(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
COMMENT by Bjørn Vassness:
Ny Tid is indeed the newspaper of the party most hostile to knowledge in the Storting, but I still didn't think it was possible to use state support for as much stupidity and dishonesty as the newspaper's employee Korslund performs in his article «The wonderful new world of biology». But the article is perhaps a good picture of the science phobia and old-fashionedness that characterizes SV at the moment.
The article is a catalog of the worst prejudices and clichés against biomedicine. The title is taken from Huxley, subtitles such as "The Boys from Brazil", "Tabloid bio-ethics", "Disinformation to the public", "The gene for this and the gene for that" and "St. Darwin still popular", are actually illustrative of the author's level of knowledge and argumentation.
Korslund writes a lot about the media mostly presenting simplified and "misrepresented" "good news" from biomedical research – but gives no examples, apart from one. And this, to be sure, is wrong: He writes that "in the late 1960s, a possible connection between the XYY chromosome and criminal behavior was widely reported all over the world. This theory was already falsified at the beginning of the 1970s, but not many people know about this".
First, XYY is not one chromosome, but a combination of three, and not least: two copies of the "male" chromosome Y. There is usually only one of this in men, and the extra chromosome causes problems for some. It is expected that en out of a thousand men have this combination. What Korslund refers to is an article from 1965 that showed men with the XYY combination were overrepresented in the Scottish prison studied (seven out of 197 inmates, which is far more than one in a thousand). This has never been "falsified", as Korslund claims. What has been debated, however, is whether this overrepresentation is due to a higher level of aggression or other factors, such as lower intelligence (which XXY carriers often, but not always, have).
Korslund's only "witness of the truth" on how "uncritical" research journalism is, is another American book from 1987, in which the author "shows" that such journalism "is often uncritical". Again without giving examples. Otherwise, note the use of the word "shows", as in the case of natural science research journalism is a sign of uncriticalness!
Most of Korslund's "criticism" is aimed at something that no biologists or medics claim: That there should be one gene for everything possible: the "gay gene", the "obesity gene", the "breast cancer gene", etc. In connection with Icelandic deCode, he tells us something "new": "The problem is that most common diseases are multifactorial. A particular gene variant need not be more than one among many relevant factors behind a disease picture.' Something that everyone who works in medical genetics realized decades ago is freely used as proof of how foolish they are!
That one gene alone cannot explain, for example, schizophrenia, does not mean that gene research is useless, as Korslund seems to argue. It will be the same as saying that there is no point in learning anything about how the car engine works, because there can be so many things that go wrong anyway. Connections between gene variants and diseases – including those with lifestyle as a contributing cause – will be one of the most important tools for the medicine of the future. Korslund believes that genetic testing for serious diseases will be a "total waste", and thus reveals that he himself is a genetic determinist: "If you have the genes for a disease, there is still nothing to do". But it is precisely those who know that they are predisposed to a disease who benefit from this knowledge: there are few diseases for which it is not possible to reduce the risk. This is precisely what will become the medicine of the future: That you can prevent and fight diseases in a more targeted way, because you have knowledge of your own genetic disposition. But the fact that he has no knowledge of any of the most important aspects of today's biomedicine does not prevent Korslund from condemning it.
Korslund ends with a strange tribute to the totalitarian philosopher Plato, who he believes "maintains style", while the speed of circulation of scientific "truths" is getting faster and faster. With this, he shows both that he has not understood how scientific knowledge building takes place, as well as a naive belief in the "truths" of philosophy. The reason why Plato, with his elitist opinions about slaves, women and the "berm", among other things, still "holds the style", is that philosophy and the human sciences precisely do not have the mechanisms for self-criticism and renewal that the natural sciences have. No natural scientist claims that they manage the Truth, but the critical, collective knowledge building that has characterized the natural sciences since Galileo has nevertheless given us a lot of knowledge we can trust. Even Korslund probably flies now and then. And he is certainly not going to refuse help from biomedicine on the day he needs it.
That the article is ignorant is as far as expected from Ny Tid. More unexpected is the dishonesty: Korslund tries to cast doubt on the thoroughness of my book by writing that "the book has neither a bibliography nor an index" – and "forgets" to mention that it has full source references, which is probably the most important thing. There is not much point in a bibliography in a field where there are almost no books (this is the first in Norwegian and one of the first in the world). At least not in a popular science book, and perhaps this is what Korslund means when when he writes it is "somewhat vulgar" – again without giving a single example. It's so much easier to just spread characteristics.
Bjørn Vassnes, author of The Renewable Human – stem cells and the search for eternal life.
