Over at the Genetic Literacy Project, editor Kenrick Vezina offers a particularly level-headed and constructive consideration of the debate over the fitness of the selfish-gene metaphor that my Aeon article “Die, Selfish Gene, Die,” raised.
Violence of the title aside, [Dobbs’s] point was not that we should go out and gather up all the copies of biologist Richard Dawkins’s seminal book and burn them. Instead, he argues that in light of the myriad biological phenomena that take pace outside the simple one-to-one gene-makes-trait paradigm, we might want to devise a new narrative. A new story that more easily accounts for the ability of grasshoppers to become locusts without altering their DNA, or for culture to act as a mechanism of cross-generational inheritance.
[snip]
While fully acknowledging the good it has done, Dobbs and several of the scientists he consults argue that the selfish-gene concept as broadly understood may now have become oversimplified and ossified; an obstacle to a richer understanding of evolutionary science.Ultimately Dobbs proposes some sort of “social genome” framework for further development.This pissed a lot of people off.
From here Vezina looks at the pushback from Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and Steven Pinker; notes the pivotal role The Selfish Gene played in his own love of science; and describes his reaction to Steven Pinker’s dismissals of my article. Then, moving toward his crux, he notes:
First, Dobbs isn’t guilty of horribly botching any facts, of sensationalism or of anything that would be considered a major crime in journalism. Second, everyone agrees that the selfish gene was a useful metaphor, so no one is trying to take anything away from Dawkins or his most famous idea. Third, most of the responses focus on the question or whether or not the gene is a necessary, immortal vessel of inheritance.
His final concern is with the perspectives offered earlier this week at Aeon by Robert Sapolsky, Karen James, Laura Hercher, and John Dupré. As he says, all four contributors make fascinating points, and
since none of the panelists actually seem to be wrong in any significant way here, it’s all about varying perspective. This is where the fourth response, from Hercher, hits home.
Then Vezina articulates something I liked about Hercher’s response, but which I didn’t quite identify even to myself.
She, as a genetic counselor, is in the unique position of needing to communicate both the power of genes and their non-deterministic nature to patients dealing with genetic screening results. Hers is perhaps the most humanizing voice in this debate. She sees the kerfuffle raised in the wake of the article, including the opposition of Pinker, Coyne, and Dawkins — and to a lesser extent, I suspect, by her peers on the Aeon panel — as distracting from the real concern raised by Dobbs’s piece. “There is a pressing need,” she writes, “to create a language in which to discuss the complex relationship between genes and traits, which is accessible to the non-scientist.
Which is indeed my main point, above all. And here, says Vezina,
is where Dobbs’s response and my own synch up perfectly. Science, he rightly notes, is built on stories. The facts are merely the beats the story must hit, the parameters it must be told within, but always science is trying to find the best story (read: hypothesis, idea, theory) to make sense of the world as we understand it.
Whether or not it’s time to dethrone the selfish gene as the reigning metaphor seems to me slightly irrelevant. It’s more important that we be willing to have the conversation. What the more vitriolic response to Dobbs’s piece showed — especially the dismissive and condescending response from some of the people we hold up as leaders in science communication — is that the real ossification is not in the ideas of the selfish gene but in the people who defend it as holy ground.
Go to Genetic Literacy Project for The selfish gene debate: The power of stories in science and society.
