3 ms·

You can do that with twin studies.

• cogman10 7y ago
  A little bit. There's just a much smaller sample size to draw from. The ideal candidates for these sort of studies would be monozygotic twins (3 in 1000 births) who are adopted by different parents. You can draw a few conclusions from that, but it's a pretty small sample pool. The other somewhat unique thing you'd get here is how much prenatal nutrition matters.
  • saghm 7y ago
    One type of study I heard about is comparing a large group of pairs of identical twins to a large group of fraternal twins (with each pair being raised together in the same household). The idea is that all the pairs from both groups experienced the same nurture (same parents, location, schooling, etc. at the same time), but one group has nearly identical genes with their twins, while the other merely has varying degrees of similar. If some measured effect is more commonly shared by the identical twins than the fraternal, it's likely due to the genetics rather than environmental factors. I never took any biology-related courses beyond high school, so I don't have any sort of knowledge to tell if this would actually work in practice, but the idea seems interesting to me.