The social sciences have for more than half a century taken one of two stances on the importance of genetics for social science research—either aggressively denying that genetics matter or acknowledging genetics as a nuisance needing attention in order to get to the “real” social science questions. In the meantime, behavioral genetics has been ignored or treated as a joke by most social scientists (Goldberger 1979,22 Goldberger concludes that the central quantity in behavioral genetics, heritability: (p. 346): “On this assessment, heritability estimates serve no worthwhile purpose.” ; Jencks 1980; Manski 2011). Kathryn Paige Harden's The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality comes to this scene ready to battle for her discipline to be taken seriously in the analysis of social equality in the social sciences. This is not a book that aims for defensive retrenchment to fortify incremental gains from new genetic discoveries, but instead as an expansive, offensive campaign to secure additional space in social science and policy spheres. Not only do genes matter for most of the individual-level outcomes of interest to social science, she says, but the joke is on us because genes matter for societal outcomes and processes like social equality—which has been the sole purview of social science and never an interest to behavioral genetics. It is through incorporating genetics into our work that we can solve previously intractable problems in our fields of study. The book attempts an incredible reversal, where the branch of social science arguably most deeply connected to racism and eugenics makes a pitch to be central to some of social science's key preoccupations of social equality. Her book ends with a five-step program for anti-eugenic science, led by a behavioral geneticist.

The book's main messages will appeal to a variety of researchers, many of whom are uninitiated into behavioral genetics. For many social scientists already working with genetic data, the book provides a desired cover for inevitable comments from colleagues that their work is racist-adjacent, if not eugenicist. But the laudable (and shared personal views from many researchers) social justice commitments in the book likely hide the many ways that the behavioral genetics tradition is largely incompatible with much social science research. Social scientists, who focus so much on taking seriously issues around modeling individual actions and choices, should note the lack of choice assumed in behavioral genetics, whose central mission is to partition outcome variance into “genetic” and “nongenetic” sources. That is, the commonality in end goals around social equality between social scientists and the claims in the book should be tempered with the vastly different roads taken to arrive there. So, let us discuss the road traveled in the book.

The central frame in the book is around the titular The Genetic Lottery. Indeed, confusingly, there are two “the's” at work, two frames for the lottery, that are often difficult to keep separate in the reader's mind. One frame is luck, which I think of as a corollary to “choose your parents wisely.” You inherit your genes from your biological parents; the extent to which you inherit genes that do not cause disorder is, indeed, luck and something to be thankful for, and has all the attendant ethical implications around just deserts and a Rawlsian veil of ignorance. These sections of the book are useful and thoughtful, though will have less effect in the social sciences, as they are often presumed to be operant in much work around social equality.33 Sir Michael Marmot said in a discussion about the book that he did not need genomics to form his commitments to social equality and anti-eugenics; I suspect many social scientists will feel the same way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0SBiYqjJXU&t=3246s A second lottery frame is around leveraging genetic laws in narrow instances that can be used to produce causal evidence of the extent to which genes matter for social outcomes. Simply put, biological siblings have equal chances of inheriting each bit of genetic luck/misfortune, and thus comparing how their inherited genes shape their outcomes can be framed around a “genetic lottery” that can tease apart causality (Fletcher and Lehrer 2011). This is similar to the use of the Vietnam draft “lottery” to examine the causal effects of military service on later life outcomes, and many other “natural experiments.”44 Of more interest to social scientists, would be a focused discussion around how the genetic lottery both limits analysis to within-family rather than between-family variation and also needs to consider the many issues with sibling analysis that are well discussed in social science circles but left unaddressed in the book. These are essentially SUTVA (stable unit treatment value assumption) violations and include sibling spillover effects, parental reactions to children, and others outlined in Boardman and Fletcher (2015); see also applications of polygenic scores in Fletcher et al. (2020, 2021). But now, we have two “lotteries” to manage when reading the book. The first is purely conceptual/ethical, and I believe already is taken for granted in social science around social equality. The second sets us up to be wowed by new evidence showcasing the need to include genetics, more generically, in all social science analysis, because of “big” causal effects on all outcomes we care about, especially those that generate social inequalities. However, here the book is incredibly underwhelming with actual new and compelling evidence (using the necessarily siblings designs above), instead relying mostly on sleights of hand and folk wisdom from behavioral genetics.

But the book does not allow the lack of new genetic discoveries using sibling analysis to derail its mission. Instead, there is an aggressive, persistent bait and switch. The reader is told that differences in genetics between biological siblings are a “lottery”—in the Vietnam draft lottery sense—that can be used to demonstrate the causal effects of genetics on all the outcomes social science cares about. Indeed, children who share the same parents have equal opportunity in receiving the genetic variants they inherit, so comparing differences in the co-siblings’ genes with their outcomes allows the conceptualization of a lottery and the induced causality that we covet. The use of siblings is essential here because genetic differences between you and me (two unrelated people) hold no special causal claims. However, it may shock you to confirm that nearly every paper55 I believe Belsky et al. (2018) is the single exception. and specific discovery reported in this book does not come from sibling analysis. Even though genetic lottery is the title of the book, the phrase is uttered nearly 40 times (lottery shows up an extra 21 times) in 250 pages. Even with major portions of chapters devoted to the importance of causal analysis, this book is mostly about non-(causal) lotteries dressed up as (causal) lotteries.

Harden pursues this conflation of lotteries on page 31 when she outlines the fascinating combinatorics of sperm and egg mixing, noting that a pair of parents could produce over 70 trillion genetically unique offspring. Calling this a “Powerball” process where your DNA is “pure luck” attempts to confuse the reader between the sheer multiplicity of possible DNA combinations for a child born to two specific parents and a lottery used for causal analysis that compares two children born to the same parents who differ in their genetics by “luck” that is informative for causal analysis.66 “… in Powerball, the fact that you have your specific DNA sequence, out of all the possible DNA sequences that could have resulted from the union of your father and your mother, is pure luck. This is what I mean when I say that your genotype—your unique sequence of DNA—is the outcome of a genetic lottery” (Harden, 31). To further the Powerball analogy, though correctly: you and I are drawn from different urns—some lotto balls in your urn are not in mine and vice versa—but siblings are drawn from the same urn. Only the latter setting serves as a quasi-experiment with causal import. The problem is that nearly ever finding in the book does not use evidence from “pure luck” against a counter-factual outcome. But why do all this? Why set up a standard for demonstrating that genes matter and then cite tons of evidence that use different standards? The author helpfully provides the Rosetta Stone to this puzzle by writing (about non-behavior geneticists): “And people's definitions of the word ‘‘cause’’ are especially mercurial when the question at hand is whether genes can be causes. Poke in one direction or another, and people's definitions expand or contract, as need be, to encompass the things they want to embrace as causal and to evade others” (Harden, 96).

The author is describing cases, similar to what I describe above, where researchers refuse to entertain the importance of genetic effects in their own work. But it also directly applies to the undercurrent of the whole book, where the author wants genes to be causal and essential for the practice of social science and policy and is willing to set any goal post that makes it so. My own view is that the past five years have demonstrated genes as contingent, of tiny individual effect, and as an exclusionary force against minority groups in social science and policy analysis.77 Much more can and should be said about how to read a book that focuses on social equality but features data/findings that exclude racial minorities. I hope other reviewers will explore this. Perhaps seeing this house of cards for what it is will allow social scientists to mostly go on as before—trying to more expertly understand genetics as mostly nuisance in social science research by continuing to fold them into our analysis in ways they can be useful.

Here is the thing. The method used to discover every genetic effect reported in Harden's book suffers from the same methodological flaw of confounding that enrages the author so deeply in the quoted passage. If we switch the two underlined words in the quote, this would be a forceful critique of all current genome wide association studies, though I would not go so far as to then call them a “waste.”

My guess is that these revelations are a sufficient shield for many social scientists against the main tactics of this book's key points.88 Biological scientists have also raised very important concerns (Coop and Przeworski 2022); see also Martschenko (2021) The rest of the weapons, I believe, can be more easily absorbed in regular social science, because they already live here. A key point—and the link between genetics and social equality—is an expanded recapitulation of a truism that many social scientists take for granted, which is choose your parents wisely. The power and implications of this notion are vast and drive so much great social science research. This includes work directed at understanding how policies and people might intervene to undo the unfairness of being born in a disadvantaged family. To add a new ingredient to what is already by this point a well-digested meal in the social sciences, Harden attempts to split the choice of your parents into a “social” component and a “genetic” component—as if they are somehow two choices.99 “But there is another accident of birth that is also correlated with inequalities in adult outcomes: not the social conditions into which you are born, but the genes with which you are born” (Harden, 8). (Emphasis added.) In my mind, the main reason to pursue this unnatural division is not theoretical or empirical, but rhetorical. Knowing that nearly all of her evidence does not rely on siblings, the author needs to continue to invoke a “special” genetic lottery that differs from a social lottery of your parents. It is only in this context that the book can continue the construction of a purportedly essential and previously unarticulated road to get to social equality where a necessary pitstop is acceptance of the importance of genetic pathways to social science outcomes. Acceptance of the obvious truth that you inherit your parents’ social and genetic advantages and disadvantages at the same lotto ball drawing is another indication that this book constructs an unnecessary detour. It is unnecessary because it includes only whites; it is unnecessary because of the need to focus on within family (and exclude between family) inequalities; it is unnecessary because there are no sentient humans on the road, only genes and environments.

These negative responses to this book do not mean that I am unenthusiastic about the continuing integration of genetics with social science (Conley and Fletcher 2017, Boardman and Fletcher 2021). Indeed, I believe researchers who defend the position that genetics can be ignored are themselves asking to be considered as unserious, dogmatic scholars. However, my read on the current state of understanding in subfields of genetics that have direct relevance to the social science enterprise is a mix of disappointment and goalpost moving, which does give renewed assurance for the continued dominance of social science approaches, theories, and ideas. The specific advantages for integration are narrower and weaker than I thought a decade ago, but they do exist. First, attending to genetic factors, likely as primarily a nuisance, should continue and expand. Second, considering genetic factors—without interpreting their effects directly—as useful tools to reduce model variance or impute unmeasured factors continues to hold promise. Likewise, asking whether impacts of environmental and other factors vary with “genetic” measures could produce additional insights in future work. But what appears to be conclusive right now is that specific genetic variants have vanishingly small effects on the major set of outcomes we care about. Social science studies that include genetic measurements will continue to be obliged to exclude racial/ethnic minorities. Attempts at providing policy implications based on work with these caveats is premature at best, but likely much worse. Thus, the primary lens to examine social inequalities remains in the social sciences.

半个多世纪以来，社会科学在遗传学对社会科学研究的重要性方面采取了两种立场之一——要么积极否认遗传学很重要，要么承认遗传学是一种需要注意的麻烦，以便获得“真正的”社会科学。问题。与此同时，行为遗传学已被大多数社会科学家忽视或视为笑话（Goldberger 1979 ,22 Goldberger 得出结论，行为遗传学的核心量是遗传力：(p. 346)：“在这个评估中，遗传力估计没有任何有价值的目的。”; 詹克斯1980 年；曼斯基2011 )。Kathryn Paige Harden 的《基因彩票：为什么 DNA 对社会平等很重要》来到这个场景，准备为她的学科在社会科学中的社会平等分析中得到认真对待而战。这本书的目的不是为了加强从新的基因发现中获得的增量收益而进行防御性紧缩，而是作为一场广泛的、进攻性的运动，以确保社会科学和政策领域的更多空间。她说，基因不仅对社会科学感兴趣的大多数个体层面的结果很重要，而且这个笑话在我们身上，因为基因对社会很重要。社会平等等结果和过程——这一直是社会科学的唯一范围，对行为遗传学从来没有兴趣。正是通过将遗传学纳入我们的工作，我们才能解决我们研究领域中以前难以解决的问题。这本书尝试了一种令人难以置信的逆转，其中社会科学的分支可以说与种族主义和优生学联系最紧密，从而成为社会科学对社会平等的一些关键关注点的核心。她的书以反优生科学的五步计划结束，该计划由一位行为遗传学家领导。

这本书的主要信息将吸引各种研究人员，其中许多人对行为遗传学一无所知。对于许多已经在研究基因数据的社会科学家来说，这本书为同事们不可避免的评论提供了一个理想的封面，即他们的工作即使不是优生论，也与种族主义相邻。但书中值得称赞的（以及许多研究人员分享的个人观点）社会正义承诺可能隐藏了行为遗传学传统在很大程度上与许多社会科学研究不相容的许多方面。社会科学家非常重视认真对待围绕个人行为和选择建模的问题，他们应该注意到行为遗传学假设缺乏选择，其核心任务是将结果差异划分为“遗传”和“非遗传”来源。那是，社会科学家之间围绕社会平等的最终目标的共同性和书中的主张应该随着到达那里所采取的截然不同的道路而有所缓和。所以，让我们讨论一下书中走过的路。

本书的中心框架围绕着名义上的基因彩票。事实上，令人困惑的是，有两个“the's”在起作用，两个用于彩票的框架，通常很难在读者的脑海中分开。一个框架是运气，我认为这是“明智地选择父母”的必然结果。你从你的亲生父母那里继承了你的基因；你继承的基因不会导致疾病的程度确实是幸运的，值得庆幸的是，并且在沙漠和罗尔斯式的无知面纱周围具有所有随之而来的道德含义。本书的这些部分很有用且经过深思熟虑，但对社会科学的影响较小，因为它们通常被认为在围绕社会平等的许多工作中具有操作性。 33 Michael Marmot 爵士在关于这本书的讨论中说，他不需要基因组学来形成他对社会平等和反优生学的承诺；我怀疑许多社会科学家也会有同样的感受。https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0SBiYqjJXU&t=3246s第二个抽签框架是围绕在狭隘的例子中利用遗传规律，这些规律可用于产生基因对社会结果的重要性程度的因果证据。简而言之，生物学上的兄弟姐妹有相同的机会继承每一点遗传运气/不幸，因此可以比较他们遗传的基因如何塑造他们的结果，可以围绕可以梳理因果关系的“遗传彩票”（Fletcher and Lehrer 2011）。这类似于使用越南草案“彩票”来检查服兵役对晚年生活结果的因果影响，以及许多其他“自然实验”。44社会科学家更感兴趣的是围绕基因彩票如何将分析限制在家庭内部而不是家庭之间的变异进行集中讨论，并且还需要考虑在社会科学界得到充分讨论的兄弟姐妹分析的许多问题但在书中没有提及。这些本质上是违反 SUTVA（稳定单元处理值假设）的行为，包括兄弟姐妹溢出效应、父母对孩子的反应以及 Boardman 和 Fletcher（2015 年）中概述的其他内容；另见 Fletcher 等人的多基因评分的应用。（2020 年、2021 年）。但是现在，我们在阅读这本书时要管理两个“彩票”。第一个纯粹是概念/伦理的，我相信在社会科学中围绕社会平等已经被认为是理所当然的。第二个让我们惊叹于新的证据，这些证据表明需要在所有社会科学分析中更普遍地包括遗传学，因为对我们关心的所有结果都有“大”的因果影响，尤其是那些产生社会不平等的结果。然而，这本书在这里令人难以置信的令人难以置信的新证据和令人信服的证据（使用上面必然的兄弟设计），而不是主要依赖于行为遗传学的诡计和民间智慧。

但这本书不允许缺乏使用兄弟姐妹分析的新基因发现来破坏其使命。取而代之的是一种激进的、持久的诱饵和转换。读者被告知，生物兄弟姐妹之间的遗传差异是一种“彩票”——在越南选秀彩票的意义上——可以用来证明因果关系遗传学对社会科学关心的所有结果的影响。事实上，拥有相同父母的孩子在接受他们继承的遗传变异方面有平等的机会，因此将兄弟兄弟姐妹的基因差异与其结果进行比较，可以对彩票和我们渴望的诱导因果关系进行概念化。在这里使用兄弟姐妹是必不可少的，因为你和我（两个无关的人）之间的遗传差异没有特殊的因果关系。但是，您可能会震惊地确认几乎每篇论文 55我相信 Belsky 等人。（2018 年）是唯一的例外。本书报道的具体发现并非来自同胞分析。尽管基因彩票是这本书的标题，但这句话在 250 页中被说出了近 40 次（彩票出现了额外的 21 次）。即使章节的主要部分致力于因果分析的重要性，这本书主要是关于伪装成（因果）彩票的非（因果）彩票。

哈登在第 31 页对彩票的这种融合进行了探讨，她概述了精子和卵子混合的迷人组合，并指出一对父母可以产生超过 70 万亿个基因独特的后代。将此称为“强力球”过程，其中您的 DNA 是“纯粹的运气”，试图将读者混淆为两个特定父母所生孩子可能的 DNA 组合的绝对多样性，以及用于比较两个孩子所生孩子的因果分析的彩票。相同的父母，他们的基因因“运气”而不同，这为因果分析提供了信息。 66 “……在强力球中，在所有可能的 DNA 序列中，你有你的特定 DNA 序列，这可能是你父亲和你母亲结合的结果，这纯粹是运气。这就是我说你的基因型——你独特的 DNA 序列——是基因彩票的结果时的意思”（哈登，31）。为了进一步的强力球类比，虽然是正确的：你和我是从不同的瓮中抽出来的——你的瓮里的一些乐透球不在我的瓮里，反之亦然——但兄弟姐妹是从同一个瓮里抽出来的。只有后一种设置用作具有因果关系的准实验。问题在于，书中的几乎所有发现都没有使用“纯运气”的证据来反对反事实的结果。但是为什么要做这一切呢？为什么要建立一个标准来证明基因很重要，然后引用大量使用不同标准的证据？作者通过写作（关于非行为遗传学家）为这个难题提供了罗塞塔石碑：“当手头的问题是基因是否可以成为原因时，人们对‘原因’这个词的定义尤其多变。朝一个方向或另一个方向戳，人们的定义扩大或缩小，

作者正在描述一些案例，类似于我上面描述的案例，研究人员拒绝在他们自己的工作中考虑遗传效应的重要性。但它也直接适用于整本书的暗流，作者希望基因对社会科学和政策的实践是因果的和必不可少的，并且愿意设定任何目标。我自己的观点是，过去五年已经证明基因是偶然的，具有微小的个体影响，并且是社会科学和政策分析中对少数群体的排斥力量。 77关于如何阅读一本关注社会平等但包含排除少数种族的数据/发现的书，可以而且应该说更多。我希望其他评论者能对此进行探索。也许看到这个纸牌屋的本来面目将使社会科学家大部分时间都像以前一样继续前进——通过继续以有用的方式将它们纳入我们的分析，试图更专业地理解遗传学在社会科学研究中主要是令人讨厌的。

事情就是这样。用于发现哈登书中报道的每一种遗传效应的方法存在同样的方法论缺陷，即在引用的段落中深深地激怒了作者。如果我们将引文中带下划线的两个词互换，这将是对所有当前全基因组关联研究的有力批评，尽管我不会说它们是“浪费”。

我的猜测是，这些启示足以让许多社会科学家抵御本书关键点的主要策略。 88生物科学家也提出了非常重要的担忧（Coop 和 Przeworski 2022）；另见马尔琴科（2021 年）我相信，其余的武器更容易被常规社会科学吸收，因为它们已经存在于此。一个关键点——以及遗传与社会平等之间的联系——是对许多社会科学家认为理所当然的真理的扩展概括，即明智地选择你的父母。这个概念的力量和影响是巨大的，并推动了如此多的伟大社会科学研究。这包括旨在了解政策和人们如何干预以消除出生在弱势家庭的不公平的工作。为了给已经在社会科学中被很好消化的食物添加新成分，哈登试图将你父母的选择分为“社会”部分和“遗传”部分——就好像他们在某种程度上是两个选择.99 “但还有另一种出生事故也与成人结果的不平等有关：不是你出生的社会条件，而是你出生的基因”（哈登，8）。（强调补充。）在我看来，追求这种不自然划分的主要原因不是理论或经验，而是修辞。知道她几乎所有的证据都不依赖于兄弟姐妹，作者需要继续调用一种不同于你父母的社会彩票的“特殊”基因彩票。只有在这种情况下，这本书才能继续构建一条据称必不可少且以前未阐明的通往社会平等的道路，其中一个必要的进站是接受遗传途径对社会科学成果的重要性。接受一个显而易见的事实，即您在同一个乐透抽奖中继承了您父母的社会和遗传优势和劣势，这表明这本书构建了一个不必要的弯路。这是不必要的，因为它只包括白人；这是不必要的，因为需要关注家庭内部（并排除家庭之间）的不平等；这是不必要的，因为路上没有有知觉的人类，只有基因和环境。

对这本书的这些负面反应并不意味着我对遗传学与社会科学的持续整合不感兴趣（Conley and Fletcher 2017 , Boardman and Fletcher 2021）。事实上，我相信那些捍卫遗传学可以被忽视的立场的研究人员自己要求被视为不严肃、教条主义的学者。然而，我对与社会科学事业直接相关的遗传学子领域的当前理解状态的解读是失望和目标移动的混合，这确实为社会科学方法、理论和思想的持续主导地位提供了新的保证. 集成的具体优势比我十年前想象的要窄和弱，但它们确实存在。首先，关注遗传因素，可能主要是一种麻烦，应该继续并扩大。其次，考虑遗传因素（而不直接解释其影响）作为减少模型方差或估算未测量因素的有用工具仍然很有希望。同样地，询问环境和其他因素的影响是否因“遗传”措施而异，可以在未来的工作中产生更多的见解。但现在看来可以确定的是，特定的遗传变异对我们关心的主要结果集的影响微乎其微。包括基因测量在内的社会科学研究将继续有义务排除种族/少数民族。尝试根据这些注意事项提供政策影响充其量还为时过早，但可能更糟。因此，检验社会不平等的主要镜头仍然是社会科学。但现在看来可以确定的是，特定的遗传变异对我们关心的主要结果集的影响微乎其微。包括基因测量在内的社会科学研究将继续有义务排除种族/少数民族。尝试根据这些注意事项提供政策影响充其量还为时过早，但可能更糟。因此，检验社会不平等的主要镜头仍然是社会科学。但现在看来可以确定的是，特定的遗传变异对我们关心的主要结果集的影响微乎其微。包括基因测量在内的社会科学研究将继续有义务排除种族/少数民族。尝试根据这些注意事项提供政策影响充其量还为时过早，但可能更糟。因此，检验社会不平等的主要镜头仍然是社会科学。