Is it dat we getting ficker?

[norrahe]

Damn.

And I thought it was caused by too much YouPorn.

You can resubscribe to the internet now without worry

[ZARDOZ]

I suspect some confounding here. DM loves it's correlation implies causation standpoint.

Or lack of Darwinian selection?

In Victorian times, if you were thick you were probably poor. If you were poor, you had a good chance of dying in infancy.

I don't think this has anything to do with natural selection.
If you clever you were still likely to be poor if you were born into the wrong class. The poor tended to have large families to overcome the high Mortality rate. As I say above, looks like confounding and dodgy surrogate endpoints.

[mudskipper]

Might it not be linked to Darwinian selection in two global unpleasantnesses?

Kill off your brightest & bestest & see what happens next.

Or lack of Darwinian selection?

In Victorian times, if you were thick you were probably poor. If you were poor, you had a good chance of dying in infancy.

[OwlHoot]

Might it not be linked to Darwinian selection in two global unpleasantnesses?

Kill off your brightest & bestest & see what happens next.

I wouldn't be surprised if wars over recent centuries have increased the prevalence of bad eyesight and flat feet.

[Mich the Tester]

yeah, innit.

[xoggoth]

Can't be a*ed to look for it but read the other day that diet is a major factor. If young kids are fed fast food with lots of fat it reduces IQ.

The other obvious downside of modern diet compared to that in the Victorian era is that the little bar stewards are too fat to put up chimneys.

[SimonMac]

But A-Level pass rates are getting higher and higher, whatever next they will be telling us the pass mark is now only 40%

[vetran]

Were the Victorians cleverer than us? Research indicates a decline in brainpower and reflex speed | Mail Online

Were the Victorians cleverer than us? Research indicates a decline in brainpower and reflex speed
Study claims we have 14 IQ points LESS than our 19th Century ancestors
Findings contradict the Flynn effect, which claims IQ has risen three points every decade since the Second World War