From a deeply personal perspective on the GWAS saga, there are larger implications to what is essentially a failure. This is particularly true for “behavioral” traits. It can all be looked at as a scientific pursuit, now, but that ignores the fact that these studies were hyped and used as a justification for, for example, a biocentric view of my own field of psychiatry, wherein my entire career diverged into a “prescriber” model of treating presumed biological diseases, while all other avenues were closed off to me and little debate could be had, without being regarded as a crank. Moreover, the grasping of the fading results for so-called “educational attainment,” continue to fuel “race scientists,” and racially motivated individuals.
The point here is not to do an “I told you so,” but to consider whether replacing GWAS with something else will give me a third “I told you so” (lest we forget about candidate gene era). In any case, it is my view that whatever direction you pursue will not be good science unless the field of behavioral genetics seriously considers in their exploration what I think should be obvious, at this point: behavioral traits are, at best, minimally influenced by nonpathogenic genetic variation in human beings.
Hi Steve, good to run into you on another social medium after leaving twitter, I always feel that you and I are too far apart in our scientific worldviews to find common ground? Which is obviously fine, in the forthcoming posts I'll touch on some of the points you make here and have made before.
We can be as far apart as you want, my point here is not to take null off the table and, in fact, start with the null. That’s just good science as I understand it, but is rarely if ever considered seriously in GWAS and other studies related to behavioral genetics. It’s the same thing I was saying during the candidate gene era. A lot of time has been wasted squeezing blood from stones. Also, I don’t think you are in the majority amongst your colleagues in implying the end of the GWAS era, so maybe we aren’t as far apart as you suppose.
From a deeply personal perspective on the GWAS saga, there are larger implications to what is essentially a failure. This is particularly true for “behavioral” traits. It can all be looked at as a scientific pursuit, now, but that ignores the fact that these studies were hyped and used as a justification for, for example, a biocentric view of my own field of psychiatry, wherein my entire career diverged into a “prescriber” model of treating presumed biological diseases, while all other avenues were closed off to me and little debate could be had, without being regarded as a crank. Moreover, the grasping of the fading results for so-called “educational attainment,” continue to fuel “race scientists,” and racially motivated individuals.
The point here is not to do an “I told you so,” but to consider whether replacing GWAS with something else will give me a third “I told you so” (lest we forget about candidate gene era). In any case, it is my view that whatever direction you pursue will not be good science unless the field of behavioral genetics seriously considers in their exploration what I think should be obvious, at this point: behavioral traits are, at best, minimally influenced by nonpathogenic genetic variation in human beings.
Hi Steve, good to run into you on another social medium after leaving twitter, I always feel that you and I are too far apart in our scientific worldviews to find common ground? Which is obviously fine, in the forthcoming posts I'll touch on some of the points you make here and have made before.
Hello Michel,
We can be as far apart as you want, my point here is not to take null off the table and, in fact, start with the null. That’s just good science as I understand it, but is rarely if ever considered seriously in GWAS and other studies related to behavioral genetics. It’s the same thing I was saying during the candidate gene era. A lot of time has been wasted squeezing blood from stones. Also, I don’t think you are in the majority amongst your colleagues in implying the end of the GWAS era, so maybe we aren’t as far apart as you suppose.