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Education United States Science

Online Tests Suggest IQ Scores In US Dropped For the First Time In Nearly a Century 186

Posted by BeauHD from the now-let's-not-jump-to-conclusions dept.
A group of psychologists, two from Northwestern University and the third from the University of Oregon, has found via online testing that IQ scores in the U.S. may be dropping for the first time in nearly a century. Phys.Org reports: In this new effort, the researchers studied the results of online IQ tests taken by adults participating in the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project over a 12-year period. They found that IQ scores have dropped for all age groups, regardless of gender. They also found that the steepest declines were among young people. They also noted that while a few skills, such as spatial reasoning, were better than previous generations, other skills, such as problem solving, numerical series assessments and verbal reasoning, had all grown worse.

The researchers did not conduct any research to try to explain the drop, but suggest it might be linked to changes in the education system. They also did not address the controversial issue of the accuracy of IQ test scores in general as a means of measuring a person's intelligence. The paper has been published in the journal Intelligence.
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Online Tests Suggest IQ Scores In US Dropped For the First Time In Nearly a Century More

Online Tests Suggest IQ Scores In US Dropped For the First Time In Nearly a Century

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  • DUH (Score:2)

    by Bob_Who ( 926234 )
    No surprise, really. What goes up....

    • Gravity vs IQ (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @11:12PM (#63368617) Homepage Journal

      That's gravity, not IQ results though.

      Still, one would expect IQ to eventually stabilize, and that would generally mean fluxuations in test results.

      Assuming that IQ tests measure *something* vaguely related to intelligence, that, like how BMI tracks with obesity even if it isn't 100% accurate, and all that, we very well should have been on an upwards track over the last century or so.
      I mean, balance improved nutrition, including quite a few measures that reduced damaged brains, up until like the 70s, when we hit what I consider a local maximum for brain damaging pollution(leaded gasoline use). Then an upward trend there with the elimination of leaded gasoline(and other stuff), up until relatively very recently.

      Balanced against lowering factors like dumb people not dying as much. Improved standards that reduce the amount of brain damage, etc...

      It can get quite complicated, I guess.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by saloomy ( 2817221 )
        No. IQ tests intelligence. As our society and our civilization gear more and more towards an inventive, knowledge based, scientifically driven society, we should be getting smarter. Each generation has enabled the following generation to have greater access to knowledge on a more constant and pervasive basis, with higher levels of nutrition and better environmental conditions to foster higher brain development, our IQ scores should be on a never-ending upward trajectory. The turn of the last century, we had

        • Re:Gravity vs IQ (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @12:41AM (#63368733) Homepage Journal

          1. IQ is supposed to test intelligence; from the reports I've read, it's fairly lousy at it, at least on the individual level.
          2. You're mixing up knowledge and intelligence. We're increasing the prior, certainly, but "intelligence" is supposed to be our ability to process knowledge. That is something that can only be slightly trained, and thus evolution is probably going to be the biggest driver once we max out environmental factors. And evolution doesn't work that fast.
          3. You miss that nutrition and environmental conditions, both of which I mentioned, do logically have ceilings.
          4. Access to books is something that IQ tests try to avoid being a factor. It was actually one of the problems with early IQ tests, because they hadn't eliminated the cultural factors. So somebody from elsewhere than Europe or the USA would tend to score worse, because they didn't have the cultural background.
          5. Dewey decimal system is knowledge, not intelligence. IQ tests deliberately try to avoid testing knowledge.
          6. IQ tests, not being supposed to be knowledge based, shouldn't be affected by schooling.

          Instead, what I see occuring:
          1. Nutrition factors have maxed out and leveled off
          2. Environmental pollution has dropped and leveled off(further fixes for this are going to take longer for relatively less benefit)

          • Re:Gravity vs IQ (Score:5, Insightful)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @01:06AM (#63368755)

            This isn't the individual level.

            IQ stands for "intelligence quotient." It is defined as how well you perform on specific types of tests, divided by how well you're expected to do (at your age, etc.).

            It doesn't measure "intelligence" because we don't know what that is. Instead, it measures your performance on cognitive tasks relative to your peers.

            • Re:Gravity vs IQ (Score:5, Interesting)

              by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @01:25AM (#63368783)

              This isn't the individual level.

              Perhaps not. But IQ does measure something strongly correlated with success in life (income, health, longevity), and things that raise IQ also raise those measures of success.

              Some things that raise IQ: Reducing environmental lead and other heavy metal neurotoxins. Better prenatal nutrition, especially folic acid. A mom who doesn't drink while she's pregnant. Parents who don't smoke. Breastfeeding. Etc.

              So whatever IQ is measuring is a good proxy for measuring a lot of things we should be fixing and identifying which subpopulations aren't fixing those problems.

              Black kids have the lowest IQ scores. They also have the highest blood lead levels, parents who are most likely to smoke and drink, and the least likely to breastfeed. Asian kids have the highest IQ scores and are on the opposite end of all those other criteria.

              • So whatever IQ is measuring is a good proxy for measuring a lot of things we should be fixing and identifying which subpopulations aren't fixing those problems.

                Yep. Looks like your assessment is in line with mine. Reducing environmental exposure to lead, other neurotoxic heavy metals, hell, other neurotoxic stuff in general. The single biggest reduction being banning leaded gasoline.

                Improved nutrition, including/especially prenatal. Including breastfeeding and such when possible, and using a high quality replacement if necessary*. Not doing various drugs with negative effects, though I wonder if those should be under pollution.

                And yeah, we have subpopulation

              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                by Anonymous Coward

                > Some things that raise IQ: Reducing environmental lead and other heavy metal neurotoxins. Better prenatal nutrition, especially folic acid. A mom who doesn't drink while she's pregnant. Parents who don't smoke. Breastfeeding. Etc.

                If you look at the literature, the lead thing is getting a bit suspect. There's a persistent IQ gap it's being used to explain and to do so the effect size has been creeping up higher and higher in the literature, yet there are lots of confounders here. It probably has some

            • Yeah, the problem with IQ tests is that they test select cognitive functions, while "intelligence" is one of those things that if you ask a half dozen experts to define, you'll get around a dozen answers. Everybody has their own weighting.

              Thus why it's fairly bad at the individual level, but still works at the social level.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by mbkennel ( 97636 )

                > while "intelligence" is one of those things that if you ask a half dozen experts to define, you'll get around a dozen answers.

                That's why the 'IQ' tests are measuring 'g' factor which the experts understand has one answer, and it's an important one.

          • Having access to information is of course important. If you ran an IQ test on a Senegalese island inhabitant who had never had formal training in maths, or understood the scientific methods or basic comprehension skills, they would fail miserably. Having access to information in and of itself is a big determinant BECAUSE it requires comprehension to be useful, which we naturally try to understand and therefore become good and learning and figuring out. Itâ(TM)s like exercising a muscle. You use it and

            • Perhaps, but there are IQ tests that are designed to have as little training in maths as possible. Just being alive should give comprehension skills, I mean, they need to comprehend when they're in danger. Scientific methods are, for the most part, not applicable.

              But yeah, primitive people doing worse on the tests is something they've been spending a while trying to work around.

          • Innate intelligence? Nope. That's fundamental attribution bias. Sure some people do appear to be born with certain advantageous pre-dispositions & attributes, e.g. larger working memory capacity (WMC), but that doesn't necessarily predict academic performance in real life. There are a lot of very "intelligent" people who don't have large WMC & conversely, people with large WMC who don't perform well on intelligence tests.

            A simple analogy, some people are born with physical fitness attributes that
          • Fossil fuel use is still increasing, and the effects of the pollution it generates takes many years to manifest. CO2 levels in our everyday lives have increased, which has known effects on cognition. Most people now live in cities, where pollution is concentrated. Food is being manufactured rather than grown while medicine tells us to avoid processed food. These seem like the most obvious reasons IQ scores have dropped over a century of large scale industry. It also explains a lot of the anger and biza

          • IQ is supposed to test intelligence; from the reports I've read, it's fairly lousy at it....

            Yes it is. I have taken MANY IQ tests over my lifetime, and I have always scored between 140 and 148. That by itself is enough to convince me that IQ tests are snake oil, because I know for a fact that I do not have genius-level intelligence. Hi intelligence, yes. Genius intelligence, hell no.

            So this report tells us exactly nothing of use. Its fear-mongering for some unknown ulterior motive. That motive is typically money, so that's a safe first bet.

        • the obvious answer is that schools are more focused on social issues today than they have ever been, and far less focused on the scientific literature. For crying out loud they are teaching children that biological sexual characteristics are muted by feelings.

          And? I think a more relevant debate is should we be prioritising turning people into smart utter cunts who treat everyone not like them with distain, or maybe the world would be a better place if people learnt a bit of VERY MUCH NEEDED empathy.

          You want to talk "for crying out load", the USA is currently split into two political realms with so little tolerance that each side thinks the other side are borderline sub human. Maybe science isn't the right thing to be teaching right now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fazig ( 2909523 )
          "Social issues" is the catch-all scapegoat for people like you, isn't it?
          With all the wild correlations going on, you could probably also show that the IQ drop among adults has a good correlation with the FOX News ratings.

          A News network whose opinion of their viewers is that they're dumb cousin fucking terrorists. So they keep feeding them what they want to hear to keep the ratings high, like "social issues" and making up all kinds of shit that children are taught despite themselves not even believing in

        • Re:Gravity vs IQ (Score:4, Interesting)

          by HanzoSpam ( 713251 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @08:47AM (#63369331)

          Left out, of course, is the effects of importing massive numbers of 3rd world immigrants. As usual, the most obvious and logical answer is the one we're not allowed to discuss.

          More dumb people = lower average IQ.

          Pretty simple, really.

          • That's begging the question. It's as easy to speculate that the folks from third world countries are under greater selective pressure than the poor in first world countries, which would mean they would be bringing superior genetics with them, and in the superior nutrition/pollution environment of a first world setting their second generation offspring would perform better than the natives and further admixture would have a positive aggregative effect. Although it probably isn't that simple either. There
            • Actually being a genius in a hardscrabble life is pretty miserable. It's the reason neurons are pared in children who are in abuse or difficult environments. You only need enough brains to survive in your environment.

  • Education (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 )

    it might be linked to changes in the education system

    I thought IQ wasn't about "education".

    • Re:Education (Score:5, Informative)

      by fermion ( 181285 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @11:07PM (#63368605) Homepage Journal
      I do very well on IQ tests. It is because it is geared to the culture I was raised in and my access to mechanical machines.

      While we are not supposed to bring up the personal in reviewing research papers, this is psychology so the assumptions and skill by the research team matter. The first author does have a masters in statistics, but like all the authors the degree is medical and theyâ(TM)re not hard science that would lead to outstanding research. The second author seems to be pining for a world that has passed him by, from reading his bio. The third is a kid from Oregon who appears to have been doing this for no more than a minute.

      The fact is no credible researcher uses the IQ as anything other than a measure against itself. It is a flawed test that has limited applicability outside a limited domain. Using it for a modern population is like trying to navigate at .9c using Newtonian physics,

      This is a paper published to fill a quota. The third author admits it. He just trolls data sets looking for interesting patterns. This is a useful technique. I know researchers who do this, but the validate and donâ(TM)t use fake data like the IQ test.

    • Re:Education (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @11:11PM (#63368611)

      I thought IQ wasn't about "education".

      It's not about education but without some education it is difficult to gauge one's intelligence. Part of IQ is being able to take in complex information, process it into something useful, convey that back to others, and do so relatively quickly. To do that would require some education in some language, some basics in mathematics (if only to understand the symbols for numbers and mathematical operations), and this language and mathematics be understood similarly by the evaluator and the subject of evaluation.

      There are IQ tests built to evaluate intelligence that require little prior education in language or mathematics but they will have limits. If given enough time with a subject someone that is skilled in evaluating intelligence could do some back and forth to get an accurate IQ score but this will involve educating the subject in some topics and then measuring how well the subject can respond to questions about what was given to them. That takes time that is not likely to be available for evaluating large groups like students in a school. Certainly not for a nation the size of the USA. So if there's an influx of people that aren't well educated in English, have had little exposure to mathematics, then they'd score poorly on standardized tests.

      There is the possibility that immigrants score poorly on standardized tests because they are lower in IQ. We've seen a large migration of people from different parts of the world into the USA and Europe, and these are people that will not speak the language of the nation they entered. It could be that they don't speak the language, or they are simply just lower in IQ. Without more testing we can't separate the two.

      Increases in immigration is one example I could think of on how education might impact IQ scores. Give it time and someone will likely provide some other possible explanation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        You can easily improve your IQ test score with practice. That's not at all surprising - people tend to do better at things they are familiar with.

        Some education systems focus on that kind of problem solving, or even in taking those kinds of tests. Obviously kids experiencing that have a big advantage when tested.

        The other issue is that problem solving as a measure of intelligence is a rather narrow definition of what being smart means. An artist like a writer or photographer could offer great insight into s

    • It's mostly not about reciting memorized facts.

      Education isn't just reciting memorized facts. A good education teaches one thinking strategies. How to figure things out. The ability to figure things out is kinda what IQ is all about.

      One examples is learning to start by picking out relevant vs irrelevant information, such as in word problems. My daughter gets a lot of that in third grade and has become quite good at it *through practice*.

      She's learning to check whether the answer she comes up with is reasona

    • it might be linked to changes in the education system

      I thought IQ wasn't about "education".

      It is. It goes up as you get more education. It is meant to be callibrated with age to counter that in children, but they let the education schew it in adults assuming educated adults are smarter as the results seem to suggest.

    • It's not. Proof: The US education system.

      Though it's debatable whether that is about education either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      The brain is a muscle. Without regular exercize, through learning math, reading, writing, physics, etc., the muscle will atrophy.

      Without learning how to find patterns, how to handle equations, how to structure a sentence and all such other things we learn in school an IQ test has little it CAN test in you.

  • Or maybe (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @10:16PM (#63368533)
    It’s because the IQ tests are being administered online, for the first time in um welll. Like FOREVER?

    It’s already been well demonstrated that people just don’t learn/try/listen/focus as well Onome versus when they’re in a physical room. No surprise to me that people taking intelligence tests remotely will do worse than sitting in a real room with a hundred other people and a dozen proctors. Nothing like a bit of real-life-stress to get the ol’ neurons jumpin’ quickly.

  • Is there a uniform sampling of the population for IQ test takers? Or at least is there a sampling methodology that has remained constant over the years to allow year-to-year results to be compared?

    I took something resembling an IQ test about 45 years ago. My 9th grade English teacher's dad took an IQ test. Those are all the people in my entire life that I know took any type of IQ test. My guess is that extrapolating IQ test results to a demographic or historical population is not statistically challenging.

    I

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by doom ( 14564 )
      Yup. My thought was "smarter people are less likely to waste time on these tests now". Pretty much every smart person I know is contemptuous of the need to prove it with an IQ score-- go do something useful, already.

    • to brag about one's relative intellectual prowess

      Which really just comes across as a sign of diminished social skills, since most normal people don't go around bragging about their IQ. Furthermore, if it's a brag done in compensation for lack of financial success, it's very likely to prompt a response along the lines of "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" [fandom.com]

    • It's pretty hilarious that anyone here is taking this seriously at all, probably just because it lets them blame their pet issue for it, like covid lockdowns, woke teachers, tiktock, etc.

    • That's how I think of all poll results. You're only sampling the views of the demographic that is willing to waste their time with polls.

  • It was a documentary.
    Power Slap comes close to 'ow my balls!'.

  • So they've confirmed we truly are living in the Idiocracy timeline? All I need is a few more people telling me they're not interested in what I have to say because I'm a fag* and I'll have enough stamps on my Idiocracy card for a free meal at Carl's Jr. Fuck you, I'm eating.

    * It's a line from the movie, and I'm actually a gay man anyway so I think I'm allowed to say it.

  • IQ - Prediction about school performance. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dschnur ( 61074 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @10:37PM (#63368565)
    The IQ test was developed, eg. the Binet-Simon Test, to filter out the people who would not do well in the educational system. That's putting it nicely. In the early 1900's, they were a little more blunt in their reasoning. It's gone through quite a bit of refinement since then, but it is still not a measurement of intelligence per se.

    As for public education, the US has been aiming at the lowest common denominator for quite some time. We starve our schools for funds, yet require specific performance from students with penalties for teachers who do not deliver.

    My wife teaches at the number one elementary school in our state, one of the top 50 in the US. She earns teacher of the month at least once per year. Her school is not part of a district. She works there because working for the public school district was untenable. Competent teachers and administrators have left it long ago. Their administration is a nightmare. They don't even provide curriculum for teachers, but require them to develop it themselves. Exactly the opposite of where she works now.

    It's no wonder that students are not preforming as well as they used to. It's also not surprising that it would show up in IQ tests.

    • The IQ test was developed, eg. the Binet-Simon Test, to filter out the people who would not do well in the educational system. That's putting it nicely. In the early 1900's, they were a little more blunt in their reasoning. It's gone through quite a bit of refinement since then, but it is still not a measurement of intelligence per se. As for public education, the US has been aiming at the lowest common denominator for quite some time. We starve our schools for funds, yet require specific performance from students with penalties for teachers who do not deliver. My wife teaches at the number one elementary school in our state, one of the top 50 in the US. She earns teacher of the month at least once per year. Her school is not part of a district. She works there because working for the public school district was untenable. Competent teachers and administrators have left it long ago. Their administration is a nightmare. They don't even provide curriculum for teachers, but require them to develop it themselves. Exactly the opposite of where she works now. It's no wonder that students are not preforming as well as they used to. It's also not surprising that it would show up in IQ tests.

      This post is very inaccurate. It's quite the opposite of what is mentioned here. Charter schools do NOT outperform public ones. In fact, they are ONLY beneficial to minority inner city children per the latest research. The amount of students who achieve great things, and who came from a charter school are almost non-existent to give an example. Seriously, go look and you will find no notable individuals who went primarily to charter schools. That said, IQ can be influenced by practice. You can score h

    • Their administration is a nightmare. They don't even provide curriculum for teachers, but require them to develop it themselves.

      To be fair, if you provide curriculum for teachers, they complain about that, too.

    • Re:IQ - Prediction about school performance. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ShakaUVM ( 157947 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @04:48AM (#63369063) Homepage Journal

      > We starve our schools for funds, yet require specific performance from students with penalties for teachers who do not deliver.

      The state ADA average is $17,020 per pupil per year. That's more money going to K-12 education - for every student - than non-resident tuition at a UC ($14,318 per year). And that's not counting local supplementary property taxes which here is twice the state budget. Or federal grants, which are pretty substantial ($170M/year here in San Diego).

      I would very happily run a class of 20 students and take them from Kindergarten to 12th grade if they paid me $170,000 per year to do so. They'd get a better and more individualized education than what they're getting now, and I'd only charge half what they were currently costing the state.

      Money is not the issue. There's plenty of money. The system is awash in money. But the education still sucks. Only 1 in 3 high school students even hits the proficiency level on standardized tests.

  • Or did they over the years make the test easier which let people score higher but they failed to account for the TP college degree's? So reality is IQ was going down for last 10 years as people were robbed of things like common sense and critical thinking.

  • Explanations (Score:5, Funny)

    by Paradise Pete ( 33184 ) on Monday March 13, 2023 @11:02PM (#63368601) Journal
    Several of the "explanations" in these comments make me believe that the researchers might be on to something.

    • Re:Explanations (Score:5, Funny)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @04:59AM (#63369087)

      Several of the "explanations" in these comments make me believe that the researchers might be on to something.

      That's just because you're not woke enough. Or too woke. Wait backup, what political side do you fall on? I need to know so I can disagree with you which is the only thing important on Slashdot.

  • Stop the common core and over-testing madness in schools and watch them begin to rise again. You're burning the kids out. I know, I was a teacher for 18 years and saw this first-hand. This is also why teachers are leaving the profession in alarming numbers. Get politics out of the schools and let teachers teach.

    • staring at a screen 12 hours a day instead of exercising your brain's speech center with real human interaction has its consequences. you can teach math with chalk, a pail of marbles, counting up, counting down, whatever. Doesn't really matter that much, and common core isn't a cause for a dip in IQ scores of the population.

      I'd expect a teacher to at least understand statistics well enough to know that most Americans have not had any exposure to common core because ... 75%+ of Americans are adults.

      • Your IQ does not drop over time. Lower IQ scores recently being seen is not made up by the 75% you point out. Now, go back to school and learn how common statistics and your lack of thought failed you young man.

        • In this new effort, the researchers studied the results of online IQ tests taken by adults participating in the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project over a 12-year period.

          Stunning reading comprehension bro.

  • Nothing says "ignore me" quite as much as a linear regression trendline fit on a non-linear dataset.
  • Cookers (Sovereign Citizens), conspiracy nutters, Social media posts etc. I am shocked this is the first time it has tracked down given the dregs of society that seem to have floated to the surface online.

  • Demographics (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 )

    I'll just say it - the demographics of the country have changed, and no one with a brain should be surprised that the new IQ test results now match the new demographics.

    It turns out that the dirt here isn't magic and does not turn people into Americans. Inviting millions of people in from low IQ parts of the world means that the average now includes millions of people from low IQ parts of the world.

    The good news is that you younger people get to look forward to telling your grandkids about how cool indoor

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      Are you sure it's not the racist morons, such as yourself, dragging the average down?

    • There is no shortage of 100% native born white American dumbasses. Never has been.

      Stupid knows no color.

    • I'll just say it - the demographics of the country have changed, and no one with a brain should be surprised that the new IQ test results now match the new demographics.

      You sound like you know what IQ really means... so tell me, is the way it is measured truly indicative of actual intelligence? Is the migrant child from El Salvador actually dumber than the typical American child? Is the IQ test that is administered able to equally assess the intelligence of both children?

      You do not say specifically, but the wording appears to indicate that you think foreign children are less intelligent. What do you base this idea on? That they are not familiar with the mechanisms and soci

  • Or 'dumber' people now are better educated (Score:3)

    by LetterRip ( 30937 ) on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @02:19AM (#63368867)

    They are grouping by education. If the average education requirement for jobs has increased and thus people seek more education it makes each group 'dumber' on average.

    So if the most intelligent of each group has now moved to the next highest education level, the average IQ of the group they leave drops, and the average IQ of the group they move into drops.

    So this alone isn't evidence that the population is less intelligent, but rather is evidence of education requirements inflation.

    • Good catch! The wider availability of student loans and family planning probably also helps students inclined to continue education to keep going where they may have stopped before.

  • > online IQ tests taken by adults participating in the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project

    Developed by Aperture Science?

  • Idiocracy here we come...

  • Not taking into account the incredible dumb that is being spread on YouTube and other short form video platforms that rarely provide anything insightful beyond being vaguely interesting or shocking entertainment, and often downright unscientific conspiracy nonsense like Flat Earth trash. YouTube is the primary source of the rise of flat earth junk, and people are siphoning it directly into their brains with no critical thinking required.
  • knowledge and reasoning kills faith.
  • "Of the nearly 98,000 students enrolled at San Diego Unified, more than 27,700 or 28.5% were chronically absent as of January."

    https://www.kpbs.org/news/local/2023/02/02/san-diego-unified-chronic-absenteeism-2023 [kpbs.org]

  • It would be interesting to know how other countries perform - it would be a clue regarding the reasons behind these results, as I vaguely remember some article that microplastics and forever chemicals (now found already in humans) do have some negative impact on "intelligence".

    From a brief search:
    https://www.bionity.com/en/new... [bionity.com]
    https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

  • Smart women not breeding (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SirLanse ( 625210 ) <(swwg69) (at) (yahoo.com)> on Tuesday March 14, 2023 @11:09AM (#63369731)
    It has been shown that the more education (especially STEM) a woman has, the fewer children they have. Women who flunk out of school, have welfare children to support themselves. Phds have careers, not children. When this happens enough, it shows up in the general public.

  • The more people that use automation that does complex things without User intervention, the less folks have to have complex thought.

    How many global STEM folks design things like modern cellular phones, design and engineer cars, versus the billions that simply use them?

    So, maybe it's a kind of intellectual atrophy.

    It might be a WALL-E effect.

  • The safe Reverse Flynn effect was observed and studied in Norway. They did it on conscription age males, and traced back families too ...

    Here is the paper [pnas.org].

    They conclude that the cause is NOT genetics nor immigration ...

    They narrow it down to "environmental", but they can't pinpoint it to exact causes ...

    Pure speculation: Lead in gasoline (stopped a long time ago)? PFAS? PM2.5? ...

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