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I found this essay (http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html) very helpful in understanding what "heritability" really means, and why it's so hard to control studies like this.

The short version is: think about how heritable something like "number of arms" would appear in a study like this. It would appear that variance in arm count is 100% environmental, since the only people who don't have two arms lost one in an accident of some kind. Arm count is therefore not controlled by genes!



very good link! thanks.




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