Last September in Chicago, Bruce Lahn a professor of human genetics from the University of Chicago, attended a packed lecture hall and produced reports of a new DNA analysis: He had found signs of recent evolution in the brains of some people, but not of others reports Antonio Regalado WJS
It was a very triumphant moment for the young scientist. He was up for tenure and his work was being featured in back-to-back articles in the country’s most prestigious science journal. Yet today, Dr. Lahn says he is moving away from the research. The reason why? “It’s getting too controversial,” he says.
Dr. Lahn has touched a nerve in science, race and intelligence.
Dr. Lahn told his audience that genetic changes over the past several thousand years may be linked to brain size and intelligence. He flashed maps that showed the changes had taken hold and spread widely in Europe, Asia and the Americas, but weren’t as common in sub-Saharan Africa.
Web sites and magazines promoting white “racialism” quickly seized on Dr. Lahn’s scientific snapshot. One magazine that blames black and Hispanic people for social ills hailed his discovery as “the moment the antiracists and egalitarians have dreaded.”
Several scientific groups have set out to disprove Dr. Lahn’s discoveries. His own university now says it is abandoning a patent application it filed to cover a DNA-based intelligence test that drew on his work reports Antonio Regalado Wall Street Journal
As scientific tools for probing genes become increasingly more powerful, research into human differences has definately exploded. Most of the time, scientists are searching for clues about the causes of disease. But some research is raising tensions as scientists such as Dr. Lahn venture into studies of genetic differences in behavior or intelligence.
The 37-year-old Dr. Lahn says his research papers, published in Science last September, offered no view on race and intelligence. He personally believes it is possible that some populations will have more advantageous intelligence genes than others. And he thinks that “society will have to grapple with some very difficult facts” as scientific data accumulate. Yet Dr. Lahn, who left China after participating in prodemocracy protests, says intellectual “police” in the U.S. make such questions difficult to pursue.
Scientists believe that a small group of anatomically modern humans struck out from Africa probably less than 100,000 years ago. After arriving on the Eurasian land mass, they continued to split up and eventually humans populated nearly every corner of the globe. One use of genetic research is to probe how each group evolved differently after becoming isolated from the others. Recently created genetic maps of people of African, Asian and European ancestry make that research easier.
Other research is starting to explain variations in human skin color and hair texture. But scientists tense up when it comes to doing the same sort of research on the brain. Sociologist Troy Duster, who studies the use of racial categories by geneticists, worries that scientists will interpret data in ways that fit their prejudices. He cites the sorry history of phrenology, a study of skull shapes popular in the 19th century, and other pseudoscientific techniques used to
categorize people as inferior. “Science doesn’t transcend the social milieu,” says Dr. Duster, of New York University.
The fellowship pays most of his research bills and has allowed him to pursue creative projects, often on attention-grabbing subjects. One study looked at how promiscuity among female chimpanzees, gorillas and humans affected the evolution of a gene that makes sperm sticky. “Bruce is in a hurry to be famous,” says Martin Kreitman, a Chicago colleague who is friendly with him.
Submitted by Antonio Regaldo WSJ