Short, fat and ugly: You're under arrest!

They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
They're gonna get you every time
Well, I don't want no short people
Don't want no short people
Don't want no short people
'Round here.

“Short People” By Randy Newman

Today’s New York Times reports that some economists argue that short people are more apt to become criminals. If the poor shrimp is also fat and ugly, look out. He is more likely to fail in school, romance, and business.

You may be skeptical about this latest study, call it junk, point to it as just more evidence that the term social “science” is absurd. Support for this view may be found in the details of these studies. For instance, the economists examined records from the last three centuries to conclude that “shorter men are 20 to 30 percent more likely to end up in prison than their taller counterparts, and that obesity and physical attractiveness are linked to crime.”

Although they found from 19th century prison records that “increased body weight was associated with a lower risk of crime,” the trend has reversed in our time. Now, “being overweight is linked to a higher risk of crime.” According to the Times article, the studies attribute this to the difference in the labor market — from manufacturing which favored strength and endurance, to service jobs which values attractiveness and self-esteem.

It starts in school, where shorter students get lower grades, have more behavior problems (seeking attention?) and participate less in clubs and sports, which leads to fewer social connections. From birth, medicine correlates development with size – height, weight — and nutrition, general physical and mental health, resistance to disease are all pinned to these issues. Poverty has long been associated with physical disabilities.

On the one hand, you may say, “Duh!” You need studies to figure out that socially scorned children become failures in life? On the other hand, you may be appalled by the echo of Social Darwinism in the claim, something that history teaches us is a slippery slope leading to racism, Nazi ideology, and genetic preferencing.

Another study found that Americans are getting shorter and fatter compared with our history and with other industrial nations. Some speculate that our deficient health care system (compared with Europe’s) is the culprit. For others, the blame is placed on — guess what — immigration.

Yes ...
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your fat, Your short, Your ugly,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

[apologies to Emma Lazarus]

Findings that obesity, unattractiveness, and diminutive stature are disadvantages in the labor market should be no surprise. The scholars are quick to admit that they cannot discern a “cause / effect” relation between the two. The same can be said of the link to crime, although it demands no leap of logic to make the jump.

My own experience in my life of crime doesn’t really support the thesis. I cannot generally conclude that my clients have been fatter, uglier, or shorter than the average. Actually, they can more accurately accuse me of those traits. Lately, I have found that obesity has thrived among jurors, prosecutors, and even some defense lawyers.

Will there be a time when the criminal law’s arsenal of social sciences which already include many dubious theories and prejudices adds physical attributes to the available defenses and excuses? Will prisons become fat farms? Perhaps botox, liposuction, and spine stretching should be added to rehabilitation techniques.

Now, that might really help the economy.

Why Jewish Mothers Are Smart: More Study Needed

On my first day at Loyola Law School in L.A., I was sitting in the cafeteria with a group of other first day students. We were chatting about our backgrounds. One guy said he had decided not to attend U.C.L.A. because "there are too many Jews". This was disconcerting to me, a Jew on his first day at a Jesuit run law school, amidst a group of strangers, seemingly a confirmation of my worst nightmare. Somehow, I found the courage to speak up, maybe sensing that I might as well get the pain over with. "What’s wrong with Jews?" I asked.

The guy (who later became an Orange County prosecutor), said "Jews are too smart, I couldn’t compete with them."

I let that ride, opting to accept a stereotype that seemed to be a compliment.

Now I find that he may have been right.

The L.A. Times today reports in a lengthy article that two genetic researchers (Cochran & Harpending) have come up with a highly inflammable theory that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically superior in intelligence to the average population.

They base their theory on findings related to genetic diseases that disproportionately affect Jewish populations, such as Tay-Sachs, Canavan, and Niemann-Pick Type A diseases. These diseases affect the processing by the brain of sphingolipids, the fat molecules that transmit nerve signals. They hypothesize that having one copy of this gene is advantageous, while having two (where both parents have the gene) produces disaster.

Science has a name for this phenomenon: heterozygote advantage. Sickle cell anemia, which is prevalent in African genes is an example. One "bad" copy of the hemoglobin B gene yields a favorable result: protection from malaria, but two deformed genes leads to cells that are too deformed (sickle cells) to carry oxygen, thus are amemic.

A 1970 study of a group of Ashkenazi Jewish children suffering from torsion dystonia, a debilitating muscle disorder revealed that those with the disease had higher I.Q.’s than a control group.

The scientists explain the variance with Darwinian logic. Jews who settled in Europe during the Middle Ages couldn’t and didn’t intermarry, which narrowed their gene pool. Periodic persecution kept the population from growing. Social restrictions forced the population into small communities, in businesses that didn’t require land ownership, but gave opportunities for gaining wealth through trade and finance.

[Here’s where the theory begins to get into trouble.]

According to the Times, they theorize that "the smartest individuals made the most money [not always true], and the wealthiest families had the most surviving children. [I’m not sure that is true; large families were common in poor households to insure a pool of workers.] The genes of the most intelligent Jews spread most, slowly raising the average IQ of the group. Over 40 generations - about 1,000 years - an increase in just .3 points per generation would have added up to a cumulative advantage of 12 points. Some models project a gain of 16 to 20 points."

Again, according to the article, "psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their (Ashkenazi Jews) average IQ at 107.5 to 115. That’s only modestly higher than the overall European average of 100, but the gap is large enough to produce a huge difference in the proportion of geniuses."

"Though Jews make up less than 3% of the U.S. population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950, account for 20% of this country’s chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students."

Cochran & Harpending (neither Jewish, by the way) have plenty of detractors among colleagues in the scientific community. Some reject the theory as crackpot junk science, another direputable racial theory. Others are intrigued, but demand proof by further study. One said the theory could be tested by comparing the IQ’s of a group with the Tay-Sachs gene with those of their non-carrier siblings.

Well!
Clearly, this kind of theory is dangerous. It smacks of Hitler’s Eugenics, and carries implications that we as a society have rejected. For example, if there are IQ genes than it means that some without them are "inferior". Our science doesn’t permit linking behavior to genetics, or does it? Criminal genes? Addict genes?

Oddly, I ran across another out there hypothesis that seeks to explain the prevalence of "dumb blondes" in our population. Long ago, the scientific team of Fenster & Humperdink sought the answer, in a study probably funded by college fraternities and Hugh Hefner. Significantly, they were unable to definitively prove the correlation of intelligence to blondeness, but to their amazement, did find a match between breast size (unenhanced) and I.Q., a finding which their supporters found equally acceptable.

They too relied on Darwinian theory to explain the phenomenon.

The theory went like this. Early women needed to attract mates to reproduce. The most attractive females were able to do so with little effort. The less attractive females needed to devise clever strategies to make up for lesser physical attributes. Thus, most of the less attractive, less intelligent females died off. Evolution preferred the smarter ugly gals. However, more of the most attractive females survived, whether possessing higher intelligence or not. Ergo, there are more stupid women with large breasts than with small ones.

Now, don’t get angry with me. I’m only the messenger. And I don’t fully subscribe to either theory. I can see the flaws in both (like, for instance, some males find prominent bootie more attractive than large boobs) and what about the Ashenazi Jewish women?