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"The Guardian: "Genetics accounts for more than half of variation in exam results""

25 Comments -

1 – 25 of 25
Blogger Thursday said...

But, of course, remember that "environment" is not the same as "social environment." "Environment" includes a lot of physiological randomness.

12/11/13, 4:11 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What I've never seen explained in any specifics is whether for particular individuals genes may account for a lot more than 50%; for others, a lot less. These are population averages, after all. What is the range of large individual variation that might be
seen in, say, three or four of the subjects in an experimental group of, say, 100??

12/11/13, 4:18 PM

Anonymous bleeding-edge bloggers said...

Steve, did you really just prove that the sum of all percentages from a population is 100%

12/11/13, 4:59 PM

Blogger jgress said...

Whoa, since when has the genetic basis of academic ability been acceptable to publish in teh Grauniad?

12/11/13, 5:10 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

if environmental factors contribute 50%, and given that our elites are better programmed for success than ever at their prep schools, trips abroad, baby eisntein tapes etc then are they smarter than ever? Is their output quality improving? are we seeing sharper thinking in any area? why not--the environmental inputs have clearly increased, at least, quantitatively

12/11/13, 7:11 PM

Anonymous hbd chick said...

@jgress - "Whoa, since when has the genetic basis of academic ability been acceptable to publish in teh Grauniad?"

i know!

there's a lot of weird stuff going on in the u.k. lately -- they seem to be "getting" (finally admitting?) that there's such a thing as innate intelligence and that not everybody gets dealt the same hand wrt smarts.

don't mention it too much! don't make them self-conscious about it! let the momentum keep working.

(~_^)

12/11/13, 8:15 PM

Anonymous JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

Steve, did you really just prove that the sum of all percentages from a population is 100%

No, he calculated the average of the two percentages. Values were the percent of X in two different group. They just happen to add to 100%. Reread the sentence in question to find X.

12/11/13, 8:40 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The system is self-correcting. As the average output converges in intelligence, outside shocks combined with groupthink precipitate a catestrophic event, with consequent mortality and diversion from the mean.

If average output diverges in intelligence, disparate mating and convergence to the mean dampen the divergence.

Neil Templeton

12/11/13, 9:03 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

If I were to guess, I'd say those identical twin comparisons underestimate the contribution of genes b/c many identical twins have a psychological need to differentiate themselves from their twin. Thus, it's not uncommon for one of the twins to rebel.

And to the 'IQ/SAT tests are the holy grail' retorts I call b.s. If a high school student parties late into the night and smokes a joint to alleviate his hangover while on his commute to the SAT site, it will have an effect.

There is no washout effect b/c the twins are actively differentiating themselves--seeking polar opposites on their inborn predisposition range.

12/11/13, 9:18 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

These vile hate facts have no place in the Guardian.

12/11/13, 11:03 PM

Anonymous map said...

What do the Winklevoss twins have to do with Bitcoin?

12/11/13, 11:04 PM

Blogger Aaron Gross said...

The heredity glass and the environment glass are generally both about half full and half empty.

Only wild-eyed extremists like me think that way, however.

Responsible moderates know that the nurture glass must be 100% full....


That's insane. Maybe it was true about twenty years ago, but now the consensus is that the heritability of lots of psychological traits is around 50%. You read the New York Times and I don't, but every recent NYT article I've read on the topic follows the consensus view, that traits like IQ, for example, are substantially heritable.

I'll bet it would be hard to find any NYT articles (I'm not talking about op-eds) that take the view that you attribute to "moderates." Your own "wild-eyed extremist" view is held practically unanimously among the liberal elite, at least the media elite.

Of course it goes without saying, but has to be said anyway to preempt stupid objections, that the heritability estimated here is within-population heritability, not between-population "heritability."

12/11/13, 11:17 PM

Anonymous jody said...

rowdy roddy piper alert. wonder what kind of name reiss is...

just kidding. i know it's a jewish name. there's a boxing referee, jack reiss, and his preference in boxing matches is pretty clear.

what's interesting from wikipedia is that half jewish michael reiss does not only not consider himself jewish, but is in fact an anglican priest.

nature over nurture i suppose, eh mike? he's a living embodiment of the reality which he denounces. he just can't keep that reflexive knee jerk reaction to any genetic talk at bay, no matter how culturally de-jewishified he is. he has to come flying in and denounce any idea that genes might matter in brainpower. he has to reassure the reader that possible nazis like robert plomin have got this stuff exactly wrong and have no idea what they're talking about.

the half jewish, not culturally jewish at all, anglican priest, who acts exactly like a left wing jew when certain topics come up. he proves plomin's point.

12/12/13, 12:26 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Okay, something funny's going on here. This is the Gruniad - what kind of waters are being tested? Because there is no way this would be allowed - maybe the results, and the differences in results, are getting too politically hot to explain away, so they need to set the bar for explaining that hey, it's not their fault.

(And as someone who thinks that their education system, independent of things like cognitive ability and race, has some severe problems, that does my head in.)

12/12/13, 1:07 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

Responsible moderates know that the nurture glass must be 100% full....

"That's insane. Maybe it was true about twenty years ago, but now the consensus is that the heritability of lots of psychological traits is around 50%. You read the New York Times and I don't, but every recent NYT article I've read on the topic follows the consensus view, that traits like IQ, for example, are substantially heritable."

Sure, but what about New York Times editorials, like the massive one yesterday about how white boys are hogging all the STEM learning? There's a massive disconnect between what the fine NYT Science section reports and the way people talk in the Editorial, Op-Ed, Education, National, Arts, and International pages.

Or just read the comments on article in the Guardian.

Jesus wept.

I'm a notoriously terrible person because I read the science articles in the New York Times and the Guardian and I fail to forget them as soon as I start reading the non-science articles in the New York Times and the Guardian.

12/12/13, 1:39 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://gu.com/p/3y659/fb

somehow fitting

12/12/13, 1:57 AM

Blogger Aaron Gross said...

1) If the editorial is about white boys compared to others, then it's not about within-population heritability.

2) I specifically excluded editorials (well, op-eds) just to be safe, but I think they're probably consistent with the reporting. And I'm not just talking about science reporting either, like the article you cited here. The NYT writes stuff related to IQ that isn't straight science reporting, and those articles never (from what I've read) say that it's all environmental; they do often say that it's substantially heritable. That's the elite position. Granted, the masses who post comments often lag behind the elite.

3) Who said you're a terrible person because you say that lots of personality traits are about 50% heritable? Again, this is within-population heritability. I've seen lots of people write that you're a terrible person, but never because of that.

Last word is yours, by the way.

12/12/13, 2:29 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

At least the schizophrenic signing gibberish was quiet instead of honking on a vuvuzela.

12/12/13, 2:37 AM

Blogger sunbeam said...

All these twin studies.

But no one ever does it epic style.

By that I mean take one half of an infant pair that you are reasonably confident will have above average intelligence. Maybe one of those Galtons or Darwins or something.

Then put that in a certain kind of environment.

Having the crew in Precious as parents. Or put them with the White family in deepest West Virginia.

Besides sorta replaying the plot of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, I'd be curious as to how things turn out.

I ask this because I have a belief of sorts about social environments, which has survived all contact with this site.

Namely that certain genetic traits you have are unlikely to be expressed or nurtured in certain environments.

If Isaac Newton took his first toke on a joint at age 9, then started tweaking at age 12. If he has to worry about his street cred and looking like a hard man, if his first baby mama gets knocked up at age 14...

There ain't a whole lot of room in there for intellectual pursuits you know.

I was also tempted to throw in some stuff about brain differences with feral children. A quick wiki walk indicates that this is mostly a fictitious phenomena, though apparently some cases have been observed. I mean I could take John Von Neumann and make something all kinds of f*#%ked up if I have given little John to this girl's daddy to raise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_%28feral_child%29

12/12/13, 5:43 AM

Blogger pat said...

You cite Michael Reiss as saying, "Some people have to wear glasses because of genetic defects, and other people wear them for reasons that have nothing to do with genetics. As long as you are wearing glasses in school, it doesn't matter at all. The genetics is utterly irrelevant,"

I stumbled into the genetics of myopia while I was researching The Tuskegee Airmen. Racial differences in eyesight is seldom noted in the press. Dr. Reiss seems to be innocent of the basic facts.

IQ and myopia are strongly correlated. East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews have much higher rates of wearing glasses than other groups. Black men in America have myopia rates when young only about half those of whites.

The reason is probably because the same genes that make your brain larger also make your eyes larger. A longer eyeball will focus the image in front of the retina, not on it.

This is not a rare and obscure 'genetic defect'. It is a widespread racial characteristic. It seems wearing glasses in the classroom is not irrelevant after all.

Albertosaurus

12/12/13, 9:54 AM

Blogger jgress said...

I imagine that, if I were a NYT-times reading liberal, I would accept that intelligence is partly heritable, but that talent is still evenly distributed across races and classes. I don't think that NYT science article breathed a word about IQ differences across race or class.

12/12/13, 12:04 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Guardian are slowly but surely coming to terms with the science.

It's painful to see, but consider that thirty or forty years ago a Hans Eysenck was attacked and had lectures boycotted - he was pretty much an unperson to liberals for saying the same things.

But that won't happen to Plomin - for one thing students are far too worried about their careers to smash up lecture theatres.

Whether they'll be so accepting when it comes to group differences remains to be seen. I think not.

12/12/13, 12:53 PM

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12/12/13, 2:00 PM

Blogger Luke Lea said...

"Plomin believes that education might be improved by enlarging schools so they have enough resources to offer children a greater range of subjects and activities, so each can find out what they are good at."

This comports with my (original?) suggestion of a cafeteria-style curriculum in very large central high-schools, with a broad range of both academic and vocational courses available. The Student and his or her parents would be free to choose any course they think he might like to take (and should probably be free to drop without penalty those they later decide are not suitable for them). There might be minimal requirements -- basic arithmetic and the main facts of US and world history on the academic side an a few vocational courses like cooking and masonry (or some other "hard labor" industrial art) to remove the stigma now associated with vocational training; but beyond that it would be up to the students and their parents, not teachers and administrators, to design the educational program that seems best fitted to their aptitudes and desires.

12/12/13, 6:31 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Some people have to get a grade handicap because of genetic defects, and other people have to for reasons that have nothing to do with genetics. As long as you are getting a handicap in school, it doesn't matter at all. The genetics is utterly irrelevant,"

12/13/13, 4:49 AM

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