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Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Press release from the Francis Crick Institute misrepresents junk DNA

Press releases have become a serious problem. I'm frequently upset whenever I read a press release covering a field I'm familiar with. They rarely do a good job of explaining what's actually in the paper and putting it into the proper context. The people who write press releases are more concerned with sensationalizing the work than they are with teaching the general public about how science works. They often do this with the blessing and participation of the scientists who did the work.

Let me illustrate the problem using a recent examples from the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK [Non-coding DNA changes the genitals you're born with]. The press release covers a recent Science paper from the Lovell-Badge lab ....