It appears in larger populations because it's a weak proxy for other things.
It disappears in smaller populations because it's a weak proxy for other things.
The same relationship would exist with the MSRP of the car the test subject arrived in or the cost of their socks.
In a small population study you'd see no real correlation between how someone did a test and the price of their car.
But over say 100,000 people you would because the cost of someone's car weakly correlates with a number of things that are, in aggregate more advantageous for testing and so the confounding phenomena would arise.
In fact, the circumference of someone's head probably has about the same correlation with the price of their socks as it does with whatever intelligence metric your want to use because it's all measuring the same thing - social class, opportunities, economic arrangements, things like that.
It's a physical consequence of our unequal society that then gets used as if it's a biological reason for the perpetuation of the vary inequality that produced it.
Eugenicists called this biological determinism, it's an old idea that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
> It's a physical consequence of our unequal society that then gets used as if it's a biological reason for the perpetuation of the very inequality that produced it.
It appears in larger populations because it's a weak proxy for other things.
It disappears in smaller populations because it's a weak proxy for other things.
The same relationship would exist with the MSRP of the car the test subject arrived in or the cost of their socks.
In a small population study you'd see no real correlation between how someone did a test and the price of their car.
But over say 100,000 people you would because the cost of someone's car weakly correlates with a number of things that are, in aggregate more advantageous for testing and so the confounding phenomena would arise.
In fact, the circumference of someone's head probably has about the same correlation with the price of their socks as it does with whatever intelligence metric your want to use because it's all measuring the same thing - social class, opportunities, economic arrangements, things like that.
It's a physical consequence of our unequal society that then gets used as if it's a biological reason for the perpetuation of the vary inequality that produced it.
Eugenicists called this biological determinism, it's an old idea that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.