FINDME: Finding the 'missing environmentality'
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Social Science
Abstract
Evaluating the degree to which statistical models can explain or predict social outcomes such as educational attainment, fertility or well-being strongly contributes to theory building, the description of social stability, discovery and defines space for intervention. However, research relies on computational "black box" methodology, ignores confounding by non-social factors and is unsuccessful in their prediction.
It has been overlooked that in the past 15 years, quantitative geneticists developed a transparent methodological pipeline to tackle this challenge. They expected to explain 80% of individual differences in height (heritability) using measured molecular data but failed. This 'missing heritability' puzzle has triggered massive advances theory, methodology, and the recognition of geneenvironment interaction. Today, geneticists explain 70% of individual differences in height using inference statistical models and measured genes. This provides a roadmap for game changing innovations in the social sciences.
FINDME infuses social sciences with knowledge from genetic methods to find this "missing environmentality". Importantly, and in novel ways, FINDME will be able to disentangle genetic from social factors and take gene-environment interaction into account. FINDME will provide interpretable statistical model specifications which include higher order interactions to model social complexity as well as classic, parsimonious sociological explanations. FINDME will compare societies and evaluate the stability of sociological explanations. Finally, FINDME will quantify the relative contributions of various social and non-social domains to the distribution of traits in a population, spotlighting targets for subsequent causal analyses and space for interventions. I will quantitatively contribute to questions such as: Are our theories too simple? How relevant is gene-environment interaction for us? Is there evidence for social determinism?
It has been overlooked that in the past 15 years, quantitative geneticists developed a transparent methodological pipeline to tackle this challenge. They expected to explain 80% of individual differences in height (heritability) using measured molecular data but failed. This 'missing heritability' puzzle has triggered massive advances theory, methodology, and the recognition of geneenvironment interaction. Today, geneticists explain 70% of individual differences in height using inference statistical models and measured genes. This provides a roadmap for game changing innovations in the social sciences.
FINDME infuses social sciences with knowledge from genetic methods to find this "missing environmentality". Importantly, and in novel ways, FINDME will be able to disentangle genetic from social factors and take gene-environment interaction into account. FINDME will provide interpretable statistical model specifications which include higher order interactions to model social complexity as well as classic, parsimonious sociological explanations. FINDME will compare societies and evaluate the stability of sociological explanations. Finally, FINDME will quantify the relative contributions of various social and non-social domains to the distribution of traits in a population, spotlighting targets for subsequent causal analyses and space for interventions. I will quantitatively contribute to questions such as: Are our theories too simple? How relevant is gene-environment interaction for us? Is there evidence for social determinism?
