What do you think?
Rate this book
The Trouble with Twin Studies: A Reassessment of Twin Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Trouble with Twin Studies questions popular genetic explanations of human behavioral differences based upon the existing body of twin research. Psychologist Jay Joseph outlines the fallacies of twin studies in the context of the ongoing decades-long failure to discover genes for human behavioral differences, including IQ, personality, and the major psychiatric disorders. This volume critically examines twin research, with a special emphasis on reared-apart twin studies, and incorporates new and updated perspectives, analyses, arguments, and evidence.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published November 20, 2014
3 people are currently reading
113 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 10, 2022
amazon review
shooting down decades of biopsychiatry's puffery
Pick up virtually any text book on psychiatry or abnormal psychology, and you're sure to find confident assertions that schizophrenia has a "strong genetic component." Twin studies and adoption studies will be claimed to provide clear scientific evidence of this.
Jay Joseph has done something the authors of most such text books have not - he's actually looked at the studies themselves.
His own book is detailed, comprehensive and scholarly - and when he holds these studies up to the light, most of their authors' confident conclusions virtually crumble.
At the very least, Joseph shows how speculative and shakily supported these conclusions are.
But I think Joseph establishes more: if the twin and adoption studies stand for anything, they show how overwhelmingly important environment and experience are in schizophrenia.
This book is not light reading. But it methodically puts biopsychiatry to the test. And, as so often in its history, biopsychiatry does not fare well when looked at too closely.
Peter C. Dwyer
---
Jay Joseph exposes the fundamentally flawed assumptions held by researchers who use twins to study the genetics of human behavior, bolstering his criticisms with the words of the researchers themselves. This is a must-read for biology teachers, geneticists seeking genes for human behaviors, psychiatrists, and all of us who learned in school about nature’s supposedly "perfect experiment" - the study of identical twins.
Jonathan Beckwith, Harvard Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology
This book is an astonishingly detailed and comprehensive dissection of the results of all the major twin studies, and the vaulting claims of twin researchers. It reveals the simplistic notions about genes and environments and the preposterous idea that their effects on human variation can be separated. Joseph then exposes the often-shoddy, corner-cutting methods through which that impossible dream has been pursued. This book will be an invaluable resource to those who suspect that twin studies are too good to be true, and want to articulate the arguments that encourage wider views of the causes of human variation.
Ken Richardson, Former Lecturer, Open University
Joseph’s analysis of the twin studies is a masterpiece in both breadth and depth. If you have always been skeptical of claims about genes for mental illness then you owe Joseph a debt of gratitude. The Trouble with Twin Studies shows that often made claims about genes and mental health are laid bare.
Jonathan Leo, Professor of Neuroanatomy, Lincoln Memorial University
shooting down decades of biopsychiatry's puffery
Pick up virtually any text book on psychiatry or abnormal psychology, and you're sure to find confident assertions that schizophrenia has a "strong genetic component." Twin studies and adoption studies will be claimed to provide clear scientific evidence of this.
Jay Joseph has done something the authors of most such text books have not - he's actually looked at the studies themselves.
His own book is detailed, comprehensive and scholarly - and when he holds these studies up to the light, most of their authors' confident conclusions virtually crumble.
At the very least, Joseph shows how speculative and shakily supported these conclusions are.
But I think Joseph establishes more: if the twin and adoption studies stand for anything, they show how overwhelmingly important environment and experience are in schizophrenia.
This book is not light reading. But it methodically puts biopsychiatry to the test. And, as so often in its history, biopsychiatry does not fare well when looked at too closely.
Peter C. Dwyer
---
Jay Joseph exposes the fundamentally flawed assumptions held by researchers who use twins to study the genetics of human behavior, bolstering his criticisms with the words of the researchers themselves. This is a must-read for biology teachers, geneticists seeking genes for human behaviors, psychiatrists, and all of us who learned in school about nature’s supposedly "perfect experiment" - the study of identical twins.
Jonathan Beckwith, Harvard Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology
This book is an astonishingly detailed and comprehensive dissection of the results of all the major twin studies, and the vaulting claims of twin researchers. It reveals the simplistic notions about genes and environments and the preposterous idea that their effects on human variation can be separated. Joseph then exposes the often-shoddy, corner-cutting methods through which that impossible dream has been pursued. This book will be an invaluable resource to those who suspect that twin studies are too good to be true, and want to articulate the arguments that encourage wider views of the causes of human variation.
Ken Richardson, Former Lecturer, Open University
Joseph’s analysis of the twin studies is a masterpiece in both breadth and depth. If you have always been skeptical of claims about genes for mental illness then you owe Joseph a debt of gratitude. The Trouble with Twin Studies shows that often made claims about genes and mental health are laid bare.
Jonathan Leo, Professor of Neuroanatomy, Lincoln Memorial University
Read
July 10, 2022amazon review
shooting down decades of biopsychiatry's puffery
Pick up virtually any text book on psychiatry or abnormal psychology, and you're sure to find confident assertions that schizophrenia has a "strong genetic component." Twin studies and adoption studies will be claimed to provide clear scientific evidence of this.
Jay Joseph has done something the authors of most such text books have not - he's actually looked at the studies themselves.
His own book is detailed, comprehensive and scholarly - and when he holds these studies up to the light, most of their authors' confident conclusions virtually crumble.
At the very least, Joseph shows how speculative and shakily supported these conclusions are.
But I think Joseph establishes more: if the twin and adoption studies stand for anything, they show how overwhelmingly important environment and experience are in schizophrenia.
This book is not light reading. But it methodically puts biopsychiatry to the test. And, as so often in its history, biopsychiatry does not fare well when looked at too closely.
Peter C. Dwyer
---
Jay Joseph exposes the fundamentally flawed assumptions held by researchers who use twins to study the genetics of human behavior, bolstering his criticisms with the words of the researchers themselves. This is a must-read for biology teachers, geneticists seeking genes for human behaviors, psychiatrists, and all of us who learned in school about nature’s supposedly "perfect experiment" - the study of identical twins.
Jonathan Beckwith, Harvard Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology
This book is an astonishingly detailed and comprehensive dissection of the results of all the major twin studies, and the vaulting claims of twin researchers. It reveals the simplistic notions about genes and environments and the preposterous idea that their effects on human variation can be separated. Joseph then exposes the often-shoddy, corner-cutting methods through which that impossible dream has been pursued. This book will be an invaluable resource to those who suspect that twin studies are too good to be true, and want to articulate the arguments that encourage wider views of the causes of human variation.
Ken Richardson, Former Lecturer, Open University
Joseph’s analysis of the twin studies is a masterpiece in both breadth and depth. If you have always been skeptical of claims about genes for mental illness then you owe Joseph a debt of gratitude. The Trouble with Twin Studies shows that often made claims about genes and mental health are laid bare.
Jonathan Leo, Professor of Neuroanatomy, Lincoln Memorial University
shooting down decades of biopsychiatry's puffery
Pick up virtually any text book on psychiatry or abnormal psychology, and you're sure to find confident assertions that schizophrenia has a "strong genetic component." Twin studies and adoption studies will be claimed to provide clear scientific evidence of this.
Jay Joseph has done something the authors of most such text books have not - he's actually looked at the studies themselves.
His own book is detailed, comprehensive and scholarly - and when he holds these studies up to the light, most of their authors' confident conclusions virtually crumble.
At the very least, Joseph shows how speculative and shakily supported these conclusions are.
But I think Joseph establishes more: if the twin and adoption studies stand for anything, they show how overwhelmingly important environment and experience are in schizophrenia.
This book is not light reading. But it methodically puts biopsychiatry to the test. And, as so often in its history, biopsychiatry does not fare well when looked at too closely.
Peter C. Dwyer
---
Jay Joseph exposes the fundamentally flawed assumptions held by researchers who use twins to study the genetics of human behavior, bolstering his criticisms with the words of the researchers themselves. This is a must-read for biology teachers, geneticists seeking genes for human behaviors, psychiatrists, and all of us who learned in school about nature’s supposedly "perfect experiment" - the study of identical twins.
Jonathan Beckwith, Harvard Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology
This book is an astonishingly detailed and comprehensive dissection of the results of all the major twin studies, and the vaulting claims of twin researchers. It reveals the simplistic notions about genes and environments and the preposterous idea that their effects on human variation can be separated. Joseph then exposes the often-shoddy, corner-cutting methods through which that impossible dream has been pursued. This book will be an invaluable resource to those who suspect that twin studies are too good to be true, and want to articulate the arguments that encourage wider views of the causes of human variation.
Ken Richardson, Former Lecturer, Open University
Joseph’s analysis of the twin studies is a masterpiece in both breadth and depth. If you have always been skeptical of claims about genes for mental illness then you owe Joseph a debt of gratitude. The Trouble with Twin Studies shows that often made claims about genes and mental health are laid bare.
Jonathan Leo, Professor of Neuroanatomy, Lincoln Memorial University
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews