We Don't Know What We Don't Know

From the Brother Judd comes word of a study indicating the height directly correlates with intelligence. This is a fascinating finding. For example, how many people have tried to deprecate the voters by noting the advantage taller candidates seem to have (particularly post WWII). Now it seems that the voters were simply using a good proxy for intelligence. More telling for science, though, is that any correlation between height and intelligence is so counter-intuitive that it would ordinarily not be investigated. Any rewards to height, other than on the basketball court, would be dismissed as mere prejudice or a remnatn of evolutionary psychiology (taller people tend to be healthier, better nourished, wealthier and so women prefer taller men, etc., etc., yada, yada, yada). In fact, taller people should be expected to get more jobs, get higher pay, be more successful, not because of some unreasoning instinct but because they are, on average, better at their jobs. How many just so stories have just met their death?