Of Alcohol and Intelligence

Over at Gene Expression, Razib Khan has done a quick analysis of alcohol consumption demographics. In one chart, he shows a correlation between alcohol consumption and vocabulary. As a dipsomaniac and sot, this comes as no surprise. He writes:

I was expecting it. That is, that the more intelligent, who scored high on a vocabulary test, would drink more than the dumb, who scored low. Look at the other correlates above. But I’ve rarely seen such a stark near-monotonic trend with Wordsum.

I mean, just look at Hemingway. But Razib also warns about findings like these:

Anyway, just be careful of studies extolling the virtues of alcohol unless they control for confounds. It’s just a fact that stupid people tend to die earlier, because they often make life decisions in keeping with their nature.