Word: lewontin
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...Lewontin notes, one must recognize that scientists operate within a social and political framework and will naturally ask questions which will substantiate their biases. For instance, a chemical firm researching the causes of cancer will be more likely to fund scientists investigating the genetic causes of cancer than they will be to fund those looking into environmental causes, which could blame their own product...
...studies, conducted in the 1950s, supposedly proved the inhabitability of IQ. Those who would later argue for a meritocracy based on IQ--such as Arthur Jensen, in his famous and influential article on the subject in the Harvard Educational Review published in 1969--drew upon Burt's data. But Lewontin and his cohorts point out the fraudulence of Burt's evidence. Not only are there serious problems with the validity of these separated twin studies, but also there are differences between the number of twin studies conducted, depending on which part of Burt's work is read...
...schizophrenia, the classic mental disorder that has been so often studied by biochemists and psychobiologists, the authors arrive at the central grist for their mill: sociobiology. In fact, at times, Not in Our Genes seems like a diatribe against Lewtontin's ideological opponent Edward O. Wilson. Quoting Wilson repeatedly. Lewontin points to the entomologist as the prototypical biological determinist...
These pointed accusations are natural, considering that Lewontin and Wilson represent completely opposite points of view. Lewontin and his co-authors carefully choose the most extreme and controversial claims of E.O. Wilson, and choose to ignore his many statements qualifying the power of genes in controlling genetic inheritance...
Perhaps there is more of a middle ground than Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin realize. The dialectical interaction between organisms and their environment proposed by the authors might be more similar to Wilson's concepts of heritability than the authors would like to acknowledge...