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What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes. By Jonathan Marks. University of California Press, 2002. 312 pp. Here's the short answer: not much, necessarily, and […]

The article presents the discussion on replication projects revisiting existing findings serve the organized skepticism. Topics include data, information about the collection and processing of the data, codebook, and software code; and replicators describing the decision-making process and planning by avoiding of being accused p-hacking for the purpose of error hunting.

Classical behavioral genetics models for twin and other family designs decompose traits into heritability, shared environment, and nonshared environment components. Estimates of heritability of adult traits are pervasively observed to be far higher than those of shared environment, which has been used to make broad claims about the impotence of upbringing. However, the most commonly studied nondemographic variable in many areas of social science, educational attainment, exhibits robustly high estimates both for heritability and for shared environment. When previously noticed, the usual explanation has emphasized family resources, but evidence suggests this is unlikely to explain the anomalous high estimates for shared environment of educational attainment. We articulate eight potential complementary explanations and discuss evidence of their prospective contributions to resolving the puzzle. In so doing, we hope to further consideration of how behavioral genetics findings may advance studies of social stratification beyond the effort to articulate specific genetic influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on the population of US sociology doctorates over a five-year period, we examine different predictors of placement in research-oriented, tenure-track academic sociology jobs. More completely than in prior studies, we document the enormous relationship between PhD institution and job placement that has, in part, prompted a popular metaphor likening academic job allocation processes to a caste system. Yet, we alsofind comparable relationships between PhD program and both graduate student publishing and awards. Overall, we find results more consistent with PhD prestige operating indirectly through mediating achievements or as a quality signal than as a "pure prestige" effect. We suggest sociologists think of stratification in their profession as not requiring exceptionalist historical metaphors, but rather as involving the same ordinary but powerful processes of cumulative advantage that pervade contemporary life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]