{"id":14007,"date":"2014-11-18T07:59:48","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T13:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=14007"},"modified":"2014-11-18T07:59:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T13:59:48","slug":"ive-always-said-its-an-aggressive-recessive-gene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/18\/ive-always-said-its-an-aggressive-recessive-gene\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ve Always Said It&#8217;s An Aggressive Recessive Gene"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My father had brown eyes.  He had three blonde, blue-eyed boys between hazel-eyed and blue-eyed wives.  Ergo, I was pretty sure the &#8220;recessive&#8221; blue eyed gene was awfully aggressive.  At least in my line.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s in it&#8217;s nature, according to this scientific paper, or at least the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2008\/01\/080130170343.htm\" target=\"_blank\">news blurb on it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But, wait!  This would fly in the face of high school presentation of Mendelian genetics, where both parents must have a recessive gene to pass it on to their children.  THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED.<\/p>\n<p>Which proves something about science and the natural world aside from what the news report about a study indicates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All SCIENCE THAT IS SETTLED is subject to review and revision when more information becomes available.<\/li>\n<li>The understanding most of us have from science stems from extremely watered down summary materials which might be decades out of date.<\/li>\n<li>The material from which most of us draw information is second-hand information about whatever we&#8217;re being told, so it&#8217;s akin to hearsay or science gossip instead of actual science we could reproduce in our basement labs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Honestly, I&#8217;m not sure what practical application this research has, and it&#8217;s not like it&#8217;s <em>reproducible<\/em>.  I&#8217;m more a fan of engineering these days, where some knowledge is put to practical benefit.  Unfortunately, it seems like most speculative science &#8212; at least what&#8217;s covered in newspapers and on Twitter&#8211; is put to <em>social<\/em> engineering uses.  Which is not really engineering at all.<\/p>\n<p>The story does give one room for a little meta-reflection of the nature of science, but most people will just see the story, post it on their Facebook walls or mention it to blue-eyed people, and go on.  Or maybe, being a blogger, I&#8217;m just prone to meta-reflection to make a word count and to keep the Google beast happy so I can keep my ten dollars a year advertising revenue flowing.<\/p>\n<p>(Link via Trey&#8217;s Facebook page.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My father had brown eyes. He had three blonde, blue-eyed boys between hazel-eyed and blue-eyed wives. Ergo, I was pretty sure the &#8220;recessive&#8221; blue eyed gene was awfully aggressive. At least in my line. It&#8217;s in it&#8217;s nature, according to this scientific paper, or at least the news blurb on it: New research shows that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14010,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14007\/revisions\/14010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}