Nothing like some garbage science to start your day!
Here’s something that might be hard for moms to swallow: a recent study suggested that women who are thin give birth to children with higher I.Q.’s. Hm.
The report, which comes from the United Kingdom, says that children born to overweight mothers may score slightly lower on I.Q. tests than children with thinner mothers.
Another class that is the wrong side of the political spectrum. The Overweight. Let’s see that amazing result!
The results are startling: If mom was overweight prior to becoming pregnant, her child scored 1.5 points lower on the three tests. And if mom was obese prior to her pregnancy, scores were 3 points lower.
1.5 Points and 3 points! WOW! What does that even amount to? Even if these numbers were real, the differences are hardly “startling”, a better word is “imperceptible”. The difference between somebody with an IQ of 125 and 120 is barely measurable, and further can be completely obscured if the higher IQ person is complacent and unmotivated, and the lower one is well-read and has a curious nature.
Further the difference between the test groups is well within the margin of error for most excepted tests. Since I’m one of those curious types I used to take IQ tests from various sources to see how they compared. I was impressed to find that indeed the number it gave me was pretty close, and that was over several years of testing, and several different tests. Of course the Margin of error given for those tests was approximately +/- 5 points. This was around 20 years ago…and not surprisingly the tests haven’t changed that much.
The reasonable error around any reliable IQ is going to be plus or minus 5 or 6 points, to give you a 95 percent confidence interval. So, for example, if a person scores 126, then you can say with 95 percent confidence that the person’s true IQ is somewhere between 120 and 132; within our science we don’t get any more accurate than that.
But as soon as you go to a different IQ test, then the range is even wider, because different IQ tests measure slightly different things.
So they’re claiming a DIFFERENCE of 1.5 and 3 points that can only be measured with tests that have a margin of error of 5/6 points.
Now to be fair, I haven’t seen the data set, but if most of the participants measured lower, that COULD indicate a real trend…but the trend really can’t be relied on, as it could simply be an artifact of the test. Still, more likely the data set was a standard scatter-plot and they managed to fit a line in there to sell a point.
A similar graph can be seen here by Barron.
Overall we can claim that a good Brady Score means a more dangerous state…but really the numbers are irrelevant, and instead the most confident claim that can be made is “Gun Control Doesn’t Make You any Safer”.
The same claim I bet is “Your BMI has no impact on your child’s intelligence”.
of course these people have an agenda, which is more important than good ethical science!
h/t Mrs. Weer’d
Well, it is a UK study, that about says what needs saying. 😉
Of course it presents a correlation not a causation, so the actual factors here may have nothing to do with the mother’s weight.
Considering there is also a general correlation between intelligence and weight, the amount of heritability of IQ could then explain the difference.
Also it’s a fairly reasonable hypothesis that the less intelligent just don’t on average take as good of care of their bodies.
Still maintaining a healthy weight is important to mental health as there is a strong correlation to reduction in mental capability with age and being overweight.
Interesting hypothesis, and it certainly could have a factor…still with all IQ readings inside the confidence intervals its likely just BS and nothing more.
I wrote a paper when I was in grad school about BMI. I do not agree that it is valid. One need look no further than professional sports to see why. I used the roster of the Tampa Lightning, a major league professional hockey team as an example.
I calculated the BMI of these athletes, many of whom not only compete in the NHL, but also compete in the Olympics. These are athletes that are in prime shape.
To a man, they all had a BMI of at least 26, which is considered overweight. In fact, left wing Pierre-Cedric Labrie, at 6’3″ and 234 pounds is only 5 pounds shy of being clinically obese.
BMI can indeed be misleading. I used to call it “bullshit”, but that was under the blanket context its currently put in. The doctors I currently work in are calling for BMI to be treated as a vital sign like resting heart rate.
A low resting pulse COULD be a sign of a thyroid condition….OR it could mean the person is a runner or does heavy aerobic exercise. Same goes for 6’2″ 250lb NFL Lineman with massive arms and 6-pack abs. Yes his BMI says he’s overweight….but a quick look at his physique shows he’s a healthy weight.
I’m fine with it being just a reference point, rather than a full-on diagnosis.