Randomized exposure to high school biology curriculum shows that moving curriculum beyond simple Mendelian treatments of genetics in ways that highlight the true patterns of human variation (e.g. Lewontin's famous results) & the multi-factorial basis of complex traits can reduce genetic essentialism - ThreadSky

stairwaytokevin.bsky.social • 448 days ago

Randomized exposure to high school biology curriculum shows that moving curriculum beyond simple Mendelian treatments of genetics in ways that highlight the true patterns of human variation (e.g. Lewontin's famous results) & the multi-factorial basis of complex traits can reduce genetic essentialism

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spicybotrytis.bsky.social•448 days ago

So if you teach the full details rather than than a single punnet square the students learned more? Shocker (damn need gifs here)

Can’t wait till UCD redoes BIS101 in completely the opposite direction.

stairwaytokevin.bsky.social•448 days ago

You laugh, but I’m pretty sure my college intro genetics class never really got to GxE or even GWAS/QTL! We hit the wall at penetrance and pleiotropy, and linkage mapping if I remember right

spicybotrytis.bsky.social•448 days ago

I don’t laugh, it just reminds me of discussions with geneticists from other model systems about how silly it was that I taught GxE, polygenic, epistasis, etc. Few intro genetics instructors have comfort with those topics and argue they should not be taught.

stairwaytokevin.bsky.social•448 days ago

C. elegans?? I thought drosophila people were on board, or is that mostly Trudy Mackay? Either way I’m surprised

spicybotrytis.bsky.social•448 days ago

Drososphila is two models that don’t communicate, one (the larger) is pure molecular mechanism. The second and smaller is the eco/evo/popgen. Arabidopsis is going a similar route.

danhicks.bsky.social•448 days ago

Tagging #philsci

stairwaytokevin.bsky.social•448 days ago

Importantly the effect seems to remain whether Mendel is taught before, or after, the more complex and nuanced material.

jwlockhart.bsky.social•448 days ago

Love that team's work

stairwaytokevin.bsky.social•448 days ago

They're great! I've enjoyed my occasional collaboration with them

avirr.bsky.social•440 days ago

Yeah, my dark-brown-eyed daughter of one parent with blue eyes and one with hazel eyes had some Things To Say in Biology class.

vscooper.micropopbio.org•448 days ago

Wonderful! I predicted this is in a blog post from a long while ago and make this point at the start of each academic year. Let’s keep building on this

https://micropopbio.org/blog/2018-07-08-firstPost

stairwaytokevin.bsky.social•448 days ago

Awesome! Looks like we also have similar grievances re; pan-adaptationism https://kevinabird.github.io/2020/04/27/Evolutionary-Psychology-Needs-To-Earn-Its-Name.html

vscooper.micropopbio.org•448 days ago

Wow, yes, amen!

kampourakisk.bsky.social•448 days ago

Indeed! And here is a complementary theoretical argument:

https://www.routledge.com/How-we-Get-Mendel-Wrong-and-Why-it-Matters-Challenging-the-narrative-of/Kampourakis/p/book/9781032456904#

gregpriest.bsky.social•447 days ago

🌱🐋

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