Dissection of heterogeneous phenotypes for quantitative trait mapping

Bickeböller, Heike; Bailey, Julia N.; Papanicolaou, George; Rosenberger, Albert; Viel, Kevin R.

doi:10.1002/gepi.20109

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Careful selection of cases and controls is necessary to avoid potential confounding effects: Cases must meet appropriate criteria for possessing the phenotype under consideration, and controls must not exhibit the phenotype and must be free from potential associated intermediate phenotypes (Chanock et al 2007). Any ambiguity in phenotypic specification will have the likely effect of confounding cases and controls, leading to spurious associations (Bickeböller et al 2005). The problem of ambiguity is particularly acute in relation to complex behaviors such as voting.…”

Section: Four Problem Areas Phenotype Specificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Candidate Genes and Political Behavior

2012

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Practitioners of a growing subfield within political science-"genopolitics"-are committed to the proposition that the study of genetics can significantly enrich our understanding of the causes of political behavior. Over the past several years, they have conducted a number of studies aimed at measuring the extent to which differences in political behaviors are due to genes (as opposed to environment) and even at identifying the particular gene variants that contribute to these differences. This research has been premised on methodologies and assumptions that comprise a hybrid discipline known as behavior genetics. Long the purview of psychologists, behavior genetics searches for the genetic bases of human behavioreverything from mental illness to moral outlook. Inasmuch as the discipline is characterized by the assumption that any behavior that falls under the rubric of human behavior potentially has a "genetic component" (Turkheimer 2000)-no matter how culturally contingent it might appear-the migration of behavior genetics to political science can be seen as a natural development.A watershed moment in this migration was the publication of a study by Alford, Funk, and Hibbing (2005) in which the authors claimed to have demonstrated that, when it comes to political ideology (specifically, whether one is a liberal or a conservative), genes count for more than environment. This claim was made on the basis of a methodology known as the workhorse of behavior genetics: the classical twin study. Twin studies are designed to measure heritability-the extent Both authors contributed equally to this article. Research was supported in part by funding from the National Institutes of Health (Grant number: P50 HG003391) to which variation in a given trait (in a given population at a given time) is due to genetic, as opposed to environmental, differences.1 The study of Alford, Funk, and Hibbing was followed by studies purporting to demonstrate the heritability of the following: vote choice ( A variant of the twin study was the original biometrical "natural experiment" proposed by Galton in 1876 (Plomin 1990), and the results of the first known classical twin study, based on the observed differences between identical and nonidentical twins, were published in 1924. A lot has changed in our understanding of genetics since then, and recent advances in molecular genetics are necessitating a rethinking of every one of the assumptions of the classical twin study methodology (Boklage 2009;Bruder 2008;Fraga et al.

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Section: Four Problem Areas Phenotype Specificationmentioning

confidence: 99%