ABSTRACT
By citing Mercer and Brown (1973) and Blau (1981), Scheuneman exemplifies the environmentalist ethos I complained of at Educational Testing Service. Both studies are classic specimens of the ‘sociologist’s fallacy’ (Jensen, 1973, Ch. 11), because they fail to recognize, for example, that although eight family background variables can account for 30.9 per cent of the IQ variance when children are raised by their natural parents, that figure shrinks to 7.5 per cent if the children are early adoptees (Scarr and Weinberg, 1978, Table 3). Sociological variables are far less potent than genetic confounding makes them seem.
