h/t Gates of Vienna
The degree to which students' exam scores differ owes more to their genes than to their teachers, schools or family environments, according to new research from King's College London published today in PLOS ONE.
Hardly news to any thinking person---but professional publication in PLOS ONE is a major attack on PC in general and political/educational establishment in specific.
| PLOS One is an 'open-access' journal. The editors and editorial board review manuscripts for technical validity but not for message (they make this very clear), unlike traditional biomedical journals. The manuscript reviewers will review the data presented in PLOS One usually as well as any major journal (which is to say, sometime good and sometimes not), but don't comment on the conclusions reached. The PLOS One editors believe that the latter is the job of the reader, and they maintain an active comments section for discussion of manuscripts. It has a reasonable "impact factor" (citation index > 4 per article) for a biomedical journal. |
...Researchers compared the GCSE exam scores of over 11,000 identical and non-identical 16 year old twins from the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded Twins Early Development Study (TEDS). Identical twins share 100% of their genes, whereas fraternal (non-identical) twins share on average only half of the genes that vary between people. Therefore, if identical twins' exam scores are more alike than those of non-identical twins, the difference in exam scores between the two sets of twins is due to genetics, rather than environment.
...Overall, science grades (such as Biology, Chemistry, Physics) were found to be more heritable than Humanities grades (such as Media Studies, Art, Music) -- 58% vs 42%, respectively.
Nicholas Shakeshaft, PhD student at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London and lead author of the paper says
Better learn some profession like plumber or electrician Nick, you just signed away any chance whatsoever of getting an academic tenure. |