The MAOA guide to misusing genetics

in the latest issue of New Scientist. It's sort of a four-step guide to interpreting studies looking at genes and behaviour, using one particular gene as a case study. The piece is out today, but it harkens back to lines of thinking that began over a century ago. Italy, 1876. The criminologist and physician Cesare Lombroso has just published L’uomo delinquente (The Criminal Man), a work that will define European understanding of criminal behaviour for several decades. Lombroso believed that some people were born criminals, whose penchant for crime was set from birth and who had diminished responsibility for their own misdeeds. Skip forward 133 years, and Lombroso’s theories seem antiquated, even distasteful. Our modern understanding of biology has put paid to simplistic ideas about the origins of criminality and violence. Discoveries from the growing field of ‘behavioural genetics’ show us how nature and nurture conspire to influence our actions. ...