All-inclusive Randomness

New Scientist just posted a brief summary of research published in Science that suggests that two gene variants implicated in brain development evolved over the past several thousand years. Reading the article, I thought to myself, this is pretty cool because the conventional wisdom is that over the past couple thousand years, there have been few new gene variants in humans. Then I read:

What is more, not everyone possesses the new gene variants, potentially inflaming an already controversial debate about whether brains of different groups of people function differently.

“Whatever advantage these genes give, some groups have it and some don’t. This has to be the worst nightmare for people who believe strongly there are no differences in brain function between groups,” says anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, US.

No differences in brain function between groups? Are there folks who really believe that?

Flashback to January when Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard and known liberal-baiter, spoke on the underrepresentation of women in engineering and the sciences and suggested that there may be reasons for that underrepresentation - social and biological differences, specifically. Controversy galore.

As Summers’ tone was intended to provoke, the way he brought up the biological differences between men and women was heard by some of the listeners as suggesting that women do not have the same natural ability for science.

Research will (and in many cases does already) show that the majority if not all higher brain functions are dependent on both “nuture” and “nature” and we each start with a mixed bag of genes. The result is that we are all individuals and process information in different ways. The fierce emotion coming from those who “believe strongly there are no differences in brain function between groups” is energy that would be better spent creating a society in which:

(1) Diversity is accepted.
(2) Education teaches to the different in the ways students process information/learn/express themselves.
(3) Science education is improved.
(4) Popular science writing is improved.

In other politics of science news - Leon Kass has stepped down as chair of the President’s Committee on Bioethics.