Reelya, again, is there more than one guy who puts forward those views? Looking at the website, his style of talking about it, and his responses to comments, gives me the impression that's he's not exactly unbiased.
Well, that one guy has a Doctorate in Psychology and has published peer-reviewed papers. There are also many other articles, writers and experts that question the methodology
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/twins/2011/08/double_inanity.htmlThat identical twins do not, in fact, have identical DNA has been known for some time. The most well-studied difference between monozygotic twins derives from a genetic phenomenon known as copy number variations. Certain, lengthy strands of nucleotides appear more than once in the genome, and the frequency of these repetitions can vary from one twin to another. By some estimates, copy number variations compose nearly 30 percent of a person's genetic code.
On the other side of the fence isn't "the whole scientific establishment" however. There are just a handful of names that always crop up when defending twin studies from criticism, mainly Nancy Segal. She's always the one person they cite when the field is criticized. And ... she took funding from
The Pioneer Fund to do her major research, which is often cited as the creme la creme of the twin studies. They're eugenicists who have been described as a "neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics." And that's an actual quote from a mainstream newspaper. Yeah, sure, it's not proof that your research is bullshit, but hell, taking your funding from Neo-Nazis to do science that backs up their racist claims makes you and your claims 100% suspect.
And some of the "defenses" are bafflingly bullshit when you even think about them for a second. For example, one criticism of twin studies is that parents empirically treat identical twins more similarly than they treat non-identical twins (and each twin might treat the other more differently), so in identical vs fraternal twin studies, this is a confounding factor. After all, small differences in how kids are treated over time will amplify. e.g. for non-identical twins the parents are more likely to label each twin's abilities differently, e.g. "the smart one" vs "the athletic one", whereas for identical twins they might view them more as peas in a pod. So those are the criticisms.
So the leading pro-twin study researcher Nancy Segal (the one funded by the white supremacist eugenics lobby) did this "defense" which involved picking random "lookalikes" from the general public and showing that they aren't treated similar. Which makes
no sense at all because it's got nothing to do with how parents treat siblings:
https://jasoncollins.org/2014/08/28/twin-studies-stand-up-to-the-critique-again/http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886912003698How the fuck does picking random pairs of strangers who look similar, and showing that they're not similar in behavior, disprove the criticism of twin studies? it's a complete non-sequitur / red-herring. And this is from the #1 most cited "expert" on twin studies.
So in other words, they do feel under pressure to defend twin studies from that criticism, but they haven't got a coherent response that
actually uses twin data. So they concocted the above stunt / clearly-bullshit-research effort. It has so little actual bearing on twin studies or the criticisms that it's clear they're grasping at straws to even think about doing it. It wouldn't pass muster if you were a first-year psychology student.
The mistake is to think that psychometrics (which includes personality-test and stats-based stuff like IQ and twin studies) is "science" in the sense of biology, chemistry and physics. It really isn't.
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EDIT: Here's another peer-review research paper. When you add in pre-natal (maternal) effects, which previous studies assume is negligible, it accounts for 20% of the similarity between twins and 5% of similarity between siblings, cutting right into the "genes did it" explanation.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v388/n6641/full/388468a0.htmlmost previous models have assumed different degrees of similarity induced by environments specific to twins, to non-twin siblings (henceforth siblings), and to parents and offspring. We now evaluate an alternative model that replaces these three environments by two maternal womb environments, one for twins and another for siblings, along with a common home environment. Meta-analysis of 212 previous studies shows that our ‘maternal-effects’ model fits the data better than the ‘family-environments’ model. Maternal effects, often assumed to be negligible, account for 20% of covariance between twins and 5% between siblings, and the effects of genes are correspondingly reduced
That's basic proof of the unscientific nature of twin studies claims. It's a "god of the gaps" argument in other words. "Genes did it" is so vague, it can fill any gap we haven't explained yet in other more concrete terms. So this new model chipped right into the gap, and thus we reduce the amount that's attributable to "genes". But if it's so easy to find other ignored factors that cut huge chunks into the claimed heritability of IQ, then clearly more detailed and specific research on those lines would carve further big chunks out of it.
That's the big problem here, they're taking a component which is "unexplained" then making the claim that "genes" fits the gap in explained causes. Then if part of that chunk is explained by another factor, the remaining gap is still "genes". But that's negative proof, not positive proof. The onus is on the claimant to prove their factor caused the thing, not on critics to prove it didn't.
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