Thursday, April 14, 2005
Motives, Agendas, and Science
This starts out as a really interesting story about studying human development.
The five-year Genographic Project, being announced Wednesday, will use sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA to figure out the patterns in which people moved from one part of the world to another. It is sponsored by the National Geographic Society and IBM.Cool, enough. I am not sure I have as much confidence that genetic data can do what they are proposing as they do, but it is a worthy effort nonetheless. But then you start to smell a rat.
The project is also inviting participation from the general public, for a fee. People may buy a kit for $99.95 (plus shipping and handling) that will allow them to scrape the matter from the inside of their cheeks and send it in.Can you say profit motive? And then, almost before the thought could finish firing my neurons, comes this little gem.
Wells said he is not concerned that the database might be skewed with samples from people who can afford to pay nearly $100 to participate, saying even nonrandom data will help scientists understand migration patterns.Not concerned?, NOT CONCERNED! Of course not, 1-900 polls are an accurate measure of public opinion too. Science just left the building.
