Free Republic

Water fluoridation has been hailed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the top great public health achievements of the 20th century, but a new study raises questions about its role as a potential neurotoxin in utero. The study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, found that increased levels of fluoride exposure during pregnancy were associated with declines in IQ in children. Previous research has made similar findings, but this is the first such study to evaluate the effect of fluoride on populations receiving what the US Public Health Service considers optimal levels...

On 30 April 2019, St. Edmunds College, University of Cambridge, rescinded a fellowship to the outstanding young researcher Noah Carl, who self-identifies as a conservative. The rescinding was unjust, and it came after a sustained and equally unjust campaign of leftist protest and demonstration against Dr. Carl. The campaign was unjustly supported by leftist press outlets, including Varsity, the University of Cambridge student newspaper. I was the external examiner on Dr. Carl’s DPhil from Nuffield, Oxford, so I am familiar with his work. It is a data-intensive investigation of cognitive ability (or intelligence) and its correlates, including ideological views, trust,...

In the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men,” there is a courtroom scene where the prosecuting attorney (played by Tom Cruise) tells the defendant Marine officer Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) that he wants the truth. To that, Jessup shouts back, “You can’t handle the truth.” What brings that to mind is the recent revelation that the College Board (CB) has begun calculating an “adversity score” for each student who takes its aptitude test, the SAT. Apparently, the people running the CB don’t believe that we can handle the truth that individual students vary in their academic abilities, and...

I have taught evolution and genetics at Williams College for about a decade. For most of that time, the only complaints I got from students were about grades. But that all changed after Donald Trump’s election as president. At that moment, political tensions were running high on our campus. And well-established scientific ideas that I’d been teaching for years suddenly met with stiff ideological resistance. ... In class, though, some students argued instead that it is impossible to measure IQ in the first place, that IQ tests were invented to ostracize minority groups, or that IQ is not heritable at...

A White House plan to reform the country’s legal immigration system includes a provision that mandates the use of E-Verify to prevent employers from hiring illegal aliens over American citizens. Mandatory E-Verify, pro-American immigration reformers previously said, was crucial to any immigration plan unveiled by the White House as, currently, American workers are forced to compete against illegal aliens for working class jobs in a majority of states that do not mandate the use of E-Verify. “Even though the plan doesn’t reduce numbers overall, it contains no amnesty or guest worker increases, mandates E-Verify, and addresses the wholesale abuse of...

IQ rates are dropping in many developed countries and that doesn't bode well for humanity An intelligence crisis could undermine our problem-solving capacities and dim the prospects of the global economy. People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline. SNIP If we want to prevent America from suffering this fate, we’d better figure out why IQs are dropping elsewhere. But it’s uncharted territory. Until recently, IQ scores only moved in one direction: up. And if you're thinking, "Isn't the test set up so that...

People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline. Though there are legitimate questions about the relationship between IQ and intelligence, and broad recognition that success depends as much on other virtues like grit, IQ tests in use throughout the world today really do seem to capture something meaningful and durable. Decades of research have shown that individual IQ scores predict things such as educational achievement and longevity. More broadly, the average IQ score of a country is linked to economic growth and scientific innovation....

The chancellor of New York City schools testified for more than two hours at a City Council hearing Wednesday, staunchly defending the view that the admissions test for eight elite high schools must be abolished. Chancellor Richard Carranza said the 1971 state law that governs admissions was designed to block integration. Now about 10% of students at the sought-after schools are black or Hispanic, despite making up nearly 67% of the city’s enrollment. “Either we believe that black and Latino students are biologically, physiologically, genealogically incapable of being admitted to a specialized school or it is the method and methodology...

Assume for a moment that America fully embraces free trade, and it works exactly as planned: we offshore all our low-margin production to developing countries, and this indeed frees-up our population to work in lucrative industries like product design, finance, management etc. While this may make America richer (in the short term), it will not necessarily make Americans richer. Why? Not everyone can be an engineer, investment banker, or lawyer—most people just aren’t smart enough, and many more don’t have the personality for it. It’s harsh, but true. Charles Murray explains in his seminal book The Bell Curve that human...

VIDEO If Joe Biden even thinks you are questioning his intelligence, he gets very very angry. Oh, and he probably has a higher IQ than you. Just ask him.

WASHINGTON—A federal court in Washington ruled Thursday that an Obama administration policy seeking to address the high proportion of black and Hispanic children in special-education classes must go into effect. The Trump administration attempted to delay the rule’s implementation last year, which would require school districts not to place disproportionate numbers of minority students—either too many or too few—into special-education tracks or isolated settings at school. The rule was originally set to take effect in July 2018, before the Trump administration delayed it. The federal judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee on the District of Columbia district court, argued...

CNN reports: "James Watson, who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA alongside Francis Crick in the 1950s based on the work of British chemist Rosalind Franklin, said in a PBS film that genes cause a difference in intelligence between white and black people in IQ tests. "The 90-year-old's comments were labeled 'reprehensible' by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on New York's Long Island, where Watson had been the director from 1968 to 1993. The laboratory said it 'unequivocally rejects the unsubstantiated and reckless personal opinions Dr. James D. Watson expressed,' noting the statements were 'reprehensible [and] unsupported by science[.]'"...

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory revoked the honorary titles held by its longtime leader James D. Watson on Friday, describing as “unsubstantiated and reckless” his recent remarks about genetic differences in intelligence among racial groups. Dr. Watson, one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, had apologized after making similar comments to a British newspaper in 2007. At the time, he was forced to retire from his job as chancellor at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, but he has retained his office there, as well as the titles of chancellor emeritus, Oliver R. Grace professor emeritus and honorary...

IVF clinics may soon use a controversial screening technique to get rid of embryos which are likely to grow up with low IQs. A company in the US offering tests which can pick out 'mental disabilities' – and, in theory, predict intelligence – has confirmed it is in talks with fertility clinics. The news has stoked fears about a rise in designer babies, which could be created by parents wanting to erase undesirable traits from their children. Experts say it is 'repugnant' to think about terminating embryos because they are expected to have lower than average intelligence.

This Tuesday America takes an IQ test. Or perhaps we should say a common sense test. Or even more a test to see the degree to which it has been brainwashed. This test has been going on for a week or two now in early voting in rather large numbers, but the results will be in, for the most part, late Tuesday night. You would think that with all economic indicators at or near an all-time high, unemployment at an all-time low (notably for minorities and women), wages rising as they haven't in years, the country at peace with the...

Child Prodigies Disprove Brain Size as Intelligence Driver July 24, 2018 | David F. Coppedge It’s not the size; it’s the wiring. Don’t we know that for electronics? Why are evolutionists still obsessed with brain size? Measuring skull capacity as a proxy for intelligence has a long history. In his book The Mismeasure of Man (1981), Stephen Jay Gould recounted how Victorian evolutionists were obsessed with skull measurements (craniometry) in their determination to prove Europeans were superior to other races. As he shows, their a priori bias influenced what they “saw” in their measurements as they preferred only the measurements...

Koko, the thoughtful gorilla who captivated the world through her ability to use sign language and revealed an empathetic side to great apes, has died. She was 46. The western lowland gorilla passed away in her sleep Tuesday morning at the Gorilla Foundation’s preserve in California’s Santa Cruz mountains, the foundation said. “Koko touched the lives of millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and an icon for interspecies communication and empathy,” the foundation said on its website. “She was beloved and will be deeply missed.” Koko was believed to have had an IQ of between 75 and 95 and...

Researchers have discovered an alarming trend: the average I.Q.s of human beings is on a downward spiral. Westerns have lost 14 IQ points on average since the Victorian age, according to a study published by the University of Amsterdam last year.  Jan te Nijenhuis thinks this could be because intelligent women tend to have less [sic] children than women who are not as clever[.] ... [E]ducated people are deciding to have fewer children, so that subsequent generations are largely made up of less intelligent people. Richard Lynn, a psychologist at the University of Ulster, calculated the decline in humans' genetic potential....

Hat Tip: Dorothy Adams Robot IQ Test A GUY GOES INTO A BAR IN NEW YORK WHERE ALL THE BARTENDERS ARE ROBOTS. THE GUY SITS DOWN AT THE BAR AND THE ROBOT ASKS: WHAT WILL YOU HAVE? THE GUY REPLIES, WHISKEY. THE ROBOT BRINGS BACK HIS DRINK AND ASKS, WHAT'S YOUR IQ? THE GUY SAYS, 168 THE ROBOT TALKS ABOUT PHYSICS, SPACE EXPLORATION, AND MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY. AFTER THE GUY LEAVES, HE PAUSES AT THE STREET CORNER AND THINKS ABOUT WHAT HE JUST ENCOUNTERED AND THE MORE HE THINKS ABOUT IT, THE MORE CURIOUS HE GETS, SO HE DECIDES TO GO...

Last week Roseanne Barr — who, with the hit reboot of her show, has become one of the most prominent Donald Trump supporters in the country — tweeted that the president has freed hundreds of children a month from sexual bondage. “He has broken up trafficking rings in high places everywhere,” she wrote. (The tweet has since been deleted.) Barr’s tweet, puzzling to the casual observer, was a reference to QAnon, an expansive, complicated pro-Trump conspiracy theory. The theory is fascinating as an artifact of our current political derangement, but more than that, it’s profoundly revealing about the lengths to...