I like how the headlines explicitly states humans.
For yet another study in ... mice.
There are other options like dogs and pigs which are much better models for human biology, so if you really want to make a claim about subtle effects of human genetics you need to be as close to a human model as possible.
This is entirely ignoring the someone generous leap they make that one single gene mutation is responsible for an increased rate of heart disease. It also doesn’t touch on what the benefits for that gene were (to spread through the gene pool completely it must have some benefit that outweighs the cost)
Just for some background for those who weren't aware what is the OP all about. But to be fair, I think this article is actually well-written and doesn't contain sensationalized framing.
Further down in the study it says that removing the gene likely occurred because it made humans more resistant to malaria, and somehow it also enhanced the ability to run long distances.
Nah. Primate studies are too expensive, impractical and ethically difficult to justify. Think about the number of subjects you would need for statistical significance ...
Hey, could you please not break the site guidelines like this? Internet forums are certainly full of comments that don't necessarily know about things. If you know more, the thing to do is to share some of what you know so we all can learn—not degrade the quality of the site even further. If you'd take the spirit of this site more to heart, we'd appreciate it.
Fair enough. But this happens in every biologically relevant discussion.. Every time results are reported on mice, someone will criticize that it wasn't done on humans, as if biologists are complete ignoramuses and not intimately familiar with the strengths and limitations of their own science.
If an engineer presented a model of a bridge and someone jumped in to say "buh, but you didn't ACTUALLY BUILD the bridge so this is worthless", people would rightly tell him off, wouldn't they? Why is this low-effort criticism of biology allowed ?
It's allowed in the sense that people are allowed to be wrong and/or ignorant because that's what most of us are on most topics. We can't stop that any more than King Canute could stop the waves. The important question is, what's the best way to handle it if we want to have an internet forum that doesn't suck? Experience teaches that the answer is: the patient supply of correct information by people who do know about a topic.
I don't mean to minimize how infuriating it is to be surrounded by a flood of ignorance and wrongness. But that's the situation you're in if you're knowledgeable. Railing against it only makes things worse. Being able to contain the annoyance, so that it doesn't drive your communication, is a hard prereq for doing something good about it.
No, he was demonstrating to his fawning courtiers that he couldn't stop the tide. (Apologies in advance to the parent commenter @pvg if my irony / sarcasm detector is out of calibration.)
For yet another study in ... mice.
There are other options like dogs and pigs which are much better models for human biology, so if you really want to make a claim about subtle effects of human genetics you need to be as close to a human model as possible.
This is entirely ignoring the someone generous leap they make that one single gene mutation is responsible for an increased rate of heart disease. It also doesn’t touch on what the benefits for that gene were (to spread through the gene pool completely it must have some benefit that outweighs the cost)