“Estimating Heritability without Environmental Bias”, Alexander I. Young, Michael L. Frigge, Daniel F. Gudbjartsson, Gudmar Thorleifsson, Gyda Bjornsdottir, Patrick Sulem, Gisli Masson, Unnur Thorsteinsdottir, Kari Stefansson, Augustine Kong2017-11-14 (; backlinks; similar)⁠:

Heritability measures the proportion of trait variation that is due to genetic inheritance. Measurement of heritability is of importance to the nature-versus-nurture debate.

However, existing estimates of heritability could be biased by environmental effects. Here we introduce relatedness disequilibrium regression (RDR), a novel method for estimating heritability. RDR removes environmental bias by exploiting variation in relatedness due to random segregation.

We use a sample of 54,888 Icelanders with both parents genotyped to estimate the heritability of 14 traits, including height (55.4%, S.E. 4.4%) and educational attainment (17.0%, S.E. 9.4%).

Our results suggest that some other estimates of heritability could be inflated by environmental effects.