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Re:Bigger brains are smarter, but not by much by xenadu02 on Sunday December 02, 2018 @02:36AM (#18581283)
"The authors underscore that the overarching correlation between brain volume and "braininess" was a weak one; no one should be measuring job candidates' head sizes during the hiring process, Nave jokes. Indeed, what stands out from the analysis is how little brain volume seems to explain. Factors such as parenting style, education, nutrition, stress, and others are likely major contributors that were not specifically tested in the study"

The tl;dr is their research found that 2% of cognitive differences can be attributed to brain volume, indicating intelligence is influenced primarily by other factors.

They also found that though male and female brains differed in size that didn't produce a statistically significant difference in outcomes, but the study didn't tackle this specific issue so they couldn't say much else definitive about it (the cortex construction speculation notwithstanding).

I applaud them for pre-publishing their methodology and their commitment to publish regardless of the results.

Re:Bigger brains are smarter, but not by much by mdorazio on Sunday December 02, 2018 @03:12AM (#18581381)
I've read previously that it's not absolute brain size that matters, but rather brain size relative to body size, hence the lack of difference in intelligence between genders. This makes sense as well since we don't see hyper intelligent whales or elephants building space ships.
Re:Bigger brains are smarter, but not by much by vkou on Sunday December 02, 2018 @03:57AM (#18581505)
Does this explain why short, skinny people are smarter then overweight, tall people? /s