In reviewing our upcoming target article in Mankind Quarterly (edit: now published), Gerhard Meisenberg wrote: “One possibility that you don’t seem to discuss is that there are true and large correlations of the Euro% variable and the geographic variables, but that the geographic variables are measured much more precisely than the Euro% variable. In that case, regression models will produce independent effects of the more precisely measured geographic variables even if they have no causal effects at all, because they capture some of the variance that is not captured by the Euro% variable due to its inaccurate measurement”.