Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
I’ve done a bit of research on this, and so far have found no strong evidence either proving or disproving this. I could simply say that the burden of proof should rest on the people making this claim, but that’s perhaps a bit of a cop out.
The most interesting response to this mystery is on an ‘ezine @rticles’ page, ‘Why Do Smart People Have More Zinc and Copper in Their Hair?’ by Lance Winslow, who starts by suggesting that this is a ‘commonly known fact’ (which always makes me suspicious):
If a pilot, soldier or racecar driver put copper and zinc in their helmet would that help make them smarter or is it from the body discharging the heavy metals easily from the body that makes the brain work better. If so, if you reduced you zinc and copper in your blood thru filtration, could you increase cognition? Are some blood types, which filter better causing this? Thus certain blood types are the cause of more intelligence and not necessarily the zinc or copper its self? Think on this in 2006.
Sounds a bit mad if you ask me, but that’s the internet for you.
Another website claimed that this is the cause of a blonde myth:
A silly story often ciculates that Intelligent People have more Zinc and Copper in their hair. Brown and Red is a Copper Color, so this explains why blondes are dumb? This myth is ridiculous.
Indeed.
Finally, the question of whether this ‘factoid’ is true or not was put to the community of student.com, with the response that 141 people (40%) thought it was true, and 211 (60%) thought it was false. They do claim that the ‘answer’ is that it is true, but then they could have just read that somewhere else on the internet.
So overall, this is so far inconclusive, rather annoyingly.
The case continues.
Men can read smaller print than women can, women can hear better
The title for this post comes from the ‘list of facts’ email that I’ve been slowly dissecting. One of these supposed ‘facts’ is simply that:
Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.
I’ve not been able to find any argument either way on this one, which might be down the vagueness of the statement. What does it mean that women can hear better? That they can make out sound at lower volumes than men? That they can better distinguish sounds? That they can recognise different types of noises more easily? This field of science, of cognitive perceptions of the senses, is pretty complicated, and I’d be surprise if either of these two claims could be easily answered, one way or the other.
Perhaps a more interesting question is how this claim arose, and why has it spread? Is it something to do with our ongoing fascination as to the differences between the sexes, and the mystery of what this differences might mean? Maybe that Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus book has a lot to answer for.
If you have any further ideas, or research, on this apparently popular misconception, post a comment below…