Ha ha ha.

Who is worse than Nathan Cofnas? How about Steve Sailer? See Sailer's comment and my reply. Important to recognize that admixture analysis, the race-guys latest enthusiasm, is also a dead end. substack.com/@stevesailer...

Reply to Nathan Cofnas You gotta believe me.

I wrote a reply to @nathancofnas.bsky.social on Substack. Nathan has been dragging me over his tendentious interpretation of a blog post I wrote 20 years ago, which I already explained many times. Nathan's contention is that I am lying about what I really think, but fortunately he knows better.

And I hope it's clear that I am just kidding around. As Michel has said, it's an important problem.

The classic, "More research is needed."

My usual example when talking about the different challenges of animal and human work is, "milk production in cows." Gas production is a livelier one. (Semi) seriously, I think it is an example where animal work might be interesting but human fartWAS would fail. Diet variation would overwhelm it.

Genomic dissection of methane emission traits in cattle: A meta-GWAS and heritability analysis across populations Enteric methane emissions from ruminants represent a significant contributor to agricultural greenhouse gases, necessitating precise genetic tools to guide mitigation strategies. This study aimed to i...

Finally, a fart-GWAS.

Is @nathancofnas.bsky.social not him, or does he not check the account?

I'm not on Twitter anymore so I can't tell him directly-- I assume he isn't here? Feel free to send him a link; Chapter 9 of my book would be even better, though it doesn't address the "ethical principle" thing directly. I would sincerely like to hear his counter-arguments.

Heritability and Malleability in Individuals and Groups Heritability and Malleability

The discussion yesterday led me to fix the links to this piece. If thinking about Cofnas has you thinking about so-called racial differences in behavior, you might be interested. The same argument in spelled out at greater length in Chapter 9 of my book. @ptrbck.bsky.social

Here is the tl;dr. I stand by the whole business. I obviously didn't mean what Cofnas and others insist that I meant. /end

Cochran on Zimmer, and Correcting an old Misimpression Greg Cochran has a review of Carl Zimmer’s new book in Quillette. Zimmer’s book is long, and (as Cochran notes; I haven’t finished it) has a great deal in it, most of which appears to be of little int...

I explain the whole business in this old blogpost. /3

To be clear, my discussion ends (before a coda about Watson) with an acknowledgment of the academic freedom of race scientists: /2

This tiresome nonsense follows from a poorly worded sentence I wrote in 2008. The Cato Institute invited James Flynn to write a piece about intelligence, with several comments. The conversation turned, as such conversations will, to race, and I wrote this. I still like it. /1

Wicked Problems - Stephan Hitchins Wicked problems are complex, multi-faceted social or environmental issues that are difficult to define and solve. They are referred to as "wicked" because they are characterized by a number of unique attributes that make them challenging to address.

Thanks to Thomas Friedman for turning me on to the idea of a "Wicked Problem". The role of genetics in the genesis of human behavioral differences is a scientific wicked problem. What is your favorite wicked problem?

Partisan brawl in Virginia muddles Spanberger’s message of moderation The congressional redistricting fight is tainting the governor’s image, one Democrat said: “This should be a flashing red light for Democrats everywhere.”

I get really sick of this. Trump is Trump, the Repubs can't help themselves, but Dems should be "moderate." Eff that. Nice governors finish last.

Hot take: Tournament basketball is better with the sound muted

Understanding the Nature‒Nurture Debate Check out Understanding the Nature‒Nurture Debate - There are arguably few areas of science more fiercely contested than the question of what makes us who we are. Are we products of our environm...

My book has a chapter about it.... bookshop.org/p/books/unde...

The Infinitesimal | Sasha Gusev | Substack Thinking about genetics in a world where every variant is causal but only a tiny bit. Click to read The Infinitesimal, by Sasha Gusev, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Or Sasha's blog: theinfinitesimal.substack.com

Eric Turkheimer - Gloomy Prospect Blog | Substack The Substack for Eric Turkheimer. Click to read Eric Turkheimer - Gloomy Prospect Blog, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Plus a variety of things on my blog: ericturkheimer.substack.com

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Some more from our group... search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3...

PS/ Got worried that I am not being clear. My point is that viewpoint diversity does not require departments to hire people who conduct obnoxious science. I am curious about the system here. How did this make it through the approval process? Was it somehow up to a single person?

This is perfectly normal. A department that decides to hire someone in perception is allowed to do so even if a very qualified clinical candidate shows up. Scientists make decisions about what they will study; departments make decisions about who they will hire. /end

The important thing here is that hiring decisions are precisely when judgement about the content of a candidate's research should be at the forefront. Once someone is hired, and especially once they are tenured, the balance shifts to academic freedom. /1

Every generation brings a new crop of Reply-All people on the faculty mailing list.

The Rindermann Reply Identifying pseudoscience

By the way, that conversation continues at....

Competent Referees for Controversial Ideas - Daily Nous "I think Jeff McMahan is in for the surprise of his life when the submissions to his new journal start coming in." I recently thought of that message, which a friend (like me, an admirer of McMahan's)...

Nice writeup of my discussion with Rindermann at @dailynous.com. Thanks to Justin Weinberg.

tool dammit

Slightly different domain but I have recently been using Gemini's notebookLM as a research too. Super useful.