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Comment by blowski | Hacker News Reader

> “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda.

I don't know whether that quote is taken out of context, or is otherwise not representative of the people involved in this project, but that sentence makes me question the validity of the science involved.

Clearly there are lots of possible explanations. Perhaps the genes were present anyway, and would have been passed on regardless of the parents' traumatic experiences. Perhaps being raised by parents who have been through a traumatic experience affected the children.

Saying there is no other possible explanation doesn't sound very scientific.

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Especially since they don't mention controlling for social influence. Nor do they mention sampling the descendants of other people exposed to the war who were not necessarily victims. Not to mention that their sample size was 32.

>Not to mention that their sample size was 32.

No offense (really!), but this kind of criticism makes me suspect that you don't know much about research and statistics.

Statistical power matters, not the sample size, per se. If you want to criticize the size of n, you have to tell us what makes you think they have insufficient statistical power (which will invariably involve estimating an effect size for us).

Your previous points are well-taken, though.

If you have very solid controls in place then a sample size of 32 is much more substantial IMHO than if you're dealing with real-world environmental factors where you have very little control.

Leaving aside the difficulty of finding living Holocaust survivors in 2015.

This jumped out at me as well - absolute statements are usually a sign of bad science or bad reporting.

Lamarck must be thrilled. ;)

What matters more to me is that, as far as we know, there is no known link between genes and psychology. That is, which genes and HOW they affect our psychology.

I personally believe (strongly) that exposure to parent's stories and trauma (which I believe no one in their right mind would consider that it stoped at the gates of Auchwitz) influenced children growing up around Holocaust victims.

There are definitely known links between psychology and genes; we know the epigenetics behind why if mothers are stressed when pregnant, their children will be more stressed for their entire lives. Far too many people still have the Jurassic Park view of DNA and believe in Central Dogma—but it has become clear that environment and all sorts of post-conception events effect genetics. Dr. Sapolsky, in this lecture series, explains, for just one example, how and why Lamarckian evolution sometimes occurs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C...

"The dickinson of morality and the Way"?

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