On The Recent Flynn Study On The Gender-IQ Gap

It’s as accurate as you would expect from a Pop-Sci column.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/022834.html

In this case, the original story seems to have come from the Daily Mail. The Mail article in its headline and lead paragraphs bubbles excitedly that “For the first time in IQ testing, psychologists have found that female scores have risen above those of men,” accompanied by a photo of a triumphant, pretty young white woman and a troubled-looking, middle-aged white man. But, as Laura Wood discovered (and as Steve Sailer, the expected expert on such subjects, did not bother discovering), if you read to the end of the article, you find out that this is not the case at all:

[James Flynn] collated IQ examination results from countries in western Europe and from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and Estonia.These showed that in westernised countries the gap in scores between men and women had become minimal.

The data for making exact comparisons was sparser and could be carried out for only a handful of countries.

It included Australia, where male and female IQs were found to be almost identical.

In New Zealand, Estonia and Argentina, women scored marginally more than men.

So, the female IQ superiority over men, uncritically parroted over the whole world, turns out to be a marginal superiority in three countries, two of them very small countries.

Meanwhile, as Laura Wood also pointed out, it was only the Daily Mail which admitted (but only at the very end of its article) the truth that the new finding was only in three countries. All the other articles I’ve checked out, from the UK Telegraph, the New York Daily News (whose article I linked and paraphrased at the beginning of this entry), CBS News, presented only the lie, consisting of the general, unqualified statement that women are now smarter than men.

The concealment of the fact that the finding only obtained in three countries was not the only lie in the “study” and the reporting of the “study.” As Laura points out in another entry:

Flynn revealed to ABC news that his studies, which took place in Estonia, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, involved girls and boys between the ages of 15 and 18. Psychologists have noted for years that adolescent girls develop faster than boys and complete puberty earlier.

And by the way, the title of that ABC News article is:

Women Beat Men on IQ
Tests for First Time

An accurate headline would have said:

Among 15-18 Year Olds in Three Countries,
Girls Have Slightly Higher IQs Than Boys