MATHEMATICAL PROOF IS NOT MINUTIAE AND IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY IS NOT A THEORY: A FINAL RESPONSE TO BURT AND SIMONS AND A CALL TO CRIMINOLOGISTS

• Author: ERIC J. CONNOLLY,BRIAN B. BOUTWELL,KEVIN M. BEAVER,JOSEPH L. NEDELEC,JOSEPH A. SCHWARTZ,JOHN PAUL WRIGHT,J. C. BARNES
• Date: 01 February 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12059
• Published date: 01 February 2015

MATHEMATICAL PROOF IS NOT MINUTIAE AND

IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY IS NOT A THEORY:

A FINAL RESPONSE TO BURT AND SIMONS AND A

CALL TO CRIMINOLOGISTS∗

JOHN PAUL WRIGHT,1,7 J. C. BARNES,1BRIAN B. BOUTWELL,2,3

JOSEPH A. SCHWARTZ,4ERIC J. CONNOLLY,5

JOSEPH L. NEDELEC,1and KEVIN M. BEAVER6,7

1School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati

2School of Social Work, Saint Louis University

3Department of Epidemiology, Saint Louis University

4School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska, Omaha

5Department of Criminal Justice, Pennsylvania State University, Abington

6College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University

7Center for Social and Humanities Research, King Abdulaziz University

KEYWORDS: biosocial, assumptions, twins

In their initial article, Burt and Simons (2014) laid out a range of specific criticisms

of twin-based research. They argued that violations of the statistical assumptions that

underpin this line of work result in upwardly biased estimates of heritability and down-

wardly biased estimates of environmental effects. According to Burt and Simons, the find-

ings generated from behavioral genetic approaches are “biologically nonsensical” and are

“misguided.” Indeed, Burt and Simons stated, without qualification, that an entire class

of statistical models used to analyze twin data are “seriously flawed.” Because behavioral

genetic designs suffer from “fatal flaws,” they argued, twin-based research designs and

their associated statistical methods should be put to an “end in criminology.”

We examined their assertions carefully. We found that Burt and Simons (2014) cherry-

picked the studies they cited in support of their position regarding the biasing impact of

the equal environments assumption (EEA), something they openly admit in the online

supporting information of their rejoinder (Burt and Simons, 2015, this issue). Specifically,

they state, “we focused on articles that showed that the EEA is not a valid assumption” to

support their claim that heritability estimates from behavioral genetic studies are chron-

ically overestimated as a result of violations of this assumption. In fact, they relied pri-

marily on a single source (Joseph, 1998, 2004, 2006, 2010) for their critique. Notably, we

found that they failed to cite the vast majority of the more than 60 studies that tested for

violations of the EEA—a body of work that is inconsistent with their claims.

∗We wish to thank Thomas Blomberg, Francis Cullen, Chris Ferguson, Judith Rich Harris, and

Daniel Mears for their comments, suggestions, and insights on previous drafts of this rejoinder.

Direct correspondence to John Paul Wright, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati,

P.O. Box 210002, Cincinnati, OH 45221 (e-mail: john.wright@uc.edu).

C2015 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12059

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 53 Number 1 113–120 2015 113