Bashing Mr. Gay Gene
Sep. 27th, 2004 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beandelphikiI was reading the latest issue of Scientific American and came across Carl Zimmer's review of Dean "I FOUND THE [blank] GENE!" Hamer's book, The God Gene. I had never noticed his reviews before, but after reading this, I'll be paying more attention.
He starts off by giving Hamer a bit of a smack for the misleading title, then continues on to describe how Hamer came to be offering the idea that more spiritual people have a "god gene" and the basic premise behind Hamer's assertion that a version of a gene called VMAT2 is responsible for "self-transcendence," a personality trait characterized by "feeling connected to the world" and "a willingness to accept things that cannot be objectively demonstrated."
He goes on to say this:
Is the God gene real? The only evidence we have to go on at the moment is what Hamer presents in his book. He and his colleagues are still preparing to submit their results to a scientific journal. It would be nice to know whether these results can withstand the rigors of peer review. It would be nicer still to know whether any other scientists can replicate them. The field of behavioral genetics is littered with failed links between particular genes and personality traits. These alleged associations at first seemed very strong. But as other researchers tried to replicate them, they faded away into statistical noise. In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in the region of the X chromosome. The report brought huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer.
ZING!
To be fair, it should be pointed out that Hamer offers a lot of details about his study in The God Gene, along with many caveats about how hard it is to establish an association between genes and behavior. But given the fate of Hamer's so-called gay gene, it is strange to see him so impatient to trumpet the discovery of his god gene.
ZING!
After bashing the sloppiness of the rest of Hamer's book, Zimmer concludes:
The God Gene might have been a fascinating, enlightening book if Hamer had written it 10 years from now - after his link between VMAT2 and self-transcendence had been confirmed by others and after he had seriously tested its importance to our species. Instead the book we have today would be better titled A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study.
ZING!
*love*
The official reviews of this book on Amazon aren't entirely favourable, either.
He starts off by giving Hamer a bit of a smack for the misleading title, then continues on to describe how Hamer came to be offering the idea that more spiritual people have a "god gene" and the basic premise behind Hamer's assertion that a version of a gene called VMAT2 is responsible for "self-transcendence," a personality trait characterized by "feeling connected to the world" and "a willingness to accept things that cannot be objectively demonstrated."
He goes on to say this:
Is the God gene real? The only evidence we have to go on at the moment is what Hamer presents in his book. He and his colleagues are still preparing to submit their results to a scientific journal. It would be nice to know whether these results can withstand the rigors of peer review. It would be nicer still to know whether any other scientists can replicate them. The field of behavioral genetics is littered with failed links between particular genes and personality traits. These alleged associations at first seemed very strong. But as other researchers tried to replicate them, they faded away into statistical noise. In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in the region of the X chromosome. The report brought huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer.
ZING!
To be fair, it should be pointed out that Hamer offers a lot of details about his study in The God Gene, along with many caveats about how hard it is to establish an association between genes and behavior. But given the fate of Hamer's so-called gay gene, it is strange to see him so impatient to trumpet the discovery of his god gene.
ZING!
After bashing the sloppiness of the rest of Hamer's book, Zimmer concludes:
The God Gene might have been a fascinating, enlightening book if Hamer had written it 10 years from now - after his link between VMAT2 and self-transcendence had been confirmed by others and after he had seriously tested its importance to our species. Instead the book we have today would be better titled A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study.
ZING!
*love*
The official reviews of this book on Amazon aren't entirely favourable, either.
