When a 21st-century paper's abstract starts off by talking about the medieval four humors theory of medicine, and it doesn't even acknowledge how wrong that is, you know you can safely stop reading.
In fairness, I think they were trying to point out that the idea there might be a correlation between intelligence and depression has been around for a long time:
"Aristotle introduced a quantitative factor, asserting that levels of melancholy and black bile are positively correlated; however, under a given threshold of black bile, it can give rise to an exceptional being"
The fact that Aristotle thought "black bile" was responsible for both is neither here not there, but just a necessary context to understand the quotation.
That struck me as odd - more emphasis placed on old theories that were essentially justified by anecdote and ungrounded speculation than on their study.
The study of 100 children is very briefly described and lacks controls. I wouldn't draw much in the way of conclusions from it.
Comments
When a 21st-century paper's abstract starts off by talking about the medieval four humors theory of medicine, and it doesn't even acknowledge how wrong that is, you know you can safely stop reading.
In fairness, I think they were trying to point out that the idea there might be a correlation between intelligence and depression has been around for a long time:
"Aristotle introduced a quantitative factor, asserting that levels of melancholy and black bile are positively correlated; however, under a given threshold of black bile, it can give rise to an exceptional being"
The fact that Aristotle thought "black bile" was responsible for both is neither here not there, but just a necessary context to understand the quotation.
That struck me as odd - more emphasis placed on old theories that were essentially justified by anecdote and ungrounded speculation than on their study.
The study of 100 children is very briefly described and lacks controls. I wouldn't draw much in the way of conclusions from it.