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“... Pinker relies on a 1998 book called "The Nurture Assumption," by Judith Rich Harris, which has been the object of some controversy in the field of developmental psychology. Harris claimed that "shared family environments"—that is, parents—have little or no effect on a child's personality.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/what-comes-nat...

As a parent, that seems about right. We may lay a foundation for helping them make good choices. But, a child’s identity ultimately seems to be formed by their predisposition and the types of peers that they seek out and befriend at around 12 years and onwards.

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We're not going to get any useful information from a pop sci book that uses other pop sci books as sources.

There's almost no fact checking and they usually mangle the science. http://www.danielbor.com/lehrerandsciencewriting/

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

Sorry, I would have cited specific chapters and paragraphs if I had more time. I don’t even know where my copy of the book is, at the moment (somewhere around here).

I figured a ‘pop sci’ reference could at least help guide the way. My bad.

I can't see what was wrong with your post; whatever we might say of any of the books in question, it seems to me like you're answering a question and helping us understand where Pinker's claims come from. If someone is going to carp that the sources of "pop-sci," let them cite what they feel is a higher-quality source.

No, but it's just that controversial claims require more rigor in how they are substantiated.

I see zero rigor in any side of this discussion. Physician, heal thyself.

I think that's kind of harsh.

I'd go so far as you're just trying to hurtful.

I'm not trying to hurt anyone; I just don't see why you've singled out this one guy, who at least had a citation, for a lack of rigor.

Because 0% parental influence is a pretty extravagant claim.

It seems obvious to me that "environment" includes parental influence; your reading strikes me as eccentric.

No. The statement was that "parental influence accounts for 0%".

If parenting is a part of the environment, then that's not 0%.

The conclusion purposely mangles the numbers for the sake of sensationalism, and that is the kind of thing that gets picked up on and becomes myth.

Sorry, you are right; I got confused about the claims with the multiple threads of the discussion. You are right: Harris claims family is essentially irrelevant.

Nonetheless, I don't think it's fair to jump straight to "sensationalism" to explain why he has different findings than yours. Perhaps your sense of influencing your children is more illusory than you think. It wouldn't be the first time a widely-acknowledged phenomenon with children turned out to be in the imagination of parents (consider "sugar high," for instance, which does not really exist).

No mate, he's totally spinning the results to stir up a buzz. I'm not just speaking from my own lived experience either, I've an academic grounding in developmental psychology.

The influence of parents is very much a factor in development. Just other factors influence a lot more than other people might expect.

You're making assumptions I'm some sort of uneducated whimsical pixie-head and that's your failure. Not mine.

Why not lead with that instead of telling me how great anecdotal evidence is?

I think there's an emerging etiquette around this kind discourse that where "research" conflicts with personal experiences that attempts be made to cross-check and reconcile that. These days with all the bad science around we have to be a lot more careful about what we accept as fact.

A pop-sci book seems like it's at least as good as personal anecdote, which is used on HN to claim all sorts of bizarre things.

I would rate personal anecdote higher.

Pop-sci often adopts sensationalism at the expense of rigour in order to shift volumes.

At least personal, lived experience can be taken at face value, if accepted in good faith as a truthful account, and can be cross-examined.

I'd say the opposite, because pop-science books at least represent an effort to collate multiple examples in support of some thesis and do not exclusively rely on the experiences of one individual. Of course we can see this used maliciously all the time (I think people are finally starting to turn on Malcolm Gladwell), but to me that just suggests both are fairly low-quality sources.

Except, you can't deny personal experience. The onus on science is to explain experience, not the other way round.

If you have an observer giving a truthful account that conflicts with an established fact then surely something must account for that discrepancy.

See for instance radio-waves vs Kirchoffs law. It's not that Kirchoff was wrong, it's just that he didn't account for frequency as a variable, which was solved by Maxwell.

Now, that's for established facts. If you're talking about commercially adulterated science then you have an even higher burden to bear.

Of course you can, or I'd have to accept all sorts of wild claims about alien abductions and near-death experiences. Even discounting such extreme examples, personal experience, as presented by anecdote, is colored by the person's perceptions and beliefs, both before and after the experience they relate.

ah you're just being facaetious now. We are discussing a very specific phenomenon where prevalent observer experience can't just be chalked down to fantasy.

People rejected the germ theory of disease because, among other reasons, they didn't feel it was in accord with their personal experience. Personal experience is the root of baseless superstition. Tell me what's wrong with these different examples, which fit the new criteria you've added.

We're discussing the experience of educated, and critical truthful observers, vs sensationalistic scientism and you throw up alien abductions, life-after-death experience and something about germ theory. I don't know which people you're talking about but it's been known for time immemorial among many cultures that cleanliness is a good way to avoid disease. You are cherry-picking narratives to suite your rhetoric.

We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.

Just because "some guy wrote it", doesn't make it so.

> We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.

I don't disagree. But I don't think personal anecdote is a sufficient answer. You could criticize the quality of the research (in more specific terms than "pop-sci") or present contradictory evidence and I'd have no problem with it. Simply attacking a guy in a casual discussion that is not particularly rigorous for posting a citation you deem insufficiently rigorous without further explanation I do not think is fair.

Huh?

Initially, I merely proposed that in the modern world we need to be more rigorous in our evaluation of scientific propositions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083635

That's where you joined in.

I had wrongly attributed the DanBC comment to you. Sorry.

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