PhD student Jorim Tielbeek comments on ‘The use of genetics in court’ for the American news site The Verge.
Jorim Tielbeek, a neuroscientist and criminologist at VU Medical Center Amsterdam who has studied the effects of genetics on antisocial behavior, comments that “higher genetic liability towards committing a crime doesn’t necessarily mean a lessened responsibility.” Although scientists have made links between certain genes and antisocial behavior, Tielbeek says, there is “no clear predictive relationship between a single gene and a criminal act — especially since hundreds of genes are involved in criminal behavior, and that each have a very small effect.”