Review: Turkheimer Nature Nurture Debate

 

What makes us the way we are? Where do our capacities for happiness, criminality, illness, height or sexual orientation come from? Complex traits do, of course, arise from a combination of our genes and our environment, but attempts to understand how these factors combine rarely provide a satisfactory or quantitative answer.

Full review at

https://biologist.rsb.org.uk/understanding_the_nature_nurture_debate.html

Review: The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science, Hotez

 

"Why is vaccine uptake falling and what can be done to improve vaccine coverage? The book’s author, Peter Hotez, is a high-profile American paediatrician, vaccine advocate and public health expert attempting to answer these questions. The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science begins by discussing anti-vaccine activism, which, in Hotez’s account, is spreading into a broader anti-science movement. Hotez details the significant gains made over the last 100 years in public health, particularly through the use of vaccines, and how much of that work is being undone by political and cultural forces...."

Full text in The Biologist

https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-book-reviews/the-deadly-rise-of-anti-science

Review: Richard Wingate "The Story of the Brain in 10 1/2 Cells"

 

Review

Richard Wingate "The Story of the Brain in 10 1/2 Cells"

https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist-book-reviews/the-story-of-the-brain-in-10-cells

Review: 'Understanding Intelligence' by Ken Richardson

Understanding Intelligence

Meera Senthilingam,
Icon Books, £8.99
"Is intelligence caused by genes or environment? Or both? Can we even meaningfully talk about what intelligence is or measure it precisely? These are the sorts of questions Ken Richardson addresses in his summary of the latest thinking on intelligence research."
Rest of the review here in The Biologist

Teens, genes and means – Why are we still debating whether genetics affect educational outcomes?

Could genetics inform our understanding about the learning process in ways that have stayed hidden until now? Conor McCrory is yet to be convinced…
Is academic ability fixed or are students blank slates? Do schools make a big difference to students’ lives, or is their destiny already settled?
Most educators will probably hold more nuanced views than those implied by the dichotomous questions I’ve just posed, but the notion that some pupils are ‘just good at school’ because of gifts granted to them by their biology isn’t new. Such perspectives have waxed and waned in popularity over years, if not decades, alongside changing trends n educational philosophy and evolving social and political attitudes. As a primary school pupil in early 90s Belfast, I managed to navigate my way through the 11-plus exam used to select entry to Grammar schools.
We were never told that we were ‘genetically gifted’ as such, but there was still a subtle implication that those who passed were simply ‘academically good’, while those who didn’t, well … maybe weren’t. That said, we were rigorously drilled for at least a year prior to taking the exams.
Evidently, they didn’t believe in our ‘innate ability’ enough to leave things solely in the hands of biology, and must have felt out environment had something to do with it… originally in rest of article here in Teach Secondary

Review: The Metaphysics of Biology, John Dupre

Review: The Metaphysics Of Biology John Dupre Cambridge University Press, £15.00

"What are we talking about when we talk about things in biology? This isn't a trick question, and it gets to the essence of philosopher of biology John Dupre's The Metaphysics Of Biology. This brief introduction in the Cambridge Elements series considers what biological entities are, and how our talk about such things fits into theoretical frameworks"

full review in The Biologist

Book Review: The Genetic Lottery, Paige Harden

Book review: The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality

by Kathryn Paige Harden Princeton University Press, £25.00

"Do genetic differences impact upon social outcomes and complex human behaviour? Should policy-makers pay more attention to genetic research? These are some of the questions that psychologist Kathryn Paige Harden attempts to shed light on in The Genetic Lottery."

full review in The Biologist