Talk:Heritability of IQ

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Heritability of IQ article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2: 120 days

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, which is a contentious topic. Please consult the procedures and edit carefully.

Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence

The article Heritability of IQ, along with other articles relating to the area of conflict (namely, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed), is currently subject to active arbitration remedies, described in a 2010 Arbitration Committee case where the articulated principles included:

Pillars: Wikipedia articles must be neutral, verifiable and must not contain original research. Those founding principles (the Pillars) are not negotiable and cannot be overruled, even when apparent consensus to do so exists.
Original research: Wikipedia defines "original research" as "facts, allegations, ideas, and stories not already published by reliable sources". In particular, analyses or conclusions not already published in reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy are not appropriate for inclusion in articles.
Correct use of sources: Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. Primary sources are permitted if used carefully. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.
Advocacy: Wikipedia strives towards a neutral point of view. Accordingly, it is not the appropriate venue for advocacy or for advancing a specific point of view. While coverage of all significant points of view is a necessary part of balancing an article, striving to give exposure to minority viewpoints that are not significantly expressed in reliable secondary sources is not.
Single purpose accounts: Single purpose accounts are expected to contribute neutrally instead of following their own agenda and, in particular, should take care to avoid creating the impression that their focus on one topic is non-neutral, which could strongly suggest that their editing is not compatible with the goals of this project.
Decorum: Wikipedia users are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other users; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook; and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Unseemly conduct, such as personal attacks, incivility, assumptions of bad faith, harassment, or disruptive point-making, is prohibited.
Tag-team editing: Tag teams work in unison to push a particular point of view. Tag-team editing – to thwart core policies (neutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research); or to evade procedural restrictions such as the three revert rule or to violate behavioural norms by edit warring; or to attempt to exert ownership over articles; or otherwise to prevent consensus prevailing – is prohibited.

If you are a new editor, or an editor unfamiliar with the situation, please follow the above guidelines. You may also wish to review the full arbitration case page. If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first.

Biology C‑class Low‑importance

	Biology portal Heritability of IQ is part of the WikiProject Biology, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to biology on Wikipedia. Leave messages on the WikiProject talk page.BiologyWikipedia:WikiProject BiologyTemplate:WikiProject BiologyBiology articles
C	This article has been rated as C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Psychology C‑class High‑importance

	Psychology portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Psychology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PsychologyWikipedia:WikiProject PsychologyTemplate:WikiProject Psychologypsychology articles
C	This article has been rated as C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Template:WikiProject Genetics

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Junheesin (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Junheesin.

Biological siblings, raised together as adults

Hi, I think I remember reading a scientific journal paper where it said the correlation between biological siblings raised in the same environment as adults is about 0.24. This is consistent with the parent-child raised apart correlation and the adopted child-parent correlation for adult child. I can't for the life of me find it, can someone confirm this? It's not easy, these correlations are not static, the figure I quoted is the median correlation I believe. 87.198.51.173 (talk) 13:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I found it! Here it is. If it's okay with the bigwig editors I might include it in the article. It clearly implies an adult-biological sibling correlation of 0.24 but doesn't out and out state it. It's clearly implied because it describes the drop in adopted sibling correlation from 0.28 to 0.04 and than says compare this to biological sibling correlation of 0.24. 87.198.51.173 (talk) 13:53, 6 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Political discussion

there is no political diskussion in this article
- Cyril Burt, Raymond Cattell und Charles Spearman are diskussed to have cheating in their publication in order to prove "Inheritance of intelligence" as a fact.
- 'Inheritance of intelligence' is used to to sanctify an elite among man
- Stephen Jay Gould says that intelligence as an thing and the Inheritance of intelligence as a whole is an myth. (The Mismeasure of Man) --Nerd

Heritability figure

I fixed a mis-citation of Plomin & von Stumm (2018). The heritability mentioned in that article is 50%, not 20-50%. The 20-50% figure is the percentage of the heritability for which "genome-wide association studies have successfully identified inherited genome sequence differences" (quote is from abstract of Plomin & von Stumm...see text of paper for 50% heritability figure) Jeremy.wilmer (talk) 14:46, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

When reading the abstract, I have the impression that 20% is about the genes, with 50% the heritability, so I agree. Thanks, —Paleo Neonate – 15:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have found a general problem with Plomin. I agree he 'says' 50%, but this figure comes from his own book and from another of his own papers. I did not download the book, but the other of his own references he cites estimates 80%. Plomin gets the 80% figure from another researcher which ACTUALLY said 86%. So Plomin is doing something strange with his numbers: 86% become 80% became 50% which is now falsely interpreted as 20%. How did we get from 86% down to 20%???? There is an acronym for this type of number fudging: L.Y.I.N.G. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 20:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Consolidating Estimates

In the article, there are many citations to the adult heritability estimate (77% etc.) but many of these papers are old and many do not actually calculate heritability estimates but instead cite other papers. There needs to be a table of source research that lists adult estimates as a percentage as well as their dates of publication; and that table should EXCLUDE papers that merely cite other papers. There are probably not more than 10 of these.

The reason the article needs to track down the source research is because researchers seem to misquote the actual conclusion figure of an original study. For instance an original analysis might publish a statistical result of 86% heritable, but this gets cited as a lower figure for "unknown reasons".

A comprehensive table would bring honesty to the discussion.

Please comment if you disagree. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 21:04, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Moore Reference on the The heritability fallacy

The Moore reference on heritability "The heritability fallacy", David S. Moore and David Shenk:

According to Moore, "heritable" includes the combination of factors of genes and other factors. However, considering that twin studies involve twins separated at birth, Moore fails to define what other factors exactly he could be talking about, except to imply that they are numerous and significant.

He hints at his idea with "These resources range from cytoplasmic factors in the egg to the language spoken in the home", without explicitly listing all of the possible factors. But of course a child separated from his parents at birth could not have "home language" as environmental factor. The Prenatal environment also has genetics as a factor since the mother is genetically similar to her parents and the prenatal environment has a strong biological component also determined by genetics.

Therefore any conclusion drawn about genetic factors also applies to most environmental factors where the biological parent is responsible for the environment.

Moore's report has been cited only 4 times on google scholar, one of which is Moore himself, and two that are not downloadable or not in English. This indicates the report was poorly received by academia. The third reference (Lerner, DOI: 10.1159/000477995 ) states "In sum, the study of epigenetics illustrates that the genes received at conception (i.e., the genotype) are not a fixed blueprint for development". This is, in essence, an opposite conclusion to Moore. Lerner says genes *are* significant. However learner needs to realize that it is not genes that heritability studies really measure: rather, heritability studies measure "everything that is inherited whatever that may be". Lerner has also been cited only 4 times.

Moore's attempt is rather desperate in my opinion, because even if there are factors that are not explicitly present in a child's Allele, it would *still* be a factor that is determine indirectly through the genes of the parent. An example is a mother that has a mental disorder that causes her to eat poorly during pregnancy. What if this mental disorder has a genetic component? In this case the womb has a damaging environmental factor, but one caused by genes which the child is likely to inherit.

Moore states -

"Because we already know that genetic factors have significant influence on the development of all human traits, measures of heritability are of little value, except in very rare cases."

That statement is quite absurd. If a trait is highly heritable, and interventions to improve that trait fail, then it is very likely that the interventions are a waist of public resources because only medically-impossible genetic alterations will work. A good example is to try improve the nutrition of a group living adjacent to the Netherlands in order to get their average height up to the height of the Dutch (which are the tallest people on earth due to genetics). By saying that height is "heritable and not genetic", according to Moore, it makes sense that the shorter group has a deficiency which can be corrected.

Contrary to what Moore says it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to quantify the heritable component of a trait because it saves public expenditure correcting problems that are impossible to correct.

Moore's failure to see this importance brings in to questing his objectivity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsheer (talk • contribs) 23:46, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This screed does not constitute any kind of compelling reason to exclude this source. The fact remains, heritability = not the same thing as genetic determination, so there is no reason to assume that the extent to which a trait is "heritable" has anything to do with whether/the extent to which is is under genetic control/influence. Moreover, toward the end of the above passage, you commit the well-known fallacy of equating high heritability with high immutability (apparently complete immutability to go by your phrase "impossible to correct"). However, this has never been true (see here for but one of many examples refuting the claim that heritability = immutability; see also Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, page 86 [1]). IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 03:03, 24 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The hell is going on with citation number 5?

This article, specifically. It's pretty annoying that New Scientist doesn't link to their actual source, but searching Molecular Biology for "Biobank" led me to this paper. Which definitely doesn't list 500 candidate genes that have significant p-value in their study. And also says "In this GWAS, common variants explained 22% of the variance in intelligence." Which seems like a direct refutation of the 80% claim it's supposedly backing as a citation(and which it definitely 100% does not support at all)? I know New Scientist is a secondary source, and we like secondary sources here, but it's a no-context one paragraph article with one citation that doesn't seem to be accurately described. Thoughts? i kan reed (talk) 17:13, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]