Continuing my inquiry into this matter, one question that hasn't been satisfactorily answered is why has the obesity rate shot up in the past few decades? As I've made plain in previous posts, variation in obesity between individuals within a group at any given time is largely heritable, as is a good portion of the... Read More

To demonstrate a point that I have asserted at various points – a point that tends to be often indirectly hinted at in the blogosphere and only occasionally stately concretely, I again avail to maps to tell a tale. First, I'll start with a previously featured map of fertility rates across Europe: This is a... Read More

Comedian/documentarian Tom Naughton recently made a highly intriguing post about the "Spanish Paradox"; that is, the low rate of cardiovascular illness among Spaniards despite their apparently poor markers of heart health. This post was made on the discussion site of Naughton's 2009 documentary Fat Head. This movie (which I have yet to see, but plan... Read More

EDIT, 5/30/15: [Post updated with results of new meta-analyses of behavioral genetic studies. See below!] Edit, 1/3/13: [Post updated to reflect additional information provided in the comments. See below and see the comments.] The time has come for a little reminder of the First Law of behavioral genetics. In my final post of 2012, I... Read More