Sounds like racism to me...
It is a terrible vicious cycle, but the scientists are trying to tie survival vs. intellect, which is an interesting take...the problem is that they use climate as a base, and there are exceptions to a rule they are desperately trying to prove.
...they live in Developing Countries.
I've known some who've left such places. To a man and a woman, they're very intelligent.
This study would tend to support reintroducing the use of DDT.
What decides a high IQ?
Good memory, math skills, logical thinking? I really don’t know what the-powers-that-be value in order to make a high IQ.
My sister used to be a peace corps volunteer in Africa in the 1970s. The thought at the time was that the children in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) were as smart and able as any on the planet between birth and age four or so. When they were completely weaned from breastfeeding and had to get by on the local, meager and unsanitary food, they began to fall behind in development, compared to children in other countries.
It’s poverty, not heat.
BTW, Singapore is plenty hot, and it has a lot of smart people, but they are well-fed.
Sounds reasonable.... hafta have a stable economic base to pursue education, etc...
Of course, the benefits of western civilization seem to be ignored here. Things like, educational emphasis, stable governments, stable currencies with a capitalist economy come to mind.
There are plenty of developing countries that are becoming developed countries. Singapore, the Chicoms, and several others are making the transition from more humble conditions just 50 years ago. As I recall, the literacy rate in Singapore is higher than the US. There’s more to account for the “retardation” than infectious disease.
Egypt is loaded with infectious diseases and parasites, plus it ain’t too cool there either. Yet, living conditions are not so bad.
As to the “oiled” middle eastern countries, they are definitely a mixed bag. Were those countries lacking the blessings of oil, they would be driving something more organic than a Mercedes. When the oil runs out, there will no be much to support their “lifestyle”. Even the Iraqis educate their women. The rest of the arab/islamic countries....not so much.
How do they know the frequency of infectious disease isn’t a result of low IQ, rather than vice versa? A low-IQ society would obviously have more trouble avoiding infectious disease than a high-IQ one.
could education count for it? A few lessons to teach you how to think /look at issues can make a huge difference in any IQ test.
“People in Developing Countries Are Focused On Survival Because of Their Lower IQ’s, hence the word “Developing””
If the author’s hypothesis is correct, African Americans born and raised in chilly Detroit or Chicago’s south side would have higher IQs than Africans in Africa. Hmmm.
It may seem far-fetched but versions of the role of diet can be racist or, at least, a way of explaining why some are intellectually inferior. For example, consider the great and influential 19th century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach constructed a broad and complicated materialistic philosophy that said, in part, “You are what you eat.” From there he went on to say that some peoples - like the Irish, who had potatoes as a disproportunately large part of their diet - were intellectually inferior as a result of this diet. Time and space force me to oversimplify this but Feuerbach elaborated on this dietary role at great length.
This is very sloppy thinking.
I can blow a hole in this theory with a single name...Nancy Pelosi.
To make things fair the UN should introduce a disease program for the developed world, nobody gets vaccinated and every child must get at least one documented infectious disease a year. Seems fair.
Did it not occur to them that perhaps all the intelligent people were simply smart enough to leave?
We only have so much energy. If we use it to find enough food for the day, that doesn’t leave much to contemplate the origins of the universe.
Hey, your IQ goes down if you just gotta have that Double Big-Mac Bacon Burger with a six pack of Papst Blue Ribbon.....right now!