Just a few years after the U.S. government’s decision to fully fund the Human Genome Project (HGP) in 1990, an important harbinger of things to come was the publication of the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The authors’ most controversial claim was that human intelligence was at least 60 percent genetic. At that time, the national advisory group to the HGP, the Ethical Legal and Social Implications committee (ELSI) requested that the American Journal of Human Genetics critique and respond to the authors’ claim. The editorial board of the journal refused on the grounds that “this book was about behavioral genetics” while the HGP was about human molecular genetics. Members of ELSI committee argued vigorously that this distinction between different forums and platforms used to explain human genetic variation would soon collapse and merge. However, it was only a matter of time before behavioral geneticists would claim the legitimacy of being under the mantle of molecular genetics. In this address, I show just how prescient the ELSI group had been. Much of the answer lies in the reward structure for science publications that strongly favor reductionism versus emergence.

中文翻译：

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科学出版物中的涌现与还原论

在美国政府于 1990 年决定全额资助人类基因组计划 （HGP） 仅几年后，一个重要的预兆是 Richard J. Herrnstein 和 Charles Murray 于 1994 年出版的有争议的《钟形曲线》一书。作者最具争议的说法是，人类的智力至少有 60% 是遗传的。当时，HGP 的国家咨询小组，道德法律和社会影响委员会 （ELSI） 要求《美国人类遗传学杂志》对作者的说法进行批评和回应。该杂志的编辑委员会拒绝了，理由是“这本书是关于行为遗传学的”，而 HGP 是关于人类分子遗传学的。ELSI 委员会的成员强烈争辩说，用于解释人类遗传变异的不同论坛和平台之间的这种区别很快就会瓦解并合并。然而，行为遗传学家声称在分子遗传学的衣钵下合法性只是时间问题。在这次演讲中，我展示了 ELSI 小组有多么有先见之明。大部分答案在于对强烈支持还原论而不是涌现论的科学出版物的奖励结构。