Eric Turkheimer

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...

Joining in on the self-promotion 😅 I think my book presents this point of view.... bookshop.org/p/books/unde...

The ability to hold those two ideas in one's head at the same time is precisely what is required for a serious view of the origins of human differences. Meehl had a lifelong commitment to psychoanalysis. Freud himself was no naif about what he would have called organic origins of differences.

Did you know that Paul Meehl was Saul Bellow's analyst? From Louis Menand in The New Yorker (h/t Jane Mendle)

The Paradox of James Watson The discovery of DNA was evidence of how deeply interconnected humans are, but the late scientist saw only difference.

Gift link:

The Paradox of James Watson The discovery of DNA was evidence of how deeply interconnected humans are, but the late scientist saw only difference.

With Paige Harden @kph3k.bsky.social we consider the greatness and bigotry of James Watson. Watson was not just a great scientist who turned out to be a bigot in his personal life. His bigotry was rooted in misunderstanding of the very science he created. Free link when I get one.

Le Volant Basque Hi, this is my old Paris blog, that I have had since 2008, when we were first shopping for an apartment here. I haven't written anything he...

I'm in France for a week, and thought it would be fun to restart an old blog I used to keep about our time here, dating from our search for an apartment. Bon appetit.

An offer I may not follow up on...

Lots to say about this, but quickly: 1) It is not a scientific paper, it is a unreviewed report from a private company, with most of the methods proprietary. 2) The results are inflated by "correction for attenuation". 3) Accounting for 12% of the variance within families does not overthrow the GP.

I very much appreciate that Jay took the time to read and review the book. It is interesting to me that all of the published criticism of the book has come from the anti-hereditarian left. Mainstream BG, never mind the hereditarians, have scrupulously ignored it.

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Jay's review is here:

Got an email about my reply to Jay Joseph's review of my book. I didn't know it was out. Reply is titled, "Taking Correlations Seriously." I will link to my personal copy of my reply, and put a link to Jay's review in a reply to this post. Not sure how firewalled it is.

Just watched the Trump s**t video. I know, don't feed the trolls. But remind me-- why am I not allowed to have any negative feelings about people who voted for this guy? Oh right, that makes me an overeducated elite prig.

Here in Central Virginia we have had the rarest of comforts lately-- temperate weather. Have not used either heat or air conditioning since early August.

This is how you get genetic 𝘷𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 without genetic 𝘥𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘮. Nice! Thanks.

Letter from the University of Virginia declining compact with the Department of Education

UVA says no to the compact. A little more polite than I might have preferred, but I'll take it. Whew.

This is how you get genetic variance, without genetic determinism. (Why don't these apps allow fonts? That sentence wants italics.)

Here is another way to put the paradox. If you ask, "If I had different genes, would my personality be different?" Then the answer is, "Probably, yes." If you ask, "If I had THESE genes, what would my personality be like?", the answer is, "We don't have any idea."

Why I Won The Bet The not-so-inexorable progress of human science

Blog post: Why I won the bet: The not so inexorable progress of human science. ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/why-i-won-...

Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble | The Jefferson Theater

Great time last night at the Jefferson Theater: Don Was and the Pan-Detroit ensemble. Played from their album "Groove in the Face of Adversity" and ALSO covered Blues for Allah, in its entirety, on the 50th anniversary of its release. Highly recommended.

The Nature-Nurture Question People have a deep intuition about what has been called the “nature–nurture question.” Some aspects of our behavior feel as though they originate in our genetic makeup, while others feel like the resu...

I couldn't think of the outfit that runs this. It's the Noba Project: nobaproject.com/modules/the-...

The Nature-Nurture Question – Understanding Biological Behavior 2nd Edition Where Biology Meets Behavior - Discover the Science Behind Human Actions

Is my book more than you are looking for? At the other end of the spectrum, totally short and introductory, there is the following, which I wrote for a group developing free textbooks. I am a bit ambivalent by now because they have rewritten it many times without consulting me.

On the other site: A rare compliment, or at least I think so.

A link to the pdf from my own drive: drive.google.com/file/d/1Deyj...

My Bet with Charles Murray How the bet came about

Blogpost: How my bet with Charles Murray came about. ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/my-bet-wit...

Maybe someday you and I could write a historical review of the Intros and Discussions of behavioral GWAS papers. My guess is we would both have to give ground-- they may have been less deterministic than I remember, but more than you remember. Tracing the evolution over time would be interesting.

When those papers were published, I don't think they were presented in the spirit of "this shows that genetic determinism is misguided." Is that how RP or PV would characterize it? You sometimes forget that much of BG is not as anti-determinist as you are.

My Bet With Charles Murray Greeting to readers of Atlantic article

An introductory blog post is here: open.substack.com/pub/ericturk...

Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.

In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.

Ancestry and Education Indirect, direct, confounded and quasi-causal

Blog post: Ancestry and Education
Indirect, direct, confounded and quasi-causal.

I write about a preprint by Wang et al, in which they look for associations with genetic ancestry in an admixed Mexican population. They found genetic effects for height and Type-II diabetes, but not for education.

The Hard Question in Psychiatric Nosology Reprinted by the author from: Turkheimer, E. (2017). The hard question in psychiatric nosology. Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry IV: Psychiatric Nosology, 27-44.

Something happened to the link in my post. Here is the link to, "The Hard Question in Psychiatric Nosology." ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/the-hard-q...