Camile.Bidan
Banned
The science for the nature argument (which includes environmental effects) is becoming surpported strongly by experiment after experiment, but the public's reaction to these studies is to either ignore them or surpress the information. Key example, the study released last month that actually mapped nearly all the genes for intelligence received almost no attention from the media.
I predict that as these studies continue and challenge many of the progressives "nurture only" arguments and their plethera of social construction arguments, the left wing will in engage in herectic-hunting and mass censorship.
I am surprised to see that Dr. Pinker, a big progressise, has even written something like this on a public forum. He will be attacked because of this.
I predict that as these studies continue and challenge many of the progressives "nurture only" arguments and their plethera of social construction arguments, the left wing will in engage in herectic-hunting and mass censorship.
I am surprised to see that Dr. Pinker, a big progressise, has even written something like this on a public forum. He will be attacked because of this.
Dr. Pinker from wsj said:
Steven Pinker on New Advances in Behavioral Genetics
The findings of behavioral genetics have turned out to be substantial and robust, and new studies are linking genes with behavioral traits like IQ
Behavioral genetics, the study of why people differ, has long been the most vilified subfield of psychology. Its signature findings—that all traits are partly heritable and that the variation that can’t be attributed to genes can’t be attributed to families either—are regularly denied by commentators who consider them too fatalistic.
Yet it is just these results that have escaped the replicability crisis embroiling behavioral science, in which many highly publicized findings have turned out to be flukes. Unlike the cute but ephemeral journalist bait that comes out of many psychology labs, the findings of behavioral genetics have turned out to be substantial and robust.
Indeed, the heritability of intelligence has recently been corroborated by a new method which complements the classic studies of twins and adoptees and which solves an outstanding puzzle: Where are the genes? Most of the “Gene for X” claims of the 1990s turned out to be false positives that resulted from snooping around genomes in paltry samples. The discrepancy between the robust results from classic family research and the failures of the gene-hunters is called the Mystery of the Missing Heritability.
But new studies looking for small effects of thousands of genes in large samples have pinpointed a few genetic loci that each accounts for a fraction of an IQ point. More studies are in the pipeline and will link those genes to brain development, showing that they are not statistical curiosities. The emerging picture is that most behavioral traits are affected by many, many genes, each accounting for a tiny percentage of the variance.
Biologists are solving a related mystery: What is the additional factor shaping us that cannot be identified with our genes or families? The answer may be luck. We’ve long known that the genome can’t wire the brain down to the last synapse, so there is tremendous room for unpredictable zigzags in development.
Random accidents also shape the genome itself. Each of us inherits about 60 new mutations, and as we live our lives, our neurons fill up with still more mutations, which can affect how our brains work. We are all mutants, so our genes may have an even bigger role in shaping us and our children than we thought: not just the ones we inherited from our ancestors but the ones that we mangled ourselves.
Mr. Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard and the author of “The Blank Slate” and “The Better Angels of Our Nature.”
