The internal brand of the scarlet

Natural History, March, 1998 by Stephen Jay Gould

Nonetheless, in our modern age of renewed propensity for genetic explanations (a valid and genuine enthusiasm when properly pursued), Davenport's general style of error resurfaces on an almost daily basis, albeit in much more subtle form, but with all the vigor of his putative old gene - yes, he did propose one - for stubbornly persistent behavior.

We are not questioning whether genes influence behavior; of course they do. We are not arguing that genetic explanations should be resisted because they have negative political, social, or ethical connotations - a charge that must be rejected for two primary reasons. First, nature's facts stand neutral before our ethical usages. We have, to be sure, often made dubious, even tragic, decisions based on false genetic claims. But, in other contexts, valid arguments about the innate and hereditary basis of human attributes can be profoundly liberating.

Consider only the burden lifted from loving parents who raise beautiful and promising children for twenty years and then "lose" them to the growing ravages of schizophrenia - almost surely a genetically based disease of the mind, just as many congenital diseases of bodily organs also appear in the third decade of life, or even later. Generations of psychologists had subtly blamed parents for unintentionally inducing such a condition, then viewed as entirely environmental in origin. What could be more cruel than a false weight of blame added to such an ultimate tragedy? Second, we will never get very far, either in our moral deliberations or our scientific inquiries, if we disregard genuine facts because we dislike their implications. In the most obvious case, I cannot think of a more unpleasant fact than the inevitable physical death of each human body, but a society built on the premise that King Prospero will reign in his personal flesh forever will not flourish for long.

However, if we often follow erroneous but deeply rooted habits of thinking to generate false conclusions about the role of heredity in human behavior, then these habits should be exposed and corrected - all the more vigorously if such. arguments usually lead to recommendations for action that most people would also regard as ethically wrong (involuntary sterilization of the mentally retarded, for example). I believe that we face such a situation today and that the genetic fallacies underlying our misusages bear a striking similarity in style and logic to Davenport's errors, however much we have gained in subtlety of argument and factual accuracy.

Throughout the history of genetics, the most common political misuses have rested on claims for "biological determinism" - the argument that a given behavior or social situation can't be helped because people are "made that way" by their genes. Once we attribute something we don't like to genes, we tend either to make excuses or to make less effort for change. For example, many people still argue that we should deny educational benefits and social services to groups falsely judged as genetically inferior. Their poverty and misfortune lie in their own heredity, the argument goes, and therefore their condition cannot be significantly ameliorated by social intervention. Thus, history shows a consistent linkage between genetic claims in this mold and conservative political arguments for maintenance of an unjust status quo of great benefit to people currently in power.