Gigachad?

We have all seen the image. The scatterplot that affirms decades-old platitudes about brain vs brawn. But something peculiar stood out to most people, there is an individual who seems to have gone against all odds and proven themselves as a true outlier. Is it Dolph Lundgren? Christopher Langan? Gigachad? The speculations have run wild in the media. However, there is something to pay attention to about the origin of the graph. Memes aside, it is important to also look at the truth. The graph appears to be from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health, Wave 5). The study is real, “it is a longitudinal survey of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during 1994-95 school year”, according to the “Sampling and Mixed-Mode Survey Design” document which can be found in the Add Health website [1]. The study has then seen subsequent waves for different time windows. Wave 5 (Wave V) was sampled in 2016-2018 [2], with a total of 12,300 individual observations [3]. ...

May 6, 2026