For two centuries, the most advanced thinkers have claimed biology and physiology could explain the most complex human behaviors and even beliefs. In the early 19th century, physicians thought that a person’s character was determined by the shape of their skull. During the last century, social scientists believed that a person’s race was a dependable predictor of their intelligence. These earlier efforts have either been discredited or widely questioned, but the attempt to link biology to behavior and belief has continued unabated. A case in point is the new field of genopolitics.

Most people would say that a person’s political beliefs and actions reflect the influence of parents, peers, and colleagues, as well as a person’s reflection based on reading and observation. But over the last two decades, political scientists, and psychologists have used genetics and neuroscience to claim that people’s political beliefs are predetermined at birth. Genetic inheritance, they argue, helps to explain why some people are liberal and others conservative; some people turn out to vote; and why some people favor and others oppose abortion and gay rights. The field itself has a name—genopolitics—and it is taking political science by storm. In the last four years alone, over 40 journal articles on the subject have appeared in academic journals.

Prominent political journalists have also endorsed this trend. In a New York Times column, Thomas Edsall writes that genopolitics “has the potential to provide insight into a host of critical matters, including the roots of hostility between the contemporary right and left, and into how political parties alter their stands on issues in both practical and rhetorical terms.” Chris Mooney, the author of Unscientific America, finds the links between genetics and politics “amazing,” and gushes that “if this is what the science says for now, there is only one thing to do: more science.” Laudatory articles about the new field have appeared inthe Huffington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Psychology Today, The Economist, Mother Jones, Nature , and ABC News, as well as in Nature, Science Daily and ScienceNordic.

Are these social scientists onto something, as Edsall and Mooney have suggested? Is liberalism or conservatism inherited the way, say, that a predisposition to breast cancer or Parkinson’s disease is? Or is there reason to be skeptical about this new field of genopolitics? I am, to say the least, not an expert in genetics (nor are many of the political pundits endorsing this new field). I know something, however, about political history, psychology, and what used to be called the philosophy of mind; and I have consulted people who do know something about genetics. Having now read a fair amount of the material in this new field, I am deeply skeptical about its claims. Like its discredited predecessors, these new field may represent an attempt to explain away rather than explain complicated human behaviors and beliefs.

The essay that laid the groundwork for genopolitics was written by political scientists John K. Alford, Carolyn Funk, and John R. Hibbing and appeared in the American Political Science Review in May 2005. It was entitled, “Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?” The authors claimed the persistent differences between liberals and conservatives could be explained by genetic inheritance. After its publication, the editor of the journal speculated “time will tell whether it will emerge among the most important articles the APSR has ever published.” It has been followed by numerous studies that have built upon its approach.