Sydney:
Public debate over paternity fraud has intensified in recent years, with the number of people undertaking genetic paternity tests rising dramatically.
However, Michael Gilding, a professor at Swinburne University, has challenged the claims that between 10 and 30 percent of men may be raising a child not genetically theirs, which he attributes to questionable research between 1970s and 1990s.
Despite their dubious origins, these figures have continually been touted as accurate, allegedly due to the commercial interests of the paternity testing industry and influence from fathers' rights activists.
"Since the advent of DNA testing in the late 1980s, a commercial paternity testing industry has emerged worldwide, mostly grounded in disputed paternity," said Gilding. However after analysing the most recent evidence from the UK, Gilding puts the rate at a much tamer figure, between one and two percent.
"The industry is the second most lucrative application of genetic identity testing after forensics, so there is a lot of incentive to raise fathers' doubts about the legitimacy of their children. It goes right to the heart of people's insecurities."
"I analysed data based on medical records, sex surveys, DNA testing lab and genetic studies. It clearly shows that claims about the rate of paternity uncertainty have been hugely overstated," he said. "Basically what this means is that chances are, your dad really is your dad."
While the study examined data from Britain, according to Gilding the results are a reflection of similar patterns in Europe, north America and Australia, said a Swinburne release.
Gilding also believes that evolutionary psychologists have given academic respectability to inflated estimates of paternal discrepancy, as it fits in with their belief that men are ?hard wired' to seek as many sexual partners as they can, and women to seek men of superior genetic quality.
"The fact is that social institutions such as marriage shape our behaviour, and we are not a just a bunch of opportunistic cheats, despite what some would have you believe."
These finding were published in Sociology, The Journal of the British Sociological Association.
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