A peculiar trope pops up on some random corner of the internet now and then. This particular one involves a list of countries and their average IQs, and it even cites a research study as its provenance. According to that list, Nepal ranks lowest in average IQ, with a score of 42. In comparison, the average IQ for individuals from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka is 74, 76, 80, and 86, respectively. Japan, Taiwan and Singapore top the list with the highest average IQ score of 106.

This factoid seems a little hard to believe for anyone with even an iota of knowledge of psychometrics and statistics. However, the trope continues to proliferate across social media platforms like X and TikTok. These have even made it to traditional news media. But few people have bothered to question this.

IQ is supposed to measure a person’s ability to use logic and reason, recognise patterns in problem-solving and think abstractly. It is expected to measure how intelligent a person is relative to people of their age or the population average. Leaving aside that “intelligence” could be very contextual and may not even be a singular construct, it is debatable whether tests that profess their ability to measure IQ are even measuring what they claim to do. But for the sake of convenience, let’s agree for the time being that there is a singular construct called intelligence and that IQ accurately measures it and reflects what it intends to calculate.

By this measure, an IQ of 100 represents the average IQ of humans. A person with an IQ of 120 or more is said to have a superior IQ. On the other hand, somebody with 130 or more is regarded as gifted. Similarly, an individual with an IQ below 70 is expected to have mild intellectual incompetence and learning impairments. A person is expected to have moderate incompetence if they have an IQ of less than 50 and severe incompetence with 35 or less.

The consequences

There are practical consequences of having an IQ below 70. People begin to have limitations in their intellectual development and daily functions. They are likely to have speech, learning and reading difficulties to the extent that progress is often not expected beyond middle school. They may also have trouble being economically productive and earning a living to support themselves and their families. When an individual has an IQ below 50, they’re supposed to be severely intellectually deficient that they can barely get past elementary school, develop meaningful social and occupational skills and may not be able to travel alone. People with an IQ below 35 struggle to develop meaningful communication skills, carry out everyday activities like cleaning themselves and cannot understand fairly abstract concepts like time or money.

Now, if the average IQ of a Nepali were to be 42, then about half of them would have an IQ of 42 or lower. But it does not end there: The same data source further suggests that 99.7 percent of Nepali people’s IQ is 60 or lower. If those claims were valid, all of us would be so intellectually deficient that we could barely get past elementary school!

Any instrument like IQ is essential only to the extent that it matches the reality of everyday life. Measures of IQ are often emphasised because they supposedly signal the extent of intellectual attainment that people can have in their lives. If more than 99 percent of the people in our society had an IQ of 60 or less, not just artists, writers, scientists, doctors and engineers but also craftsmen, shopkeepers and other professionals who require superior reasoning and abstract thinking abilities would be non-existent.

How did the trope begin?

The critical question is how the trope began on the internet in the first place. What is the study they keep citing that claims the average IQ of a Nepali is 42? This pseudo-fact comes from Lynn and Becker’s book The Intelligence of Nations, published in 2019. On pages 116-117, the authors explain how they concocted the IQ number out of a hodgepodge of data sources that sampled a few villagers and pregnant mothers in Sarlahi, Bara and Rautahat in the 1980s and the 90s.

However, these samples hardly represent the whole country. It is also unclear if the sampled people were interviewed in their mother tongues or in Nepali. Moreover, none of the studies cited were conducted with the primary purpose of a psychometric evaluation (the science of measuring mental/cognitive capacity); in fact, almost all cited data was collected from studies that studied nutritional deficiency.

It is a little surprising that the authors go on to conclude by saying, “The unweighted national IQ of Nepal is 42.79, which is very implausible…. we would expect a national IQ for Nepal not so far below the national IQ of its neighbourhood country India (76.24)”. What is even more difficult to fathom is that Lynn and Vanhanen’s 2012 book Intelligence put it at 78, and a 2023 revision of the Intelligence of Nations put it at 73.

Measures for other nations are equally problematic. When Lynn and Vanhehan, who supposedly pioneered the field of national IQ measurements, first emerged with national IQ averages, they put out averages for 185 countries, even though they had no IQ data for 104 countries. They just averaged IQs for neighbouring countries and came up with an average IQ! Most of the work in measuring national IQ is riddled with sloppy methods. The unsurprising result is a pseudoscientific verbiage of implausible findings.

A research finding that insinuates that more than 99 percent of the people in a country—one that has birthed enlightened philosophy, literature and the arts over the millennia—have an IQ that renders them intellectually impaired means that not only is the research flawed, but it is also grossly irresponsible.

A reviewer of IQ and the Wealth of Nations, another book by Lynn and Vanhanen, concluded that their work is “.. not so much science, then, as a social crusade”. Lynn, Vanhanen and Becker, who, by proxy, gave birth to this ludicrous internet trope on average national IQ, have indeed given legs and wings to an eugenics-inspired social crusade. Over time, it is unclear how far this social crusade will advance. What Lynn, Vanhanen and Becker have really not been able to advance is science.