Science / Medicine : Eyes That Speak Intelligence

A study of 150,000 Israeli teen-age boys showing a strong link between nearsightedness and high IQs lends credence to the stereotype of the bespectacled intellectual, but more research is needed to clarify the relationship of the two, scientists say. The study found a significant statistical correlation between myopia and high intelligence and education.

The association is so strong that it is possible to predict the percentage of nearsighted people in a group of given intelligence and schooling, Mordechai Rosner and Michael Belkin reported in a specialty journal of the American Medical Assn.