On 23 Mar 2008 at 11:47, Mike Palij wrote:
> one person provided the
> following quote from an editorial for the "American Jorunal of
> Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics":
>
> |It is no secret that our field has published thousands of candidate
> |gene association studies but few replicated findings.
> Source:
> S.V. Faraone, J.W. Smoller, C.N. Pato, P. Sullivan, M.T. Tsuang (2008).
> The new neuropsychiatric genetics.
> American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics
> 147B(1), 1-2
> DOI: 10.1002/ajmg.b.30691
> US: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.b.30691
Mike P. then comments:
> I am tempted to ask
> "Are you saying that there is a lot of published research on
> gene-behavior relationships that have not been replicated?"
> Given the difficulty of doing such studies, especially the Minnesota
> Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA), should we uncritically
> accept the results from such studies or wait until they are replicated?
>
This confuses two different areas of research. Studies such as MISTRA,
using the behaviour genetic techniques of twin and adoption studies do
come up with a range of values, but are generally confirmative of each
other and are quite reliable. What Faraone et al are talking about are
gene linkage studies, an entirely different methodology. It is well-known
that many of such studies were rushed into print based on small samples
and poor data ("Gene for homosexuality found!!!") and subsequently had
to be retracted. The editorial cited above announces a much-needed
stricter policy towards such notorious studies. But it is unfair to use
the poor quality of these studies to beat up others, such as those
carried out by Bouchard and Plomin, which use an entirely different
methodology.
Also note that the same editorial says this, which Mike's informant
somehow failed to quote:
"The advent of genomewide association studies has provided an important
advance for the study of complex traits and disorders. Over the past 2
years, these studies have produced conclusive evidence implicating genes
for a variety of complex medical diseases and provided proof-of-principle
examples of the power of these methods."
Mike P. declared in another of his posts:
"I wonder why people look for genetic explanations for
complex human behavior when it seems to me that gene-environment
interactions are probably the more reasonable thing to focus on."
I wonder if Mike could favour us with a high-quality research study or
two published in a peer-reviewed journal which provides evidence of such
gene-environment interactions. Surely his belief must be based on
evidence.
Stephen
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