The Flynn effect and its reversal are topics of scientific inquiry by which, should you find yourself inching toward politically incorrect conclusions, cancellation looms ominously.
In 2016, in a systematic literature review of all major accounts of the post-seventies IQ plummet across Western countries, Edward Dutton of the Ulster Institute for Social Research concluded that the best explanation for the dawdling of the Western mind had both environmental and genetic components. The industrial revolution’s technological advances, he argued, precipitated massive gains on IQ scores “by establishing an environment which compelled us to think in a more scientific way, compelled us to become more educated, and saturated us with knowledge, information, and novel problems.”
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