That's a pretty awful article. It cherry-picks the literature for convenient soundbites, and then proceeds to put even more spin on top of them. It also misinterprets various findings that demonstrate nothing except the restriction of range effect, etc., etc.
Trusting science reporters in the popular press is generally a bad idea, and when it comes to especially charged topics such as this one, they are probably less than worthless on average.
Edit: Just as one example, the authors of that 1987 German study about chess and intelligence themselves explain the result as a restriction of range effect. ("Dieses Ergebnis wird auf die Homogenität der Spielstärke der Bundesligaspieler zurückgeführt." -- "The result is explained by the homogeneity of the skill level of Bundesliga players.")
And if the author of the Atlantic article had spent a few more minutes googling for newer results, he would have found this 2006 study stating that:
Correlation and regression analyses revealed a clear-cut moderate relationship between general (and in particular numerical) intelligence and the participants’ playing strengths, suggesting that expert chess play does not stand in isolation from superior mental abilities.
This is hardly news, but this Guardian article reminded me of it - genes are really overrated, both among unwashed masses, and also here on Less Wrong.
I don't want to repeat things which have been said by so many before me, so I'll just link a lot.
Summary of evidence against genes being important:
Summary of evidence for genes being important:
And there's nothing more. Decades ago, before we had direct evidence of lack of correlation between genes and outcomes, it was excusable to believe genes matter a lot, even if it was never the best interpretation of data. Now it's just going against bulk of the evidence.
And in case you're wondering how could twin studies show high heredity when everything else says otherwise, I have two examples for you.
This one from a critique of twin studies by Kamin and Goldberger:
"A case in point is provided by the recent study of regular tobacco use among SATSA's twins (24). Heritability was estimated as 60% for men, only 20% for women. Separate analyses were then performed for three distinct age cohorts. For men, the heritability estimates were nearly identical for each cohort. But for women, heritability increased from zero for those born between 1910 and 1924, to 21% for those in the 1925-39 birth cohort, to 64% for the 1940-58 cohort. The authors suggested that the most plausible explanation for this finding was that "a reduction in the social restrictions on smoking in women in Sweden as the 20th century progressed permitted genetic factors increasing the risk for regular tobacco use to express themselves." If purportedly genetic factors can be so readily suppressed by social restrictions, one must ask the question, "For what conceivable purpose is the phenotypic variance being allocated?" This question is not addressed seriously by MISTRA or SATSA. The numbers, and the associated modeling, appear to be ends in themselves."
As the final nail in the coffin of heredity studies:
The Body-Mass Index of Twins Who Have Been Reared Apart
We conclude that genetic influences on body-mass index are substantial, whereas the childhood environment has little or no influence. These findings corroborate and extend the results of earlier studies of twins and adoptees. (N Engl J Med 1990; 322:1483–7.)
Or as paraphrased by a certain commenter on Marginal Revolution:
IOWs, the reason why white kids of today are much fatter than white kids of the 50s and 60s is due to genetic influences and environment has little or no influence
To summarize - heredity studies are pretty much totally worthless data manipulation. Once we accept that, all other evidence points for environment being extremely important, and genes mattering very little. We should accept that already.