The hunt for the Hat Gene

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

11 pointschrismealy2 comments

For all the praise that the NY Times gets, Nicholas Wade is the guy who wrote the other article on genes that was recently on the front page of HN.

Is it really excusable for the nation's paper of record to have its main reporter on genomics research be one who carries such a stunning misapprehension of how genes work?

Thinking of genes (and someone's genome) as having a 1:1 mapping with disease, behaviors, etc., is the sort of pseudoscience that is behind attempts to shut down companies like 23andme and force people to go through doctors and genetic counselors to even see information about their own DNA.

In the article to which you refer (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/health/research/13genome.h...) Wade suggests that diseases are partly caused by "a host of rare genetic variants" and that "with most diseases, the findings [about disease-causing mutations] have explained only a small part of the risk of getting the disease." Is something awry in Liberman's critique or is Wade just changing his mind arbitrarily?

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