Sulloway is still banging the birth order drum

Though rather more cautiously these days. See below. His claims are all just selective use of data. Facts that don't suit him he ignores or misrepresents. Sulloway exposed himself as the charlatan he is by doing something almost unknown in academe: bringing a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent publication of an article disproving his claims. Not even the Warmists have done that.

The whole extraordinary story is here. I myself have previously put up a brief summary comment on the matter here. My comment should explain why I am not surprised that it is NPR that is preaching the Sulloway story below

There are lots of expectations and assumptions about how birth order may shape our adult lives, and many of them go back ages. Centuries ago, the oldest son had huge incentives to stay on track and live up to family expectations — that's because, by tradition, he was set to inherit almost everything.

"Historically the practice of primogeniture was very common in Europe," says Frank Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley. "So firstborns had every reason to preserve the status quo and be on good terms with their parents."

Now you may think any "first born" effect would have completely disappeared in modern times. But not so, say experts who study birth order. Researchers first examined the status of firstborns among Washington power brokers in 1972.

"I expected that there would be a disproportionately high number of firstborns among members of Congress" says psychologist Richard Zweigenhaft of Guilford College. "And that's exactly what I found."

Out of 121 representatives and senators included in his sample, Zweigenhaft found that 51 were firstborns, 39 were middle children, and 31 were youngest children. It wasn't a huge overrepresentation of firstborns, but the difference, he says, is too significant to ignore.

Several surveys and studies conducted throughout the years have found that firstborns do edge out later-borns in lots of high-achieving professions, from corporate CEOs to college professors to U.S. presidents and Supreme Court justices. There's even evidence that firstborn children are about 3 IQ points smarter than their second-born siblings.

More here

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).