Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: We consider the problem of interpreting negative maximum likelihood estimates of heritability that sometimes arise from popular statistical models of additive genetic variation. These may result from random noise acting on estimates of genuinely positive heritability, but we argue that they may also arise from misspecification of the standard additive mechanism that is supposed to justify the statistical procedure. Researchers should be open to the possibility that negative heritability estimates could reflect a real physical feature of the biological process from which the data were sampled.
Source: Genetics
Language: English
Subfield: Genetics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: Variability and the latent ageing process in life histories, SOCGEN: Combining Social Science and Molecular Genetic Research to Examine Inequality and the Life Course, Center for Multi- and Trans-ethnic Mapping of Mendelian and Complex Diseases, Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging
OpenAlex ID: W3015225271