Craig Venter, the infamous head of the Human Genome Project and who created the first "synthetic" cell, has been saying this stuff for years. It's remarkable how ahead of the times he is, perhaps because he's not beholden to an academic institution.

He claims that a "tree of life" is fallacious, that there is no junk DNA, and that the bare minimum genes necessary for a living cell still can't be determined even after decades of research.

I hope that the authors of the new Extended Evolutionary Synthesis will admit the deficiency of outdated assumptions and reject dogmatic approaches to the theory, as implied by the author of the book reviewed in this article.

[–] Steve@communick.news 6 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Which theory exactly are we rejecting dogmatic approaches to?

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)

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

[–] jahashar@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

It's published in Nature or Science. Which means it's better than the thruth (which we don't have access to!), it's high quality science.

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