
The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains (2014) - myth_drannon
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/?single_page=true
======
tokenadult
Submission of same article 490 days ago, with more than 100 comments in
discussion thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158510)

Each time I reread this article from _The Atlantic_ (I have read it before,
and it has been submitted to Hacker News on other occasions), I am astounded
that the author seems never to have heard about actual data on IQ score
trends, which are upward for countries all over the world. The phenomenon,
which surprised psychologists when it was discovered, is called the Flynn
Effect by most psychologists these days, because James R. Flynn (NOT a
psychologist, which is why he was open to discovering the phenomenon) has done
the most to document and report on the worldwide trend of rising IQ scores
throughout the last century.[1] Anyway, the article kindly submitted here
shows altogether too much concern about speculative harms by an author who
ought to know that there are better statistics on these issues than those he
cites.[2]

[1] James R. Flynn, "Why Our IQ Levels Are Higher Than Our Grandparents'"

[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents)

The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge "Beyond the Flynn
Effect"

[http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-
us/directory/beyond...](http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-
us/directory/beyond-the-flynn-effect)

[2] David Gorski, "The Food Babe’s war on 'chemicals' heats up again"

[https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-
on-c...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-food-babes-war-on-chemicals-
heats-up-again/)

~~~
ScottBurson
I don't know why you would think that an upward trend in IQ scores necessarily
contradicts a claim that we are adding neurotoxins to our environment. We've
been doing that for many decades; it's entirely possible that we're doing less
of it now, and yet the amount we're still adding is still having significant
effects.

As for why a downward trend in IQ wasn't noted in the first half of the 20th
century, when we were ramping up our production of neurotoxins, that can
easily be put down to improvements in nutrition.

It's not inconsistent to note that, even though things are getting better,
they're still not as good as they could be.

