David Thoreson Lykken (June 18, 1928 – September 15, 2006) was a behavioral geneticist and Professor Emeritus of

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

and

Psychiatry Psychiatry is the specialty (medicine), medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psych ...

at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. He is best known for his work on

twin studies Twin studies are studies conducted on identical or fraternal twins. They aim to reveal the importance of environmental and genetic influences for traits, phenotypes, and disorders. Twin research is considered a key tool in behavioral genetics ...

and

lie detection Lie detection is an assessment of a verbal statement with the goal to reveal a possible intentional deceit. Lie detection may refer to a cognitive process of detecting deception by evaluating message content as well as non-verbal cues. It also ma ...

Life

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, David Lykken was the youngest of seven children born to Henry G. Lykken and his wife Frances. He joined the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

at 17 and then attended

on the

G.I. Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

, earning his Bachelor of Arts (psychology, philosophy and mathematics) 1949, his master's degree in psychology and statistics in 1952, and his doctorate in clinical psychology and

neuropsychiatry Neuropsychiatry or Organic Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with psychiatry as it relates to neurology, in an effort to understand and attribute behavior to the interaction of neurobiology and social psychology factors. Within neurop ...

in 1955. He remained on Minnesota's permanent faculty for his entire career and taught as a visiting professor at

Deep Springs College Deep Springs College (known simply as Deep Springs or DS) is a private, selective two-year college in Deep Springs, California. With the number of undergraduates restricted to 26, the college is one of the smallest institutions of higher educat ...

. He was an emeritus professor from 1998 until his death. Lykken's wife, wildlife advocate Harriet (Betts) Lykken, died in 2005. Lykken was survived by three sons: attorney Matthew Lykken, physicist Joseph Lykken, and criminologist Jesse Lykken, as well as ten grandchildren.

Work

Lykken was also known for his work on

twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...

s, which he began in 1970. He was a principal investigator on the

Minnesota Twin Family Study The Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research (or MCTFR) is a series of behavioral genetic longitudinal studies of families with twin or adoptive offspring conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota. It seeks to identify and chara ...

, which examines heritability of certain psychological traits based on evidence found in identical and fraternal twins. He was a signatory of a collective statement in response to ''

The Bell Curve ''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life'' is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by ...

'' titled "

Mainstream Science on Intelligence "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" was a public statement issued by a group of researchers of topics associated with intelligence testing. It was published originally in ''The Wall Street Journal'' on December 13, 1994, as a response to criticis ...

", written by ''Intelligence'' editor

Linda Gottfredson Linda Susanne Gottfredson (née Howarth; born 1947) is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of I ...

and published in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' in 1994 and in ''Intelligence'' in 1997.Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994).

. ''

'', p A18. Lykken was the proponent of a set-point theory of

happiness Happiness, in the context of mental or emotional states, is positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Other forms include life satisfaction, well-being, subjective well-being, flourishing and eudaimonia. ...

, which argues that variation in sense of well-being is half determined by genetics and half determined by circumstances, and has been the subject of international media attention. His research findings suggest that variation in baseline levels of cheerfulness, contentment, and psychological satisfaction is largely a matter of heredity. He was also a proponent of introducing a scheme whereby every parent or prospective parent would have to obtain a license in order to have a legal baby, which would depend on the parents being

married Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between t ...

, financially independent, having no

criminal record A criminal record, police record, or colloquially RAP sheet (Record of Arrests and Prosecutions) is a record of a person's criminal history. The information included in a criminal record and the existence of a criminal record varies between coun ...

or debilitating illness, and not being assessed as high in psychopathy or sociopathy.Richard Lynn: ''Eugenics: a reassessment'' Praeger, Westport, Conn, 2001, Chapter 14, He was elected a Fellow of the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...

(Division 1), a Charter Fellow of the

American Psychological Society The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...

and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also a member of the

Behavior Genetics Association The Behavior Genetics Association (BGA) is a learned society established in 1970 and which promotes research into the connections between heredity and behavior, both human and animal. Its members support education and training in behavior genetic ...

and the International Society for Twin Research. Throughout his career, he consulted with government and industry. He frequently testified as an

expert witness An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...

polygraph A polygraph, often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector test, is a device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked ...

testing and

personality Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, m ...

assessment in the wake of Daubert standard requirements.

Funding

Some of Lykken's work was funded by the

Pioneer fund Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". The organization has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature. One of its first project ...

. An organization founded by Americans sympathetic to Nazi policy on eugenics which openly modelled it's support of eugenics on the Nazi

Lebensborn Lebensborn e.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure" and "hea ...

breeding program, and has often explicitly promoted

scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...

at numerous points in its history up to and including the present. Lykken defended his acceptance of money from the fund, writing "If you can find me some rich villains that want to contribute to my research—

Qaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by ''The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spelling ...

the Mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...

, whoever—the worse they are, the better I'll like it. I'm doing a social good by taking their money... Any money of theirs that I spend in a legitimate and honorable way, they can't spend in a dishonorable way".Patricia Ohman (7 March 1984). "Do they get what they Pay for?", '' Minneapolis City Pages'', p. 8. Nevertheless, he has praised the theories of eugenic academics associated with or on the board of the pioneer fund, such as

Richard Lynn Richard Lynn (born 20 February 1930) is a controversial English psychologist and author. He is a former professor emeritus of psychology at Ulster University, having had the title withdrawn by the university in 2018. He is former assistant edit ...

.Lykken, D. (2004). The New Eugenics. ''Contemporary Psychology, 49'', 670-672.

References

External links

For Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology: David Lykken.
Recognition from the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR), ''Psychophysiology'', 1999, ''Oxford University Press''.
Science, Lies, and Controversy: An Epitaph for the Lie Detector
( PDF)
How Can Educated People Continue to be Radical Environmentalists? A Talk by David Lykken
(1998); Introduction by John Brockman. ''

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed ...

' {{DEFAULTSORT:Lykken, David T. 1928 births 2006 deaths 20th-century American psychologists American geneticists Behavior geneticists American people of Norwegian descent Deep Springs College faculty Scientists from Minneapolis Fellows of the American Psychological Association 20th-century American zoologists

Life

Work

Funding

See also

References

External links