this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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Lead Exposure in Last Century Shrank IQ Scores of Half of Americans (today.duke.edu)
submitted 5 months ago by cm0002@toast.ooo to c/usa@midwest.social
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[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago

Three points per person average, seven points in worst cases. Doesn't sound very significant.

Why a high IQ doesn't mean you're smart

A high IQ is like height in a basketball player," says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ.

Also, it's good to keep this in mind, especially considering current events:

Intelligence Quotient

Historically, many proponents of IQ testing have been eugenicists who used pseudoscience to push later debunked views of racial hierarchy in order to justify segregation and oppose immigration. Such views have been rejected by a strong consensus of mainstream science, though fringe figures continue to promote them in pseudo-scholarship and popular culture.