Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Behavioural genetics/1

Behavioural genetics

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Kept per Fish and karate's rational at WP:ANRFC. I see this as a close with the GA status being kept; the primary concerns (a lack of a criticism section; the lack of discussion of animal behaviour in favour of exclusively focusing on human behavioural genetics) have been addressed. If you can carry out all the procedural elements and tell me where to post that as the closing summary I'm happy to do that, or just link to this post. Link here AIRcorn (talk) 00:59, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I believe the article should be reassessed because it lacks a neutral presentation, as indicated by the template banner which has been present since March 2017. Neutrality of course is a requirement for good article status. The article presents behavioral genetics in a largely positive light as if the scientific field was mature and produces robust findings. I am not an expert in behavioral genetics, but I am an expert in statistics and social science, and I find many of the claims of behavioral geneticists totally implausible. There are also serious ethical criticisms of this kind of research. Given the ongoing replication crisis in psychology, which is a neighbor to behavioral genetics and that behavioral genetics is is more a subfield of psychology than of genetics or of biology. I think that to be considered a good article, this article should be written in a less promotional and authoritative tone and should include a section on criticism of behavioral genetics. Sources for that section might include such publications as scientific american Nature, and Logos . Here are some additional good critical articles by Richard Lerner and Gary Greenberg .

References

--Groceryheist (talk) 08:36, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment A very good book about the history of (mainly human) genetics is Aaron Panofsky's book (not just Greenberg's review of it). The problem with the article is not just that it doesn't address criticisms of research performed in the field, but also that it almost completely ignores animal research. It briefly mentions selection studies, which actually are an extremely minor part of animal BG. There are huge amounts of animal BG done with mice (such as work with transgenics/KO, gene localization/expression studies, and a host of other stuff), Drosophila (for example, the "homosexual" flies, the whole rover/sitter story, learning, etc etc), C. elegans, and a range of other organisms (including primates and, increasingly, zebrafish, for example). Either this article should be significantly expanded to cover the animal work or it should be renamed as "Human behavior genetics". One thing that might argue for that is the huge gap between the human and animal fields. While animal work for the most part is concerned with mechanisms leading from genotype to (behavioral) phenotype, human BG is still for a large part about partitioning variance and seems to treat genes more as imaginary concepts, completely ignoring the underlying neural mechanisms. As far as I am concerned, this should never have been promoted to GA to start with, but my concerns were ignored at that time. --Randykitty (talk) 10:55, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• This article and related ones are awful and should not be GA. This one has all kinds of offtopic stuff about diseases generally which is not really relevant here. There is also some hyper-detailed stuff about mathematical modelling of influences on phenotype. The page makes no distinction between humans and other animals. In some animals there are behaviors that ~must~ be "programmed" in the genome, like almost-fetal joeys crawling from the vagina to the pouch, but even in those cases we don't understand how that works on the level of the genome. In humans we understand even less of the influence of genes on behavior. Yet the page makes broad claims like "Findings from behavioural genetic research have broadly impacted modern understanding of the role of genetic and environmental influences on behaviour." So this is over general in some ways, too detailed in others, and has big holes in it. Jytdog (talk) 16:21, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

• I agree with Randykitty about lack of animal work but not Jytdog. The reviewer of the page for GA was not convinced that Randykitty's concern precluded GA status, and I find it odd that no one has added anything useful about animal BG to this page. I don't have a strong opinion about GA. Jytdog you make some strong statements but the examples suggest some tweaking, not that the page is "awful". I can't see how one wouldn't conclude that behavioral genetic research has had broad impact on understanding role of genes and environment? I think it would be good to insert some crticisms, but the refs provided by Groceryheist aren't especially compelling and are mostly short commentaries. Just to take one example, Lerner was writing in 2006 and uses examples from candidate GxE paradigm in support of a big part of his argument, which themselves of course are "behavioral genetic" findings! I guess he takes (unreplicated) BG findings that support his view and discards (replicated) BG findings that do not. I also have doubts that these references represent a consensus view in psychology, neuroscience, or related fields that use behavioral genetic techniques. The authoritative tone is taken for information that represents more of a consensus view. Of course improvements can be made and I hope thye are. WRT to the replication crisis that was a huge issue for BG (animal or human), as candidate gene replication problems presaged the "replication crisis" in psychology. A comment on replication in human BG is here

References

Vrie0006 (talk) 03:39, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Just a note that ref 3 is not a review and fails MEDRS. Jytdog (talk) 15:23, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

• How is an overview of a field of inquiry in a noted encyclopedia written by two very notable behavior geneticists (Gottesman being one of the most notable behavior geneticists) not a review and how does this fail MEDRS (I admit not being too familiar with MEDRS, so this is a request for explanation). --Randykitty (talk) 16:01, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
• I don't see how MEDRS is appropriate as a strict standard in this case. MEDRS guidelines are for clinically relevant information, or for information on which individuals might base medical or health decisions. Behavioral genetics seems like a branch of psychology with little current clinical application and this is reflected in the content of the article. I think it would be appropriate to include criticisms that don't reach MEDRS level references because those criticizing another field are not likely to publish their criticisms in peer reviewed journals. Instead they might do so for magazines or in books. That said, the MEDRS guidelines are good practice, and we should follow them when reasonable, especially when it comes to clinical recommmendations. Also, much of ref 3 seems similar to the Plomin et. al article. Groceryheist (talk) 04:30, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• Even if MDERS doesn't apply, the critical refs provided above are IMO clearly fringe views, which is why they are not published in leading journals (in psychology or elsewhere) and/or are commentaries. The difference between Groceryheists ref 3 and the Plomin article is that Plomin et al. is a published peer-reviewed review article written by notable behavior geneticists in a leading psychology review journal with impact factor of 10 or so. So the criticisms of twin studies etc. by Jay or Lerner or Lewontin or whomever could go in a criticisms section, but they do not reflect current consensus nor do I think their exclusion precludes GA, unless someone can find a relatively current critique in a mainstream journal. The more interesting criticisms/controversies that could be inserted are the ethical ones perhaps especially wrt to things like genetic engineering and historically divisive issues like eugenics (which is dealt with somewhat in the intro) or specific topics like race and IQ. However, these ethics controversies don't touch on the science so much as the potential implications of BG findings and/or how BG has been misused/abused in the past (eugenics, "gene for this", "gene for that").Vrie0006 (talk) 13:01, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

• I assume you mean the references given above by Groceryheist. I agree that 1 and 3 are marginal. However, Richard M. Lerner (4) and Nature (2) cannot be that easily dismissed. Panofsky's book has unanimously been reviewed very favorably (here are more reviews: ). I've read it myself and I think that Panofsky has put together a very insightful, impartial analysis of the history of the field and its current status (and you don't have to take my word for it, those reviews are ample evidence, in fact there are so many, that this book easily passes GNG). It is telling that his book was not reviewed in Behavior Genetics, which is, in fact, in line with Panofsky's analysis... Here is another critical appraisal of current (human) BG.

References

• The Nature article is a "news feature" and not a review, and touches more on ethical controversies in BG, which I agree could be fruitfully added to the article. My take on the Lerner piece is that he is a significant figure in developmental psychology, but not in genetics. This is why I discount his views, which are critical of the scientific methods of BG, as they pertain to the article in question. The Crusio article, on the other hand, looks interesting. But doesn't look overly critical. More of an article on ways to shape up the field on the margins, rather than claiming the whole field is bunk, like Lerner (Lerner however is fairly unreasonable...). Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall... Vrie0006 (talk) 06:20, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

• I've access to a lot of stuff in the life sciences, including this journal. If you send me an address, I can email you a PDF (and other things too if you need them). As for Lerner, yes, he's professor of psychology, but so are most human behavior geneticists. Lerner's a respected scientist and should not be discounted out of hand. As Panofsky has shown, discounting critics out of hand (the word they use is: "biased") is something that the field of BG has done for decades now (in my personal opinion to their detriment). --Randykitty (talk) 09:31, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment Left a note at the reviewers talk page and at wikiproject genetics. The nominator was already informed so thank you for that. AIRcorn (talk) 09:50, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
• Comment: As the original GA reviewer, I am not really going to wade into this issue again, as I have neither the time nor the motivation to help solve the problem, so I will offer my two cents, but not say anything more beyond this post (unless pinged, as I'm not even watchlisting this). In short, based on the GA criteria, it met that criteria at the time (independent sources, neutral tone, formatted, readable, not plagiarized, etc...), though it was definitely not anywhere close to FAC quality. Perhaps it's now a matter of someone starting to work on a more FAC-level of comprehensiveness. Acknowledging there was disagreement at the original GAN, I viewed the debate to basically be over GAN standards versus FAC quality, and if memory serves, I said something to that effect. I would support "a section on criticism of behavioral genetics" as appropiate and necessary for a comprehensive article. But keep in mind that at the time, the neutrality appeared acceptable, the "too favorable" concerns do not jump out at the non-expert reader, and the GA criteria does not mandate comprehensiveness. As for the source quality, the topic itself isn't really 100% an MEDRS issue, but WP:MEDRS can be applied to sourcing for any medical claims contained within. (Ditto WP:SCIRS). So to me this becomes a question of 1) how can the article can be expanded to present the various issues that exist? Not really a debate of "if", more of "how" and "let's just do it!" My own thinking is along the lines of Randykitty and Vrie0006, so carry on, gentlemen. As for MEDRS and SCIRS, the "soft" sciences such as psychology are not "pseudoscience" or "snake oil," but they are difficult to study because humans are not lab rats, and a lot of the "evidence-based" therapies can be absolutely ridiculous to implement on real human beings in practice (Like the computer-based form of Cognitive behavioral therapy. Seriously? Sounds like a scene from Sleeper). And this topic is still a relatively new field of study. All that said, the issue for GAR is simple: if the sources are proven dubious, should the content they source be removed, rewritten or simply have appropriate caveats added, and, if the non-compliant content is removed, does what remains still meet GA criteria? If the article needs more balance, then expand as needed. Montanabw^(talk) 18:33, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
• Randykitty many thanks for the offer. I got a copy of panofsky. On a quick skim it's interesting and he makes some good points. It's not especially compelling in part because it's qualitative research based on interviews with experts. We can add a section describing the primary thesis (BG is an "archipelago" without a strong hierarchical structure) and some of the worst of the bad and overhyped science ("gay gene"?) but I guess it's not convincing as a major criticism of the science as much as Lerner tries to do. (I'm still very much not taken with Lerner's arguments, nor have they become mainstream.) BTW, there already was a section on controversies. Two sentences buried in the History section. I've moved it to its own section and I added a paragraph on race and genetics. Just trying to get something started. I suppose race and genetics represents the worst of the worst controversies in BG. So if anything should be listed, it should be that. Vrie0006 (talk) 02:18, 3 April 2018 (UTC) Postscript: also the previous two sentences on controversy already included the Erika Check Hayden Nature commentary. Vrie0006 (talk) 17:16, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
• A decent criticism section has been added now so I feel that part is satisfied enough to meet the neutrality good article standards. I don't think this article has to go too far down the race and intelligence or any other rabbit hole and is much better kept as an overview.

As to the animal studies that relates to the broadness criteria. Broad does not mean comprehensive and in many ways (like a lot of the other criteria) can be subjective. The article mentions animal studies in its own sub section and that is enough for a reviewer in good faith to pass that aspect of the criteria. RandyKitty makes some good points and provides references and examples so this should not be discounted and ideally that section should be expanded. However, passing the Good Criteria is not actually that hard and I am not convinced that the article is undue enough to preclude it in this case. Like it or not most research is geared around humans and it is perfectly acceptable for a Good Article to focus more on the human aspects of a topic. A quick look at reviews on this topic through pubmed show twice as many articles focus on humans rather than animals.[1]

So although it could be improved I think it meets the criteria and should be kept as a good article. AIRcorn (talk) 20:15, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• Neutrality concerns means the article cannot be kept. There is a body of literature critiquing Behavioural genetics, it should be summarized and included for the article to be balanced, neutral and comprehensive.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:59, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

But there is a section in the article critiquing behavioral genetics. AIRcorn (talk) 21:31, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

even that section comes across as apologetic and does in no way represent the substance and scope of the objections to the field's claims and methods.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 12:37, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I honestly don't know what criticisms should be listed. Surely not every criticism directed at the field. The race and intelligence controversy is apologetic (the other controversies are not) because that controversy has involved people at the fringe of the field who at best marshaled poor evidence for their conclusions. The most notorious case (maybe other than Rushton, who surely was fringe) that panofsky goes into is Glayde Whitney. A good mouse scientist who inexplicably moved to race and intelligence in humans at the end of his career. So there's a tension between listing controversies and ensuring that some of these views are clearly described as being fringe and/or unsubstantiated. I was planning to put in a few sentences about Panofsky's book but, beyond that, this thread has not provided good suggestions for what criticisms and controversies to list. So, what are the "substance and scope of the objections to the field's claims and methods" that should be taken so seriously and listed? Vrie0006 (talk) 14:00, 24 April 2018 (UTC) P.S.: I added to the page the start of a statement on Panofsky. Vrie0006 (talk) 13:48, 23 May 2018 (UTC)