunt Gladys, who is a dwarf, is stupid and that she's not as good as all the other people in the world and that we should exterminate her... and that's WRONG. That sonofabitch never met my Aunt Gladys and he doesn't know how wonderful she is."
I do understand why people have those sentiments. It is true that people oftentimes speak in code for political reasons. I'm thinking, in particular, of some simpleminded radio talk-show hosts or politicians. An appropriate--in my opinion--response to that type of stuff, is to say, "Here's what you're stating explicitly, but here's what I think you're actually implying, and I'm going to tell you why you're wrong to imply such a thing." And that's when you give him all your evidence and close your comments by telling him a little story about your wonderful Aunt Gladys.
Of course this reminds me of the outrage over the comments made by Harvard's Larry Summers earlier this year.
Never mind, I won't get into that.