A blogger at the Huffington Post, Scott Berry Kaufman, Ph.D. (h/t Gene Expression), has a "nature-nurture" posts discussing the importance of gene by environment interactions :
Therefore, gene-environment interactions are understood to drive the development of all of our characteristics ... every trait develops through the interplay of genes and the environment. Nature and nurture are complementary, not at odds.
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The importance of GE interaction is an empirical matter but I think their possible importance serves an emotional need for reformed liberal creationist by making environments important again. The think "complicated" GE interaction will justify their grand interventions in the name of equality? They will be disappointed since important GE interactions can have anti-egalitarian implications.
As an example take a preliminary finding from Robert Plomin's group. Docherty et. al. (2010) defined a SNP score associated with mathematical ability and , although not confirmed by a second study, they (Docherty 2011) evaluated the effect of an interaction of the SNP score with a measurement of "teacher negative" on a mathematics achievement (measured in SDs below):
The result are significant at the 5% level but did not survive the Bonferronni adjustment, but it appears less genetically gifted do not do well with with positive teachers who should be reserved for the genetically gifted. In the future, a GE interaction could justify assigning the dimmer students to meaner teachers. This educational equivalent of personalized medicine may be a good idea but it will disappoint the liberal creationist.
3 comments:
Ya, you noticed this trend too. GE correlations, GE interactions, and epigenetics. Hot stuff now.
As for GE interactions, the "every trait develops from an interaction between genes and environments" therefore traits are malleable is a common fallacy which conflates two types of interactionism. You might be interested in this discussion: Tabery 2009. Making Sense of the Nature–Nurture Debate Review of Neven Sesardic (2005), Making Sense of Heritability. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Chuck,
The anti-HH partisans are getting desperate. I thought Plomin had a fun example. Thanks for the Tabery ref.
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