tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post6556683283256864621..comments2024-02-29T03:34:23.190-05:00Comments on Who Were the Sea Peoples?: Gotta Have a Gene for This, a Gene for Thatgcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-22651657550895255772012-05-20T12:36:42.637-04:002012-05-20T12:36:42.637-04:00"This is a bigger problem for the popular pre..."This is a bigger problem for the popular press reporting on behavioral genetics than behavioral genetics itself."<br /><br />Oh, and since the authors list literally hundreds of academic studies with this problem...gcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-8100796066223043562012-05-20T01:20:12.805-04:002012-05-20T01:20:12.805-04:00"But that isn't the same thing as saying ..."But that isn't the same thing as saying you cannot argue that something is genetic, despite what the authors imply..."<br /><br />Wow, Ryan, not only did you not read the paper I am citing, you didn't even read the excerpts from the paper I explicitly included in this post:<br /><br /><br />"80% of the variation in height in a given population at a given time is attributable to genetic factors."<br /><br />So since the authors very explicitly argue that we can say 80% of the variation in height is genetic, why do you say that they "imply" that we can't argue that something is genetic?! Is it possible to misread an author's work more egregiously?<br /><br />Given that you could not even bear to superficially scan the quotes I gave from the paper in question, I will take your assertion that the problem the paper raises are only "really skin deep" as merely an assertion of your faith in the reductionist paradigm, despite all evidence of its repeated failure, since you obviously have not only not read the paper in question but did not even really read the quotes I excerpted from the paper.gcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-41857815587384105662012-05-20T01:18:03.661-04:002012-05-20T01:18:03.661-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.gcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-73160108510961492402012-05-20T00:04:22.515-04:002012-05-20T00:04:22.515-04:00This is a bigger problem for the popular press rep...This is a bigger problem for the popular press reporting on behavioral genetics than behavioral genetics itself. <br /><br />If you go back to the 1970s with Dawkins, there was little pretense that we would be able to identify "the" gene for something. But that isn't the same thing as saying you cannot argue that something is genetic, despite what the authors imply, if genetic means "nature" as opposed to "nurture."<br /><br />If you want to see a work that pays lip service to the whole "it's complicated" thing, see (your least favorite author) Matt Ridley's Nature via Nurture, which preserves every interesting result in behavioral genetics without running into any of the problems raised by the paper (which are really skin deep). Note also this was a popular book from a decade ago, so it's not exactly like serious people aren't aware of these things.Ryanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18341935691462262579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-15461742359873173282012-05-19T17:41:11.418-04:002012-05-19T17:41:11.418-04:00Exactly right! And as I'm sure you've not...Exactly right! And as I'm sure you've noted, a great portion of these behaviors and mindset flow from positivism, of which I'm not sure there was ever a more stereotypical demonstration of its approach (and futility) than the Human Genome Project. How many promises were made that we'd understand practically everything once the thing had been completely sequenced, and almost as soon as the deed was done, it was explained that it would take many more human sequences to figure out what everything did.<br /><br />Useful as sequence information is when you've already got an idea how things work, theoretical and hypothesis driven research are probably better suited to the figuring out. But I'm beginning to think that biology probably has more in common with meteorology than with chemistry -- the systems involved are simply so complex that they'll never really be reducible to the kind of attractive abstractions and equations you find in subjects like chemistry and physics. We'll always be kind of guessing. Maybe we'll get close with bacteria, but eukaryotes probably never.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12915297057336831151noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-52839974961166958572012-05-19T16:24:24.042-04:002012-05-19T16:24:24.042-04:00This is a pet peeve of mine, and what's worse,...This is a pet peeve of mine, and what's worse, most newspaper editors are absolutely terrible at reporting on genetics. Every hint of any correlation between genetics and behavior, however slight or inconclusive, is mangled into "Scientists find gene that determines whether men like blondes or brunettes".Watooshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16255104522543797858noreply@blogger.com