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QUIGGIN_BIOLOGY

                                             January  3, 2018

From a paper by John Quiggin:

    "... with regard to the heritability of behavioral traits,
    Pinker suggests that about 50 per cent of the observed variation
    in individual character traits within modern societies is
    genetically determined. (This proportion is conditional on the
    amount of variation in environment for the population being
    considered, and would be much lower for comparisons between
    societies.) Pinker views this as a triumph over nurturists like
    Leon Kamin who asserted in the 1970s that there was no evidence
    to justify a non-zero estimate for heritability (not the same
    thing as saying the heritability is equal to zero).  Pinker does
    not mention the fact that, at the same time, leading naturists
    like Eysenck and Jensen were claiming 80 per cent heritability,
    and makes Kamin look silly by not mentioning his main point,
    which was to show that the twin studies of Sir Cyril Burt, on
    which Eysenck and others relied relied, were almost entirely
    fraudulent, being based on fabricated data collected by
    non-existent collaborators."


                   Quiggin, J. (2003), 'Trading blows in
                   the evolutionary war: Review of Steven
                   Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern
                   Denial of Human Nature.' , Australian
                   Financial Review, 24-27 January.



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