Monthly Archives: February 2017

There was a paper out late last year that discussed sex ratio effects in the population of Europe. They found that the Neolithic farming immigrants apparently settled as whole families, and were more likely to incorporate females than males from … Continue reading →

There is a range of psyches that has been favored by natural selection, maybe somewhat different in different parts of the world. Some people are outside that set: their minds are different, different in ways that were never favored by … Continue reading →

There’s a mutation found in Ashkenazi Jews (not common – maybe 1 in 2000 frequency) that, in the opinion of a number of a number of those that have dealt with patients, makes you smarter. It’s a low-penetrance dominant. Some … Continue reading →

There isn’t one, as far as I can see, because sociologists, on the whole, don’t give a shit about being wrong. They like it. Social psychologists inhabit the uncanny valley – highly susceptible to going astray, but embarrassed when it … Continue reading →

Some time ago, around the time hat Congress passed No Child Left Behind, a reporter asked me what I thought its effect would be. I said I didn’t think it would have any. Judging from the NAEP long-term trend scores … Continue reading →

Another new paper finds that the GWAS hits for IQ – largely determined in Europeans – don’t work in people of African descent. That was always a possibility: I’ve talked about it. If you look at the frequencies of height … Continue reading →

There is an interesting new paper out on genetics and IQ. The claim is that they have found the missing heritability – in rare variants, generally different in each family. Some of the variants, the ones we find with GWAS, … Continue reading →

Once upon a time, very substantial spinoffs from investments in military technology were fairly common. This trend is not new: for example, John Wilkinson developed a technique for boring iron guns from guns from a solid piece, which led directly … Continue reading →

Let us imagine that we found out that nervous systems had evolved twice (which seems to be the case). And suppose that you spent a lot of time worrying about the Fermi Paradox – and had previously thought that nervous … Continue reading →