Heritability, race, and police bias: Kareem Carr’s blunder
This was given to me as an example, so let's cover it even though it's two years old. Archived. So let's try his idea out. Here's what I did (R…
Book review: A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe by Johannes Krause
I read this book the other day and it's worth reviewing in some detail. Krause, J., & Trappe, T. (2022). A short history of humanity: A new history of old…
New paper: On group differences in the heritability of intelligence: A reply to Giangrande and Turkheimer (2022)
So it was finally published, our reply to our frenemies Eric Turkheimer and his student Evan J. Giangrande. For good measure, it's these two guys: The saga begins in 2020:…
High heritability does mean that social interventions likely won’t work well
The scientific literature is full of claims like this one (Paige Harden 2021): This hereditarian pessimism about the possibility of social change, however, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of…
A theory of Ashkenazi genius: intelligence and mental illness
I want to put together a theory to explain a putative phenomenon: Ashkenazi Jews have more geniuses relative to non-Jewish Europeans (gentiles) than one would expect based on their average…
Secular changes in race differences in height: a mystery
Be sure to participate in the 2022 reader survey if you didn't already! Some days ago I came across this study: Rashad, I. (2008). Height, health, and income in the…
Variance explained is mostly bad
Reporting the proportion of variance explained by some statistical model is ubiquitous. However, just like p-values, it is a misleading metric. I'll try explain why it is used, and why…
Who supports biotech eugenics?
Naturally, you've heard that eugenics is something that evil people, in fact, Nazis support. So, which country has more Nazis? PEW research was kind enough to ask a bunch of…
Book review: What We Owe the Future, 2022, by William MacAskill
While I am no longer the philosophy blogger I once was, I do occasionally read philosophy that's got something to do with science. I saw some references to this book…
Older fathers bad, paternal age effects vindicated?
Since the 1930s, people are getting older and older before having children, as the importance of careers and education to people seems to increase without stop. As older people are…