Reports of Junk DNA's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

[salvorhardin]

A number of biologists were annoyed this week when the press release for the ENCODE Project’s latest findings proclaimed that 80% of the Human Genome actually has a function.

As T. Ryan Gregory of University of Guelph points out, most of the major media outlets ran with the press release and proclaimed the revolutionary discovery that Junk DNA isn’t Junk after all.
The Myth ... of the Myth of Junk DNA John Farrell John Farrell Contributor

The key point of misunderstanding, as both Gregory and Larry Moran at University of Toronto, point out, is that the ENCODE team, headed by Ewan Birney, decided at the outset of their announcement to define biological function in as liberal a way as possible. Here’s Gregory:

To get that 80% figure, you have to have a very loose definition of “function” indeed. Actual evidence (which itself may not convince many experts) suggests 20% is functional in the sense of, well, having a biological function. The 80% value refers only to “specific biological activity”.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2012/09/07/reports-of-junk-dnas-demise-have-been-greatly-exaggerated

The hype surrounding the ENCODE findings isn't as bad as NASA's "arsenic life," but it's pretty bad. If you want to know more about why ENCODE's findings don't support the hype, biochemist Larry Moran has been writing about it extensively. See: http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/search?q=ENCODE&max-results=20&by-date=true

[Speck Tater]

1. You have just witnessed a biologist shooting a climatologist in the foot

The natural reaction is going to be "Well, if scientists exaggerated about this then they must be exaggerating about global warming too."

At that, my fellow human beings, is another reason why our species is doomed to extinction. We are incapable of acting as a group to save ourselves from the consequences of our own mistakes.

[longship]

2. No, it is an example of why science should not be done by press release.

The real scientific dialog happens at science conferences and publication in journals. That's where the real dialog happens.

It seems that recently some are using new findings as publicity which is always a dodgy affair. Remember the "life on a Mars rock" and "Pons and Fleishman cold fusion"? Both were science by press release. Both failed, the latter, spectacularly.

You would think that people would learn that this isn't a good way to do it. One has to let these things percolate through the literature and let peer review sink its teeth in before any large changes are announced.

Oh well, at least we get a look into the sausage machine. That might be okay, too.