Thread by @AdamRutherford

It is possible that I have not fully engaged with your articles, because I find some of your other opinions and misogyny childish, grotesque and indicative of impulse control issues that grown-ups try to suppress. 1/n

I have been having grown up conversations bout genetics now for around 25 years, so am not terribly excited by your condescension. However, 2/n

People I respect and whose work I have time for tell me that you gave made efforts to engage properly with this area, which is of course, very difficult.
3/n

Perhaps there is value in further discourse on this matter, though it is not clear to me why I would be talking to you rather than someone whose credentials are more clear.
4/n

After all, there is plenty of disagreement within academia and among geneticists about the importance of polygenic scores, and the heritability of complex traits.
5/n

And as I am sure you are aware, GWAS are population level probabilistic analyses. As I have said often and forcefully, direct to consumer genomics companies are more often than not hucksters.
6/n

who trade on a misunderstanding of genetics and a cultural predisposition to deterministic arguments to sell snake oil. I'm only just aware of conpanies attempting this for cognitive ability markers, but I daresay they are no less fatuous than those for wine tasting or sport 7/n

Though I might be wrong.
On your later point, the history of eugenics is complex though short, and does not solely concern the Holocaust, nor the most egregious manifestations of selective breeding.
8/n

It is also paved with poorly understood patterns of inheritance for complex traits (and indeed simpler ones).
9/n

Within psychology and genetics we have been discussing the ethics of technological selective breeding for a century or so I'm not sure that we need this conversation to be kickstarted further.
10/n

Though having said that, I do think we need to revisit Galton and his legacy in public more.
11/n

I may have judged your understanding of genetics unfairly, because our views on politics and women are different, and I was unimpressed by reports of how you were selected to that piss-awful committee that no-one asked for and no-one wanted.
12/n

But I also believe that things are better in the open and discussed openly. So in that sense, I admire your response here, and thank you for it.
I am however on a) finishing a new book and b) on holiday, so any further interaction will have to wait.
Adam
13/13