The genetics of beliefs
Nathan Cofnas wrote a great piece the other day, Beating Woke with Facts and Logic, which included this part: Beliefs Aren’t Genetically Determined Should we execute murderers? Raise taxes on…
Heritability of achievement tests at age 10-14 in Norway’s entire population
Since discussing heritability estimates is all the rage, with Seb Jensen producing a new meta-analysis, and Scott Alexander providing a great review (which was somehow praised by both sides since…
Yes, Elon should clone himself now
Speaking of other science advances we could make right now, human cloning is a good opportunity. Why spend time optimizing embryo selection if we can just take a genome we…
Cannabis probably causes schizophrenia
A lot of countries are currently pondering whether they should legalize or decriminalize the sale of cannabis for recreational use. Cannabis is generally considered a fairly safe drug, at least,…
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…
Heritabilities are usually underestimated
When we read popular books by leading authors, we often find statements like this: Since the 1960s scientists conducting long-term studies on special relatives like twins and adoptees have built…
Beware small biases: the case of height
See prior post on self vs. other measurements of personality for a similar take. Height is the favorite trait in 'behavioral' genetics: it's easy, fast and cheap to measure, continuous…
Soviet and East German era (DDR/GDR) twin studies
I cover these here mainly because they are not widely known, and relate to ongoing discussions about the generalizability of twin estimates across time and space. To put things into…
School factors are not important: evidence from classroom separation studies
People commonly ascribe large effects to having this or that teacher, or this or that classmate. They usually cite some anecdotes from their personal lives for this, but large sample…