Via Involuntary Transformations
Schizophrenia and Genetics— does critical thought stop here? by Mary Boyle at a conference entitled “From Galton to the Human Genome Project: A critical appraisal of genetic theories in psychology and psychiatry”, 2004
Mary Boyle is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of East London and the author of Schizophrenia: A Scientific Delusion?
illustration by tim robinson
Well, at least the article expresses this:
Psychiatrists and neuroscientists around the world recently have begun sounding the alarm that the field is in crisis. Drug development for complex psychiatric illnesses is misguided, they argue, stuck churning out slight variations on therapeutic themes that didn’t work all that well to begin with. Faulty assumptions, animal models that don’t look anything like human diseases, hazy diagnoses and a lack of knowledge about how the brain works have all thwarted the search for better drugs.
But then it goes on to say that they need a better understanding of genes and molecules in order to understand why “1 out of 4 people are mentally ill” and why so many people suffer from mental affliction, in their opinion. With 1 out of 4 as an estimate, how could environment be an issue? How could any of the diagnoses be bunk? Yes. Snark.
the crumbling pillars of behavioral genetics by jay joseph
Schizophrenia researcher Timothy Crow wrote in 2008 that molecular genetic researchers investigating psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia had previously thought that “success was inevitable-one would ‘drain the pond dry’ and there would be the genes!” But as Crow concluded, “The pond is empty.” Four years later the psychiatric disorder and psychological trait “gene ponds” appear to have been completely drained, and there are few if any genes to be found. Twenty years ago, however, leading behavioral geneticists had high expectations that molecular genetic research would soon “revolutionize” the behavioral sciences.
Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature by Richard P Bentall contains a chapter that also challenges the twin studies challenged below.
TWIN STUDIES IN PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY: SCIENCE OR
PSEUDOSCIENCE?
Jay Joseph, Psy.D.
Psychiatric Quarterly, Vol. 73, No. 1, Spring 2002 (°C 2002)
wileywitch sez: Though it is widely considered to be axiomatic that mental illness is genetically determined, upon analysis most of the research showing a concordance is, at best, questionable, and at times fraudulent.
Today, it is widely acknowledged by proponents of the genetic position that family studies are confounded by environmental factors, since family members share both common genes and a common environment. As a pair of psychiatric geneticists recently put it, family studies can provide only “the initial hint that a disorder might have a genetic component”
This is what I like to call, “Have I mentioned that I lived with my mother?” A statement that has too often been met with what I call the “therapeutic glaze.”
A question about identical twins separated at birth
…let us suppose that a 20 year-old pair of German reared-apart male MZ twins, separated at birth and brought up in different parts of the country, had been reunited in 1940. A researcher would probably notice several striking similarities. Both might be wearing swastika armbands, have short-cropped hair, give stiff arm salutes and rail against “the enemies of the Reich.” The values, beliefs, behaviors, and even wardrobes of these twins might be remarkably similar, yet the conclusion that these similarities are caused by common genes would be quite erroneous.