The notion that birth order bears a systematic relation to personality was commonly thought to have succumbed to the formidable attack from Ernst and Angst (1983). The 1996 publication of Frank Sulloway's book Born to Rebel, however, breathed new life into a proposition that most social scientists thought was a dead horse. In response to the book, Townsend (this issue) insists that Sulloway's extraordinary measures to revive this dead horse were unwarranted. Apparently fearing that too many readers have taken the book seriously, Townsend attacks both the contemporary and historical evidence offered by Sulloway.

In the famous (some would say infamous) final chapter of his discipline-defining volume, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, biologist Edward O. Wilson invited us to consider humankind as if we were zoologists from another planet. In this light, Wilson said, “the humanities and social sciences shrink to specialized branches of biology” (1975:547). One of the functions of the new discipline of sociobiology, Wilson suggested, was “to reformulate the foundations of the social sciences…” (1975:4). Wilson cautioned, however, that it “remains to be seen” whether or not the social sciences can be “truly biologized” in this fashion.

Frederic Townsend's critique of Born to Rebel (Sulloway, 1996) is based on an unfortunate pattern of misrepresentation and faulty empirical methods. First, the historical data in Born to Rebel are neither unrepresentative nor undisclosed. They were compiled with the help of 110 expert raters, who validated their representative nature and operationalized the principal outcome measures. Second, birth order is moderately associated with political radicalism, especially in real-life and within-family studies. Third, the meta-analytic data are statistically compelling for various behavioral attributes, although effect sizes are generally modest. Fourth, recent studies using large samples and anchored scales demonstrate the influence of birth order on a wide variety of personality traits, especially in within-family comparisons. In addition, the relationship between birth order and openness to radical innovation—highlighted in Born to Rebel—has been replicated by other researchers. Because Townsend fails to employ formal methods of hypothesis testing—relying instead on selected anecdotal examples, adversarial tactics, and an inadequate grasp of statistical principles—he has drawn numerous false conclusions about the influence of birth order.

Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to the various commentators for their remarks about Born to Rebel, including some of the constructive criticisms of my research findings and conclusions. No book trying to set forth more than two decades of research on why historical figures as diverse as Martin Luther and Charles Darwin behaved the way they did can expect to pass muster without exception. At best, one hopes that any problems that come to light will prove to be relatively easy to correct (as I think they have been, so far) and thus do not undermine the validity of the book's central arguments.

My thanks to the commentators for their thoughtful analyses. I will respond to their comments below. I should point out that under the format for this roundtable discussion, I have not yet seen Frank Sulloway's response to my article. Any reply I might have to his response will therefore have to come later.

This issue of Politics and the Life Sciences includes an article, ten commentaries, and three responses on the subject of birth order and rebelliousness, focusing in particular on Frank Sulloway's Born to Rebel (1996, 1997). Extraordinary events have surrounded the publication of this roundtable, including threats of legal action, accusations of misconduct, letters to university officials, termination of the journal's publishing contract, and an almost five-year delay in publication. This editorial reviews these events and goes on to assess Frank Sulloway's responses (published in this issue), as well as parts of Born to Rebel. It also reports the results of a replication of Sulloway's study of Reformation martyrs. The replication generated markedly different data than those reported by Sulloway. Data from an expanded sample were also inconsistent with the relationship that Sulloway reported finding between birth order and religious commitment among Reformation martyrs. The editorial supports the suggestion by Frederic Townsend that an independent review of Born to Rebel would be appropriate. It concludes with a call for establishment of a multidisciplinary legal defense fund that would reduce the likelihood that legal threats can succeed in stifling research and publication in the natural and social sciences.

Proponents of xenotransplantation hope that it will provide organs to fill the gap between the demand for and supply of organs for transplant. The scientific obstacles to transplanting animal organs into humans are daunting, as are the moral, political, and policy issues. Among them are concerns about animal rights and welfare, patient acceptance and informed consent, and broader public health issues, such as the cost-efficient deployment of scarce resources and the risk of disease in third parties. The latter is, in my view, the most immediately urgent issue. Pigs, the current animal of choice, carry many bacterial and viral pathogens, and it is currently impossible to assess the risk of disease to human populations. Because of this risk, a moratorium on xenotransplantation is necessary to protect public health; it is also questionable whether the technology, if successful, would be the most cost-effective way to promote health.

In January 2001, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed annual public disclosure of adverse events during gene therapy and xenotransplantation trials. The proposed policy raises the following questions: (1) Is the reformed policy in accord with the FDA's long-standing informed consent policies? (2) Why pair gene therapy trials and xenotransplantation trials in the revised guidelines? (3) Why single out these trials for public disclosure of adverse events? Each question is examined, and three conclusions are drawn. First, the FDA's own policies on informed consent require prompter public disclosure of adverse events. Second, the coupling of gene therapy and xenotransplantation trials entails a conceptual mistake in the types of communities that are harmed by each therapy's related adverse events. Third, all clinical trials merit such public disclosure of adverse events, not only gene therapy and xenotransplantation trials.

The geopolitical positions currently occupied by the United States and Germany should be of interest to students of international arms control regimes. The former enters the twenty-first century empowered by its political, military, and economic weight, yet unable to respond to the global responsibilities entailed by this. In contrast, Germany has come to represent the less militaristic aspects of modern Western sensibilities, and has had to face the political problems of post-cold-war Europe more directly than other Western states.