Tuesday, August 30, 2011

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Blogs

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I have been meaning to write a blog post as a generic response to every not very smart genetics blogger who thinks he or she is smart because he or she wrote that there is no single gene for something. The only thing holding me back has been that I do not want to seem too angry because I am a nice guy in real life. You see, according to them, a behavior like having a fit of rage is so complex that it must be molded by thousands of genes, each only supplying the slightest tincture of that immense complexity. My response had been to say, “What about Brunner syndrome?” Brunner syndrome causes fits of rage and is the product of just one gene. They instantly become indignant (fit of rage?) because Brunner syndrome is rare. That is true, but it proves that one rare gene can drive a “complex behavior,” so why can’t a few somewhat uncommon genes cause the somewhat uncommon behavior of violent delinquency? Or three genes and crime:

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