Table 2 Summary of the argument of Sect. "Genome-wide association studies and their application"
Section | Biological background and main claim against WDP view |
|---|---|
3 Genome-wide association studies and their application | Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and indices derived from it such as polygenic risk scores (PRS) are claimed by Harden (2021) to be sufficient for predicting the behavior of complex traits in human populations |
3.1 Biological context for applying GWAS | Fisherian idealizations underpin GWAS, including additivity of gene action and infinitely large panmictic populations. Human populations frequently fail to conform to these idealizations |
3.2 Genome architecture and effect sizes | Effects of single nucleotide differences identified by GWAS are so small as to be swamped by environmental effects. To generate reliable results, GWAS require large samples, which almost always violate idealizations required for their applicability |