A good teacher can teach any subject as long as they have high-quality resources. TIES provides middle school and elementary teachers the tools they need to effectively teach evolution and answer its critics based on new Next Generation Science Standards.
The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science began as a program of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science and it's now part of the Center for Inquiry.
TIES recently posted a video with an interesting title on their YouTube channel: "Beyond DNA: How Epigenetics is Transforming our Understanding of Evolution." This is a presentation by Ben Oldroyd who wrote a book titled "Beyond DNA."
Watch the video and decide for yourself whether you think this is what teachers of evolutionary biology should be telling their students. What part of understanding evolution do you think needs to be transformed by epigenetics?
9 comments :
The "plasticity first evolution" sounds just like Conrad Waddington's genetic assimilation idea, which is at least 60 years old at this point. The propensity to have a plastic response is likely itself the product of selection, so it's unclear how this transforms our view of evolution. And, gosh, we've known about maternal effects for 50 years; Sewall Wright had a chapter on it in his 4-volume set on population genetics from '84. But the best take-down of a dominant role for epigenetics in evolution is by Charlesworth et al. (2017): https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.2864.
Honestly, so many biologists are saying these sorts of things now that it feels like I'm trapped in an eternal game of whack-a-mole.
we've known about maternal effects for 50 years Longer than that, there was empirical work on them in animal breeding going on in the 1950s, so 70 years ago.
From the transcript, starting at 19:00
"... if you think about it if you have a violent environmental change if the population can't respond phenotypically first then it's not going to be there for natural selection to work on it'll go extinct so I think this is um a a really good way of um uh just slightly tweaking our understanding of evolution um to put more emphasis on phenotypic change before genetic change okay well that's the main message of the book ..."
That's not going to sell the book!
But why is TIES promoting this nonsense?
It's a bad sign if left-handed DNA shows up before the video even really starts.
I often agree with the thoughts here, but in this case I don't really understand the backlash. Sure, the ideas are not necessarily new, but which part of this video is actual nonsense? It's a promotional video for a popular science book, and nothing sounds obviously wrong to me. Just not new.
That is starts with a Dawkins group reason and science is the problem. it means reason, and science, is the exclusive domaine of those who agree with evolutionary biology. So they expand the concept to a few conclusions folks here don't like. Are folks here against reason and science? Well if you opposeb this group you must be. AHA.folied in thier trap.
@Anonymous The idea that epigenetics has anything significant to do with evolution is nonsense. The claim that it is "transforming our understanding of evolution" is pure nonsense.
What's so disappointing is that TIES is supposed to be helping teachers "to effectively teach evolution" but posting a video like this undermines that goal.
Oh yes, I see now that ('transforming...') is part of the book title. I agree that all the fuss about epigenetics is overblown. The video itself didn't seem too bad to me, and he seemed relatively on top of things from what I could tell. PS I have bought a copy of your book, hopefully I can get to it soon.
Post a Comment