Historic decline in IQ could stem from poor education, study shows

Of course it's propaganda, as is everything which uses "woke" as a pejorative that it doesn't bother to define.

I thought the entire IQ concept and methodology was quite disputed to start with.

If they start advocating for less pollution, better food, more exercise, better teachers etc ... its going to cross the lines into being a socialist woke project.

Then flag this, please.

The pandemic?

Heck, even plain old mean reversion - the site mentions the Flynn Effect, an unexplained gradual increase in IQ scores; there's no guarantee that such an effect should continue forever.

Despite Occam's Razor, I will suggest the answer could be both poor education and health issues of the sort you list.

Remember this paper is only one data point. It even points out that:

> These results are directly at odds with the differences of 0.20 to 0.33 SD per decade observed by Flynn, 1984, Flynn, 1987, Flynn, 2007 and the 0.15 to 0.195 SD per decade observed by Trahan et al. (2014), where more recent norming samples had higher IQ scores

It may well be that the variability in this sort of analysis is too high to say anything.

Not only is there the well-known problem that "intelligence" isn't easy to measure (and different tests give different numbers), but also people don't always make the same effort at doing the tests. If there's a secular trend to not caring about these tests then the numbers would likely go down. (Call it "Facebook quiz burnout. :)

The paper then goes on to say:

> these findings are consistent with studies that have found a reversal of the Flynn effect (Dutton and Lynn, 2013, Dutton and Lynn, 2015; Rönnlund et al., 2013; Sundet et al., 2004; Teasdale and Owen, 2008; Woodley and Meisenberg, 2013).

Those studies are from Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, so if it's something like pollution then it needs to explain how that trend appeared in northern Europe even back in the late 1900s.

I say "late 1900s" because I skimmed through the Sweden study ("Secular trends in cognitive test performance: Swedish conscript data 1970–1993" at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... ). It says:

> Finally, evidence that the FE has ceased during the last decades has been provided in a recent set of studies. First, a study based on Norwegian conscripts revealed gains up to the mid 1990s after which a tendency of decline was actually observed until 2002 (Sundet, Barlaug, & Torjussen, 2004; cf. also Teasdale & Owen, 2005). ...

> Finally, performance on Piagetian measures showed a decline corresponding to 4.3 IQ points per decade, over the years 1975–2003 in British samples (Shayer, Ginsburg, & Coe, 2007), suggestive of a reversed FE.

Since pollution levels decreased by the end of the 1900s (more emissions control, no leaded gasoline, etc.), that broad category seems unlikely.

Similarly, my knee-jerk thought was a cause might be the negative consequences of focusing on high-stakes testing in the US. But that can't explain any negative trends in Europe which started before "No Child Left Behind."

But again, this might just be the sort of result you get from trying to analyze noisy data. Sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low, and your measurement tools are bear skins and stone knives.

It's still a skill that could be trained. IQ tests are basically solving a bunch of problems, they might be knowledge-independent but practice still helps, even if it is indirect one (solving problems at school)

Relatively knowledge-independent is not the same as absolutely knowledge independent. Familiarity with basic mental arithmetic, a decent vocabulary and certain types of pattern all going to improve your ability to answer different forms of IQ test, especially if you're somewhere in the middle of the distribution, and we're talking average differences of a couple of percentage points here.

The test that goes down in history as "the first IQ test" was never intended to measure intelligence. It was intended to measure school readiness for French children in an era where:

1. Not everyone had a birth certificate, so you could not base it on age.

2. City kids tended to be ready for school earlier than rural kids because they were more familiar with processes like queuing up.

The entire concept and history of intelligence testing is rife with problems and remains controversial.

Good education is about teaching you how to think, which is applicable to IQ tests.

Knowledge isn't the only thing you acquire during your education. You also learn how to analyze a problem, how to process the information given, or in general: how to think.

The key there is that it is indeed supposed to be, but it isn't. People have tried to make a way to get at some kind of inherent ability but no one has succeeded.

If you dont exercise your brain you wont reach the potential you have within you.

Like it or not, IQ exists and it's impactful. In my experience, highly educated, high IQ people are more likely to hold an opinion such as yours. My guess is that they don't like thinking about how much of their success is due to a variable that is not under their control.

Likewise, someone with some sense who has interacted with very high IQ people in a "competitive" settings know how it is. Not too different to how it would be to play basketball against a 6'6 person, or how it is to be extremely physically attractive.

How it is "culturally biased" ?

Nope it is not https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115 declining IQ can observed within family.

If you give something to support your point you can theorise it. If it's just in your head then it's just plain ol' racism :)

It might be. If immigration were curbed earlier, the current decline might have been normal rather than "historic". What's your suggestion on how to test that theory?

Wikipedia says no : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...