I'll trade you 3 IQ points for a trip to Albania...

My sister recently alerted me to a research study which proports to show that older siblings have a slighter higher IQ. I find it odd that she might point this out since I am the older sibling, but she cheerfully asserted that in fact I am smarter than her. You might think this is what every big sibling wants to hear, but I must disagree. I have no idea what my IQ is - and I don't care - but I'd say Moxie and I are about equal in the smarts department.

I think Moxie was ok with the alleged 3-point IQ difference because younger siblings were supposedly more adventurous travellers and out-of-the-box thinkers, and I must also disagree here. I'm not sure either Moxie or I are going to invent the next big out-of-the-box concept, we're just not that type. We're the reliable, dutiful, keep-the-trains-running-on-time type, both of us (oh, and older siblings are supposedly more dutiful too, another claim I find dubious).

As for the adventurousness of our travel, the very adult exchange between Moxie and I went something like this:
"Of course I'm more adventurous. I've been to Albania."
"Well, I've been to Argentina."
"India!"
"Aleutian Islands!"
And so on.

So I dunno. Having read a couple of stories on this study, they sure make it seem air-tight (over 240,000 subjects studied!), but I have a few methodological concerns. First of all, they used only men. The researchers cheerfully assure us that IQ tests have been shown to be gender-neutral, but medical researchers assured us for years that drug tests on 160-pound men could be perfectly well extrapolated to women - wrong! Plus, the study asserts that the IQ differences are due to family socialization, not biology, and we know there are differences in socialization between girls and boys, so how can they be sure those socialization differences don't produce different results for the girls? If they've only studied pairs of brothers, how do they know the results would hold with an older sister and younger brother, or vice-versa?

And the study consisted entirely of Norwegians, so what about socialization differences across cultures? Would this study produce the same results in Albania, or Argentina, or the Aleutian Islands?

And in any case, having been a human guinea pig in high school, I am suspcious of all standardized tests. They can all be gamed. I know the IQ test is supposedly rock-solid, but I don't buy it.

In addition, all of the study was done from military records of 18- and 19-year-olds. Now I'm going to assume that Norway, like other European countries, has mandatory military service for all young people, and thus this population still constitutes a representative sample of this age group (that is, without possible bias due to self-selection for military duty). However, they point out that the IQ differences change between early childhood and adolescence, so how can they be sure the IQ issue - let alone the dutifulness and adventurousness - is all settled by age 19?

Not that any of this is very important, but it's not every day of the week that your kid sister insists you are smarter and offers scientific proof to back up the point.