One of the greatest pieces of evidence demonstrating that the family/rearing environment has no effect on eventual outcomes is the absence of birth order effects. Birth order is an excellent test for these effects: it is something that systematically differs between siblings and is bona fide non-genetic (mostly). Hence, it's a great way to see... Read More

Can be quite substantial. Jump off the Empire State Building and see for yourself. But, beyond that, the question remains how much of the variation in health outcomes and longevity can be explained by behavioral variation? Well, we don't quite know. But we do have evidence which indicates that – at least in the developed... Read More

My previous post – “Squid Ink� – has spawned a little discussion about the role of the "environment." However, I'd argue what all the discussion is about – what it is always ever about when people invoke "environment" – is changeability. This is what people really want to know about that, and they see heredity... Read More

In my previous post, I noted that the oft-mentioned association between obesity and poor health and "early" death may be a function of the lower average IQ of obese people. I suggested that the true correlate of these things was in fact low IQ. And indeed, I've stumbled on additional studies that suggests that this... Read More

Previously, I intimated that the connection between obesity and cardiovascular disease and death from such diseases may not be what is commonly believed: The idea is that people who are in poorer health have all around poorer genetic quality – in other words, they tend to have higher levels of genetic load (see here at... Read More

(CNN) -- Boys in the United States are starting puberty earlier than ever, according to a new study publishing in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics. In the study, lead author Marcia Herman-Giddens from the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health and her colleagues show that boys are starting to sexually develop... Read More

Post edited (9/28/2012), see below! A new study was released, discussed by Ilana Yurkiewicz at her Scientific American blog, that seems to conclusively prove that gender bias in the sciences does exist. The article describes the challenges involved in studying this and how these challenges were overcome: It’s tough to prove gender bias. In a... Read More

Following my previous post. [youtube Liberals especially be mindful:

Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending have recently proposed a hypothesis on their blog that posits that the lower average IQ of tropical peoples may be related to the number of fitness reducing mutations these people carry. Apparently, the rate of mutation is higher in the tropics. The majority of mutations that occur are neutral and... Read More

Courtesy Razib Khan's Pinboard Feed: ScienceDaily (July 15, 2012) — Your genes determine much about you, but environment can have a strong influence on your genes even before birth, with consequences that can last a lifetime. In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have for the first time shown that the environment experienced... Read More

Anecdotally, I have noticed that those who have sexual fetishes (or paraphilias as they are known technically) as a group have a higher average IQ than those who don't. I don't know of any data that verifies this (I haven't seen any studies linking sexual fetishes to IQ), but I suppose that runs into the... Read More

In the spirit of (partial) full disclosure, in my earlier post on the topic, I announced that I'm liberal. In this post, I'll announce that I am Black. That is, at least, according to American hypodescent; I'm a mixed Black/White/Chinese second generation Jamaican-American. As such, of course I have a soft spot for the American... Read More

Edit, 10/26/12: I've added a table of contents, to make navigating through this long post easier! Unlike the vast majority of HBD'ers, I lean to the political Left on a variety of issues. The primary reason for this is that most of the stuff that comes out of mainstream conservatives in America is utter insanity.... Read More

Edited, 6/6/13. See below! I'll have much more on this later, but I stumbled across this map, and I thought it was too poignant to ignore: This is a map of the 2010 unemployment rates across Europe, broken down by region, originally found here. I have filled in the unemployment rates of the former Yugoslav... Read More

I had promised a couple of posts to bring those not necessarily familiar with HBD (i.e., Human BioDiversity) up to speed, but as I've not been getting around to those transitional posts, I've decided to skip that step and go on ahead. So here is my first semi-original contribution to the world of HBD. I'm... Read More