Verified by 
Stupidity is easy to experience but hard to measure. Several possibilities spring to mind, all useful but none totally satisfactory. Accidents might be a good place to start, particularly since we so often refer to stupid accidents.
1: ACCIDENTS: They may be stupid sometimes, but they are rarely accidental, happening by chance. The deaths and damage these “accidents” cause are not intentional, or they would not be considered accidents, but they are often preventable and foreseeable: just “waiting to happen.” And hindsight, judicial enquiries and inquests might inform us how they could or should have been avoided. Accidents are often the result of human error, negligence, carelessness, recklessness, miscalculation, cupidity and stupidity, often exacerbated by tiredness, hunger, anger, pain, drink or drugs, lateness, texting and other physical or emotional or behavioural states.
Accidents happen, from the Titanic (1912) to Bhopal (1984), Chernobyl (1986), Exxon Valdez (1989) to Deepwater Horizon (2010) and Fukushima (2011), and every day. Given that human error or errors were involved in all the above, accidents might be a useful unobtrusive measure of stupidity. Bad things happen to good people, but bad things also happen to stupid people, e.g. death. In the U.S. accidents are the fifth leading cause of death, and accounted for about 122,777 deaths in 2011, over two times more than homicides (15,953) and suicides (38,285) combined. Accidents were the leading cause of death from the age cohorts 1-4 to 35-44, after that cancer and heart disease knock accidents down to third place. Rates rise steadily to 35.5 per 100,000 in the 20-24 cohort, then fall slightly then rise to a horrifying 98.8 in the 65+ cohort (Proquest, 2014: 92, 94). THE FUTURE IS ACCIDENTAL.
Similarly in Canada, accidents are also the fifth leading cause of death, killing 10,716 people in 2011. The gender and age differentials are interesting: males in the U.S. (2010) accounted for 75,000 accidental deaths and females for only 43,000 i.e. males accounted for about 65% of all accidental deaths. This makes them more accident prone. Does it make them more stupid? Probably no more than the increased mortality rate by age. The total number of Life Years Lost (LYL) based on life expectancy at time of death was about 3,518,000 years. And the total cost of all these LYLs was about $88 billion (nine zeroes). (ProQuest, 2013, Table 132). So these accidental deaths, from so many causes, are a huge social and economic issue.
The problem (from the point of view of measuring stupidity) is that not all these accidental deaths are necessarily from the stupidity of the victim: they may be from some-one else’s stupidity, or perhaps not from any stupidity at all. Some are from natural disasters, what we might call chance, or fate or divine providence. Some are from bravery: risking your life to save someone (mostly male, see the Carnegie Bravery Awards), or to give birth. Some are the occupational risks of such altruistic professions as fire-fighters (83 killed on duty in 2011), police (72 killed feloniously, and another 53 killed accidentally, and 55,000 assaulted in 2011) (Proquest, 2014:238, 225). The military have taken heavy casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. And 92 health care workers have died fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa (Time 13 Oct 2014). Some deaths are from the calculated risks of dangerous jobs, including mining, deep sea fishing, lumberjacks and construction, (about 92-95% of work-related fatalities are to men – numbering more than the total of female homicide victims in the U.S.). Some are the results of corporate policy e.g. the Ford Pinto case, the Sago mine disaster in West Virginia in 2006 which killed 12 men, the Lac Megantic train derailment and explosion in Quebec in July 2013 which killed 42 people, the GM decision not to recall the Chrysler Cruze to replace a faulty ignition, though the defect has been known since 2001; this has killed 12 people to date, and injured many more (Foroohar, 2014). Politics enter the equations as in the failure of the regulatory authorities (e.g. in mining); and also in the shooting down of Malaysian Flight ML 17 in July 2014 with the loss of 298 passengers and crew: the deadliest airliner shootdown in history. Whether these deaths will be classified as Accidents or Homicide I do not know. Some accidental deaths are from contact sports, with a low frequency of death on the field, but a higher frequency of paralysis, concussions and brain damage, leading years later to suicide. Some are consequential to leisure activities and hobbies: mountaineering, ice-climbing, BASE jumping, canyoning, caving, tombstoning etc. which are mostly male enjoyments. They must be exhilarating, but they are high risk, and taking unnecessary risks is usually not a recommended practice; but is it stupid to enjoy these activities? To try to summit Everest? (Everest killed 219 people from 1922-2010, and another 16 in 2014). To race alone across the Atlantic?
So accidental deaths, while including stupid accidents, do not in themselves provide a reliable, accurate measure of national or gender rates of stupidity. Some of these are male dominated activities and professions, which partly accounts for the higher male accidental death rates. But one cannot slide from these higher male mortality rates to infer higher male stupidity rates. Yes, some would do so, but that would be stupid too.
2: HUMAN ERROR, negligence and mistakes: Charles Vaca, killed by the nine year old girl with the Uzi last month in Arizona was a tragic mistake. We had another sad case outside Montreal recently when a young woman stopped her car in the fast lane of a highway to assist some ducklings. A motor cyclist slammed into her and both he and his passenger, his daughter, were killed outright. She was found guilty in a jury trial of two counts each of dangerous driving and criminal negligence. BP was recently found guilty of gross negligence, and Deepwater Horizon and Halliburton were found guilty of negligence in the “accident” that killed 31 workers and spilled between 3.2 and 4.2 million barrels of oil into the sea. BP faces fines of up to $18 billion. Gross negligence means conduct that is more reckless than ordinary negligence. This was an accident, but not “chance.” Verdicts of negligence could provide one measure of stupidity.
3: MEDICAL ERRORS: Medical errors in the U.S. health care system are responsible for causing between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths every year, according to the Institute of Medicine Report, “To Err is Human” (IOM 1999), depending on whether one extrapolates from surveys done in Colorado and Utah or New York (worse). A follow-up letter in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association was even more alarming, asserting that “iatrogenic damage” adds up to a total of 225,000 deaths p.a., broken down as follows: 12,000 deaths due to unnecessary surgeries, 7,000 due to medication errors, 20,000 due to other errors, 80,000 due to infections in hospitals and 106,000 due to non-error, adverse effects of medication (Starfield, 2000:483-5). About 39,000 of these annual deaths are specifically due to “error.” The IOM gives some examples. One of my aunts was a victim of medical error. A former nurse, she told the hospital staff that she was allergic to penicillin, and it was so noted in her file; but they gave it to her anyway, and she died. Hospitals are dangerous, high risk locations, and kill even more than accidents, making iatrogenic deaths the third leading cause of death; but they probably do more good than harm.
Oliver Sacks sheds some light on some of these errors: “There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity, in their patients. And no one was “stupid,” no one is stupid, except the fools who take them as stupid” (1990:171). Also, and related, they don’t listen too well (1990: 104-7).
4: DRIVING CONVICTIONS: Men are nine times more likely to commit motoring offences than women, according to UK statistics for England and Wales. In 2002 (latest data available to me), “men committed 97% of dangerous driving offences, 94% of offences causing death or bodily harm, 89% of drink or drug driving offences, 83% of speeding offences…” etc. (Briscoe, 2005:181). Even though men probably drive more than women (truckers, taxis, delivery), this seems disproportionate, and might reflect..ummm…testosterone?
5: CRIMINALITY: Crime pays, they say, but not always very well, actually badly. Not a recommended investment. Stupid maybe. Yet over 10 million crimes were reported by the FBI in 2011 (down 31% since 1980), over one million people are in prison, mostly men, and 5,136 people were executed from 1930 to 2011, mostly Blacks and men. Since 1977 the ratio has changed: 1,227 executed, mostly Whites, but still disproportionately Blacks and men (Proquest 2014: 209, 234).
Compounding these crimes are the errors made by the justice system, exposed by such groups as the Innocence Project, and reported regularly as miscarriages of justice. In the U.S. Anthony Yarbough was recently released after 22 years in prison, exonerated. Cameron Willingham was not so lucky; he was executed, but probably innocent (Economist 4 Oct 2014:20, 33-4). But both Canada and the U.K. have seen similar miscarriages, for many reasons. Innocence is no guarantee against criminal convictions.
6: IQ TESTS: Yes, but they measure intelligences of different types, not stupidity. A person may be highly intelligent in one domain but very stupid in another. We need stupidity tests.
7: MISTAKES: Years ago students were required to fill in pre-printed cards in class; the cards simply required name, address, student number, telephone number and sex. Most people got their names right, but they made mistakes about the lines on which they were supposed to write, and name or number order. In fact about one-third made mistakes of one sort or another. When I analyzed my data I found that the men were almost two times more likely to make careless mistakes than the women, and that men over 30 were again two times more likely to make mistakes than younger men. Neither tested as significant as the numbers were too small, but extrapolated to larger numbers they perhaps would have been significant (I neglected to do that. Stupid!) When I suggested that they theorize these remarkable gender and age differences, chaos predictably ensued (Synnott, 1980). These sorts of careless mistakes would probably automatically weed some people out of the hiring pool. If you cannot fill out a simple form correctly, first time, you are no use to us, might be the logic.
8: SURVEYS: Even surveys or interview research, which are so illuminating in some domains, would not be much help here. The three most obvious questions are: 1) How stupid would you say you are on a scale of 1 to 10, where one is “Not at all” and 10 is “Extremely”? 2) Give three examples of your stupidity in the last year. 3) What is the stupidest thing you have ever done? The responses would be difficult to score, and would be highly subjective, but might illustrate some danger areas. My own focus-group research into high risk behavior using Health Canada guidelines found that smoking was the highest risk; but the one I remember best was the very intelligent young woman who went mountain climbing with her friends, and only remembered when they got to the top that she suffered from vertigo; so she had to be helped down with her eyes closed. Which reminded me how I once swam across a river, and only then, exhausted, realized with horror that I would have to swim back again.
SAPIENS? Stupidity is the hallmark of humanity, as is its opposite, rationality. We see it and maybe do it quite often. The young man whom I saw run across two lanes of traffic. The first lane was fine but he had not seen the second, smaller car in the fast lane, which hit him. The car I saw in my rear view mirror, held up in the middle lane, swerved right into the slow lane, but hit a car in his/her blind spot, which crashed into the retaining wall, sparks flying.
And the apologies are routine. In England Rotherham City Council apologized for ignoring reports of the sexual abuse of girls for years by Pakistani men, fearing allegations of racism (Newsweek 19 Sept 2014). In the U.S. the N.H.L. Commissioner, Roger Goodell, apologized for the mishandling of domestic abuse cases: “I let myself down, I let everyone else down, and for that I’m sorry” (Time 6 Oct 2014). In Canada the Premier of Nova Scotia just apologized to the former residents of the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children for years of abuse and neglect. Compensation is being discussed (Globe and Mail 11 Oct 2014). The British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline was fined $487 million by the government of China for bribery, and Glaxo apologized (International New York Times 20-1 Sept 2014). More to come.
Stupidity may have its value, as we saw last time, but it also causes immense damage and trouble with high social and economic costs; yet because of its infinity and infinite variety it is still very difficult to measure. So how valid is it to refer to the species Homo as sapiens? (Part 3 next week)
Briscoe, Simon, 2005. Britain in Numbers. London: Politico’s Publishing.
Foroohar, Rana 2014. “Mary Barra’s Bumpy Ride.” Time 6 Oct: 32-8.
Institute of Medicine, 1999. To Err is Human.
ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States. 2013, 2014.
Sacks, Oliver 1990. A Leg to Stand On. New York: Harper.
Starfield, Barbara 2000. “Is U.S. health really the best in the world?” Journal of the American Medical Association. July 26. Vol. 284 (4): 483-5.
Synnott, Anthony 1980. “The Sociology of Mistakes.” American Sociological Association Teaching Newsletter. Vol. 6 (2) Dec: 6-8.
