So.... the blogosphere is alight this morning with reports that more intelligent children grow up to consume more alcohol as adults than their less-clever peers.
Some data is presented, and that seems fairly compelling. In particular, this data comes from longitudinal studies that survey people and collect data on them repeatedly from childhood until adulthood.
This result has led a lot of people to speculate wildly about "why smart people drink more", but I think the issue is not quite as cut-and-dry as it is made to seem.
For example, one of the results of the same longitudinal (UNC) study is that alcohol consumption is negatively correlated with academic achievement in high school. So, it's not like drinking makes you smart, or anything. It's also not true that being smart makes you want to drink. If those things were true, you would expect to see high GPA and alcohol consumption positively correlated.
But, smarter kids drink more as adults. And, given the high-school study, it appears to be a late-onset effect (the smart kids don't drink more than everyone else in high-school, they wait until they are older).
What's my point? Well, for one thing, a lot of science reporting likes to pick up the flashiest headline they can ("OMG! drinking makes you smart", for example), to get people to read their stuff. And a lot of people browsing the news just skim through headlines to get a quick sense of the relevant information. But this whole process ignores the inherent messiness of scientific results, and can be very misleading.
So, before you rush out to put your kids in beer-chugging lessons, take a deep breath, and let the hype die down a bit.
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