BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA (08/05/85)
From: Bard Bloom <BARD@MIT-XX.ARPA> Someone writes: > I am told by Printer's Inc. that his new book has a title like "The > Cat Who Walked Through Walls: A Comedy of Manners" and is due out > this fall. Is it about Kitty Pride of the X-men? Someone else writes (presumably unrelated topic): > > I'll repeat a challenge I made there: I challenge anyone in this > newsgroup to show me a study whose results have clearly linked a > human behavior to a gene or group of genes, and whose results have > (a) been corroborated by followup studies and (b) shown not to be > fraudulent. "Being a father" is slightly correlated to one group of genes. 8-) Abnormal levels of agression are somewhat correlated to some genetic glitches, nXmY for some n,m with n+m>2. There's some debate on this, but if I interpret (a) as ``been corroborated by some [not necessarily all] followup studies'' I think it satisifes your challenge. (My prejudices are derived from a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology. Beware.) On the other hand, I don't know of any behaviors linked to normal combinations of genes. In my [limited] reading, it seemed likely that all genetically normal humans could express all behaviours, and the choice of behaviours is culturally determined. Lots of people, sociobiologists in particular, don't agree. A less flame-inspiring opinion is that genetically-determined behaviour differences among humans are very subtle, and masked by differences of experience. More of the difference could be caused by cultural responses to genetic conditions: strong or smart or deformed people are often treated differently than others, in most cultures. Why don't we move this debate to the Evolution mailing list? Lots of biologists and anthropologists and suchlike there. The Mathanthrope. -------