Saturday, September 04, 2010

Correlating with parasites

According to recent research, there are correlations (or anti-correlations) in data at the national level among: parasites and infections, IQ, skin color, individualism and collectivism, religious diversity, linguistic diversity, armed conflicts and civil war, and democracy and liberal values.

See Ed Young and Donald Templar for details.

These correlations say nothing about cause and effect. It would be nice if we could just kill some parasites and make everyone smarter, but I doubt it.

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