Is Our Desire for Genetic Answers Cultural Rather than Scientific?

August 28, 2015

(The Guardian) – Do a quick survey of recent stories, for example, and you will find research that claims “intelligence, creativity and bipolar disorder may share underlying genetics” and a much-reported story that found that Holocaust survivors may have passed ontrauma to their children through their genes. Genetics has come to explain almost everything about our identities, whether it is our weight, our sexuality, or even if we are likely to become a criminal. But is this based on sound science, or is it instead a cultural phenomenon using science to back it up? That is among the questions Professor Deborah Lynn Steinberg asks in her new book Genes and the Bioimginary.