

The hunt for the Hat Gene  - chrismealy
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1896

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grandalf
For all the praise that the NY Times gets, Nicholas Wade is the guy who wrote
the other article on genes that was recently on the front page of HN.

Is it really excusable for the nation's paper of record to have its main
reporter on genomics research be one who carries such a stunning
misapprehension of how genes work?

Thinking of genes (and someone's genome) as having a 1:1 mapping with disease,
behaviors, etc., is the sort of pseudoscience that is behind attempts to shut
down companies like 23andme and force people to go through doctors and genetic
counselors to even see information about their own DNA.

~~~
pigbucket
In the article to which you refer
([http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/health/research/13genome.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/health/research/13genome.html?hp))
Wade suggests that diseases are partly caused by "a host of rare genetic
variants" and that "with most diseases, the findings [about disease-causing
mutations] have explained only a small part of the risk of getting the
disease." Is something awry in Liberman's critique or is Wade just changing
his mind arbitrarily?

