Aaaagh!

When I logged on to the internet I saw this headline:
New Study: Taller People Are Smarter
Reuters

Wait a minute! Didn’t I just read something about Reuters?

What got me interested in Reuters, was an email that provided a link to a study that claims Reuters doctored pictures in the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, causing a false perspective of Israeli war tactics (see: http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp, and also: http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/). I checked Urban Legends, to see if these reports are accurate, but it looks like the incident is too new to be documented by Snopes.

Should I be worried that Reuters skewed this report? Why am I so concerned? No, I don’t think that it has anything to do with me being 4’ 11”, do you? Do you think I am too sensitive? Let’s go back to the report.

The findings were based primarily on two British studies that followed children born in 1958 and 1970, respectively, through adulthood While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it's not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality -- tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds.

Sob.

"As early as age three -- before schooling has had a chance to play a role -- and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests," wrote Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and a U.S. study on height and occupational choice.

Wait - who raised these children – wolves? Do children only learn at school? Were their parents not allowed to have input?

Other studies have pointed to low self-esteem, better health that accompanies greater height, and social discrimination as culprits for lower pay for shorter people.

Do I need to comment on this? Could it be that people have been telling these kids that taller kids are smarter and that they are better than those poor little short kids? Isn’t that called social discrimination?

Since the study's data only included populations in the United Kingdom and the United States, the findings could not be applied to other regions, Case said.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Shouldn’t that headline read, “Short people in the United Kingdom, especially right after the Second World War, during food shortages, seem to be not as smart as those who are taller?” And let’s not even make a footnote about all those short Asian kids who are winning all the prizes and taking the majority of places in our universities.

And how tall are the researchers? They are both about 5 feet 8 inches tall, well above the average height of 5 feet 4 inches for American women. Did they have a pre-conceived idea when they started this research? Where is the link to this study? How many participated? What kind of tests were given?

Where are my heels?

previous ~ home ~ next