Psychological Bulletin

1978, Vol. 85, No. 1, 194-201

Comment on Munsinger's Review of Adoption Studies

Leon J. Kamin
Princeton University

The critical review of studies of adopted children's IQ published in Psychological

Bulletin by Munsinger concluded that such studies indicate heredity to be "much
more important" than environment in determining individual differences in IQ.
The Munsinger review evaluated 17 different studies on the basis of 9 methodo-
logical criteria. The data cited from the various studies were, however, highly
selective; further, they were in many instances factually incorrect. The very
large-scale study by Freeman, Holzinger, and Mitchell was rated as among the
least adequate by Munsinger. The incorrect citations of their work by Munsinger
are documented in detail, both to illustrate the unsatisfactory nature of
Munsinger's critical review of adoption studies and to call attention to the
wealth of unique data presented by Freeman et al.

The central role of adoption studies in Munsinger study, as it happens, provided

argumentation about the heritability of IQ
has long been evident. The relevance of adop-
tion studies has now been heightened by a
recognition that data provided by Burt
(1966) are not usable for the testing of
hypotheses (Jensen, 1974; Wade, 1976). The
largest and methodologically most satisfac-
tory study of separated identical twins had
been reported by Burt, and his data on IQ
correlations among various kinship categories
were more extensive than those of any other
investigator.
The critical review of adoption research
published in this journal by Munsinger
(197Sa) concluded that "available data
strongly suggest that under existing circum-
stances, heredity is much more important
than environment in producing individual
differences in IQ" (p. 623). This conclusion
flowed from Munsinger's examination of 17
adoption studies, each evaluated on the basis
of 9 methodological criteria. The most satis-
factory of all the studies, in terms of the
methodological criteria, was said to be Mun-
singer's (197Sb). The very large-scale study
by Freeman, Holzinger, and Mitchell (1928)
was evaluated as one of the very worst. The
Requests for reprints should be sent to Leon J.
Kamin, Department of Psychology, Princeton Uni-
versity, Princeton, New Jersey 08S40.
extraordinarily clear-cut data, suggestive of
an overwhelming genetic determination of
IQ, and the study by Freeman et al. con-
tained many unique analyses that suggested
a powerful environmental effect on IQ.
The methodological superiority of Mun-
singer's study has not been evident to all crit-
ics (Kamin, 1977). The purpose of this com-
ment, however, is to indicate that Munsinger's
review of the adoption literature is in general
unreliable. Though any review must be selec-
tive in its presentation and analysis of data,
Munsinger's is excessively so. Further, his
descriptions of published studies contain a
large number of simple factual misstatements.
These weaknesses characterize much of Mun-
singer's review, but they will be documented
here primarily with reference to the work of
Freeman et al. (1928). That study examined
the largest sample of adopted children as-
sembled by any investigator, and contained
a large number of pertinent data analyses.
The fact that it is not often cited by theorists
who maintain that IQ is highly heritable—
and the fact that Munsinger found it so
methodologically deficient—may bear some
relation to the results that it reported.
The Munsinger (197Sa) review of the
Freeman et al. (1928) study reported accu-
rately that those authors tested 401 adopted
children and 36 biological children of the

Copyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

194
 COMMENT ON MUNSINGER
adoptive parents. But Munsinger erred when
he stated that "all the adopted children's in-
telligence quotients were measured because
they were suspected of being mentally re-
tarded?' (p. 633). This statement applied, in
part, to a subset (134 of the 401 adopted
children), called the "pretest group." Those
children, later re-tested by Freeman et al.,
had received an initial IQ test before being
placed in foster homes. The initial testing, ac-
cording to Freeman et al. (1928), had been
carried out for "various reasons, the chief
being a suspicion of low mentality. . . . In
some cases a prospective foster parent asked
that a child be given a test in order to be as-
sured that he had normal mentality" (p. 115).
Though it is obvious that the subjects of any
adoption study cannot be representative of
the general population, the Freeman et al.
sample was not so extraordinarily biased as
Munsinger's misstatement implied.
Munsinger next referred to "a small sub-
sample of 74 children" who had been tested
twice, at average ages of 8 and 12 years,
and whose mean IQ had increased 2.5 points
during 4 years in adoptive homes. These
children were, of course, part of the pre-
test group. Munsinger (1975a) indicated
that "Freeman et al. attributed most of
this gain to the superior adoptive home en-
vironment, but regression to the mean and
practice effects are more likely explanations
for the small gain" (p. 633). The likeli-
hood of Munsinger's preferred explanations,
however, appears sharply reduced by a num-
ber of analyses presented by Freeman et al.
(1928). First, they indicated that the mag-
nitude of the IQ gain in their data was
underestimated, since the 1916 Stanford-
Binet Intelligence Scale was negatively cor-
related with age. This was true not only
within their own data but also, as they dem-
onstrated, within the original standardization
sample. Further, they subdivided the 74 chil-
dren into two approximately equal groups (p.
119). The home environments of all children
in the study had been rated numerically, and
the two groups consisted of children placed
in "better" or "poorer" homes. The children
placed in better homes had a significantly
higher IQ at the time of placement. Thus, "re-
gression to the mean" should have produced
195
a larger IQ gain in children placed in poorer
homes. Precisely the opposite occurred: Chil-
dren placed in better homes gained 5.3 points,
compared with a gain of only .1 point by
children placed in poorer homes. Practice, of
course, was a constant across the two groups.
These highly relevant data evidently had no
impact on Munsinger, who concluded that "it
is difficult to know which methodological arti-
fact or combination of artifacts actually
caused the apparent gain" (p. 634). The
phrasing suggests that any environmentally
produced gain would be dismissed as an arti-
fact by Munsinger; it is in any event clear
that a significant differential gain standing
out clearly over and above the "artifacts" he
cited was ignored. The differential gain of 5.2
IQ points, it may be noted, could conceivably
have been much larger if the children had
been adopted at earlier than 8 years of age.
Further, it should be recognized that the de-
fective standardization of the Stanford-Binet
presumably masked a significant gain made
even by children adopted into "poorer" foster
homes.
The Freeman et al. study also reported IQ
correlations for a large number of siblings
who had been separated and placed in differ-
ent foster homes. Munsinger accurately re-
ported that if the siblings were separated
after each was 5 years old, the correlation was
.49 (n — 38). However, if the separation oc-
curred before either was 6 years old, the cor-
relation was .32 (» = 46). Though this ac-
curately reported difference was not statisti-
cally significant, Munsinger (1975a) went to
some length to minimize any impact it
might have. The basis for his guess is unclear,
but he assumed that siblings separated at an
early age were about 8 years old when
tested and that siblings separated at a later
age were about 12 when tested. Further,
he indicated that "early tests of intelligence
are not nearly as valid as later IQ tests" (p.
633). The apparently low correlation of sib-
lings separated early was thus attributed to
a lack of test validity. There appear to be no
data that indicate the Stanford-Binet to be
significantly more valid at 12 than at 8, but
more importantly, Munsinger again ignored
data directly relevant to his criticism. Free-
man et al. (1928), although they noted that
196 LEON J. KAMIN
there were "very few cases in which the foster
homes of a pair differed in any marked de-
gree" (p. 129), divided the separated sibling
pairs into those reared in "more similar
homes" (n = 62) and those reared in "widely
different homes" ( « = 6 3 ) . The correlations
for the two groups were .39 and .28, respec-
tively. This difference, like the one cited by
Munsinger, was not statistically significant,
but as Freeman et al. indicated, it did suggest
an environmental effect—particularly in the
absence of marked differences between foster
homes. The very low correlation between sib-
lings reared in "different" homes, with an n
of 63, cannot easily be dismissed as reflecting
low test validity.
Munsinger (1975a) proceeded to cite three
correlations attributed to Freeman et al. that
"taken together . . . offer no support for an
environmental effect on the adopted children's
IQs" (p. 634). Two of the cited correlations
were derived from subsets of the full Free-
man et al. sample, and the third did not ap-
pear in their article. First, Munsinger re-
ported that "Freeman et al. found a correla-
tion of .34 between the adoptive homes' social
status and the children's IQs at the time of
placement" (p. 633). This correlation was in
fact observed in the pretest group of 74 chil-
dren who, it will be recalled, were tested be-
fore placement. Freeman et al. indicated that
in this group the child's IQ had presumably
been used to accomplish selective placement,
but they also reported that within this group,
the correlation with home rating increased to
.52 after 4 years. That significant increase
was sensibly interpreted as an environmental
effect. Their data also indicated that the much
larger remaining group of adopted children
averaged less than 4 years old when placed,
compared with a mean placement age of 8 in
the pretest group. This large group of younger
children had not been tested prior to place-
ment. For many of them, information about
biological family background was minimal or
absent. From these facts, Freeman et al. ar-
gued that selective placement in the main
group of children must have been less efficient
than in the pretest group. There seems to be
little doubt that selective placement did occur
in the Freeman et al. study, as in all adoption
research. For example, they reported that le-
gitimate children were placed in lower status
adoptive homes and at a later age than were
illegitimate children. There is adequate evi-
dence, however, of environmental effects over
and above selective placement.
The second correlation cited by Munsinger
was one of —.11 between child's IQ and time
in the adoptive home. That correlation, how-
ever, was observed in another subset of 185
children—the "main sibling" group. For the
entire group of 401 children, the correlation
was in fact -.05 (p. 194). The length of time
spent in the adoptive home was of course posi-
tively correlated with child's age, and age was
negatively correlated with IQ. For the entire
sample, Freeman et al. reported a partial cor-
relation (age constant) of .08 between IQ and
time in foster home. This very modest posi-
tive association was, in view of the large
sample size, at the border of statistical sig-
nificance. There was in any event no real rea-
son to expect a large correlation, even if
large environmental effects occurred. Free-
man et al. cited suggestive evidence from the
pretest group to speculate that the beneficial
effect of adoption may occur relatively soon
after placement. There is obviously no reason
to expect it to increase over time with no
limit.
The final coefficient cited by Munsinger
was described as follows: "Also, the correla-
tion between the children's IQs and the adop-
tive parents' IQs when the children were 12
years of age was .32" (p. 634). This particu-
lar coefficient was not reported by Freeman et
al. The mean age at which children were
tested was 11, not 12, and the child's IQ cor-
related .39 with that of adoptive midparent,
.37 with adoptive father, and .28 with adop-
tive mother. (The .32 correlation cited by
Munsinger may have been the average of the
father's, .37, and mother's, .28, correlations,
rounded down). The exact numerical value of
the parent - adopted child correlation was of
some significance to Munsinger (1975a), who
argued that the
selective placement correlation of .34 is very similar
to the final correlation between the adoptive parents'
IQs and the children's IQs (r = .32), suggesting that
the adoptive parents' environment has no effect on
children who are adopted into new homes at 4 or 5
years of age. (p. 634)
 COMMENT ON MUNSINGER
We have already indicated that the "selective
placement correlation of .34" applied only to
the pretest group and that within that group
the correlation between child's IQ and "adop-
tive parents' environment" increased signifi-
cantly, from .34 to .52! Those children, fur-
ther, were placed at 8, not "4 or 5," years of
age. There is, it may be noted, a logical error
in Munsinger's assumption that identical "se-
lective placement" and parent - adopted child
correlations would indicate that "adoptive
parents' environment has no effect." The
adoptive parents' IQs were not measured until
long after the children had been placed, and
the correlation between parental IQ and home
environment is of course far from perfect (p.
143).
The most startling false citation by Mun-
singer (197Sa) was his assertion that in the
case of adoptive parents who had their own
biological children, "the correlation of the
adoptive parents' IQs with their own chil-
dren's IQs is .47" (p. 634). This coefficient,
of course, is very close to that typically re-
ported for biological parent and child, and it
is presumably to be contrasted with the .32
coefficient reported by Munsinger for adop-
tive parent - adoptive child. The coefficient
actually reported by Freeman et al. was not
.47 but .35! Further, this was the correlation
between midparent and biological child. The
correlation between single parent and own child,
though not reported, was presumably even
lower. This low correlation within adoptive
families between parent and biological child
is to be expected in view of the restricted en-
vironmental variance that characterizes adop-
tive families (Kamin, 1974). The same re-
stricted variance, of course, would be ex-
pected to produce low correlations between
adoptive parent and adopted child.
The coefficient of .47 cited by Munsinger
did appear in the Freeman et al. report, but
Munsinger misidentified it. What Freeman
et al. actually wrote about families contain-
ing both biological and adopted children was
the following: "The correlation between the
intelligence of the own child and his home
rating was .47 (« = 36), while the corre-
sponding relation between the foster child
and the home was also .47 (« = 34)" (p.
137). Thus, in a single stroke, Munsinger
197
managed both to inflate the alleged IQ cor-
relation of biological parent-child pairs and
to suppress the revealing fact that adopted
and biological children's IQs are equally cor-
related with the same home environments!
This last observation is, of course, incon-
sistent with the claim that in normal families
the correlation between child's IQ and home
environment is in large measure mediated by
the common genes of parent and child. The
equal correlations with home environment of
adopted and biological children in the same
families is one of the most interesting of the
many observations reported by Freeman et
al., but it is not likely to be discovered by
readers who assume that Munsinger has pro-
vided an accurate or impartial critical review.
Throughout his review, Munsinger (1975a)
commented on the apparently inadequate data
presentation of Freeman et al. Thus,
it is difficult to know exactly the distribution and
mean age of separation and placement, because the
data are reported only in terms of before 7 years and
after 6 years of age, with no notion of how many
children are included in both categories, (p. 634)
This is false. The Freeman et al. (1928) re-
port presented (p. 153) complete distribu-
tions plus means and standard deviations,
both of age when committed and of age when
placed in foster homes. Further, Munsinger
reported "statistical problems" because "the
authors did not report the standard deviations
of the parents' IQs, the adopted children's
IQs, or the adoptive parents' own children's
IQ scores" (p. 635). These assertions were
also false. The data that Munsinger's critical
reading of Freeman et al. failed to detect were
presented on pages 177, 154, and 136, respec-
tively.
To this point I have focused on Munsinger's
treatment of the work of Freeman et al., but
the same kind of unreliability is evident in
Munsinger's descriptions of other adoption
studies. To document this, below I briefly cite
errors in his reports on seven additional
studies. There is, however, no intended impli-
cation that all of Munsinger's errors are speci-
fied in this comment.
The Munsinger review correctly indicated
that Wells and Arthur (1939) compared two
groups of children of "feeble-minded" par-
198 LEON J. KAMIN
ents. The groups, each 100 in number, differed
with respect to their rearing conditions. The
children of one group lived with their biologi-
cal parents, and children of the other group
were reared by foster families. The children
were given two IQ tests, spaced approximately
5 years apart. The two groups did not differ
significantly in mean IQ at the time of the
first testing. However, children reared by
their own parents showed a decline of 6.68
IQ points between the two tests; at the same
time, children reared by foster parents showed
an increase of 1.43 points.
To quote Munsinger (1975a),
The authors interpreted this differential shift in IQ
between the first and second testing to be the result
of foster home placement, but they gave no statistical
significance test of the interaction between group and
first-second measurements to support their assump-
tion. This interaction could be tested statistically be-
cause the authors gave standard deviations for each
group. I computed appropriate analysis of variance
and in fact the interaction is not significant, (p. 643)
The computation performed by Munsinger,
however, was in no sense "appropriate." The
data given by Wells and Arthur were as fol-
lows: For children reared by own parents,
mean IQ on Test 1 was 81.06, and on Test 2,
74.38. The standard deviations were 15.39
and 12.89, respectively. For children reared
by foster parents, the mean IQs were 79.69
and 81.12, with standard deviations of 14.40
and 14.61. The correlations in IQ between
first and second testings were not reported by
Wells and Arthur.
To "appropriately" test the interaction, of
course, knowledge of the within-subject error
term is required, and this was simply not
available. However, it is easy to demonstrate
that the differential shift reported by Wells
and Arthur was statistically significant. The
logical equivalent of the F test for interaction
is a simple t test of the signed difference
scores (Test 1 — Test 2) of the two groups.
The groups differed by 8.11 IQ points in
mean difference scores. With 198 degrees of
freedom, the difference would be significant
even under the absurd assumption that the
standard deviation of difference scores, ob-
tained by testing the same individual twice,
was as high as 29.08 IQ points! We can in fact
assign an upper bound to the standard error
of each group's mean difference score. This
can be obtained by utilizing the standard
deviations given by Wells and Arthur, to-
gether with the wildly implausible assumption
that, in each group, there was a perfect nega-
tive correlation between scores on the two
test administrations. This absurdly conserva-
tive procedure still indicates that the differ-
ential shift in IQ between the two groups is
significant. Finally, it may be noted that if—
entirely inappropriately—the means and stan-
dard deviations given by Wells and Arthur
are assumed to represent four independent
groups of 100 subjects each, the "interaction
between group and first-second measure-
ments" would still be regarded as statistically
significant!
The Wells and Arthur study provides strong
evidence for the effect of rearing conditions
on the IQs of children. The design of the
study controlled for artifacts frequently cited
by Munsinger, such as regression to the mean
and practice effects. This positive evidence
was disposed of by Munsinger with a false
and undocumented assertion that his "ap-
propriate analysis of variance" had shown the
effect to be "not significant."
The Munsinger review correctly reported
that Snygg (1938) obtained only a very
modest correlation (.13) between the IQs of
312 adopted children and the IQs of their bio-
logical mothers. However, Munsinger (197Sa)
indicated that the
sample of biological mothers was biased toward low
IQ, so the distribution of IQ scores would be asym-
metrical and should have a smaller variance com-
pared to a representative sample of the total popula-
tion. As you will recall, restriction of range usually
attenuates the correlation of scores with other vari-
ables, (p. 643)
The mean IQ of the 312 mothers was given
by Snygg as 78.30, with a probable error of
.61. Thus it can be calculated that the stan-
dard deviation of mothers' IQ was 1S.97—
clearly not a smaller variance than in the
total population.
Munsinger (197Sa) correctly indicated that
Burks (1928) reported a multiple correlation
of .35 within a sample of adopted children
between child's IQ and a number of "en-
vironmental variables." The multiple correla-
tion, Munsinger indicated, was "uncorrected
 COMMENT ON MUNSINGER
for shrinkage," and this was said to consti-
tute "a serious statistical problem in Burks'
data" (p. 637). Munsinger presented a for-
mula (p. 637) designed to correct for "capital-
ization on chance in a multiple correlation."
The formula includes a term for the number
of variables entering into the correlation. The
number of variables, according to Munsinger,
was nine, so that, corrected for shrinkage,
Burks' "environmental correlation" was re-
duced to .255. But Burks in fact employed
only four variables in her multiple correla-
tion. Thus, if Munsinger's correction formula
is appropriate, it yields an adjusted correla-
tion of .317.
The review of the several articles by Skeels
and Skodak contained a number of errors.
Having first suggested that Skeels "did not
really understand the meaning of a correla-
tion coefficient" (p. 647), Munsinger (197Sa)
stated that Skeels (1938), in the second re-
port on his cumulative and longitudinal study,
"did not report the correlations between the
biological fathers' education and the chil-
dren's IQs or between biological midparent
education and children's IQs, although the
latter correlation was .29 in the first sample
of 73 children" (p. 647). These assertions
were false; both pieces of data were in fact
given in Skeels' report (p. 39). The correla-
tion between biological father's education and
child's IQ in the enlarged second sample was
an insignificant .05. The correlation between
biological midparent's education and child's
IQ was an insignificant .08 in the second
sample. Though Munsinger correctly asserted
that the latter correlation had been .29 in
the first sample, that coefficient had been de-
rived from a sample size of 42 (not 73) and
fell just short of statistical significance.
With a fine eye for numerical inconsistencies
on the part of others, Munsinger (197Sa)
wrote that "Skeels' (1938) second report in-
cluded most of the initial sample of 73 in-
fants plus 75 additional adopted children for
a total sample of 147 (see Skeels' report for
discrepant total)" (p. 647). There was no
discrepant total in the Skeels report, which
explicitly and consistently indicated that pre-
cisely 74 additional children had been added
to the entire initial sample of 73 to form a
composite sample of 147. The number 75 was
199
Munsinger's invention; it appeared nowhere
in the Skeels report.
The Munsinger (1975a) review asserted
that Skodak and Skeels "gathered IQ scores
on some of the biological fathers (they re-
ported having tested 12, but never published
any of the biological fathers' IQ data)" (p.
651). This statement was also false; the in-
dividual IQs of the 12 tested biological fathers
were presented in the article cited by Mun-
singer (Skodak & Skeels, 1945, p. 51). The
fathers' IQs may be of interest to those who
wish to estimate the children's IQs from those
of biological midparents. The biological fa-
thers' mean IQ of 82 was slightly lower than
that of the mothers with whom they had
mated.
The Munsinger (1975a) review of the
Claeys (1973) report was not entirely ac-
curate in maintaining that "he found no rela-
tion between the primary mental abilities of
the adopted children and the socioeconomic
class of their adopted parents" (p. 653).
Though the correlations involving various
mental abilities were very modest in size, they
were positive in sign and, in one instance, sig-
nificant. Peculiarly, Munsinger neglected to
report that Claeys could not detect any re-
lation between adopted child's ability scores
and the socioeconomic status of his or her
biological parents. Perhaps this was because,
as Munsinger indicated, information about
biological parents' socioeconomic status was
"very vague and uncertain" (p. 653). The in-
formation, however, had been sufficiently pre-
cise to reveal a significant selective placement
correlation between the social class of biologi-
cal and adoptive parents.
When discussing the results of his own
study (Munsinger, 1975b), Munsinger re-
lated data from his samples of Mexican-
American and Anglo adoptive families to
data reported earlier by Skodak and Skeels
(1949). For these three samples, Munsinger
described and graphed "a perfect positive as-
sociation" between average IQ of the group
of adopted children and "average social
status" (p, 654) of the relevant group of
biological parents. When group average IQs
are related to average social status of the rele-
vant adoptive parents, "the association is
exactly reversed." This "pattern of group
200 LEON J. KAMIN
means . . . suggests that nature has a much
stronger effect than nurture on adopted chil-
dren's IQs" (p. 654).
The "perfect positive association" seems
unimpressive in a statistical sense. There is no
indication of a significant difference in the
average IQs of the three groups of children,
and there are only six possible outcomes of a
rank ordering of three groups. Thus, granted
the social statuses of the biological parents,
for example, the probability is .17 that, by
chance, the average IQs of the three groups
of children would exhibit "perfect positive as-
sociation" with parental social status.
To obtain this unimpressive result, Mun-
singer arbitrarily employed the results of the
fourth testing of the Skodak and Skeels chil-
dren, with the 1916 Stanford-Binet. The
children had been tested during the same ses-
sion with the 1937 version of that test. They
had also, on two earlier occasions, been tested
with the 1916 form. By Munsinger's scaling,
the Skodak and Skeels biological parents had
the lowest social status of the three groups.
Thus, to observe "perfect positive associa-
tion" it is necessary for the Skodak and
Skeels children to have the lowest average IQ
of the three groups. There was only one of
the several sets of test scores given by Skodak
and Skeels that would produce such a result.
This was the testing session employed by
Munsinger in his analysis, without comment.
There is, further, grave question concerning
the validity of Munsinger's ratings of pa-
rental social status (Kamin, 1977). For the
two samples in his own study Munsinger
(1977) indicated that he "cannot report pre-
cisely how the ... ratings were generated be-
cause they were not done by me personally"
(p. 407), and that rating parental occupa-
tion "was a more difficult, subjective and
sometimes ambiguous procedure" (p. 409).
The final example simultaneously illus-
trates both the unreliability and the extreme
selectivity of Munsinger's review: He re-
ported that Leahy (193S) "found a correla-
tion of only .06 between the IQ of adopted
children and own children living in the same
family; however, the statistic was based on
only 13 pairs of foster siblings" (p. 639). The
sample size on which Leahy's correlation was
based was in fact 25 pairs. Though choosing
to cite this low correlation based on what he
believed to be 13 pairs, Munsinger failed to
cite an analogous correlation reported by
Freeman et al. (1928). Those authors re-
ported a significant IQ correlation of .34 for
40 pairs of adopted-own children. The basic
tenor of Munsinger's review seems evident.
When a genetic interpretation of IQ calls for
no correlation, a low coefficient based on a
small sample was reported (but garbled). The
existence of a higher and significant correla-
tion based on a larger sample was simply
ignored.
The point has been made elsewhere
(Kamin, 1974) that many reviews of the
literature on heritability of IQ are both ex-
tremely selective and uncommonly rife with
simple factual misstatements. The Munsinger
review, in its entirety, is a case in point.
Though readers of the review will have ac-
quired misinformation about many adoption
studies, a particular disservice will have been
done if they are dissuaded by Munsinger
from consulting the large-scale and extra-
ordinarily interesting Freeman et al. study.
Perhaps the major point to be made is that
readers interested in evaluating the evidence
on heritability of IQ ought not to depend on
published summaries. Those who wish to
speak or to teach accurately about what is
and is not known have no realistic alterna-
tive but to read this literature themselves.
References
Burks, B. S. The relative influence of nature and
nurture upon mental development: A comparative
study of foster parent-foster child resemblance and
true parent-true child resemblance. Yearbook of
the National Society for the Study of Education
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Received December 21, 1976 •