The Flynn Effect is real

The Flynn Effect — the observation that average IQ test scores are rising, and have been doing so, in many industrialised countries throughout the 20th century — has been known about for some time, and it’s been debated whether this is because people are actually getting more intelligent (whatever that means), or whether it’s just an artifact of how IQ tests are measured (e.g. in a society where people have more contact with IQ-test-like puzzles, you might expect their test scores to rise, without any corresponding rise in other cognitive abilities).

Matt McIntosh at Gene Expression notes that here has been physiological changes in the population over this time period which suggests the Flynn Effect corresponds to real increases in intelligence:

To my mind, the most compelling evidence in favor of Flynn Effect gains being real is physiological: it’s well known that there have been increases in height concurrent with increases in intelligence in all the countries where the FE has been operative. What’s less well known is that there have also been recorded increases in cranial capacity [...] and in brain size.

Given an increase in brain size and the correlation between IQ and brain size (0.4), it’d be pretty remarkable if there wasn’t any corresponding increase in intelligence. Also, in support of Lynn’s nutrition hypothesis, there have been correlations found in developed countries between IQ and presence of certain micronutrients.

Also, there have been a few studies showing that FE gains tend to be disproportionately located at the left half of the curve rather than the right, which is the nutrition theory would predict given that the less bright people tend to be poorer and thus benefit more than the wealthier (who tend to be smarter) from nutritive improvements.

So there you have it — we really are cleverer than our ancestors.

Why I’m uneasy about storing everyone’s DNA

Lord Justice Sedley thinks the state should store everyone’s DNA profile:

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.

The present database in England and Wales holds details of 4m people who are guilty or cleared of a crime. Lord Justice Sedley said this was indefensible and biased against ethnic minorities, and it would be fairer to include everyone, guilty or innocent.

One problem with this is that the police and CPS over-rely on DNA evidence, even when other evidence suggests that a suspect couldn’t have done the crime (link via Samizdata):

By February 2001 UK police had amassed a database of over 1 million personal profiles along with almost 100,000 crime scene profiles. This database is constantly expanding and police report hundreds of matches every month, using 6-point testing which claims match odds of about 37 million to one. This is to be expected. What is also to be expected from a thorough trawl of this mammoth database would be around 100 billion attempts to match crime scenes with potential suspects, resulting in over two thousand false cold hits. More if the labs are capable of making mistakes.

The first false cold hit from a database trawl to be recognised in the UK was in 1999, though it did not become public knowledge until the following year after a UK forensic scientist addressed the USDOJ Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. A man with advanced Parkinsons disease who could not drive an automobile or dress himself unaided was linked to a burglary which had occured 200 miles from his home. In spite of protestations of innocence and alibi evidence police arrested him because the DNA profiles matched and ’so it had to be him’. It was several months before10-point DNA tests were done on samples from the suspect and the crime scene. The results exonerated him.

He gained his freedom and a brief note from the prosecutor saying that charges were being dropped because “there was not enough evidence to provide a realistic chance of conviction”. He still awaits an official apology. Or even an admission of error.

How secure is the DNA database? One indication is that five employees of the National DNA Database (NDNAD), all IT specialists, are currently on trial for copying its data (they hoped to set up a rival firm):

It’s worth publicising the fact that five employees of the NDNAD, all IT specialists, are currently facing trial in the civil courts: the NDNAD says they made a copy of the database – i.e. the DNA profiles of four million people – in an effort to set up a rival business. Apparently the theft was noticed because, stupidly, the five men attempted to sell some of this information back to their employer.

I’m not a big fan of crime or criminals. Recently a friend was stabbed while I was walking with him across a public park. But when I read of stories like the ones above, I think I’d rather risk a slightly greater chance of getting stabbed against abuse by the state.

Organisations edit Wikipedia because it’s important

It’s recently been revealed that organisations have been editing their own entries on Wikipedia. Many have taken this as a sign of Wikipedia’s weakness: that anyone with a vested interest can edit an entry, distorting or removing information in it. But Techdirt points out that it’s actually a measure of Wikipedia’s strength; people edit their own entries because Wikipedia is important:

Wikipedia Edits Show How Important The Site Has Become
With all of the stories last month about various companies or organizations trying to edit Wikipedia to their own advantage, many Wikipedia haters used it as evidence as to why Wikipedia was no good. However, some are realizing exactly the opposite. Jeremy Wagstaff has a good column showing that all of these embarrassing Wikipedia edits show the reverse: it shows just how important and credible a source Wikipedia has become. [...] Wikipedia is trying to solve that problem by highlighting recent or less-trustworthy edits.

Indeed.

Open source graphics drivers for ATI chips

One problem people using GNU/Linux systems often face is the non-availability of drivers for some hardware. This problem is made worse because some hardware companies want to keep the specs of their kits secret, which makes it harder to write open source drivers.

So the news that AMD will release the specs for their ATI graphics chips is especially welcome:

AMD has announced they are releasing the specs for all new Radeon chipsets, and will be working with the open source community to develop a fully functional 2D and 3D graphics driver.