What lies beneath - hidden variables in the criticism of claims about human nature

Sociobiologists and more recently evolutionary biologists have sometimes been told that it is "evil" to pursue research on the biological foundations of human behavior. This is perplexing especially for evolutionary psychologists, who regard their discipline as deliberately avoiding the traps of sociobiology, because it concentrates on the makeup of the human mind, not on genes. They, like sociobiologists, behavioral ecologists, Darwinian anthropologists, and other related researchers see themselves as engaged in a detached quest for knowledge and truth. I will discuss some reasons for the continuing criticism of these sciences: the critics' blurring of boundaries between facts and values, and science and morality, as well as their implicit model of humans as responsible social agents.