'Men cleverer than women' claim ....

Academics in the UK claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women.

'Men cleverer than women' claim Who will get a first? Academics in the UK claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women.A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests. Paul Irwing and Professor Richard Lynn claim the difference grows when the highest IQ levels are considered. Their research was based on IQ tests given to 80,000 people and a further study of 20,000 students. 'Widening gap' Dr Irwing, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Manchester University, told the Today programme on BBC Radio Four the study showed that, up to the age of 14, there was no difference between the IQs of boys and girls. "But beyond that age and into adulthood there is a difference of five points, which is small but it can have important implications," he said. "This is against a background of women dramatically overtaking men in educational attainment and making very rapid advances in terms of occupational achievement." The academics used a test which is said to measure "general cognitive ability" - spatial and verbal ability. As intelligence scores among the study group rose, the academics say they found a widening gap between the sexes. There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, for example, a level said to correspond with people getting first-class degrees. At scores of 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman. Nobel prize-winners Dr Irwing told The Times the differences "may go some way to explaining the greater numbers of men achieving distinctions of various kinds, such as chess grandmasters, Fields medallists for mathematics, Nobel prize-winners and the like". The paper will argue that there is evidence that at the same level of IQ, women are able to achieve more than men "possibly because they are more conscientious and better adapted to sustained periods of hard work". His co-author Richard Lynn's previous work on the genetic and environmental influences on intelligence and race has proved controversial. Prof Lynn, an emeritus professor at the University of Ulster, has argued that people of east Asian origin have higher IQs on average than Europeans, or that those from sub-Saharan Africa have lower IQs than African Americans. Earlier this year, the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, sparked controversy when he suggested at a seminar that one reason men outperformed women in maths and science was genetics. Several guests walked out of the conference after hearing the comments. Dr Summers, who has apologised repeatedly for his remarks, said later that the shortage of senior female academics was partly caused by child-minding duties, which restricted working hours. Your comments My reaction, coming from a family with a tradition of women who achieve very highly in maths and sciences, is weary disgust. Yet again, what is intelligence? Who is defining it? Have these researchers looked at IQ levels below the average, at gender differentials among prison inmates? Let's have these included for balance, please. Julia Blincoe, Southampton, England All this discussion is fairly irrelevant. Men and women have different and also some similar skills but we are all genetically programmed for survival, together. Basically we need teamwork and to be able to work to each other's strengths and minimise our collective weaknesses in order to make any progress in future. Divisive talk about who is better than who is pointless and smacks of political correctness. I do not believe, on average, that men are more intelligent than women. I'm convinced we often find more men at the extremes like in academia or indeed in the work place simply because we still live in a male-driven society. Women think differently from men, that I do agree with, but more intelligent? From my 'empirical analysis' I find this unlikely. Jason Robinson, Cambridge