Bettawrekonize

If memory serves me correctly, DNA is found in the nucleus (RNA is a copy of DNA with slight differences in the proteins). Perhaps there is something outside the nucleus that helps determine our characteristics (I seen on forensic science that there is another way people can identify blood. They couldn’t get the DNA of a person; however, I believe they took information from the mitochondria). I haven’t studies biology in a long time, so I don’t remember very much. Perhaps someone can refresh my memory.

pz

Among any group of distinguished, famous people, one will find screwballs and racists. The Pioneer Fund is just very good at fishing them out.

Let's also note that the Nobelist was Shockley, who won his prize for physics and then used the prestige to advance ill-informed nonsense about races. Even in that article you cite, in which they are trying to defend themselves from accusations of racism, they quote Shockley's remark that "As to the Nazi reference, I think everyone agrees that their methods were profoundly inhumane"...completely oblivious to the fact that he is arguing in favor of the goals of the Nazis.

These guys fund Lynn and Rushton, and a mob of eugenicists, racists, and crackpots. They are not good people -- they are ideologues trying to justify old fashioned bigotry with new fangled excuses.

lpetrich

There need not be. Consider breeds of dogs, with their great variability. Overall body size, muzzle length, head width, ear stiffness, leg length, fur color, fur length, fur curliness, temperament ...

Yet to within body-size limitations, they can all interbreed. And as far as can be determined, all these features are controlled by only a few genes for each one.

Furthermore, our species has a great ability to learn. Thus, although there is some evidence for a "language instinct" for learning and using spoken natural language, the languages themselves have very little sound-meaning correspondence, and their grammatical features vary widely. Even imitative words show lots of variation.

For example, sentences having subjects, verbs, and objects are essentially universal, though I'm not sure whether that is instinct or the most straightforward way to describe our world.

However, their order is variable, with the favorite orders being

Subject-Verb-Object
Subject-Object-Verb

And users of one of these orders are not known for griping about how hard it is to use that order.

Also, the amount of inflection that languages have is very variable; English speakers often consider inflection-heavy languages like Latin difficult, while a native speaker of inflection-heavy Lithuanian once wondered how English speakers could understand each other, since English has no noun cases.

lpetrich

RNA is a close chemical relative of DNA; DNA and RNA can form a combined double helix in the fashion of two complementary DNA strands.

And yes, there is DNA outside of our cell nuclei; it resides in the mitochondria, small structures which help extract energy from food molecules. However, mitochondria have very tiny genomes.

And let us not forget about environment as a sort of characteristics.

Doubting Didymus

Is your contention that these genes are not currently known, that there are no genes so directly "responsible" for nose shape, or that genes that influence nose shape do not exist?

In other words, I am interested to know what accounts for the difference between a wide nose and a long thin one, remembering that this factor is heritable.

ps418

Yes. Let me point out that I could not care less about the Pioneer Fund, nor have any interest whatever in defending anyone, much less Shockley, Lynn, or Rushton. My point is simply that recieving funds from the PF is not in itself a reason to believe or disbelieve the research it funded, a point I think we all agree upon.


By the same token, if you look back into the 19th and early 20th century writers on biological evolution, you can find plenty of racist statements being made by scientists we all know, love and respect as great scientists. Yet no one (well, almost no one) will dismiss the rest of their work, or the work of their colleagues, for this reason. Even Darwin, who was ahead of his time in matters of racial rights, held opinions as racist as anything written today by Rushton or Lynn:


Charles Darwin: Life and Letters, I, letter to W. Graham, July 3, 1881, p. 316; cited in Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (London, Chatto and Windus, 1959), p. 343.

And Thomas Huxley wrote:

Thomas Huxley: Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (New York, Appleton, 1871), p. 20.

pz

That is correct, none have been identified. That is also correct. There aren't going to be any genes that any credible scientist will be able to label as "the nose shape gene(s)". No, that one's wrong. There will be lots and lots of genes that influence nose shape. Those same genes will also influence (for instance, hypothetically) adhesive interactions in the gastrula, rates of migration of chondrogenic precursors, proximo-distal branching patterns in peripheral nerves, and thickness of the connective tissue capsule of the pancreas. Differences in nose shape will also be a consequence of extremely subtle differences in the regulatory regions of some genes, and will develop as a result of epigenetic interactions that are rather sensitive to the environment (and also generate the environment).

pz

Actually, no, I happen to disagree. The minds behind the Pioneer Fund actively seek out and bankroll ideologically-driven research that supports their predetermined beliefs. I am very suspicious of research funded by them for the same reason that I am suspicious of research into the causes of lung cancer funded by Phillip-Morris.

Doubting Didymus

How very interesting. So, may nose shape change as a consequence of mutations in the parts of these genes that influence other features? Or is that too much of an extrapolation?

pz

I'm not sure what you mean by "the parts of these genes", since it's not as if the gene has a discrete Part A that influences Organ A, and a Part B that influences only Organ B, but yes, of course. Do you think that genes could have nothing at all to do with morphology, or something?