Genomics is clearly one of the most interesting developing subfields of science with potential implications for political behavior. The trouble is that it is extremely difficult for political scientists to discriminate sensible applications from nonsensical ones. Many arguments (both pro and con) make sense to me because they are written by very smart people who know a lot more about this than I do. This is why I find the recent debates triggered by the Charney and English article so fascinating (see here and here), although I remain on the fence. In the latest round Evan Charney responds that the same two genes that Fowler and Dawes associate with turnout have been:
[..] associated with, among other things, agreeableness, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease, anger/aggression, anorexia nervosa, antisocial behavior, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, attitudes toward longshot risks, auditory evoked potentials, binge drinking, bipolar disorder, bulimia, bone mineral density, borderline personality disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, conscientiousness, contraception use, cooperativeness, credit card debt, depression, educational continuation, extraversion, facial expressionrecognition, fearfulness, fibromyalgia, gambling, gout, hypertension, insomnia, intelligence, memory, narcolepsy, neuroticism, novelty seeking, openness, pain perception, panic disorder, Parkinson’s disease, persistence, restless legs syndrome, reward dependence, schizophrenia, smoking, social phobia, stress response, success by Wall street professionals, sudden infant death syndrome, temperomandibular disorder, time perception, and Tourette syndrom
What is going on is data mining on a massive scale: A number of large data sets contain the same polymorphisms of the same five or six genes, with the result that these genes have been associated with every imaginable trait (and for every study showing an association, there is another study showing no association).
Larry Arnhart responds here. To be continued, I am sure.
Edit: And now Playboy has an article on the topic!