Reported associations between receptor genes and human sociality are explained by methodological errors and do not replicate

Abstract

Using a sample of 757 British individuals, Pearce et al. (1) tested 24 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in six candidate genes for association with eight social behavior traits. For each SNP for each trait, five genotypic model tests were reported (except the androgen receptor gene, for which two model tests were reported), resulting in 936 reported tests. Of these, 44 (4.7%) were significant at P < 0.05, a proportion of significant associations that would be expected by chance if there was no true association between the SNPs and the traits measured in this dataset.