My criticism of the Nature paper does imply endorsement of Watson, who was equally stuck in 1950's extropolationist macroevolutionary thinking:
1. Take a trait (IQ) that is highly heritable within well-nourished, educated, industrial populations.
2. Observe large average differences between populations that differ dramatically in nutrition, disease burden, schooling, and historical trauma.
3. Assume, without any direct genetic evidence, that the between-group gap must be largely genetic because the within-group heritability is high
I have made an effort to acquaint myself with the ACTUAL literature on evolutionary theory. It is nothing like what popular media would have you believe.
the Nature paper is empirically spot-on and theoretically obsolete at the same time
it reflects a pre-1990s dogmatic belief in extrapolationist macroevolution.
It treats high heritability + polygenic additive variance as if that somehow proves the Modern Synthesis was right about everything
It never once mentions developmental constraint, niche construction, active rGE as a macroevolutionary ratchet, cultural-genetic co-evolution, or any of the other mechanisms that the post-2000 literature now recognizes as necessary for understanding why human g exploded in the last million years
My criticism of the Nature paper does imply endorsement of Watson, who was equally stuck in 1950's extropolationist macroevolutionary thinking:
1. Take a trait (IQ) that is highly heritable within well-nourished, educated, industrial populations. 2. Observe large average differences between populations that differ dramatically in nutrition, disease burden, schooling, and historical trauma. 3. Assume, without any direct genetic evidence, that the between-group gap must be largely genetic because the within-group heritability is high
I have made an effort to acquaint myself with the ACTUAL literature on evolutionary theory. It is nothing like what popular media would have you believe.
Watson was vastly simplifying genomics, as is this letter. To grasp the details requires knowledge of class, culture, nutrition, and genomics.
https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2014105
the Nature paper is empirically spot-on and theoretically obsolete at the same time
it reflects a pre-1990s dogmatic belief in extrapolationist macroevolution.
It treats high heritability + polygenic additive variance as if that somehow proves the Modern Synthesis was right about everything
It never once mentions developmental constraint, niche construction, active rGE as a macroevolutionary ratchet, cultural-genetic co-evolution, or any of the other mechanisms that the post-2000 literature now recognizes as necessary for understanding why human g exploded in the last million years
YMMV
Evidence? Plomin isn't some slouch, and the paper's from 2014.