A new master's thesis on the history of junk DNA has been posted. It's from the Department of History at the University of Chicago.
My routine scan for articles on junk DNA turned up the abstract of an M.A. thesis on the history of junk DNA: Requiem for a Gene: The Problem of Junk DNA for the Molecular Paradigm. The supervisor is Professor Emily Kern in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. I've written to her to ask for a copy of the thesis and for permission to ask her, and her student, some questions about the thesis. No reply so far.
Here's the abstract of the thesis.
“Junk DNA” has been at the center of several high-profile scientific controversies over the past four decades, most recently in the disputes over the ENCODE Project. Despite its prominence in these debates, the concept has yet to be properly historicized. In this thesis, I seek to redress this oversight, inaugurating the study of junk DNA as a historical object and establishing the need for an earlier genesis for the concept than scholars have previously recognized. In search of a new origin story for junk, I chronicle developments in the recognition and characterization of noncoding DNA sequences, positioning them within existing historiographical narratives. Ultimately, I trace the origin of junk to 1958, when a series of unexpected findings in bacteria revealed the existence of significant stretches of DNA that did not encode protein. I show that the discovery of noncoding DNA sequences undermined molecular biologists’ vision of a gene as a line of one-dimensional code and, in turn, provoked the first major crisis in their nascent field. It is from this crisis, I argue, that the concept of junk DNA emerged. Moreover, I challenge the received narrative of junk DNA as an uncritical reification of the burgeoning molecular paradigm. By separating the history of junk DNA from its mythology, I demonstrate that the conceptualization of junk DNA reveals not the strength of molecular biological authority but its fragility.
It looks like it might be a history of noncoding DNA but I won't know for certain until I see the entire thesis. It's only available to students and staff at the University of Chicago.
Since other theses are available the auhor may have not reveived the Phd yet and it will become available later.
ReplyDeleteAsk Dr. Coyne if he could download it for you?
ReplyDeleteThe university where I used to teach has pdf's of its
ReplyDeletetheses/dissertations posted on-line, available for download.
All should do this.
"Moreover, I challenge the received narrative of junk DNA as an uncritical reification of the burgeoning molecular paradigm. By separating the history of junk DNA from its mythology, I demonstrate that the conceptualization of junk DNA reveals not the strength of molecular biological authority but its fragility."
ReplyDeleteThis reads like something out of sociology and psychology, rather than actual history.
"I challenge the received narrative of junk DNA". It sounds like he's aligned with the new 'received narrative'. And note, as Rumraket has, that his terminology of 'narratives' is that of postmodern "critical studies" which view science as just a bunch of arbitrary stories, with no connection to reality. And yet these same postmodernists happily fly on airplanes and use cell phones and computers. Their disconnect with reality doesn't bother them, because what they are saying is never supposed to be checked against reality.
ReplyDeleteWe don't know the content of the thesis but I think the abstract provides enough clues.
ReplyDeleteThe main question for me is how did we ever get to this position? What ever happened to critical thinking in universities? How is it possible that a student at a major university could get a graduate degree for work like that? It must mean that every faculty member on the thesis committee is incompetent.
If, as the abstract implies, he's managed to find a reference to the term (concept?) "junk DNA" as far back as 1958, that would be a significant extension. But that's a remarkably unclear abstract.
ReplyDelete