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Shane Horan's avatar

I used to think of Turkheimer as a basically legit critic of hereditarianism. If there's a spectrum of hereditarian views from blank slate at the far left, to Charles Murray at the right; and an Overton window of beliefs that a respectable scientist could hold (given the evidence), then Turkheimer anchored himself to the far left of the window, only letting himself be dragged rightwards by the evidence as little as possible while staying in the window.

And this is fine. Just don't look to Turkheimer for a central estimate of the scientific consensus. Paige Harden (his former PhD student) probably provides that.

But after reading this, I believe Turkheimer is more concerned with dragging the window to the left, and is not above misrepresenting the evidence to do so.

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PatrickB's avatar

Turkheimer reminds me of big Tobacco’s merchants of doubt. Except he’s doing it for free? Sad.

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