Abstract
One reason for the astonishing persistence of the IQ myth in the face of overwhelming prior and posterior odds against it may be the unbroken chain of excessive heritability claims for ‘intelligence’, which IQ tests are supposed to ‘measure’. However, if, as some critics insist, ‘intelligence’ is undefined, and Spearman's g is beset with numerous problems, not the least of which is universal rejection of Spearman's model by the data, then how can the heritability of ‘intelligence’ exceed that of milk production of cows and egg production of hens?
The thesis of the present review paper is that the answer to this riddle has two parts: (a) the technical basis of heritability claims for human behavior is just as shaky as that of Spearman's g. For example, a once widely used ‘heritability estimate’ turns out to be mathematically invalid, while another such estimate, though mathematically valid, never fits any data; and (b) valid technical criticisms of flawed heritability claims typically are met with stubborn editorial resistance in the main stream journals, which tends to calcify such misinformation.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bock, R.D. & E.G.J. Moore, 1984. The Profile of American Youth. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Washington, D.C.
Crouse, J. & D. Trusheim, 1988. The Case Against the SAT. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Donlon, T.F., 1983. The College Board Technical Handbook for the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Achievment Tests. CEEB, New York.
Estes, W.K.E., 1992. Ability testing: Postscript on ability tests, testing, and public policy. Cognitive Science 5: 278.
Falconer, D.S., 1960. Introduction of Quantitative Genetics. Oliver Boyd, Edinburgh and London.
Fisher, R.A., 1918. The correlation between relatives on the supposition of Mendelian inheritance. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 52: 399–433.
Frank, G., 1983. The Wechsler Enterprise. Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Galton, F., 1908/1974. Memories of my Life. Methuen, London.
Herrnstein & Murray, 1994. The Bell Curve. The Free Press, New York.
Hirsch, J., 1981. To 'unfrock the charlatans'. Sage Race Relations Abstracts 6: 1–67.
Holzinger, K., 1929. The relative effect of nature and nurture influences on twin differences. Journal of Educational Psychology 20: 241–248.
Horn, J.L. & S.M. Hofer, 1993. Continuation to the Doctorate Degree and the predictive validity of the GRE assessments. The Graduate School. The University of Southern California.
Humphreys, L.G., 1968. The fleeting nature of the prediction of college academic success. Journal of Educational Psychology 59: 375–380.
Jinks, J.L. & D.W. Fulker, 1970. Comparison of the biometric genetical, MAVA, and classical approaches to the analysis of human behavior. Psychological Bulletin 73: 311–349.
Kempthorne, O., 1978. Logical, epistemological and statistical aspects of naturenurture data interpretation. Biometrics 34: 1–23.
King, J.C., 1981. The Biology of Race. Berkeley University of California Press.
Loehlin, J.C. & R.C. Nichols, 1976. Heredity, Environment, and Personality. University of Texas Press, Austin and London.
Maraun, M.D., in press 1996. Metaphor taken as math: Indeterminacy in the factor analysis model. Multivariate Behavioral Research.
Newman, H., F. Freeman & K. Holzinger, 1937. Twins. A Study of Heredity and Environment. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Nichols, R.C., 1965. The National Merit twin study, in Methods and Goals in Human Behavior Genetics, edited by G. S. Vandenberg. Academic Press, New York.
Osborne, T., 1980. Twins: Black and White. Foundation for Human Understanding, Athens, GA.
Plato, 1928/1956. The Republic. Penguin, London.
Plomin, R. & C.S. Bergeman, 1991. The nature of nurture: Genetic influence on 'environmental' measures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14: 373–385.
Schönemann, P.H., 1990. Environmental versus genetic variance component models for identical twins: A critique of Jinks and Fulker's reanalysis of the Shields data. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/European Bulletin of Psychology 10: 451–473.
Schönemann, P.H., 1993. A note on Holzinger's heritability coefficient h 2. Chinese Journal of Psychology 35: 59–65.
Schönemann, P.H., 1994. Heritability, pp. 528–536 in Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence, edited by R. Sternberg. MacMillan, New York.
Schönemann, P.H., in press 1996. The psychopathology of factor indeterminacy. Multivariate Behavioral Research.
Schönemann, P.H. & R.D. Schönemann, 1991. We wondered where the errors went. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14: 404–406.
Schönemann, P.H. & R.D. Schönemann, 1994. Environmental versus genetic models of Osborne's personality data on identical and fraternal twins. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/Current Psychology of Cognition 13: 141–167.
Schönemann, P.H. & W.W. Thompson, 1996. Hitrate bias in mental testing. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive/Current Psychology of Cognition 15: 3–28.
Scott, J.P., 1987. Why does human twin research not produce results consistent with those from nonhuman animals? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10: 39–40.
Seymour, R.T., 1988. Why plaintiff's counsel challenge tests, and how they can successfully challenge the theory of 'validity generalization'. Journal of Vocational Behavior 33: 331–364.
Shields, J., 1962. Monozygotic Twins Brought Up Apart and Brought Up Together. Oxford University Press, London.
Spearman, C., 1927. The Abilities of Man. Their Nature and Measurement. MacMillan, New York.
Steiger, J.H. & P.H. Schönemann, 1978. A history of factor indeterminacy, pp. 136178 in Theory Construction and Data Analysis in the Social Sciences, edited by S. Shye, Jossey Bass, San Francisco.
Taylor, H.F., 1980. The IQ Game. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.
Thorpe, W.H., 1978. Purpose in a World of Chance. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York.
Wahlsten, D., 1990. Insensitivity of the analysis of variance to heredityenvironment interactions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 109–120.
Wilson, E.B., 1928. Review of 'The Abilities of Man, Their Nature and Measurement' by C. Spearman. Science 67: 244–248.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schönemann, P.H. On models and muddles of heritability. Genetica 99, 97–108 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018358504373
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018358504373