In Born to Rebel (1996), Frank Sulloway proposed that laterborns are more rebellious than firstborns. In the context of Sulloway's theory, this article examines the difficulties of defining and measuring rebelliousness. Rebellious acts (such as attempting to overthrow a government) are one measure of rebelliousness. Using this measure, an analysis of six of Sulloway's samples undermines the theory. As a second measure of rebelliousness, Sulloway relies on the personality traits of his subjects. Many of the rebellious traits he selected, however, appear unrelated to rebellious behavior. A reexamination of 28 scientific revolutions Sulloway analyzed reveals other weaknesses. Finally, Born to Rebel contains a meta-analysis of the birth order literature. The application of two methodologies to the reconstructed data is discussed. Neither methodology appears to replicate the results in Born to Rebel. The conclusion is that Sulloway's claims for birth order effects should be rejected.

In my comments on Townsend's detailed critique of Sulloway's (1996) book, I want to make two general points about birth order research. The first is that several authors—including Ernst and Angst (1983), who are extensively quoted by Townsend—have concluded that the effects of birth order on adult personality and behavior are either completely nonexistent or else so negligible as to be useless to science. I agree that the methodology of birth order studies is often flawed, and that many, if not most, of their findings are probably irreproducible. However, an assertion that birth order has no effect on adult behavior would be as extreme in its way as the assertion that birth order's effect on behavior is decisive. My own research demonstrates that a categorical dismissal of any and all birth order effects is not only premature but demonstrably erroneous.

Iam surprised and glad that our book, Birth Order (Ernst and Angst), which appeared in 1983, is still quoted in a controversial discussion. We wrote the book with little support and even less sophistication. By the vote-counting method, the result was unequivocal: birth order did not appear as an environmental factor with predictable effects on personality or psychiatric disorder. When the book was written, we were unable to use meta-analysis. If someone found it worthwhile and possible to reanalyze by meta-analysis the studies mentioned in our book or published later, the result of this effort could determine the value of doing any further research.

What struck me most forcefully in Townsend's critique (this issue) was a pattern he observed: A large preponderance of the changes he documented in Sulloway's numeric or graphic descriptions of data resulted in improvements. The later data point was almost always a better fit to Sulloway's predictions than the earlier one. Townsend suggested that further analysis would be appropriate, which made me wonder why he stopped where he did, without doing any statistical tests on his findings. A possible next step would be to calculate the likelihood that the observed proportion of changes in the confirming direction occurred by chance alone.

Although I am intrigued by the recent efforts of several researchers who have taken issue with Sulloway's (1996) work on birth order, I experience some hesitancy to comment for a number of reasons. Birth order research has historically come up with contradictory findings (Nyman, 1995). In the main, I suspect that the apparent inconsistencies will be resolved not through commentary but with keener measuring tools, better experimental controls, and with the patience and energy to define each research condition so as to enable accurate replication. It is also not an easy assignment to critique the work of scientists whom I admire, especially when their inferences seem to be at odds. With this said, I shall attempt to deal with design issues inherent in birth order research in an effort to illustrate some of the factors that enter into the contradictory findings reported in the literature.

Finding ourselves in general accord with the thrust of Frederic Townsend's meticulous and unsparing critique (this issue) of Frank Sulloway's Born to Rebel (1996), we devote this commentary to an amplification of some of Townsend's points.

Born to Rebel (Sulloway, 1996) embeds a theory of birth order within an evolutionary perspective that gives a refreshing new twist to theorizing about family structure. Most past birth order “theorizing” is of the type that both begins and ends with “Isn't it interesting that….” In Rodgers and Thompson (1985/86), we documented birth order research on presidents and strippers, artists and assassins, hockey players and cigarette smokers; even the birth order of birth order researchers has been investigated. Sulloway (1996), in contrast, provided explicit mechanisms to explain why he believes that birth order plays an important role in revolutionary behavior. The mechanisms derive from sophisticated thinking about both evolution and family dynamics.

Frank Sulloway (1996) has stirred up great debate with his thesis that birth order explains and predicts people's proclivity to rebel. Scientists, scholars, business writers, and the broad reading and talk-television public alike all have weighed in to discuss the value and veridicality of Sulloway's thesis. Though many think he may be on to something, certain voices—Frederic Townsend's included—argue that his opus is simply bunk.

At the outset I should admit that I am more positively disposed toward Sulloway's (1996) magnum opus than is the author of the target article (see Simonton, 1997). My positive disposition stems from three sources—substantive, theoretical, and methodological. Concerning the first source, I am more receptive to the notion that birth order may bear some relation to various forms of exceptional achievement. Galton (1874) was the first behavioral scientist to report such an empirical linkage, and his findings have been replicated and extended many times (Simonton, 1994). Indeed, I am among those who have discovered some of the relationships.

In accordance with the principle of full disclosure, we believe we should inform the reader about several matters. First, as associate book review editors of the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, we recommended for publication (but did not commission) a review by Frederic Townsend of Born to Rebel (Townsend, 1997). That recommendation was accepted, and the review appeared in the journal's Volume 2, Issue 2 in 1997.

The notion that birth order bears a systematic relation to personality was commonly thought to have succumbed to the formidable attack from Ernst and Angst (1983). The 1996 publication of Frank Sulloway's book Born to Rebel, however, breathed new life into a proposition that most social scientists thought was a dead horse. In response to the book, Townsend (this issue) insists that Sulloway's extraordinary measures to revive this dead horse were unwarranted. Apparently fearing that too many readers have taken the book seriously, Townsend attacks both the contemporary and historical evidence offered by Sulloway.

Frederic Townsend's critique of Born to Rebel (Sulloway, 1996) is based on an unfortunate pattern of misrepresentation and faulty empirical methods. First, the historical data in Born to Rebel are neither unrepresentative nor undisclosed. They were compiled with the help of 110 expert raters, who validated their representative nature and operationalized the principal outcome measures. Second, birth order is moderately associated with political radicalism, especially in real-life and within-family studies. Third, the meta-analytic data are statistically compelling for various behavioral attributes, although effect sizes are generally modest. Fourth, recent studies using large samples and anchored scales demonstrate the influence of birth order on a wide variety of personality traits, especially in within-family comparisons. In addition, the relationship between birth order and openness to radical innovation—highlighted in Born to Rebel—has been replicated by other researchers. Because Townsend fails to employ formal methods of hypothesis testing—relying instead on selected anecdotal examples, adversarial tactics, and an inadequate grasp of statistical principles—he has drawn numerous false conclusions about the influence of birth order.

Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to the various commentators for their remarks about Born to Rebel, including some of the constructive criticisms of my research findings and conclusions. No book trying to set forth more than two decades of research on why historical figures as diverse as Martin Luther and Charles Darwin behaved the way they did can expect to pass muster without exception. At best, one hopes that any problems that come to light will prove to be relatively easy to correct (as I think they have been, so far) and thus do not undermine the validity of the book's central arguments.

My thanks to the commentators for their thoughtful analyses. I will respond to their comments below. I should point out that under the format for this roundtable discussion, I have not yet seen Frank Sulloway's response to my article. Any reply I might have to his response will therefore have to come later.

This issue of Politics and the Life Sciences includes an article, ten commentaries, and three responses on the subject of birth order and rebelliousness, focusing in particular on Frank Sulloway's Born to Rebel (1996, 1997). Extraordinary events have surrounded the publication of this roundtable, including threats of legal action, accusations of misconduct, letters to university officials, termination of the journal's publishing contract, and an almost five-year delay in publication. This editorial reviews these events and goes on to assess Frank Sulloway's responses (published in this issue), as well as parts of Born to Rebel. It also reports the results of a replication of Sulloway's study of Reformation martyrs. The replication generated markedly different data than those reported by Sulloway. Data from an expanded sample were also inconsistent with the relationship that Sulloway reported finding between birth order and religious commitment among Reformation martyrs. The editorial supports the suggestion by Frederic Townsend that an independent review of Born to Rebel would be appropriate. It concludes with a call for establishment of a multidisciplinary legal defense fund that would reduce the likelihood that legal threats can succeed in stifling research and publication in the natural and social sciences.

Proponents of xenotransplantation hope that it will provide organs to fill the gap between the demand for and supply of organs for transplant. The scientific obstacles to transplanting animal organs into humans are daunting, as are the moral, political, and policy issues. Among them are concerns about animal rights and welfare, patient acceptance and informed consent, and broader public health issues, such as the cost-efficient deployment of scarce resources and the risk of disease in third parties. The latter is, in my view, the most immediately urgent issue. Pigs, the current animal of choice, carry many bacterial and viral pathogens, and it is currently impossible to assess the risk of disease to human populations. Because of this risk, a moratorium on xenotransplantation is necessary to protect public health; it is also questionable whether the technology, if successful, would be the most cost-effective way to promote health.

In January 2001, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed annual public disclosure of adverse events during gene therapy and xenotransplantation trials. The proposed policy raises the following questions: (1) Is the reformed policy in accord with the FDA's long-standing informed consent policies? (2) Why pair gene therapy trials and xenotransplantation trials in the revised guidelines? (3) Why single out these trials for public disclosure of adverse events? Each question is examined, and three conclusions are drawn. First, the FDA's own policies on informed consent require prompter public disclosure of adverse events. Second, the coupling of gene therapy and xenotransplantation trials entails a conceptual mistake in the types of communities that are harmed by each therapy's related adverse events. Third, all clinical trials merit such public disclosure of adverse events, not only gene therapy and xenotransplantation trials.