Some thoughts on "Misbehaving Science"

Recently I created an article on UCLA sociologist Aaron Panofsky on Wikipedia. I had previously created an article about his 2014 anti-behavior genetics book, Misbehaving Science, in May. I haven't read the entire book, but I have read reviews of it and bits and pieces of the book itself on Google Books preview (so really just a few pages at the beginning, until I get the "you have reached your viewing limit" message and can't keep reading). So you should take what I'm saying about this book with a grain of salt.

With that significant caveat out of the way, I will begin discussing this book now. The book is a sociological study of the development of the field of human behavior genetics over time, with a specific emphasis on the many highly controversial findings that have been reported in this field. The main argument of the book appears to be that in human BG, unlike in "real science" that is working like it's supposed to, controversies are never resolved, and rancorous debate over fundamental issues keeps persisting for many years. Thus, the book's title refers to a type of science in which results of studies are so inconsistent that no one can come to a clear conclusion about anything, partly because of "anomie" (lack of clear guidance) in the field (which would mean, I guess, that human BG researchers don't have clear or specific "rules" about how to conduct their research the "right way").

You'll notice I specified "human BG" when summarizing the book above, and that's because the human stuff, obviously, is more interesting, controversial, and is more discussed in the book. No one other than scientists who actually research animal BG really gives a shit about its results, except insofar as they apply to humans, which is only slightly. But human BG is really interesting and relevant to hot-button issues, so the media loves to publicize its findings. The most obvious example is the "gay gene" study published by Dean Hamer et al. in 1993. The study concluded that there was a link between markers on the X chromosome and male homosexuality. Of course, its results were not replicated despite the huge amount of media attention they got at the time.

So why does controversy keep resurfacing in human BG? One possible answer is that no one can advance the field's knowledge by replicating results, and the same research designs are used over and over to produce statistically random results based on bogus assumptions. Another possible answer is that BGists intentionally make provocative claims without caring about whether they are scientifically responsible, just so they can get media attention and increase their "scientific capital" (Panofsky looooooves this phrase for some reason). Misbehaving Science appears to endorse both of these answers. It appears that the picture he paints of human BG is one in which a controversial claim is made, other scientists try to replicate it, they fail, and then the cycle starts all over again.