From the classic question of whether the chicken or the egg came first to the recent black and blue or white and gold dress incident, there are many famous scientific debates that exist in today’s society.

In the world of science and health, one of the major debates is the argument of whether a person’s health is influenced by their nature or how they are nurtured. Thanks to University of Queensland researcher Dr. Beben Benyamin and other researchers from VU University of Amsterdam, the debate has essentially determined as a draw.

The research group reviewed the past 50 years worth of twin studies from around the world, which involved more than 14 million twin pairs. The results found that the average variation in human traits and diseases is 49% genetic and 51% impacted by environmental factors.

Although the impact of genetic and environmental factors was balanced for most of the traits, the research also showed that there could be significant differences in individual traits. Bipolar disorder, for example, was influenced 70% by genetics and 30% to environmental factors.

69% of the cases revealed that individual traits were the product of the cumulative effect of genetic differences.

“When visiting the nature versus nurture debate, there is overwhelming evidence that both genetic and environmental factors can influence traits and diseases,” Dr. Benyamin said. “The findings show that we need to look at ourselves outside of a view of nature versus nurture, and instead look at it as nature AND nurture.”

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