Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This is why people do twin studies. Orphaned twins that were separated at birth are as close to a natural instrument as one could ever hope to get.


Twin studies have shown that at least 30% of intelligence is determined by post adoption environment. (This is a lower bound because adopters must meet a minimum bar, limiting the differences in adoption environments.) Add that with prenatal environment, and you could have differences in intelligence distributions across races entirely explained, but again, twin studies aren't enough to show that.


Unless you can control for the surrounding culture and allow for ~150 years of development of same, even twin studies will be of limited power.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: