Is language dumbing down?
In the media, we can read that political speeches are getting simpler (2013): This kind of article is typically used to bash the current right-wing president if such exists. E.g.,…
How strongly is leftism correlated with mental illness? Is it real?
Earlier this year, Finnish researcher Oskari Lahtinen published a new scale of wokism or critical social justicism: Lahtinen, O. (2024). Construction and validation of a scale for assessing critical social…
Tattoos and piercings, what do they tell you about someone?
Richard Hanania and I recently wrote on Twitter/X: Naturally, my reply and his general level of trolling on the platform attracted a lot of angry, dumb replies from people with…
Africans, violence and genetics
Over on Twitter/X, science journalist i/o writes: I get replies all the time under my posts that suggest or claim that wildly disproportionate black violence and the apparently unmovable US…
The general disease (“d”) factor and mutational load
Last year, this study was published: Brandt, V., Zhang, Y., Carr, H., Golm, D., Correll, C. U., Arrondo, G., ... & Cortese, S. (2023). First evidence of a general disease…
The ethnic meritocracy in the United Kingdom
Some of my colleagues have a new paper out: Te Nijenhuis, J., Pesta, B. J., & Fuerst, J. G. R. (n.d.). General mental ability testing and adverse impact in the…
The value of intelligence
There are many studies that report correlations between intelligence -- however measured -- and economic outcomes, mainly (self-reported) income. This is however somewhat abstract since correlations are unitless. They don't…
It doesn’t matter whether refugees are in the same classroom
Back in 2018, I wrote about classroom separation studies. It's one clever way to use the already existing twin data to examine specific environmental causes. Many people will claim that…
The first admixture mapping study for intelligence
There's a new study out of note: Xia, R., Jian, X., Rodrigue, A. L., Bressler, J., Boerwinkle, E., Cui, B., ... & Fornage, M. (2024). Admixture mapping of cognitive function…
Large environmental effects on hand grip strength internationally
Hand grip strength is a pretty interesting measurement. Fast to do, reliable, and seemingly irrelevant to most of modern life devoid of physical labor. But it turns out to be…