Big Brains and Biases

By BJ Bjornson

While interesting, there�s just no way that this study isn�t going to be misinterpreted to reinforce some really ugly stereotypes.

Humans living at high latitude have bigger eyes and bigger brains to cope with poor light during long winters and cloudy days, UK scientists have said.

The Oxford University team said bigger brains did not make people smarter.

Larger vision processing areas fill the extra capacity, they write in the Royal Society's Biology Letters journal.

Now, as to the science of the study, it was a pretty small sample, and they haven�t actually tested the part about the improved vision, so this will likely see some revision in the near future.

Meanwhile, despite the very careful disclaimer that brain size has nothing to do with intelligence, you just know that more than a few people are going to ignore that little caveat. I�m reminded of the glee shown in certain quarters when it was shown that Stephen Jay Gould had been less than scientifically rigorous in attempting to debunk the work of Samuel Martin and his measurement of skulls that had been used by many to �prove� the cognitive superiority of Caucasians. Even the comments in most of the news outlets that this has been posted to have automatically defaulted to the bigger=better supposition. The concept is just too ingrained in our all-too-human brains. We�ll just have to see if enough people will choose to use them, whatever their size.