Blood Type Silliness
I’m churlish enough today to point out that Andrew Sullivan is prone to silliness, and this post from his blog is a perfect example:
David Zax interviews Israeli venture capitalist Jacob Burak, author of bestsellers “Do Chimpanzees Dream of Retirement” and “Noise.” Here Burak explains the demographic make-up of successful entrepreneurs:
“Blood type B is found in a much higher percentage (four times as often) in self-made millionaires than in the rest of the population. On the other hand, many of the business CEOs and the United States Presidents are first-born children. Dyslexics compose about 9% of the population while they are 30% of the entrepreneurs (the reason probably being that they have to rely on others and delegate early on in their lives because of their handicap).”
First, neither of these books is a bestseller. I can’t find “Noise” and the “Chimpanzee” book is self-published through “Amazon’s” CreateSpace arm and its “Best Seller Rank” on Amazon is 233,000.
Beyond that, is there really a survey of that asked the blood types of “self made millionaires,” and if so can I see it? I can only assume that this notion is based in “Blood Type” personality tests that are popular in Japan and have no more scientific basis than astrology. The dyslexia claim is on slightly less shaky ground, as there was a study that demonstrated something like this among American entrepreneurs, but it relied on self reporting (and apparently self diagnosis).
Like I said, I’m feeling churlish today.
