Men are Smarter

Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines have published this list of the world's top 100 living intellectuals. On the Prospect web site you can vote for your top five. Click here to vote. My selections were:

Benedict XVI …… pope
Freeman Dyson …… physicist
Francis Fukuyama ….. political scientist
Christopher Hitchens …… essayist
Bjorn Lonborg ….. environmental scientist (sceptic)

You could also nominate a bonus intellectual and I chose Harvard historian Harvey Mansfield, the expert on Machiavelli. I gave serious consideration to Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus, Michael Novak and Michael Crichton.

The list is dominated by the west (three fourths) and America (one third). Half the intellectuals live in the US. But women are under-represented at only 10%.

If one includes all the dead white men the gender difference is even more pronounced. In Human Accomplishment, Charles Murray presents an inventory of 4002 significant figures in the sciences, philosophy, literature, art and music. Only 88 are women (2%).

Of course the dearth of ancient women was primarily due to the exclusion of women from intellectual fields. But when one looks at the 20th century the numbers are not significantly changed. Thus women were awarded only 3.5% of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences and literature in the last century.

The question is how much of a role does intelligence play in these results? It has long been believed that the median IQs of men and women are equal. But in a paper to appear in the British Journal of Psychology in November, Paul Irwing and Richard Lynn said men's IQs are on average five points higher than those of women.

The study was based on IQ tests of over 100,000 people. The researchers discovered that there was no difference in boys’ and girls’ intelligence until the age of 14. But after that point a difference of almost exactly five IQ points emerges which seems to remain constant throughout adulthood. “The small male advantage in IQ is therefore likely to be of most significance for tasks of high complexity, such as complex problem solving in mathematics, engineering and physics, and in other areas of high spatial ability," Irwing said.

Furthermore the bell curve of the males has a broader standard deviation than the female bell curve. That means that there are more males than females in the tails of the distribution at very low IQ and at very high IQ.

The study showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rose. There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, typical for people with first-class degrees in Britain. When scores rose to 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

The two professors argue this is why men — who also have larger brains — are more likely to win Nobel prizes and other major academic distinctions.

Thus it has now been statistically demonstrated that men are smarter! But common sense is something else. At a recent press briefing in NOLA, reporters continued asking General Russell Honore the same question about the last storm, expecting a different answer (the definition of insanity). The General warned the mostly male reporters: “Don’t get stuck on stupid!”

When the next male reporter asked the very same question, Honore fired back: “You’re stuck on stupid,” said the General. Maybe it’s just reporters.

What say you, blogettes?