Originally Posted by ColinsMum
ETA: we've talked about this often on this site. Here is a post I wrote last year to explain that "regression to the mean" doesn't work the way people sometimes think. Short version: if you think children's IQ will regress towards the mean of the population, you have to ask yourself "which population?" Humans? Primates? Mammals? PhD scientists?
Since humans give birth only to humans, the 2nd and 3rd choices are silly. The PhD scientists choice is more plausible, if you are talking about their children, but we know that many children of two PhDs are not smart enough to get PhDs themselves, and that some of the offspring of non-PhD parents are.

A blog post by Steve Hsu (author of the article that started this thread) on "regression to the mean" is at
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/10/regression-to-mean.html .

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell