If by ' charitably ' you mean ' assuming they didn ' t mean what they actually wrote ', sure . I ' m not with you though on the rest . In contrast to your argument that bad science should be read bad media coverage , the actual meaning of predict absolutely allows for partial prediction . In fact , to read predict as meaning anything other than explain some proportion of variance betrays a misunderstanding of statistics . Regarding your other point , that this put to sleep some hereditarian arguments they ' re not studying heritability , but are trying to explain estimated heritability from genetic variation . Showing that the additive effects of SNPs don ' t fully explain heritability doesn ' t even so much as make a dent in any hereditarian argument .