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HERITABILITY STUDIES IN THE POSTGENOMIC ERA: THE FATAL FLAW IS CONCEPTUAL
Author(s) -
BURT CALLIE H.,
SIMONS RONALD L.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/1745-9125.12060
Subject(s) - disclaimer , heritability , missing heritability problem , twin study , content (measure theory) , psychology , genealogy , history , genetics , biology , political science , genetic variants , mathematics , law , mathematical analysis , genotype , gene
In our recent article, drawing on advances in the life sciences and echoing the calls of prominent scholars, including renowned behavioral geneticists (e.g., Rutter, 1997; Turkheimer, 2011),1 we called for an end to heritability studies in criminology and a recognition of the dubious nature of existing heritability estimates (Burt and Simons, 2014).2 We argued that heritability studies are futile for two reasons: 1) Heritability studies suffer from serious methodological flaws with the overall effect of making estimates inaccurate and biased toward inflated heritability and deflated shared environmental influences, and more importantly, 2) the conceptual biological model on which heritability studies depend—that of identifiably separate effects of genes versus the environment on phenotype variance—is unsound. The aim of our original article was to educate readers about both the (often unacknowledged) methodological assumptions and the (outdated) biological model undergirding heritability studies, evidence that evinces that the heritability study should be superannuated. Our goal was not to foreclose but to reinvigorate biological research in criminology by pointing it away from a misguided gene-centric model and, in so doing, highlight recent evidence of developmental plasticity facilitated by the