The Heredity Hoax

Richard M. Lerner is the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and the Director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development in the Eliot Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, at Tufts University. Gary Greenberg, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Wichita State University, Co-founder (with Ethel Tobach) of the International Society for Comparative Psychology, has been a comparative psychologist for his entire career.

Preface Section 1. Framing the Choice: The Pseudo-evidence and pessimism of genetic reductions vs. the evidence and optimism from research framed by dynamic, relational development systems-based concepts 1.1. Addressing the heredity hoax in science and society 1.2. The fallacies and failures of genetic reductionism Section 2. Metatheory and theory about the nature-nurture coaction 2.1. Metatheory and the primacy of conceptual analysis in developmental science 2.2. The failure of biogenetic analysis in psychology 2.3. What Galton’s Eugenics Has Wrought Section 3. The concepts of instinct and critical periods 3.1. Development evolving - The origins and meanings of instinct 3.2. Critical period- A history of the transition from questions of when, to what, to how 3.3 Short arms and talking eggs - Why we should no longer abide the nativist–empiricist debate Section 4. Evolution 4.1 Toward a new developmental and evolutionary synthesis 4.2. Précis of Evolution in Four Dimensions 4.3. Developmental evolution 4.4. Evolving evolutionary psychology 4.5. Evolution beyond neo-Darwinism Section 5. Behavior genetics: Heritability, Twin studies, adoption studies, and IQ 5.1. From gene to organism - The developing individual as an emergent, interactional, hierarchical system 5.2 The heritability fallacy 5.3. The 1990 “Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart” IQ Study Section 6. Sociobiology 6.1 Sociobiology and the theory of natural selection 6.2. Sociobiology and human development Section 7. Epigenetics 7.1. Social regulation of human gene expression 7.2. Human Social Genomics 7.3. Behavioral epigenetics 7.4. Dynamic heredity Section 8. Implications for Programs and Policies 8.1. The Bell Curve at 30 - A Closer Look at the Within- and Between-Group IQ Genetic Evidence 8.2. Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development 8.3. Whole-child development, learning, and thriving in an era of collective adversity, disruptive change, and increasing inequality 8.4. Promoting positive human development through dynamic, relational developmental systems