Wednesday, February 8, 2017

A brief example of when genetic determinism gets picked up by feel-good clickbait websites. Thanks, Facebook. 

The Wanderlust Gene: Why Some People are Born to Travel

It gets a bit into the fallacies of genetic categorization we've been reading about, though keeping it more on the population level: 

'The gene is not all too common; in fact, it’s only possessed by about 20 percent of the population. Having said that, there is a much higher prevalence of this gene in regions of the globe where travel has been encouraged in its past. Assuming that all forms of human life originated in Africa, Chaunsheng Chen, who conducted a study in 1999, supported the premise that “the DRD4-7r form of the gene [is] more likely to occur in modern day societies where people migrated longer differences from where we first originated in Africa many thousands of years ago.”'

And watch out. If you like to travel you might also be a crazy caveman:

'"While this mutant gene DRD4-7r might carry a ton of positive, exploratory, character traits with it – it also might be linked with general Neanderthalic behavior. According to LoPorto, while carriers of this genetic variant might be “incredibly resourceful, pioneering, creative,” and more predisposed for wanderlust, they also might be “utterly out of control.”'

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