Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology

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Epigenetics

• Epigenetics - main article
  • Epigenetic theory - overlapping content
  • Transgenerational epigenetics - overlapping content
  • Soft inheritance - overlapping content
    • Inheritance of acquired characteristics - negatively characterized as outdated and disproven Soviet dogma that had disastrous administrative consequences
    • Lamarckism - categorized as an obsolete scientific theory, despite contemporary re-analyses within the mainstream scientific community
    • Lysenkoism - depicts Lamarckism, and, specifically, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as being a textbook example of pseudoscience among Lysenko's many bedlamitic absurdities

This interrelated series of articles is one of the most disoriented, contradictory and factually compromised sets that I've encountered on our project in quite some time. Moreover, the overlapping nature of content and lack of adequately unambiguous central navigation is confusing, even for someone who has existing familiarity with the general topic. I'm not certain of how much available manpower WikiProject Biology has to offer at the moment, but I'd like to get the ball rolling on a collaborative effort of some sort.   — C M B J   04:56, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikimedia Discord has a Biology Channel!

It has recently come to my attention that not only is there a highly active Wikimedia Discord Server, it also has a #wpbiology channel! See Wikipedia:Discord for more details.

I hope to feature a link to this on the main page after the redesign is complete, but for the time being I wanted to advertise it here. I would love for more people to join, and I hope it will prove a major resource to us going forward as we improve WP:BIOL and it's subprojects. I cannot emphasize how refreshing it can be to talk in real time (or even in voice channels!) rather than in talk pages.

@Evolution and evolvability and Alexmar983: This also should serve us nicely for the user group discussions--they have a #meta channel as well.

Draft:MRNA therapeutics

Should this draft be accepted as a stand-alone article? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:21, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Probably not sadly. It's an ok draft, but would more logically be merged into RNA therapeutics#mRNA (from where 70% was copied over). The Heart Diseases application section and the Delivery systems sections could be merged over since they are both new content, and decently enough referenced. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 03:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Iron in biology

I recently created the article Iron in biology which for such an important biological concept has not had its own article until now. Does anyone want to help with fleshing it out?Immanuelle 💗 (please tag me) 09:58, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Requested move of Abiogenesis

A requested move of Abiogenesis to Origin of life is under discussion. Project members are invited to contribute. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:22, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

AfD for Female (gender)

Comments are requested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Female (gender). Crossroads ^-talk- 01:15, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Is there a consensus in biology that race is a social construct?

A tweet by Steven Pinker agreeing with Richard Dawkins agreeing with a list by Jerry Coyne of ideological perversions of science included the idea that race is a social construct. Race (human categorization) claims there is a consensus ("Modern science regards...") about this, which I find hard to square with disagreement by these eminent biologists. Whether race is a valid biological concept is of course a question for biologists, who could situate it in normal taxonomic practice. For example they would know observations like "more genetic variation within groups" was typical among subspecific taxa, whereas a cultural anthropologist or even a medic would likely not. I raised the question of how this consensus was established on the talk page[1], it seems to be merely asserted. Responses were evasive. So perhaps Wikiproject Biology can help. Bogestra Bob (talk) 08:19, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Jerry Coyne's list is "Ideological distortions of biology". One of his 10 items is:

"C.) The claim that “race” (I prefer “ethnicity”) is purely a social construct with no biological value and containing no biological information [is an ideological distortion of biology]. I don’t believe in “races” as they were classically conceived of by Carleton Coon and others, but humans are genetically different from place to place, and those differences contain information of value in tracing our ancestry and our movement around the globe from Africa."

This is quite a limited statement biologically. He agrees (with the social construct people and others) that the Carleton Coon idea of race is wrong, i.e. there is no hierarchy from ape to African to White Man at the top (there is a clear consensus in biology that that was racist nonsense), but he disagrees insofar as genomics shows genetic differences in different parts of the world (and through history). Biologists in general (if I may be so bold) broadly agree that "race" is a mistaken concept, but they also agree with Coyne/Dawkins (tweet)/Pinker (his tweet) that it's possible to trace gene differences. All three of them are well aware that saying so means treading a narrow path through an ideological minefield. Hope this helps, Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:54, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

How did you establish that biologists in general think that? Bogestra Bob (talk) 09:19, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

A lifetime of reading. If you want immediate evidence, you have the three sources cited here already; if you want another, David Reich's book Who We Are and How We Got Here is a WP:RS, and of course it has been attacked for the reasons I've given. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:35, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

You're saying Dawkins and Coyne think race is a "mistaken concept"? That's a bit of a stretch. Dawkins: "Social construct"? Forget it. Race is biologically real." Reich does indeed say race is a social construct, although it's unclear what he means by this. Greg Mayer quoted by Coyne:

"I also like Reich’s article, but if he hopes to be able to talk about genetic differentiation, he’s going to have to stop accepting the “race is a social construction” fallacy..."[2]

I don't think consensus describes this. Bogestra Bob (talk) 10:14, 4 August 2022 (UTC)