JOHN THE OBSCURE ™
By John Ruch
© 2007
Massive Norwegian Study Shows My IQ Is Higher
Than Boston.com’s
Among the many questions mainstream media failed to ask in the run-up to the Iraq War was this: Why should we believe “weapons of mass destruction” reports that all come from disgruntled defectors who haven’t even been in the country for years?
As the Amazing Randi frequently notes, journalists typically are trained in English and humanities, not math or science—that is, most understand storytelling and self-expression, but not necessarily critical thinking, logic and skepticism. And yet, one would think the latter are what help distinguish journalism from other forms of writing. (In many cases, the only clue is that it doesn’t rhyme.)
In an epic failure of brainpower, the media became the real weapon of mass destruction. Thousands of people are now dead because very well-paid journalists couldn’t spot the logical fallacy of argument from authority. As Carl Sagan epigrammatically put it, “Gullibility kills.”1
The problem is, gullibility doesn’t always kill. Many times it just distracts and entertains and is considered harmless—a pleasant sweetener silently rotting away the teeth unnoticed until it’s time to chew on something solid and everything cracks to pieces. Journalists are often encouraged to be silly and credulous, eroding our thinking skills along with theirs. Even more often, they and their readers just don’t have the skill sets to think about unusual or complex claims. Horoscopes, sports stories on “hot streaks” and horse-race reporting of political candidate opinion polls are the seeds from which spring noxious weeds like the war.
Most aspects of a story aren’t susceptible to mathematical or logical analysis. But it’s curious how often journalism miscalculates those that are.
A small case in point from last week was a Boston Globe/Boston.com report on a “massive Norwegian study” that found that on average, eldest siblings score about 2 points higher on IQ tests than younger siblings. (For the sake of the rest of this piece, I’ll ignore the overriding fact that IQ is a fundamentally nonsensical reification of social knowledge, not some kind of objective “intelligence”; and also avoid erecting a scornpole over the insignificance of 2 points’ difference. I’ll also forestall all jokes about Norwegian black metal. Suffice it to say this was a serious study appearing in “Science.”)
Boston.com,
the Globe’s own dumber sibling, teased this story on its home page on June 21
under the headline, “Study shows eldest siblings outsmart their siblings.” For
illustration, it pulled a mash-up of modern journalism’s two worst crimes:
faux-snarky celebrity reference and total statistical
fuck-up. This consisted of a photo of two of the
Virtually everything about this illustration was incorrect. For example, as the full story by one Colin Nickerson explained, the study did not conclude that the higher IQ scores were “just because [a sibling] was the oldest.” While there was no solid conclusion drawn by the study, it suggested that some type of child-rearing socialization was responsible. (Presuming, again, that any of this is meaningful at all; Nickerson also reported on doubts about that.)
Deciding to write to Boston.com about its sins, I knew I had to be pithy and so targeted the worst claim: that Alec Baldwin automatically “would be” smarter than Stephen Baldwin.
I wrote:
“This caption is factually incorrect. You cannot judge a specific case [i.e.,
the
Boston.com “customer support” (a tellingly unjournalistic term) promptly wrote back to tell me that the caption had been changed, though whether due to my influence or the site’s typical frenetic updating was unclear. Better still, the problem was solved: “The caption that currently appears on our homepage appears to address your concerns: ‘According to the massive Norwegian study, that would mean Alec Baldwin (right) is smarter than younger brother Stephen.’”
In other words, Boston.com believed that rephrasing it to say essentially the same thing, only even more assertively, addressed my concern. (Of course, this wasn’t about satisfying “my concerns,” but aligning with reality, as non-fiction is supposed to attempt.) The only charitable conclusion is that Boston.com doesn’t understand stats even when stats are explained to them.
I responded:
“No, that
is still incorrect. A study about average trends makes no judgment about any
particular case outside of its study parameters. (Unless the
And realizing I was being prolix as usual, I followed up with: “Perhaps it will help if I put this very simply: A study about average trends describes probability, not actuality.”
That is a short-hand definition of science, and the crux of the problem. Science operates on always-tentative conclusions based on varying degrees of probability. Journalists (who are not alone in this crime) love to simplify that down to certainty even where the statistics do not warrant it. (Alec being smarter than Stephen is not the same as the Sun coming up tomorrow.)
It finally seemed to be sinking in. Customer support responded again: “We understand your point, and have adjusted our homepage accordingly.”
Here’s their idea of an “adjustment”—pick a different pair of celebrity siblings and say exactly the same thing, only turn the statement into a question:
“The study concluded eldest siblings are, on average, smarter than their brothers and sisters. Does that mean Paris Hilton (right), despite her recent troubles with the law, is smarter than younger sister Nicky?”
Disguising an assertion as a question is a classic journalistic headline trick. But here’s the real innovation: an implication that criminality is linked with stupidity and/or lower IQ. Needless to say, that’s not in the study, either. Also, as a superior New York Times story had already reported, the study only covered brothers, not sisters. (The results were alleged to be transferable to the opposite sex, just as Norwegian cultural results supposedly can be abstracted to talk about similar probabilities amongst us all.)
When the story ran in the actual, hardcopy Globe the next day, Boston.com teased the story in a much calmer fashion that at least got the statistical core right, though the lame question remained: “Is your older sibling smarter? A large [note the demotion from “massive”] Norwegian study suggests that eldest children have a higher IQ than their younger siblings.”
Yep, it’s just a goofy little story. But it was a very popular one, spending at least three days on Boston.com’s most-e-mailed list. That can only mean that many readers swallowed the illustration’s misinformation. And whatever its significance, it’s a microcosm of how the mainstream media turns everything into a false-dichotomy face-off between famous people and damns the evidence.
* * * * * *
Rated G for
Gay-Bashing
For truly off-beat news that gets its stats right, to boot, I prescribe an eyecup full of Cocktail Party Physics. It was there last week—the same day as the great Viking sibling rivalry story—that I learned of the amusing “blog rating system” tool attached to a dating Web site at http://mingle2.com/blog-rating. This apparently custom-made tool surveys one’s Web site and then gives it a movie-style, content-based rating. The rating is given based on keywords found on the site, which is no more arbitrary than actual movie ratings.2
I plugged my own site into the tool and was not surprised to receive an NC-17. But the keywords were “rape,” “pain” and “dead”—way more softcore than the Bible.
Oh, and I used the word “gay.” Twice.
What’s wrong with “gay”? Certainly nothing inherently. It’s wrong only in the implied definition, “Raving antichristian sodomites who won’t just shut up and keep giving us art and music.” Sure, it’s a joke tool, but that isn’t funny anymore.
It’s particularly odd—or perhaps particularly fitting, considering the recent controversy over eHarmony’s lack of gay options—that a matchmaking site would flag the word. (The rating tool appears to be the work of the site’s one-man creator/operator.)
I e-mailed site owner “Matt” to ask about the flagging of “gay.” He didn’t respond.
Oh, well. As the thoroughly censored and bigot-tweaked world of corporate movies has shown us, when you undergo a “voluntary” rating system, you get what you ask for.
1 In “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.”
2 As a side note, it’s interesting how we’ve all gotten used to the ridiculous CARA movie-rating explanation system, with its use of laughable yet alluring adjectivals like “sci-fi destruction” and “psychopathic violence.”
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