I don't know what "less important than many people think" means. It's true that the article suggests people think 50% of variance is explained by IQ, and it tur

I don't know what "less important than many people think" means. It's true that the article suggests people think 50% of variance is explained by IQ, and it turns out that literally nothing in this paper explains even 25% of variance. On log-wages, IQ explains 30-50% of the explained variance depending on whether you go by figure 4 or 5. It does a similar job for education and welfare usage. So it seems that if people have any misconceptions, it's merely about how much of the variance in log wages at age 40 is explainable by early life measurements.