Are Footballers cleverer than PhD students? Think again

Ability is dictated by what we need to succeed. A chimp would fare better than me in a jungle – that doesn't make it smarter

• Dean Burnett
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 February 2013 17.12 GMT

'How can a test accurately measure something when there is no certainty as to what is being measured?' Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

A recent study has shown that footballers can perform better than PhD students on certain cognitive tasks. This is being interpreted in the mainstream media as evidence that footballers are smarter than PhD students. While this is something of a considerable extrapolation, it is a perfect example of how our views and ideas about what counts as "intelligence" are a lot more flexible than most would think.

Scientifically, there is no real consensus per se on what intelligence can be accurately defined as. IQ tests may seem like an obvious way to assess intelligence, but in psychology their use remains controversial. How can a test accurately measure something when there is no certainty as to what is being measured? When you've got demonstrating that intelligence is dependent on working memory capacity, or arguing whether it's supported by singular or multiple processes, you need to be reasonably intelligent to keep up with the varying theories about what that even means.

Intelligence is also strongly influenced by culture. What's considered smart in one culture could well be considered foolish in another. We are all guilty of this bias to some extent. In the UK, a detailed knowledge of science is considered intelligent by many, whereas a detailed knowledge of football usually isn't. But there's nothing to say someone's football knowledge isn't just as or more complex and diverse than someone's knowledge of science. But football is everywhere, you don't need a degree to know about it, children play it all the time – so an in-depth knowledge of it is, perhaps unfairly, not considered an achievement.

Of course, knowing a lot of detailed information about something is only part of intelligence. It's also important to consider how this information is used. This division is referred to by some as crystallised and fluid intelligence, or information you retain and your ability to use it, respectively. Think of it like a computer: you've got your hard drive (data storage) and your processor (data usage); you need both to create a truly useful device.

This is reflected in changes to the structure of the brain, as the brain adapts and dedicates more resources to this constantly occurring demand. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that professional footballers would be better at certain mental abilities than non-footballers.

Whatever you think of the sport, a professional football match is undoubtedly a challenging context to be in. With so many variables to consider in a constantly changing scenario, it would be hard enough to keep on top of without thousands of people screaming at you for various reasons. Footballers have to be able to do this if they wish to get to the top of their field, so of course they'd perform better in tests that assess rapid thinking, attention and any other ability that isn't so crucial for other disciplines.

Footballers are stereotyped as being a bit thick, based on their unrefined behaviour and lack of social/cultural awareness. But these things haven't exactly held them back, so why would they have learned otherwise? Our abilities and skills are largely dictated by what we need to do in order to succeed. A chimpanzee would be far better equipped than I to survive in the jungle and would undoubtedly perform better than me in tests that assessed this. Still, I wouldn't let one fill in my tax return.

Perhaps intelligence is the wrong term to use, perhaps it would be fairer to say footballers and PhD students have differing mental abilities. But which of these abilities is considered "intelligent" seems to be a lot more subjective than most people realise.

Immigration Song

Immigration Song

by Giffenman

Its immigration say the Tories
The cause of all our worries
So lets shut the door
Keep the peril from our shore
And the BNP can make our curries

The fault may lie with the bankers
Managers, footballers and rich wankers
Yet its the always the brownman
yellowman and other bogeyman
Who will be showered with hard conkers

So lets shut the door
Keep the peril from our shore
And the BNP can make our curries

Why does the UK government struggle to reach its net migration target?

Figures show net migration is at a record high. To understand why, we must break it down into its main components

• 
• • Matt Cavanagh
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 February 2012 17.30 GMT
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Statistics out this week show that 250,000 more people came to the UK than left in the 12 months to June 2011. Photograph: Clara Molden/PA

"Net migration" – total immigration, including both foreign and returning British nationals, who are intending to come for a year or more, minus total emigration – is the metric which ministers have chosen for their overall target.
They have pledged to cut it "from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands" by 2015. But the latest statistics out this week show net migration remaining at a record high: in the 12 months to last June, 250,000 more people came to the UK than left. In other words, in its first 15 months, the government made no progress towards its target.
Why is cutting net migration so difficult? To answer this question, we need to break it down into its main components.

Emigration

This may seem like a surprising place to start, but – contrary to the narrative of anti-immigration campaigners, and Conservative ministers – it is emigration not immigration that has driven recent changes in net migration, with immigration remaining stable since 2004. One of the government's problems is that emigration remains low by recent standards.
This week's figures show a small rise in emigration of UK nationals, up 12% to 143,000, but this is offset by a fall in emigration of foreign nationals. Fewer people seem to want to leave the UK for work-related reasons during a time of global economic downturn, and retirement and "lifestyle" emigration by British nationals – highly dependent on UK house prices and pensions – remains lower than before the financial crisis.
The government plans to make it harder for working migrants to stay longer than five years, and for overseas students to stay on and work after graduation: these changes should mean that in future years, more foreign nationals will start returning home, but are unlikely to make enough of a difference to help the government hit its target.

Work migration and the immigration 'cap'

Despite the rhetoric, the only kind of immigration which is actually "capped" is one sub-category of working migrants, those from outside the EU, and excluding those on "intra-company transfers", and certain other exceptions. This covers 20,000 out of total immigration of just under 600,000 – around 3%.

Students

Overseas students are the largest category of migrants coming for a year or more, around 240,000. The government intends to reduce this number, and believes its policies are already starting to have an effect: the number of student visas fell by 4% in 2011. But it will be challenging to reduce the numbers enough to help meet the overall target.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has lobbied internally against more severe restrictions on student visas, concerned about the impact on higher education finances (given the cuts in central government funding) and about the UK's position in this lucrative global market, one of the few areas of potential growth and export revenue over the coming years.

Family

Immigration on the "family route" has been falling over recent years, but ministers need it to fall faster if they are to hit their target. They are planning to introduce a minimum income requirement, which could disqualify around half of the roughly 50,000 who currently come to the UK on this route. But if this goes ahead, it is highly likely that this policy will be challenged in the courts.

European Union migration

The slight fall in the number of work visas granted to foreign nationals from outside the EU (down 7%) appears to be more than offset by an increase in the number of eastern Europeans coming to the UK to work, with eastern Europe continuing to contribute around 50,000 to the overall net migration figure.
The government cannot control migration to and from the EU, and trends here are hard to predict, but if the performance and prospects of the UK economy decline relative to those EU countries which are crucial to migration, such as Poland, this could reduce net migration, as fewer Poles arrive and more return home; however, there could still be more immigration from other struggling economies like Greece.
Overall, the government finds itself in the perverse position that its best chance of hitting its net migration target is if the UK experiences a prolonged economic downturn. If instead, as we all hope, we start returning to growth late this year or early next, ministers will face a more difficult set of choices. The risk is that the net migration target will force them to attempt more drastic reductions in work and especially student migration, simply because those are the easiest categories to control, and despite the fact that they are also the most economically beneficial categories, and the kind of immigration which surveys suggest the public are least bothered about.

The Rioters' Defence

By Peter Oborne Politics Last updated: August 11th, 2011 in The Telegraph


David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.

Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.

Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.

I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.

Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?

Our politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad. They have shown themselves prepared to ignore common decency and, in some cases, to break the law. David Cameron is happy to have some of the worst offenders in his Cabinet. Take the example of Francis Maude, who is charged with tackling public sector waste – which trade unions say is a euphemism for waging war on low‑paid workers. Yet Mr Maude made tens of thousands of pounds by breaching the spirit, though not the law, surrounding MPs’ allowances.

A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, “What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption.” This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.

Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be “reclaimed” by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.

Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears’s expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.

The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.

The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.

These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society. It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out.
But there are those who do not. Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.

Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society. Let’s bear in mind that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.
The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.