Defending Biobehavioral Science

Abstract

We argue for the superiority of biologically informed models of human behavior and behavioral variation relative to their purely sociocultural/environmental competitors. It will be shown that opposition to models of the former type emanates largely from scientific ignorance, political motivations, and tacit (but critical) assumptions about the roles of “nature” and “nurture” in human behavior. Chapter 2 surveys a very wide set of empirical and theoretical work that attests to the explanatory power of these biologically informed models. A further matter that this chapter addresses is the substantial collective academic effort to block dissemination of biobehavioral theories of human behavior. We argue that this stems mostly from the substantial overrepresentation of those on the political left in academia, a fact that several researchers have noted.