A useful starting point for recognizing the foundational flaws of Burt's critique is the fact that her methodological case against the utility of sociogenomics research rests on a self-refuting thesis about the environmental confounding of polygenic score (PGS) associations with complex social traits. If, as Burt correctly argues, sophisticated statistical methodologies are incapable of distinguishing genetic from environmental causes of these traits, on what authority is she asserting—matter-of-factly, repeatedly, and without explanation—that “environmental effects masquerade as genetic influences” in PGS studies? How, then, can Burt know that the problem isn't instead that genetic effects masquerade as environmental influences in the empirical reports of mainstream social science? By her silence on this question-begging interpretation, Burt lays claim to the benefit of doubt where the evidence casts nothing but shadows of it. Those shadows are difficult to see at first because Burt formulates her critique at a general level of abstraction that highlights the methodological deficiencies of sociogenomics without also calling attention to exactly these same deficiencies in the social science research she seeks to defend against its encroachments. The key to recognizing these shadows and their methodological significance lies just beneath the surface of Burt's vague observation that a person's social traits “emerge from a complex interplay of environmental and genetic influences.” What Burt doesn't tell us here is that the human brain is a masterpiece of complex biological design, that the functioning parameters of its psychological structures and processes are genetically underdetermined, shaped by natural selection pressures to continue evolving somatically (i.e., non-genetically) across individual lifespans in response to the adaptive demands and contingencies of everyday life (Dalton & Bergenn, Reference Dalton and Bergenn2007; Edelman & Gally, Reference Edelman and Gally2001; Ingold, Reference Ingold2008; Levin & Aharon, Reference Levin and Aharon2011; Mason, Reference Mason2015; Richters, Reference Richters1997, Reference Richters2021; Waddington, Reference Waddington1957; Whitacre, Reference Whitacre2010). Nor does Burt tell us that this underdetermination affords the brain astonishing sui generis degrees of freedom to make short- and long-term modifications to the functioning parameters of those capabilities, to acquire and create new ones, and to flexibly activate, suppress, combine, and leverage endlessly different configurations of these capacities in the service of adaptive needs. To characterize this jaw-dropping dynamic as merely a “complex interplay” is an understatement rivaling Emperor Hirohito's 1945 post-atomic bomb radio announcement to the Japanese people that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage” (Frey & Eichenberger, Reference Frey and Eichenberger1991, p. 76).
Is it an accident that Burt holds back this much stronger genetic underdetermination card? That she says nothing about how underdetermination renders individuals qualitatively different from one another in terms of the functioning parameters and response dispositions of psychological structures and processes underlying their behavior? That she fails to mention that psychological heterogeneity is a pervasive, ubiquitous, defining characteristic of human functioning (Bryan, Tipton, & Yeager, Reference Bryan, Tipton and Yeager2021; McCaffrey, Reference McCaffrey2015; Moeller et al., Reference Moeller, Dietrich, Neubauer, Brose, Kühnel, Dehne and Pekrun2022)? Or does Burt neglect to mention these things because they would call attention to something else she doesn't tell us: Namely, that the social science research she so vigorously champions but never gets around to describing is predicated on the logically implicit assumption that individuals are instead psychologically homogeneous, and that quantitative differences between them with respect to any particular pattern of overt functioning are produced by exactly the same psychological structures and processes operating in exactly the same ways in all individuals. Logically implicit is the straightforward sense that psychological homogeneity functions as the logically indispensable load-bearing support beam for a scaffolding of interdependent corollaries on which the coherence of all variable-oriented, sample-based research strategies and statistical modeling approaches to causal-theoretical inference rests, and without which they are unintelligible and incoherent (Holland, Reference Holland1986; Molenaar, Reference Molenaar2004, Reference Molenaar2015; Richters, Reference Richters1997, Reference Richters2021; Xie, Reference Xie2011).
If the psychological homogeneity assumption and its corollaries were true, it follows that quantitative differences between individuals would reflect common underlying causes and that sophisticated statistical modeling techniques would be capable of identifying those causes in the covariance structures of aggregates. But they can't be, they don't, and they aren't. Nor, because they are predicated on the same faulty homogeneity assumption, are so-called statistical control and adjustment procedures capable of removing unwanted influences of theory-irrelevant nuisance variables from aggregate data, allowing researchers to peer through those disturbing influences for an unobstructed, as-if-by-experiment view of theory-relevant causes. Which is why the standard social science methodology Burt tells us nothing about is as intrinsically, provably, irredeemably incapable of identifying environmental causes of complex social traits as the sociogenomics methodology is incapable of distinguishing their genetic causes.
In fairness to Burt, there is no evidence in her critique that she deliberately side-steps these uncomfortable truths about social science methodology to stack the rhetorical deck in her favor. A more likely and troubling explanation is that Burt, like the vast majority of social and behavioral scientists, is genuinely unaware of the homogeneity-based foundational flaws of the standard social science model. Although easily identified through the logic of reverse engineering, the psychological homogeneity assumption is otherwise extraordinarily difficult to recognize without deliberate effort because it is so seamlessly woven into the fabric of social science research (Richters, Reference Richters2021). Seamlessly enough that psychological homogeneity has flown under the radar and escaped scrutiny for the past 100 years as the root cause of psychology's notoriously slow theoretical progress, replication failures, and continuing reliance on discredited practices of null hypothesis significance testing.
Burt is right to be concerned about the overreaches of genetics enthusiasts. She also provides readers with ample justification for her concerns about the methodological deficiencies of contemporary sociogenomics. By failing to acknowledge that these legitimate concerns apply with equal force to the social science research she so vigorously defends but keeps hidden from view, however, Burt prosecutes her methodological case on an uneven playing field that belies her stated goal of establishing a foundation for meaningful dialogue about genetic and environmental influences. Equally troubling is that Burt repeatedly claims to have set aside her sociopolitical concerns about potential dangers of genetic influence claims while at the same time arguing that these dangers far outweigh the meager contribution potential of sociogenomics research and justify holding it to higher methodological standards than those of mainstream social science. What otherwise might have been a methodological bulwark against the excesses of sociogenomics is instead a question-begging, one-sided critique with far greater potential for renewing its charter.
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A useful starting point for recognizing the foundational flaws of Burt's critique is the fact that her methodological case against the utility of sociogenomics research rests on a self-refuting thesis about the environmental confounding of polygenic score (PGS) associations with complex social traits. If, as Burt correctly argues, sophisticated statistical methodologies are incapable of distinguishing genetic from environmental causes of these traits, on what authority is she asserting—matter-of-factly, repeatedly, and without explanation—that “environmental effects masquerade as genetic influences” in PGS studies? How, then, can Burt know that the problem isn't instead that genetic effects masquerade as environmental influences in the empirical reports of mainstream social science? By her silence on this question-begging interpretation, Burt lays claim to the benefit of doubt where the evidence casts nothing but shadows of it. Those shadows are difficult to see at first because Burt formulates her critique at a general level of abstraction that highlights the methodological deficiencies of sociogenomics without also calling attention to exactly these same deficiencies in the social science research she seeks to defend against its encroachments. The key to recognizing these shadows and their methodological significance lies just beneath the surface of Burt's vague observation that a person's social traits “emerge from a complex interplay of environmental and genetic influences.” What Burt doesn't tell us here is that the human brain is a masterpiece of complex biological design, that the functioning parameters of its psychological structures and processes are genetically underdetermined, shaped by natural selection pressures to continue evolving somatically (i.e., non-genetically) across individual lifespans in response to the adaptive demands and contingencies of everyday life (Dalton & Bergenn, Reference Dalton and Bergenn2007; Edelman & Gally, Reference Edelman and Gally2001; Ingold, Reference Ingold2008; Levin & Aharon, Reference Levin and Aharon2011; Mason, Reference Mason2015; Richters, Reference Richters1997, Reference Richters2021; Waddington, Reference Waddington1957; Whitacre, Reference Whitacre2010). Nor does Burt tell us that this underdetermination affords the brain astonishing sui generis degrees of freedom to make short- and long-term modifications to the functioning parameters of those capabilities, to acquire and create new ones, and to flexibly activate, suppress, combine, and leverage endlessly different configurations of these capacities in the service of adaptive needs. To characterize this jaw-dropping dynamic as merely a “complex interplay” is an understatement rivaling Emperor Hirohito's 1945 post-atomic bomb radio announcement to the Japanese people that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage” (Frey & Eichenberger, Reference Frey and Eichenberger1991, p. 76).
Is it an accident that Burt holds back this much stronger genetic underdetermination card? That she says nothing about how underdetermination renders individuals qualitatively different from one another in terms of the functioning parameters and response dispositions of psychological structures and processes underlying their behavior? That she fails to mention that psychological heterogeneity is a pervasive, ubiquitous, defining characteristic of human functioning (Bryan, Tipton, & Yeager, Reference Bryan, Tipton and Yeager2021; McCaffrey, Reference McCaffrey2015; Moeller et al., Reference Moeller, Dietrich, Neubauer, Brose, Kühnel, Dehne and Pekrun2022)? Or does Burt neglect to mention these things because they would call attention to something else she doesn't tell us: Namely, that the social science research she so vigorously champions but never gets around to describing is predicated on the logically implicit assumption that individuals are instead psychologically homogeneous, and that quantitative differences between them with respect to any particular pattern of overt functioning are produced by exactly the same psychological structures and processes operating in exactly the same ways in all individuals. Logically implicit is the straightforward sense that psychological homogeneity functions as the logically indispensable load-bearing support beam for a scaffolding of interdependent corollaries on which the coherence of all variable-oriented, sample-based research strategies and statistical modeling approaches to causal-theoretical inference rests, and without which they are unintelligible and incoherent (Holland, Reference Holland1986; Molenaar, Reference Molenaar2004, Reference Molenaar2015; Richters, Reference Richters1997, Reference Richters2021; Xie, Reference Xie2011).
If the psychological homogeneity assumption and its corollaries were true, it follows that quantitative differences between individuals would reflect common underlying causes and that sophisticated statistical modeling techniques would be capable of identifying those causes in the covariance structures of aggregates. But they can't be, they don't, and they aren't. Nor, because they are predicated on the same faulty homogeneity assumption, are so-called statistical control and adjustment procedures capable of removing unwanted influences of theory-irrelevant nuisance variables from aggregate data, allowing researchers to peer through those disturbing influences for an unobstructed, as-if-by-experiment view of theory-relevant causes. Which is why the standard social science methodology Burt tells us nothing about is as intrinsically, provably, irredeemably incapable of identifying environmental causes of complex social traits as the sociogenomics methodology is incapable of distinguishing their genetic causes.
In fairness to Burt, there is no evidence in her critique that she deliberately side-steps these uncomfortable truths about social science methodology to stack the rhetorical deck in her favor. A more likely and troubling explanation is that Burt, like the vast majority of social and behavioral scientists, is genuinely unaware of the homogeneity-based foundational flaws of the standard social science model. Although easily identified through the logic of reverse engineering, the psychological homogeneity assumption is otherwise extraordinarily difficult to recognize without deliberate effort because it is so seamlessly woven into the fabric of social science research (Richters, Reference Richters2021). Seamlessly enough that psychological homogeneity has flown under the radar and escaped scrutiny for the past 100 years as the root cause of psychology's notoriously slow theoretical progress, replication failures, and continuing reliance on discredited practices of null hypothesis significance testing.
Burt is right to be concerned about the overreaches of genetics enthusiasts. She also provides readers with ample justification for her concerns about the methodological deficiencies of contemporary sociogenomics. By failing to acknowledge that these legitimate concerns apply with equal force to the social science research she so vigorously defends but keeps hidden from view, however, Burt prosecutes her methodological case on an uneven playing field that belies her stated goal of establishing a foundation for meaningful dialogue about genetic and environmental influences. Equally troubling is that Burt repeatedly claims to have set aside her sociopolitical concerns about potential dangers of genetic influence claims while at the same time arguing that these dangers far outweigh the meager contribution potential of sociogenomics research and justify holding it to higher methodological standards than those of mainstream social science. What otherwise might have been a methodological bulwark against the excesses of sociogenomics is instead a question-begging, one-sided critique with far greater potential for renewing its charter.
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