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IJE Advance Access originally published online on April 27, 2006
International Journal of Epidemiology 2006 35(3):531-534; doi:10.1093/ije/dyl066
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2006; all rights reserved.

Commentary

Commentary: The attainability of causal knowledge of genetic effects in complex human traits

Gert-Jan Vreeke

Gemeente BUSSUM, Postbus 6000, 1400 HA Bussum, The Netherlands

E-mail: g.vreeke@bussum.nl

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Lewontin1 points to a central issue in heritability analysis: can heritability analysis provide clues to the impact of genetic factors on behaviour?

Lewontin's verdict does not lack clarity: he thinks that heritability analysis is not helpful in any way, it merely presents results that are ‘a unique function of the present distribution of environment and genotypes’ (1974, p. 409).

In this comment I shall reconstruct Lewontin's arguments, outlining broadly the basic tenets of the debate, which still surrounds heritability and behavioural genetics. The task of finding out if information about variation in genotypes and environments can provide causal knowledge and, if so, in what way, is, as we shall see, far from being resolved.


   Heritability analysis and causes
 
Before entering the discussion it is important to provide some basic information concerning the notion of heritability analysis (a notion I will use in this paper to denote the information an analysis of variance provides). A . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   The locality objection
 

   Which model is appropriate?
 

   The interaction objection
 

   Conclusion
 

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