The NYT Does Not Know IQ Either

Just like Business Insider, the NY Times apparently doesn't understand IQ either:

But the Somali children were less likely than the whites to be “high-functioning” and more likely to have I.Q.s below 70. (The average I.Q. score is 100.)

The study offered no explanation of the statistics.

No. The median IQ for those classified as caucasian is 100. it is 110-115 for those classified as Asian and 85 for those classified as African. I get no joys from these statistics, but there they lay. So when looking at a sample of white (European descended) children vs a sample of African descended children, that the European descended children still score higher and be "higher functioning" is expected. So the explanation is already known.

The results echoed those of a Swedish study published last year finding that children from immigrant families in Stockholm — many of them Somali — were more likely to have autism with intellectual disabilities.

Again. Not surprising. Northern European natives score a median of 100. Africans score a median of 85. So of when there are other non biological factors added that would trigger intellectual disabilities, Africans are, unfortunately to show more of their population with such issues. Again, I don't enjoy writing this. It's not meant as a knock against the African. The same research shows that urbanized Africans have a significantly higher IQ than non-urban Africans, which suggests a strong influence of environment, education and I think, methylation processes. But this is not the place for that discussion.

Even though the city has Asian and Native American communities, records for so few of those children were studied that they were not included in the analysis, she added, “but it’s reasonable to extrapolate that autism rates among them are lower.”

Well research shows that Asians have a higher median IQ than Caucasians and Africans (115). Therefore it would stand to reason that it would take a drop of 2 standard deviations for an Asian to reach the median IQ of the African, and even more to be registered as having a intellectual disability. Of course the data would have to be collected and studied to confirm that. Anything else is just a guess.

At onetime, 25 percent of the children in local special education classes were Somali, while Somalis represented only 6 percent of the student body. While some children back home had the same problems children everywhere do, parents said, autism was so unfamiliar that there was no Somali word for it until “otismo” was coined in Minnesota.

Personally I think it's the weather. I would act a fool if I had to deal with the winter they have to deal with. Kidding. The other thing could be a large number of misdiagnosed developmental issues that are NOT actually autism. It could be that the children are simply not that bright relative to the white population. It may also be clashes of cultures (language, habits, etc.) that are affecting them in ways that look like autism.

Of course that's speculation and I'm not even a little bit of an expert on autism. But the IQ statement? The NY Times should know better than to pass of 100 as THE average IQ, when it is known that it is the median for a specific group.