According to the Daily Mail reported on the 13th, "this is not rocket science" and "this is not brain surgery" are commonly used expressions to indicate that you don't think something is difficult to do or difficult to understand. But a new study suggests that rocket science and brain surgery may not be as difficult as they think.
Source: The Daily Mail
Researchers at University College London in the United Kingdom looked at the intelligence of aerospace engineers and brain surgeons and compared the intelligence of people in these occupations with those of the general public. They found that, contrary to popular belief, aerospace engineers and brain surgeons had a level of intelligence comparable to that of the average person. The study was published in the British Medical Journal.
Researchers at University College London compared the intelligences of 329 aerospace engineers, 72 brain surgeons and 18,257 ordinary people. Participants completed an online test to measure different aspects of intelligence, including planning, reasoning, working memory, attention, and emotional processing. The study also considered other factors that may affect intelligence, including gender, hand habits, and professional experience.
The results showed that aerospace engineers and brain surgeons were the same in most respects, except that aerospace engineers were better at mental manipulation and neurosurgeons were better at solving semantic problems.
When their results were compared to those of the general population, aerospace engineers showed no significant difference in intelligence in any way. Neurosurgeons are able to solve problems faster than the general public, but exhibit slower rates of memory recall.
Overall, the findings suggest that the stereotypes of "this is not rocket science" and "this is not brain surgery" are not correct.
The researchers wrote in a study published in the British Medical Journal: "Brain surgeons and aerospace engineers may have been unnecessarily on the altar. If it's not hard to describe something, it might be more appropriate to use phrases like "it's like walking in a park" or other unprofessional phrases.
Upstream News Compiled by Ruochen Yang