Challenging the utility of polygenic scores for social science: Environmental confounding, downward causation, and unknown biology.

ABSTRACT: The sociogenomics revolution is upon us, we are told. Whether revolutionary or not, sociogenomics is poised to flourish given the ease of incorporating polygenic scores (or PGSs) as "genetic propensities" for complex traits into social science research. Pointing to evidence of ubiquitous heritability and the accessibility of genetic data, scholars have argued that social scientists not only have an opportunity but a duty to add PGSs to social science research. Social science research that ignores genetics is, some proponents argue, at best partial and likely scientifically flawed, misleading, and wasteful. Here, I challenge arguments about the value of genetics for social science and with it the claimed necessity of incorporating PGSs into social science models as measures of genetic influ

SUBMITTER: Burt CH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9653522 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature