Talk:Thomas J. Bouchard Jr.

Incorrect link
The Wikipedia link in the first sentence of the main article, purportedly to Dr. Bouchard's Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA), is INCORRECT. It actually links to the Minnesota Twin Family Study (MTFS), which apparently is not related to Dr. Bouchard's work at all. Tina Kimmel (talk) 00:55, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Articles
Does anyone actually know whether the 130 alleged papers published were published in refereed journals. This page needs sources, besides the webpage of Mr. Bouchard. Incidentally his page claims only 129 papers.

Viz

Question
Why does this article fail to mention Bouchard never subjected any of his work and methodologies on the Minnesota Twin Studies, other than the transracial one to peer-review or anyalysis from anyone else outside of his project, in the 10+ years since it's been put out?

Critiques of Reared Apart Twin Studies
Most references here are not pertinent. Some of them critique twin studies in general, but not separated twins in particular. An even-handed article would also mention the many articles that praise Dr. Bouchard's studies. As an aside, most of Dr. Bouchard's articles were published in peer-reviewed journals. The above signalled discrepancy (129 vs 130) in papers published is probably due to the fact that few academics keep their web pages up to date. To the people that posted the above comments, please sign them in future.

--Crusio 00:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Representation of Bouchard's work
It seems like Bouchard's work is frequently misrepresented. It's been noted that twins reared together are virtually no different in personality from twins reared apart, yet twins reared together show many marked dissimilarities as well as similarities. Studies of twins reared together are at the basis of virtually every heritability study. The Nurture Assumption makes prominent note of this, as well as this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/twins/twins2.htm

"When journalists first began interviewing Bouchard's twins-raised-apart, they focused on the spectacularly similar pairs, like the Springer-Lewis twins. But those twins turned out to be outliers in the Minnesota study. Most of the other twins weren't nearly as alike. Furthermore, since no one is claiming there is a gene for flushing the toilet before you use it, or a gene for marrying women named Betty, such coincidences are statistical anomalies, as Bouchard is quick to acknowledge. The quirky cases strengthen our sense of the power of nature, but they don't provide enough data to make a scientific case. "There probably are genetic influences on almost all facets of human behavior," Bouchard says today, "but the emphasis on the idiosyncratic characteristics is misleading. On average, identical twins raised separately are about 50 percent similar -- and that defeats the widespread belief that identical twins are carbon copies. Obviously, they are not. Each is a unique individual in his or her own right.""

This article also notes some media exagerations of twins reared apart studies, towards the end: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/08/reviews/980208.08angiert.html

Bouchard's work needs to stop being treated as so unique in regards to the heritability of personality. The media has distorted his work enough, but I'm perplexed as to why Bouchard has seemingly so rarely confronted this.

His work has apparently found rather lower heritabilities of IQ in twins reared apart, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mannoro (talk • contribs) 01:39, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to IQ Testing
I see a lot of unsourced statements about Bouchard right here on the article talk page, which is not good. I have posted a bibliography of  Intelligence Citations for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in those issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research and to suggest new sources to me by comments on that page. I invite Wikipedians to check the sources, and to take care to add sourced statements to the biography of Bouchard and to the articles related to his research. Most articles on these issues on Wikipedia still need a lot of work, and we can all help. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:44, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

The section I added seems to be sourced, though- a direct comment from him. There's alot of mythology surrounding his work, it seems, or atleast, poor explanations. Mannoro (talk) 04:39, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I should also note I wrote the "Question" section a few years ago. This is when I knew far less about this topic, and heard hearsay claims of Bouchard not publishing. That claim is also made in the New York Review of Books article regarding a book on twins.

I do not claim myself to be much better than a well-read layman, but from what I've gathered, it seems Bouchard's work and similar studies on twins reared apart have achieved an almost mythological status in the nature-nurture discourse. I really can't count the number of times I've seen accounts of the twins they've examined quoted in favor of rather extreme hereditarian views on personality. You get the impression of personality, even things like flushing the toilet before using it as being traits that are virtually 100% genetic.

Having read a good deal of Harris' work, and even corresponding with her, it appears that twins reared together are virtually identical to those reared apart in personality, as I said. That reflects a peculiar dynamic of the non shared environment. Yet that doesn't tell you much of anything about another intricacy. The general consensus is seemingly that, while twins on many dimensions of personality are very similar, they are also very different on many others, whether reared apart or together. And it's not just that- some can be very similar overall, others can be very different overall.

Bouchard doesn't seem to subscribe to the view of pure similarity, though, even though innumerable media accounts- or even academic ones that don't mention the flipside do. In a series of emails with me, Mrs. Harris said the following when I said how so many paint this strange picture:

"Nothing strange about it. You have to realize that at the time Bouchard began his career, the most influential figures in psychology were B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud - both of whom blamed people's problems on the way their parents raised them and said nothing at all about heredity. The culture was very anti-genetic during the 1970s and '80s. So the fact that identical twins were very similar in intelligence and personality even if they were reared apart was big news. It was the finding that people - including those in the media - found most interesting, because (even though it now seems obvious) at the time it was a startling result."

And this:

"Right. I pointed that out in The Nurture Assumption (pp. 33-34):

"Tales of the eerie resemblances between identical twins separated early in life and reared in different homes have made their way into the popular press and the popular imagination.... But the flip side of the coin is seldom mentioned. The flip side of the coin is that identical twins reared in the SAME home are not nearly alike as you would expect them to be.""

This front page article from an old issue of Psychology Today is perhaps one of the most egregious examples: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199707/natures-clone

There's even headings like "No nurture?". Reading things like this wasn't too enjoyable when I first delved into this discourse, especially the cutesy pop science tone articles like this carry with them- not a very tasteful way of painting this kind of research.

Yet I would constantly read how personality is, on average, 50-50 or something. That didn't line up with claims of the same twins reared apart using the same cleaning products, which would make most people roll their eyes at claims of this being so profoundly genetic.

So I guess Bouchard himself is indeed correct to call them "statistical anomalies." That book review I posted also dealt with a book heavily based on anecdotal accounts of these twin studies and a huge lack of consideration for the nonshared environment.

I just feel like many of these anecdotal accounts of twins reared apart, especially Bouchard's work, have achieved a very peculiar placement in the representation of behavior genetics research, both in regards to popular and sometimes academic accounts. This article continues those same flaws, such as it's mention of the Jim twins. I don't think this article should entirely be based on just one part of that Washington Post article, or a few aspects of Harris' work, but this article should definitely be altered to include some clarification.

Besides, in the discussion page of "heritability of IQ", you mention a review article co-authored by Bouchard and Turkheimer- with Turkheimer seeming to be quite liberal on these issues- outright saying "highly heritable traits can be strongly influenced by environment." That article was from 2009, around when Bouchard retired.

I'd like a copy of that study, if possible.

On that same page, you also mentioned you seem to have close contact with them. Might it be possible for you to add things to this article based off what you've learned from them?

Just one other thing, but I imagine this tidbit from the Washington Post article is a mistake:

"These statistics have shown that on average, identical twins tend to be around 80 percent the same in everything from stature to health to IQ to political views."

80% on everything? Right... Mannoro (talk) 23:43, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I have learned a lot from Tom Bouchard and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota who participate in the behavioral genetics seminar (a "journal club" of the Department of Psychology that meets every semester with a graduate-level course designation), but I wouldn't use any of his direct personal statements for editing Wikipedia. That would violate the No original research policy here. It is enough for editors to continually dig into the latest professional secondary sources, and to digest what those say. There is much research about psychology, genetics, and other topics that isn't reflected in Wikipedia articles yet, because most Wikipedians don't read that research. I'll try to catch up as rapidly as my typing speed allows with more updating of more articles on these subjects. Yes, Bouchard's recent paper and a recent paper by Turkheimer are good guides to how the opinions of researchers on human behavioral genetics are changing as the researchers do more research.

-- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I was just about to come back to this page and mention how these are only my experiences and your input should come in as well. Like I said, though, it would be helpful to specifically examine Bouchard's views in an academic context and formulate a proper picture of the real dynamics behind these twin studies. I'm not sure how that would be implemented in this article, or if it should be done in another- I don't think a wikipedia article should serve as some massive guideline in this regard on the intricacies of the findings of twin studies, but I can't emphasize enough how there needs to be clarification on Bouchard and similar issues. in And do you have something other than wikipedia for correspondence? There's some things I'd like to ask you about this topic. Mannoro (talk) 16:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

One another note- that quote in that study is indeed illuminating, but I found their example to be rather weak- the comparison of north and south koreans in height. The heritability in that context would be alot lower due to nutritional differences. A better example would be how the danes, dutch, and other northern european populations have towered over all other europeans in spite of having such similar environments. It would be most telling, however, if the heritability of height hasn't gone down in those countries. Pages 80-81 of Snyderman and Rothman are particularly illuminating in this regard: http://books.google.com/books?id=DAYO1Nggh3EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=snyderman+and+rothman&hl=en&ei=fRBPTM6GGsT68AaAsKnCAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

A better example, I believe, would be the heritability of body weight- quite high, but it's not like that can't be substantially altered... Mannoro (talk) 17:05, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

NPOV
"Bouchard's longitudinal studies of twins reared apart are world-renowned. His research topics have been diverse - ranging from sociology to human resources, as have the methods he has used: from large scale quantitative analyses and meta-analyses establishing the increase in heritability of intelligence with time, to case-studies of twins reared apart. This latter work demonstrated numerous astounding similarities in identical twins separated at birth and living without knowledge of the other twin for many decades. The detailed reports of similarity went a long way to answer critics of twin studies."

This starting paragraph has no citations. The first and last sentences are NPOV and should be removed. (Note that the bibliography linked to by "critics of twin studies" largely postdates Bouchard's reports, which can thus hardly be said to rebut it.) "World-renowned" here clearly goes against WP:AVOID.

"Time, U.S. News and World Report, the New York Times, and various TV programs have reported Bouchard’s conclusions that shyness, political conservatism, dedication to hard work, orderliness, intimacy, extroversion, conformity, and a host of other social traits are largely heritable. Bouchard is the author of more than 170 publications.[2] According to the Web of Science, Bouchard's works have been cited over 5500 times and he has an h-index of 33.[3]"

The first sentence is probably OK, though most pages on academics don't go into such detail about their media presence. Neither the 170 publications nor the other bibliometric disciplines strike me as extraordinarily high for somebody in Prof. Bouchard's discipline. In fact, stating any bibliometric measures in an academic's Wikipedia page is unusual, and comes across as boosterism. Feketekave (talk) 09:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Bouchard: Before the Twin Research
The article is missing a whole segment of Dr. Bouchard's career and work between the time he received his PhD (1966) at Berkeley and the beginning of his interest in the study of twins (1979).

For example, as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1970s, I remember Dr. Bouchard being the center of controversy because of his support for the work of others such as Arthur Jensen that suggested most of the wide gap in IQ betweeen whites and blacks was due to genetic factors. Indeed, I remember vigorous on-campus protests by students. After taking a course in behavioral genetics offered by noted behavior geneticist, Irving Gottesman, who was also at the University of Minnesota, I audited Dr. Bouchard's introductory graduate course in individual differences, in which he supported simplifying assumptions about heritability that were unlikely to be correct and were likely to inflate heritability estimates. Indeed, in 1972 Dr. Gottesman testified before the US Senate, explaining that the genetic and environmental contributions to IQ could not simply be allocated into two "buckets," but how they interacted with each other needed to be taken into account. Gotteman found that socioeconomic status was an important factor in the heritability of IQ. The simplified heritability models that Bouchard and other supporters of race-based IQ differences overestimated the heritability component. Dr. Bouchard's later work with twins avoided many of the technical issues with estimating heritability of a large number of human attributes, as well as avoiding the controversy of advocating race-based differences.

My recollections are not appropriate fodder for a Wikipedia article. But my point is that to be complete, the article should cover, at a minimum, the highlights of Dr. Bouchard's career during the 13-year period from 1966 to 1979. I also understand that he served for a time as chair of the psychology department at the University of Minnesota. That should be included--with dates--if verified.--Drbb01 (talk) 15:38, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Lots of issues
This article contains a lot of strange and significant issues, most of which I see were already noted on this talk page over 5 years ago, yet somehow have still survived. I was just going to try to edit them away and mention my reasons in edit summaries, but it has become apparent that such edits will be very substantial, so I thought I should make an entry here outlining what was wrong, why I did what I did, and what other editors should hopefully avoid reinstating here or on other articles relating to twin studies, heritability, and the like.

First, the article has a strangely promotional tone. I took issue with the exact same paragraphs that I then saw Feketekave pointed out back in 2011, so I'm surprised it survived all that time. Additionally, each of his selected papers is accompanied by the number of citations it has received; I don't think I'll bother changing that, and it's not terribly POV or promotional, but it's certainly unusual and I would say unnecessary. To me it does seem to look a bit like Wikipedia is bragging about how good and cited he is, which is odd. The idea on Wikipedia is just to present relevant, noteworthy, verifiable facts in a neutral tone, and let them speak for themselves. "world-renowned" does not convey actual, objective info, but rather than interpretation; say something like "has resulted in X and Y awards" instead, if that can be verified, which this article later does, or make it clear what it was used for, or anything like that, not just promotional tone without info behind it.

Second, that whole promotional first paragraph also lacked citations, which is particular bad for value-statements like "world-renowned" and major-yet-vague claims like "The detailed reports of similarity went a long way to answer critics of twin studies".

Third and more significantly, at least two parts - quotes, in fact - did have citations attached, but were not at all in the citation given. In fact, the citation given provided an extremely different (almost opposite in emphasis) picture of Bouchard's views, particularly in the quote Mannoro had already noted back in 2010. This Wikipedia article cited that Washington Post article for supposed quotes from Bouchard that went totally against what the Post article was actually highlighting.

Fourth, even what appear to be the actual sources for those two quotes were misused in the first case and should not have been used in the second. I tried to find where the two quotes provided here actually had come from. The only things I can find that don't seem to be mirrors of this article are, for the first quote, the textbook Psychology: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself by someone called Sandi Mann, and, for the second quote, this article.

That textbook seems mainly like an acceptable source, but it doesn't provide that text as a quote from Bouchard, but just as text the author has written. Therefore, quoting it as from Bouchard is misrepresentation. Further, it might not be an acceptable source anyway really, because in that same paragraph it appears that it is actually plagiarising the Washington Post source this article cited; it chucked in a sentence about sons and dogs, but on either side of that sentence are the Post's sentences, with exact phrasing intact, it appears. So this might not be a textbook worth citing. I don't know, it doesn't really matter anyway, as it doesn't support the claim.

As for the second of those sources, that appears to be a strange, POV, inaccurate source that's out to get a bunch of scientists. I'm certainly not an expert on these topics, but "Bouchard obtained emergency funds from the university and arranged for the pair to be flown to him for study" seems unlikely and melodramatic (why "emergency funds"? Why not regular grant money?), "the scientific data and methods of analysis upon which his conclusions are based have to date never been released for objective scrutiny" seems like it's just repeated the above mentioned urban legend/misreport of this stuff, and "Nevertheless, the prestigious journal Science invited Bouchard to contribute a key article in its June 17, 1994 edition, which included an editorial reporting that a "new consensus" had been reached among behavioral scientists in the nature vs. nurture debate: genes dominate" seems like an exaggeration or misrepresentation of the common kind.

Furthermore, there is literally only one citation in the whole Bouchard section on that article, and it isn't for any of its controversial or major claims, nor is it for the quote that this Wikipedia article appears to have taken from that article. So we're quoting a secondary source for a quote which that secondary source doesn't cite a source for. Not good. And the quote, presented without context and following that twin story as it is, seems to suggest that Bouchard is saying we're pretty much just determined solely by genes, whereas, again, in that Post article he clearly highlights that people shouldn't read too much into that one twin account and that it's largely a matter of statistical anomalies, and that, while genes are certainly important, they are certainly not the whole picture either.

Fifth, that seemingly dodgy source was kind-of plagiarised in this article. Here we used the sentence "Time, U.S. News and World Report, the New York Times, and various TV programs have reported Bouchard’s conclusions that shyness, political conservatism, dedication to hard work, orderliness, intimacy, extroversion, conformity, and a host of other social traits are largely heritable.", which is copied word-for-word from that source, which was not cited in this article for that sentence or anywhere else. Even if this article had cited that one, it should've either paraphrased what the source said or put it in quotes; Wikipedia can't just use direct phrasings without quote marks. Also, the source is dodgy anyway, and, as Feketekave noted, it seems sort of weird and promotional to mention his media attention in that way. Weirdly, this article plagiarised from a source it never cited, but which seems "out to get" Bouchard, but with this article plagiarising that source in a way that looks overly promotional. Very odd.

And the final issue is, as shown in some of those examples, that this article misrepresented Bouchard's work and views, and, in my opinion more importantly, the science regarding twin studies, heritability, and genetic influences in general. I don't like it when a Wikipedia article is NPOV, fails to cite its sources, cites sources that don't support what it's saying, or uses inappropriate sources, but much more genuinely problematic is when a Wikipedia article contributes to misinformation in a real way on a scientific topic. There's already so much terrible, over-simplistic journalism on these topics, and Wikipedia stooping to that level makes matters much worse. On top of the many readers who come here for their information, there are many sites which mirror Wikipedia's content, and many journalists and science writers and the like who'll pop into Wikipedia either to get a first overview of a topic or just as their only source (not to cite, of course, but to inform what they write without citing anything). So there's many ways that anything misleading on here can mislead many people. We've gotta do a better job to not just perpetuate urban legends and distortions of science.

I am presently making changes to try fix these issues. It isn't going to be a fantastic article by the time I'm done, and in particular it won't be very comprehensive as I don't actually have much prior knowledge on Bouchard specifically (I just know enough about psychology, science, and media misrepresentations of psychology and science to notice some issues). But I think it's primarily important that this article doesn't misrepresent or plagiarise sources, doesn't take a POV tone, and doesn't perpetuate misleading ideas about science, so I'll focus on that, even if it means cutting some content. BreakfastJr (talk) 03:21, 12 June 2017 (UTC)