[jmde]

I think this is a serious problem in various areas of society, and touches on the debates regarding the value of a degree or certification.

I have no doubt that pedigree, as you refer to it, does stochastically index quality. There's too much evidence from various studies that it does. But the strength of relationship between pedigree and quality, is much, much, much weaker than people typically assume. We end up relying on things like test scores in school, and degree in the workforce as a proxy for talent or ability or motivation or whatever, when it's more like a weak predictor. In the process, we end up granting monopolies to meritocracies and driving up things like income inequality, where income distributions don't parallel skillsets.

I agree that this paper probably reinforces false beliefs, but my guess is that it does so because it oversimplifies a kernel of truth, not because there's no truth to it to begin with.