Monday, June 20, 2005
Size Matters?
VCU researchers have published a study which claims to firmly establish a link between brain size and intelligence. Without access to the full text (or time to deal with it) I can't say for sure that this is as much a load of crap as it sounds, but I'm willing to guess that it is.
There are centuries of bad studies making this claim, all of them seeking a nice, clean, easily measurable way of predicting a person's aptitude. All of them have proved bobkis. If you measure brain size the right way I am certain that it correlates to intelligence. I'm also certain that if you measure it in another right way it correlates to a preference for Chianti over Chablis, or dying your hair green in high school.
It's all in what you measure.
There are centuries of bad studies making this claim, all of them seeking a nice, clean, easily measurable way of predicting a person's aptitude. All of them have proved bobkis. If you measure brain size the right way I am certain that it correlates to intelligence. I'm also certain that if you measure it in another right way it correlates to a preference for Chianti over Chablis, or dying your hair green in high school.
It's all in what you measure.
