11.4.2 Views on alcoholism: genetic or environmental

An academic user of PoP wrote to me: “I work in the field of Psychobiology of addictions, where I do most of my lab research. We have just started a project that tries to assess whether a common statement in the field of addiction studies is true or not. Specifically, it has been suggested that the traditional view of alcoholism as a mainly genetic disorder has been replaced by a more environmental view that focuses in how early onset of drinking affects later ethanol abuse and dependence.

If that was true, the number of papers covering the latter "point of view" and the impact of these papers should have been steadily increasing in the last years, while those covering the traditional genetic perspective may be scarcer and perhaps have less impact. As you may imagine, we are using your fabulous program to assess these hypotheses.”