Thread by @AlexGiannelis

1/ I have noticed that some on Twitter, even prominent scientists, have called the historic Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA) "fake". The study's author, Thomas Bouchard, has recently published an exhaustive rebuttal to critics.

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

2/ The author of the critique is Jay Joseph, a known pseudoscientist who is part of the anti-psychiatry movement. Amongst his claims is that psychopathology has no biological basis, a view that is both false and actively harmful to patients.

3/ Still, this person was then given a platform in the journal "Human Development". The same journal later refused to publish Bouchard's reply.

4/ Bouchard begins by exposing the paradox of the taboo surrounding human behavioural genetics, while at the same time there is a thriving field of animal BG which suffers no such obstacles. He documents that the Wilson effect (rising h2 with age) replicates in animals.

5/ There are certain unsystematic effects that render MZ twins non-identical genetically. This would actually deflate the MZ correlation, biasing h2 estimates downwards. Most sources of bias in twin studies (assortative mating, measurement error) also deflate h2.

6/ A typical strawman argument asserts that MISTRA is not a true experiment. Of course, the study never claimed that, being an imperfect natural experiment. Also, few know that MISTRA results were replicated in Sweden 2 years later (Pedersen et al. 1992)

7/ It is remarkable how Bouchard anticipated the current hot topic in sociogenomics (indirect genetic effects) in his 1990 paper:

8/8 Finally, Bouchard points that the Reductio ad Hitlerum argument often posed by BG critics can also be used against research on environmental effects. Countless atrocities have been committed in the name of altering the social environment.