Fat, Poor, Liberal, and Stupid

A recent study of obesity in children suggests that being overweight when young reduces the child’s intelligence. Researchers at the NYU Langone School of Medicine claim to have found that obese toddlers wind up being, well, stupid teenagers.

I would be apt to dismiss this Federally-funded study (see abstracthere ) as junk science, since the researchers do not simply claim a statistically small difference in I.Q. between obese children and their peers but a whopping 5 to 15% test score difference. Still, it does dovetail with other studies that give similar results, so for the sake of argument let us assume it is accurate.

(Interestingly enough, little was made of a recent study showing similar effects on children from high levels of fluoridation of water.)

The research was funded by the National Institute for Health and the lead author is founder of the BODY Project :

“Dr. Convit’s focus on combating and raising awareness about the impact of childhood obesity led him to create the The BODY Project, a program that works with New York City schools and parents to evaluate students’ height, weight, blood pressure, test for insulin resistance and record other measures of health, giving parents an overview of their child’s health status”

Which leads one to believe that perhaps Dr. Convit and his team are perhaps crusaders. Increasingly, science - particularly government funded science - serves political purposes and finds what the paymasters want them to find. This is particularly evident in Climatology where researchers produce voluminous bodies of work showing that the world is doomed when the actual world conditions show nothing of the sort. The way it works is simple; liberal activists get into controlling positions in science journals and professional organizations and reject papers that do not comport with their views, while promoting those that do. Once a paper is published it is used as a building block for another piece of research finding the same results, and the whole house of cards grows like a cancer, with no rebuttals allowed in the establishment system. Researchers understand this, and tailor their work to fit the new paradigm. It ultimately goes back to an excess of government funding.

Via: Canada Free Press

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