Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics .

It is a curious aspect of the sociology of science how some ideas become popular and capture the imagination. This was the case with late 20th century sociobiology (Wilson, 1975) and evolutionary psychology (Buss, 1999,2005), both drawing substantial criticism from numerous quarters (for sociobiology: Hull, 1988; Lustig, Richards, & Ruse, 2004, and for evolutionary psychology: Lickliter & Honeycutt, 2003). The main points of contention centered around the continuing nature/nurture issue and the question of whether behavior, especially human behavior, was the result of genetic and biological determinism, and the manner in which evolutionary processes were applied to behavioral origins. It is safe to say that mainstream psychology is understood by many to be a biological science: that is, behavioral origins are seen to depend on genes, brains, and other biological processes. There is, however, another way to conceptualize psychology and its subject matter, behavior—as a developmental science in which biology is seen to play a participating but not a causal role (Bertalanffy, 1956; Greenberg & Partridge, 2010; Greenberg, 2011, 2014; Moore, 2015). These differing approaches to the science of behavior can be described in this way: “Behavior is a product of the brain, brains are made up of interconnected neurons, and neurons develop and function through gene-guided processes. The opposed view is that complex systems have emergent properties that are neither predictable nor explicable from their elements” (Panofsky, 2014, p. 139), the view favored by the book reviewed here and the present author. This understanding of psychology has a long history and as pointed out by Lerner (2015a) can be seen as an amalgam, or blending, of ideas from many quarters including Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) bioecological model, Riegel’s (1975) dialectal model, Lerner’s (1982) developmental contextualism model, Gottlieb’s (1997, 1998), and Ford and Lerner’s (1992) developmental systems model, Magnusson’s (1999) model of individual development, and Overton’s (1997) model of embodiment. If this seems somewhat complex, it is because psychology is among the most complex sciences. While physics has identified its variables and can express relationships with formulae, psychology has yet to identify all of the variables which influence behavioral origins. There is great hope in unifying these interrelated approaches under the umbrella of relational developmental systems models of behavioral development (e.g., Lerner, 2006a, 2015a,b,c; Lerner & Overton, 2008; Overton, 2013). The book reviewed here deals critically with one particular aspect of biologism—the development of behavior genetics. The book is extremely scholarly and while offering a thorough critique of the issue, is mindful of Bertalanfy’s (1956) caution that, “Rejecting biologism does not mean we can neglect biology” (p. 34). A more contemporary cautionary note has been added by Moore (2015, pp. 6–7): “. . .because biology contributes to all psychological phenomena, trying to understand psychology with very little understanding of biology is a bad idea. . .” As Lerner (2006b) has expressed this, “No one would deny the ubiquitous role of genes, or of biology more generally, in human development” (p. 338). In the end, the book reviewed here can be seen as an important introduction to psychology, not as a biological science, but as a developmental science (e.g., Greenberg, Partridge, Mosack & Lambdin, 2006; Lerner, 2015a,b,c). I opened this review with a reference to the sociology of science. Fittingly, Misbehaving science is written by a sociologist, Aaron Panofsky, from the perspective of the sociology of science. Panofsky is an Associate Professor in Public Policy and the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His book explores the question of how the field of behavior genetics, which is today an especially reductionistic and deterministic approach to behavioral Manuscript Received: 29 June 2015 Manuscript Accepted: 30 June 2015 Article first published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/dev.21334 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Developmental Psychobiology