View Single Post
  #139  
Old 12-12-2004, 09:54 PM
Quinn Quinn is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Calgary, Alberta
Posts: 2,305
Quinn is on a distinguished road
Default

I guess to some degree this is an issue of semantics. I think it's more likely that if anything, what the evidence shows is that there might be a "risk-taking" gene, or something to that effect, ie. willingness to take risks in order to gain - and certainly I think you could justify almost any criminal act as being adaptive (murder is often attributed to jealousy, and jealousy is certainly adaptive). It would be interesting to do a follow-up study with those twin pairs to look for more evidence of this (legal, deviant behaviour). There's also a problem in the field of criminology in that politics and belief systems tend to become significant factors, and may affect research validity - a lack of objectivity.

I am familiar with Lombroso and his prison studies. I'm not sure what made you think I might put some stock in his work? As you said, it's about as valid as Lamarck's. I am also familiar with Eysenck, but am not his largest fan.
__________________
-Quinn

Man, n. ...His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth, and Canada. - A. Bierce, Devil's Dictionary, 1906