So who is regularly sick where you work?
Not me. That’s for sure. 
Maybe they have the cart before the horse. Illness makes you dumb, not being smart means you don’t get sick.
I wonder - did they also consider people who will come to work sick, thereby infecting the rest of the workforce? I would think an intelligent person would recognize when bedrest is the correct course of action.
How much does it take into account that dumb people are often forced to go into low level, physically demanding jobs that are more difficult to perform when sick. I work in an office because I’m super smart. When I sprained my arm (doing something dumb) it didn’t stop me from working. But if I was employed as a waiter or construction laborer, I would have been unable to perform my job for at least a week.
I agree - and their conclusion that education could help future generations be less sick is a dumb response.
You can’t fix stupid, and I suspect that low native intelligence and many health problems have a high co-morbidity rate. I know that’s true for Down’s Syndrome.
I must be a genius. My only time off for sickness has been when i was hospitalized for my gall bladder. Of course, I go in sick so that I can take off on nice days. . .
Are dumb people more suggestible, or hypochondriacs? The dumbest people I know are also the ones who just cave when they’re even slightly ill. Makes me wonder if they’re internalizing all the ads for prescription drugs. They can’t get out of bed if they have a cold. They can’t go outside if their allergies are acting up. They’re sad about something so they must be clinically depressed. They’re fatigued because their legs are restless.
Dumb sometimes means disorganized, so you have people who don’t arrange for backup child care, alternate transportation when the car breaks down, etc.
The study looked at people on “long-term” sick leave, not those workers who don’t call in sick when they have a headache. I bet that some of that is the fact that less intelligent people do work that is harder on your body, but not enough to count for the least intelligent people being 3 times more likely to be on leave than the most intelligent.
The poor may have a higher incidence of smoking and alcoholism, which would contribute to poorer health in the long-term.
StG
I briefly had RLS postop [stupid massage boots for the prevention of blood clots overstimulated the nerves in my legs.] Have you ever tried getting to sleep with RLS? [or chronic pain, arthritis in my knees and hips makes positions for sleeping tricky depending on which joints are hurting at any given time.]
If you can’t get to sleep, or sleep properly several days in a row, your body has issues, your mind has issues. Sleep deprivation negatively impacts your ability to function.
Or maybe they don’t know anyone with one of these weird problems and they think they are a freak but then they see an ad and realize that they are not freaks and actually have a medical problem.
From the article
OK so they are not separating out why the people are on long term sick pay or they don’t seem to notice the decline over the years, nor do they compare how smart they got later on in life.
Perhaps this is because the “stupids” worked in jobs that had more dangerous conditions. Like a mine or other labor intensive jobs.
But the fact that it has been steadily declining seems to me to negate their basic idea. If they were just as stupid in 1970 as they were in 1946, why are they sick less? Of course their basic idea is being presented by the Telegraph so we don’t know if that is accurate.
Duckster, I get what you’re saying. We had one in our office and she was a friend of mine. She came to work maybe four days a week, sometimes three. I’m not saying she was stupid but there was something going on…Our “boss” would usually come out and mingle in the late afternoon. One day when about half the staff was “out sick” I told him I’d started to call in “Stupid” that morning. He said it wouldn’t have worked, as it was a chronic condition. 
Note that the study addressed only long-term sick leave, so the picture of a woman with the sniffles was ridiculously inappropriate, and this has nothing to do with a person calling in sick for a day or two.
Dumb people = crappy jobs. Nobody likes crappy jobs.
Also, Whole Foods isn’t exactly packed with retards. Poor people often have poor diets.
Intelligent people know that signing “my mother” on sick notes doesn’t work.
I find that the people where I work who are most often out sick are the ones that do not comprehend that a super-sized smoothie from Dunkin Donuts is not, in fact, good for you. Perhaps this does not correlate exactly to “intelligence” per say - but I have a sneaky suspicion…