How Successful is Sociobiology?
Tom Bethell (Against Sociobiology, January) is to be commended for pointing out the fatal flaw of socio biology and of its latterday offspring evolutionary psychology: the lack of falsifiability of many of the hypotheses proposed in these fields. Lack of falsifiability was also, to some degree, a problem even in the relatively noncontroversial field of behavioral ecology, from which sociobiology emerged. Bethell is quite wrong, however, in asserting that in the biology departments and in the academy more generally, [E. O.] Wilson and his supporters resoundingly won the debate. I cannot speak for the academy more generally, but in biology departments sociobiology went down to utter defeat. I am aware of no biology department in this country at which a sociobiologist could be hired today, and very few would even have any interest in hiring a behavioral ecologist. Biologists do not take any more kindly to nonfalsifiable hypotheses than Mr. Bethell does. Moreover, the twentyfive years sinc
