Review of 2023 book: How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology Philip Ball. ISBN9781529095999

  • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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    9 months ago

    i believe the article suggests that the current way of communicating biology - that genes are the code that runs the machinery of life - is dogmatically adhered to by science communicators

    it also suggests that when we communicate our new understandings that we are careful not to fall into another dogmatic theory, because it’s complex and we just don’t know

    this is language used in the article, i don’t have enough information or understanding to know whether it’s true or not

    • kalkulat@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      Really good science news communicators (including many teachers because how are admins to judge?) are too rare … on YTube there’s … a half-dozen, maybe, at best?

        • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Sure large proteins have multiple forms and functions, but we do know the exact makeup shape and function of a lot of the smaller ones, like the ones that are small enough to get between either strand of an opened helix to read, transcribe, and send for translation the code for the larger proteins (anything inside the nucleus). Saying all proteins are inherently not understandable because there are large proteins that we don’t have full understanding of, is just as incorrect as saying we know every function of every synthesized protein.

          Also I can’t stand veritasium, he gives over simplified, easy to latch onto, “explanations” of questions and misses out on a lot of minutia that would actually lead to a better understanding of why these questions exist. But people on the Internet love that stuff because they get an answer and are enabled to say “well actually” next time the topic comes up even though they’ve barely gotten any of the details of the problem itself. Pop science at it’s worst. Him and numberphile both

      • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        There are way more than half a dozen, they’re just too dry to get the algorithm’s/communities attention. Most Internet viewers want an answer in x minutes or less, they don’t care to understand what the details of the questions are. If an answer is able to be given in a few minutes, why would the question exist for centuries?