Misbehaving Science ─ Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics

With its claims about genes amplifying to include a larger and larger list of behaviors, the study of behavior genetics has become the quintessentially controversial science. From the ?criminal chromosome” to the ?gay gene” to the Bell Curve, behavior genetics claims catapulted it into national debates about race, class, inequality, identity, free will, and social policy. Trying to explain the alleged lack of black and Latino success relative to whites and Asians by appealing to genetically-driven racial differences is just one of the controversies (in Hernstein and Murray’s notorious book, The Bell Curve) that behavior genetics has generated. The author explores this larger question by tracing, in both historical and sociological analysis, the ways in which behavior geneticists cope with controversies that have beset them, the risks and opportunities they present for the research community, its norms, its scientific legitimacy, and the knowledge it produces. The author finds relative social disorder within science, and a misbehaving science like behavior genetics breeds controversy that is persistent and ungovernable (passionate and political).

Aaron Panofsky is assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy and Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles.