Neanderthal cloning chatter highlights scientific illiteracy

BOSTON Thu Jan 24, 2013 12:13am EST

Harvard geneticist George Church speaks to Reuters reporters about cloning during an interview in Boston, Massachusetts January 23, 2013. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi


Credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi

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But Church explained on Wednesday that he was simply theorizing.









(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Comments (6)
krm398 wrote:
He might not be doing it…yet…but sooner or later someone will do things that are considered insane today, why? Becuase they can, and they will run full force to do it before soemone else, fame, fotune and reputation are all reasons that science does things, and has done things we might never hear about, in the name of elarning, or just scientific curiousity.

Jan 24, 2013 3:49am EST  --  Report as abuse
ginobean wrote:
I consider myself a fairly scientifically literate person and it actually seemed plausible to me that a scientist might have been pursuing the cloning of a Neanderthal. Why not ? We’ve cloned sheep and scientists have recently sequenced at least some portions of Neanderthal DNA.
But to group the people who find this plausible with the same group of people who are scientifically illiterate, is outrageous and insulting to the first group.
To me, scientific illiteracy is when a person chooses not to be in evolution because “it’s only a theory”. Because this reflects a profound misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is.

Jan 24, 2013 11:47am EST  --  Report as abuse
gregbrew56 wrote:
Part of the problem is that standardized testing checks for a great deal of rote memorization. It often doesn’t check for conceptual understanding. The result is that students aren’t taught to actually think, analyze and synthesize information, which are higher-level thinking skills necessary to develop some healthy skepticism. I hope that the new nationally developed standards (the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards) that emphasize application of learned skills will change that.

Jan 24, 2013 3:19pm EST  --  Report as abuse