Barring unforseen circumstances, this will be the last post I put up about Siddhartha Mukherjee’s misleading article about epigenetics and The New Yorker (see my posts on it here and here).
First, on the website of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, Mukherjee has written a rebuttal, which is not really directed at the posts on this site but to a bunch of emails sent to the New Yorker that criticized his piece. As far as I know, those critical emails were sent directly to the magazine rather than the author, and then the NYer passed them on to Mukherjee. He then wrote a big email response and sent it to the critics (I was not among them, though I eventually saw his response). That email is what Scripps published, so you should consider his rebuttal as a response to the criticisms sent to the New Yorker and not to what I posted.
One example of this difference: in point 8 of his rebuttal, Mukherjee asserts that he did indeed criticize the “epigenetic-Lamarckian” process as being unlikely to cause adaptive evolution. Yes, that’s true—and I said in my original post that I agreed with him, but thought he could have made this point a bit more strongly in the New Yorker piece. Perhaps some other critics faulted him in the emails sent to the New Yorker. So, for the record, let me say this: all of us, including Mukherjee, agree on the gist of what follows (though I don’t know if he’d sign off on this wording):
There is absolutely no evidence for any Lamarckian form of evolution based on “epigenetic” markers on the DNA produced by the environment. Further speculations about this—and claims that it shows that the modern theory of evolution is wrong—are misguided and should be ignored pending some real evidence.
Although I don’t think Mukherjee’s response on the Scripps site is very convincing, nor rebuts the faults of the New Yorker piece enumerated by the various scientists on my site (see especially Ptashne and Greally’s criticisms, and the letters by Madespacher and Henikoff), I’m not going to deal with this further. I will let readers and other scientists judge the entire exchange. The only future posts I will put up about this matter will be notices and comments on any press coverage (see below).
But I do fault the New Yorker for failing to print any criticisms of Mukherjee’s piece, for that piece will then stand unsullied, forever, in its pages. Only those who have read my posts or the press coverage to come (see below) will know of the problem. The New Yorker really needs to look seriously at how it vets its science pieces, and, as I noted before, its entire attitude towards science. But their arrogance suggests that they won’t do this.
Finally, there will be several press pieces about the controversy, as I (and several others, surely including Mukherjee) have talked to reporters. The first press piece, “Right but wrong” (subtitle: “The field of epigenetics is poorly understood by non-scientists. Did a recent New Yorker magazine article help matters?”), was published yesterday by Aleszu Bajak in Undark, an online organ of MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Program. There you can read Mukherjee’s “explanation” of why his New Yorker piece wasn’t a thorough (and I’d add “accurate”) summary of the field. (Hint: not enough space!)
One plaint about the Undark piece (and about the Vox piece that I just saw and will dissect tomorrow): you cannot excuse inaccuracies or misleading information on the grounds that you didn’t have enough space to tell the truth. From Bajak’s conclusions:
At the same time, it’s worth asking if such a thing [providing “an honest explanation of the nuances of gene regulation”] can be done at all, by anyone, in a popular magazine — the goal of which, in any case, is not to mimic a scientific journal, but to communicate to the general public the alluring frontiers of science — in this case, epigenetics (however that might be defined). It’s possible that Mukherjee fell short, but his critics would do well to consider the exceedingly difficult challenge he and his editors sought to undertake.
Sorry, but I’m not sympathatic to the problems of journalists who decide to tell a distorted story because they are either too lazy or don’t have enough space to tell the right story.
In fact, Mukherjee could have told the true story of gene regulation, rather than the cute but incorrect story, in the same amount of space that he had. But of course if he described the real state of the field, he wouldn’t have a novel story to tell.
So listen up, journalists: it’s better to tell the truth than mislead readers with fine words and a false story. Not all scientific explanations are equal, and the first job of a science journalist is to get the facts right. After that you can dress it up with fine words.
