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Causal complexity in human research: On the shared challenges of behavior genetics, medical genetics, and environmentally oriented social science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2023

James W. Madole Open the ORCID record for James W. Madole [Opens in a new window]  and
K. Paige Harden
James W. Madole
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA jmadole@utexas.edu harden@utexas.edu VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, WA, USA
K. Paige Harden
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA jmadole@utexas.edu harden@utexas.edu
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Abstract

We received 23 spirited commentaries on our target article from across the disciplines of philosophy, economics, evolutionary genetics, molecular biology, criminology, epidemiology, and law. We organize our reply around three overarching questions: (1) What is a cause? (2) How are randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and within-family genome-wide association studies (GWASs) alike and unalike? (3) Is behavior genetics a qualitatively different enterprise? Throughout our discussion of these questions, we advocate for the idea that behavior genetics shares many of the same pitfalls and promises as environmentally oriented research, medical genetics, and other arenas of the social and behavioral sciences.

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Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e206
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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