Letters to the Editor
Rachael F.
Published Letters: 157 Editor's Choice: 17
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@unc70
[Read the article: Anorexia: It's not just for teens]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Erm. I actually laughed out loud.
Careful who you're telling to "read some real research" before commenting further. I'm a PhD behavioral geneticist and neuroscientist studying the genetic basis for behaviors such as over (and under-) eating, alcoholism, and drug abuse. Odds are, there's no one here with better qualifications to judge the "real" data.
And the "real" data say this: while there is a significant genetic component for predisposition to anorexia and obesity (and every other behavioral disorder anyone's bothered to study), the fact remains that you can't become obese if you don't eat more calories than you utilize over a very long period of time. There aren't any data anyone takes seriously that contradict this basic fact of biology.
It's really very simple. What it isn't, is easy. It's HARD to not eat. Because evolution has sculpted us into efficient, food-loving machines. Food was scarce for most of human history, and so it was to our reproductive advantage to eat as much as we could when we found food, and to store the extra, unusued calories as fat. People didn't get very fat because life was hard. Exercise wasn't something you did at the gym; it was something you did to survive. Food was scarce, so you'd use that extra up in the next cold snap.
So it's very hard, for very good reasons, to force oneself not to eat. But ultimately it IS about behavior.
It's not easy to quit smoking or drinking, either. It's unbelievably difficult for most people. But you can't "blame" genetic factors (or some bizarre viral explanation) for something that (in most people) can be controlled through diet and exercise.
(I say "in most people" because there are a few very rare genetic disorders that result in energy metabolism that's so altered that it's nearly impossible to change one's behavior enough to not be obese. See the "obese" mutant rat, the leptin mutant, for an example. But we've looked; almost no obese humans turn out to be leptin mutants. Probably because, over evolutionary time, this mutation is very disadvantageous and gets selected to a low frequency in the population. The mouse can be bred in the lab, but under real selective conditions, it'd be reduced to background levels very quickly.)
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On autism
[Read the article: Roundup: Autism in girls, "manny" mania and more]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Geneticists have a tendency to think of autism as "extreme scientist brain". Largely because the incidence of autistic spectrum disorders among the kids of very highly educated people in the "hard" sciences (physics, math, biology, chemistry) is much higher than in the general population. We're not sure why, yet, but it's intriging. Even more interesting is that it's even higher if BOTH parents are science-brained.
Part of it could be the known paternal age effect in autism - older fathers have more autistic children - and since people that are getting highly educated in the sciences tend to reproduce later, that could contribute to the effect. Doesn't seem to account for all of it, though.
Nevertheless, it's not our imagination - autism does seem to be somewhat an extension of the stereotyped tendency to be very good at math and/or science and deficient in social skills.
As for "extreme male brain"? Well, there are clear differences between the average male brain and the average female brain, but the data saying that boys/men are innately better at math and science than girls/women just aren't there. The variance is bigger than the difference between the averages - meaning that the two groups overlap so much that there's no significant difference. Plus, we still can't completely remove socialization from the calculations, no matter how hard we try.
What I do know is that the stereotypical male brain seems to have more in common with the stereotypical autistic brain than does the stereotypical female brain. And also that this was unfortunate and somewhat irresponsible phrasing. It sounds to me like he chose the phrasing as an attempt to "dumb down" the results and make an easy soundbite. We scientists as a whole need more practice communicating their science to the non-science world, starting with not assuming the audience is stupid.
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Erm
[Read the article: What's that giant suckling sound?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, actually, breasts DO also serve to attract males. Most other mammals don't have permanently enlarged mammary tissue, and certainly NO other primate does. But human women do - because breasts are sexually attractive to men, and so the more breastage a woman has (as a general rule), the more sex she has, and the more offspring she can then produce. In an evolutionary sense, anyway.
Why it evolved that way, I dunno. But it's clear, scientifically, that the human female breast is bifunctional: food and sex, both. No entitlement issues required to see it.