Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-03T15:01:53.835Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

All that glisters is not gold: Genetics and social science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2023

Callie H. Burt*
Affiliation:
Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies & Center for Research on Interpersonal Violence (CRIV), Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA cburt@gsu.edu www.callieburt.org

Abstract

In their target article, Madole & Harden offer an account of “what it means for genes to be causes” of social outcomes to bolster their claim that genetics should be incorporated into social science with practical implications. Here I object to several key features of their arguments, their representation of the state of science, and claims about the utility of genetics for social science and society.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Burt, C. H. (2023). Challenging the utility of polygenic scores for social science: Environmental confounding, downward causation, and unknown biology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, doi: 10.1017/S0140525X22001145Google Scholar
Charney, E. (2022). The “Golden Age” of behavior genetics? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(4), 11881210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coop, G., & Przeworski, M. (2022). Lottery, luck, or legacy? Evolution, 76(4), 846853.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crouch, D. J., & Bodmer, W. F. (2020). Polygenic inheritance, GWAS, polygenic risk scores, and the search for functional variants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(32), 1892418933.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dupré, J. (2012). Processes of life: Essays in the philosophy of biology. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, J. M., & Turkheimer, E. (2021). Galton's Quincunx: Probabilistic causation in developmental behavior genetics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 88, 6069.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McClellan, J., & King, M.-C. (2010). Genetic heterogeneity in human disease. Cell, 141(2), 210217.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morris, T. T., Davies, N. M., Hemani, G., & Smith, G. D. (2020). Population phenomena inflate genetic associations of complex social traits. Science Advances, 6(16), eaay0328.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richardson, K., & Jones, M. C. (2019). Why genome-wide associations with cognitive ability measures are probably spurious. New Ideas in Psychology, 55, 3541. doi: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2019.04.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar