Biological research on sexual orientation: a critique of the critics

Evolutionary biologists are tired of being accused of being too biologically deterministic, by critics who have little understanding of what biological or evolutionary theories actually imply. Misunderstandings came about because social-science disciplines often do not share evolutionary biology's tendency to build into their models multiple "normal" paths of development. Sociobiologists first explained homosexuality adaptively because they first try to explain everything adaptively. Most nonbiologists are unaware of this very strong evolutionary tradition. It is now fashionable to discount scientific objectivity, but there are many examples of where such an attack is unwarranted. Kinsey produced a nontypological theory of sexual orientation in spite of his history as a taxonomist. Sociobiologists produced a nonpathological explanation of nonreproductive homosexuality in spite of the centrality of reproductive success in their models. In judging whether a discipline is particularly likely to be misused in social debates, one must perform the appropriate intellectual "controls". One must examine appropriate uses as well as misuses, and one must examine other disciplines to see whether there are differences in the relative likelihood of abuse. Indeed, many social-science theories have been even more clearly abused than biological ones.