Disagree. If Jostin said “you definitely [can't] infer between group heritability from within group heritability” he would be correct. But he didn’t say that. He said that you can’t use within group heritability to infer between group heritability — which is silly.

Imagine a trait W that is 100% heritable within both population A and B. If one can rule out all environmental factors (X) that might uniquely affect A or B, one could infer a genetic component to the difference between A and B. If the heritability was <100% within A and B, one could make a similar inference, if one had some additional information.

I think it would just make evolution in intelligence impossible. Which could be rhetorically reconciled with evolution either with a Behe-like assumption that all observed forms of human intelligence were present in potentia in the first anatomically modern human, or by claiming that intelligence is not a thing so its non-evolution is trivial.

This is quibbling since I agree with your probable enthymeme, that the evolution of human intelligence is inextricable from any true account of human evolution. I’d be delighted to hear that someone had tried the Behe-like method though.

I still see people who ostensibly accept evolution claim that intelligence isn’t heritable, never mind that such a position would make human evolution by natural means logically impossible. We apparently do not exist.

I’m delighted to have you human genetics folks on board now. But those of us who have been dealing with these folks on plant science issues for a long time know what they are up to. Some of them are even trying to block funding for research training in developing countries because the bill contains the word “biotech”. It doesn’t matter if you try to explain to them that scientists in Africa need training for managing seed banks, or doing MAS. They use “biotech” as a club to stop research and training. Here’s the bill’s author trying to straighten them out, to no avail: http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/95017-rep-lugar-no-mandate-for-genetic-modification

They are seriously anti-science. This was just a particularly unusual attack, and I’m glad it caught the eye of the genetics community. They are using the same strategies as anti-vaxxers and creationists. They techniques are getting more refined, I have to say. I’m calling it “crank evolution”. It’s in linkage with “crank magnetism”.

That article is a travesty of distortion…(and onur: note the excellent credentials of the authors). I doubt the authors are ignorant of the complexities they are exploiting to appeal to a particular audience or agenda. There are kernels of valid criticism about how the biotech industry in particular has approached the concept of “disease genes.” (For a much better one, see Adam Wilkins in Bioessays several years ago.)

But this public conversation can never move forward if we constantly have to go back to just getting our terms straight: explaining things like heritability, pleiotropy, gene x environment interaction… even science journalists for the most part seem not to have a basic conceptual framework for talking about or understanding results in quantitative genetics. I guess this kind of crap is the other side of the “scientists discover gene for X” coin.