In comments to my previous post, S had pointed out this link about how research points out that first-born children have higher IQ. Well…. this post is not a rebuttal to that article, but I just wanted to point out a few things.

In one of the classes I am taking, the professor taught us to analyze research data. This is to teach us that we must take research data with a pinch of salt. Why should we do this? Because we must realize that statistics are statistics and they go only so far. So as long as we don’t put blind faith in to the numbers and are aware of other variables, we are fine.

When some one tell us that, statistics point out that children in the US cry more than children from other parts of the world ( which is a true statistic! ), what does that mean? Some thing wrong with the babies born here? The right interpretation of this data is that children all over the world cry the same amount, but in eastern societies we never let the babies cry. When we see a little crinkling of face, we immediately run to the baby and start pacifying the baby. Here in US, people believing in crying it out.

Another myth that really irritates me to no end is this. “In our times there weren’t so many miscarriages. Now you people are doing something wrong. That’s why there are so many miscarriages” and this ‘something’ might vary from computers to blasphemy. The logical interpretation of many miscarriages happening now might be

  • Our widening contacts. Seriously, 20 years back, how many people outside of their small circle of friends and relatives did women know?
  • Now we have all these EPTs which indicates pregnancy on the first day of missed period or even a couple of days early! So we are aware of conception and miscarriage. 20 years back the technology to detect pregnancy this early wasn’t there. Most of the miscarriages occur in the first few weeks of gestation, so 20 years back most early miscarriages must have gone down as a late period.

    • A decade back they found out that a higher percentage of women in Marine county suffered from cancer and people were intrigued. They started searching for hidden carcinogens in Marine county and weren’t able to find anything extraordinary. On a more careful analysis they found that the people in Marine county had really good health insurance and were visiting the doctor on a regular basis and their cancer was detected on time. In other parts of the US, because of insurance limitations, people weren’t getting health checkups and their cancer, if any, was not getting included in statistics.

    Now that I have irritated you all with my futile knowledge, do first born really have an edge over their siblings? May be, but I don’t trust this article (not the research, mind you) because the target audience were all males. They were from one single country – Norway. Their age group is a specific age group – 18/19 years. This sex specific, country specific, age specific data cannot be applied universally. There is no mention if the siblings were tested at the same time or at the same age. We don’t know in what context this test was conducted. Last but not the least IQ tests are coming under heavy criticism now a day. I can write one whole post on “Are IQ tests real indicators of intelligence?”. In the article, the conclusion states that, ‘….says the greatest challenge is to find other large data sets to investigate other possible explanations for the findings.’ In my personal view, it looks like WebMD just pulled out a research article gave it a attention capturing title and used it out of context. Sounds like a sensational headline in a magazine, “Chiranjeevi and Rajinikanth butt heads”. On reading you will find out that they dropped something on the floor, reached for it and bumped their heads !

    All those first-born folks out there – stop strutting around. Not yet, nothing is concrete!