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[flagged]


For full clarity: I didn't flag your comment (at least, not intentionally, as I never even thought about doing that)

Now the substance:

"The alleged “suppressed control group” does not turn the result into “no heritability”."

=> Of course not, did anyone claim there was no heritability? But

1/ It's not "alleged", it's printed black on white in the paper.

2/ There is no excuse for suppressing control group data (it's like suppressing the placebo arm of a drug study).

3/ It does turn the result into "junk", and it does establish a definite case of scientific malpractice among people arguing that IQ heritability is 0.70.

As for later analyses, they weren't the topic of my post, but that doesn't mean they're casher.


As for this snide comment that you posted behind your flagged comment:

"I don't care if you find it fair. If you can't accept that genetics determines the entire organism (stress: entire) and does not stop at the neck, then you'd perceive my later criticisms as much worse than - gasp! oh great heavens! my pearls! - unfair. It is a bitter pill to swallow that some people were simply born with better hardware than yourself, one you are obviously railing against. Now, rush on and down vote this comment as well to lighten the burden of your cognitive dissonance. I'm also finding it difficult to reconcile your use of the flag/report on the parent comment versus the rules dictating and describing what is disallowed content. Disagreement is not against the rules. Perceived "fairness" is not in the rules."

Sorry to inform you that you don't understand the meaning of the verb "determine", as "genetics determines the entire organism" is scientifically wrong for obvious reasons: "influences", yes; "encodes proteins for", yes; but "determines", no.

And, no, I'm not railing against anyone's hardware as I'm pretty satisfied with mine.


[flagged]


This literally doesn't say anything. It's a lot of words, but you've managed to reproduce the exact position the author of the article has. For those wondering what the trick was here: this comment forwards the 40-80% h2 numbers from twin studies, then says "molecular genetics show real, replicable genetic signal for intelligence", rather than showing the 10-30% h2 numbers those studies generate.

It's practically nobody's position that there's no linkage between genetics and intelligence (that would be weird indeed), but it's important for this comment for you to believe that's the counterargument --- otherwise the comment doesn't make sense.


The real question is whether genetics is a substantial or a negligible influence on intelligence (or proxy measures like IQ).

If genetics is less than 5 percent I would consider that something worth ignoring.

If it is 10 percent it is substantial enough to make a difference at the extremes.

If it is 20 percent that is real serious business.

Anything higher means we should really sit up and take notice of this fact.


Another issue is, what is it that you're trying to use it for?

If you're arguing against a eugenicist then it's not just about the percentage, in that case you have to distinguish between genetic and heritable. Suppose that there are some set of four genes that, in just the right combination, are worth 5 IQ points. That's, by definition, genetic, but it won't have a strong correlation with heritability because every kid has four chances to get the combination wrong. Or, if the combination does something bad, four chances to get it right even if their parents didn't. So past performance is no guarantee of future results.

By contrast, if you're trying to decide whether to allocate more resources to kids who already show promise, you care about the individual's natural potential rather than the statistical probability that it will be similar to their parents, so it doesn't matter what was more likely, it matters what actually happened. And by the point you're performing the evaluation, you can't go back in time and change things like the prenatal environment for someone who is already born, so in that context those things belong in the "nature" column and "nurture" only gets the things you could still affect.


Surely what people want to "use it for" is completely orthogonal to the science itself?

Let the science science, and policy makers make policy.

I think the problem comes when we want scientists to make policy recommendations.

I think scientists should help us determine what the facts are, not decide what to do about them.

What to do is for courts and democracy and for individuals to decide?


Even the choice of which question you want the scientists to answer is inherently political, because it frames the issue and causes the available data to contain the answer to that question instead of some other one, which influences (and therefore can be manipulated to influence) what conclusions can be drawn from the available information.


Please look at the examples in the article and consider re-calibrating your numbers here. The lower range of heritability means that it is mostly noise.


Why is that? Odd that the article claims otherwise:

> 50% may sound like a solid heritability figure, but the associated correlation is rather modest.




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