Sex Differences in Intelligence
Lynn's research correlating brain size and reaction time with measured intelligence led him to the problem that men and women have different-sized brains in proportion to their bodies, while consensus for the last hundred years has been that the two sexes perform equally on cognitive ability tests. In 1994, Lynn concluded in a meta-analysis that an IQ difference of roughly 4 points does appear from age 16 and onwards, but detection of this had been complicated by the faster rate of maturation of girls up to that point, which compensates for the IQ difference. This reassessment of male-female IQ has been bolstered with meta-analyses with Paul Irwing in 2004 and 2005 which found a difference of 4.6 to 5 IQ points .They saw no evidence that this isli due primarily to the male advantage in spatial visualization, and concluded that some research previously presented as showing that there are no sex differences actually demonstrates the opposite. A further study of 1,258 11-year-olds in Mauritius derived a difference of more than 6 IQ points.
Lynn and Irwing's findings were criticised by Dr Steve Blinkhorn. Dr Blinkhorn criticised the selection of tests used in the study, citing a large Mexican study they had not included which had shown no difference. He also criticised some of their statistical techniques.
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