User:Vrie0006/sandbox

Criticisms and Controversies
Behavioral genetic research has been the subject of many controversies and criticisms, attributable perhaps to the fact that such research has at times challenged long-cherished beliefs about why individuals act the way they do.

Perhaps the most controversial subject has been on Race and genetics, where fringe research groups have claimed that observed racial differences on a behavioral trait are a product of racial differences in allele frequencies. Such claims are made most frequently to difference between White and Black racial groups. These are complicated issues that are extremely difficult to resolve due to the confounding of the racial group and environmental experience, such as discrimination and oppression. Indeed, race is a social construct that is not very useful for genetic research. Instead, geneticists use concepts such as ancestry, which is more rigorously defined. For example, a so-called "Black" race may include all individuals of relatively recent African descent ("recent" because all humans are descended from African ancestors). However, there is more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world combined, so speaking of a "Black" race is without a precise genetic meaning.