In a recent paper published in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science, KLI Hans Przibram Postdoctoral Fellow Olesya Bondarenko examines the prospects for integrating behavioral genomics with the social sciences. She characterizes the main promises associated with sociogenomic integration as the promises of epistemic credibility and ethical trustworthiness. Social scientists believe that the use of genomic tools (particularly so-called polygenic scores) can enhance the credibility of causal claims about socio-environmental influences on different individual outcomes—from educational attainment to well-being. In turn, using sociological frameworks to interpret and contextualize genetic effects is thought to provide an antidote to the ethically problematic genetic determinism which has been a recurrent concern in the context of behavioral genetics and genomics.

Having discussed the overarching promises of sociogenomic integration, the paper proceeds to interrogate where these promises are being convincingly realized by a particular strand of sociogenomic research: studies of gene-environment interaction (G × E). Such studies are often used to support inferences about the level of social equality across sociohistorical settings or between social groups. The author argues that they cannot be said to function as an "index of equality" as they blackbox social mechanisms of G × E and do not attend to the relevant normative considerations. Moreover, the forms of G × E which sociogenomic research on equality examines are not the most effective in terms of challenging genetic determinism, which means that the application of sociological frameworks only offers limited payoffs in and of itself. The paper concludes that a more developmentally oriented approach which examines the instability of genetic effects on individual psychological characteristics (rather than on downstream individual outcomes such as educational attainment) may have a better chance of convincingly refuting determinism and delivering on the trustworthiness promise of sociogenomics.

Publication:
Bondarenko, O. (2026). Credibility and trustworthiness: the promises of sociogenomic integration and research on gene-environment interaction. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 16(2), 49 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00750-z (a free version can be accessed here).