PINNING DOWN POTENTIAL 23But there are now deeper ripples of concern. At last, it is beginning to
dawn on people that the genome might not actually contain the informa-
tion being sought. As a lead article in the journal Nature in 2009 com-
plained, “Despite the successes of genomics, little is known about how
ge ne tic information produces complex organisms.” Th e appalling answer
now emerging from molecular biology is that it doesn’t— genes contain
no such information!
Th is is the huge conceptual hurdle now to be overcome. Researchers
like the Imperial College group may talk of gene products forming gene
regulatory networks (GRNs) that govern development in bottom-up
fashion, as per the standard model. But data now pouring out of molecu-
lar ge ne tics labs are revealing how GRNs are themselves regulated by
layers of other networks in and far beyond the cell, in top- down organ-
ization. Chapters 4 and 5 describe how organisms, and their variations,
are constructed during development, using genes but not programmed
by them.
Accordingly, modern molecular biology reveals that, for normal ranges
of complex functions, little if any relationship exists between genes on the
“inside” and variation on the “outside.” We all want to understand the
detail of developmental pathways. But that requires sensitivity to the dy-
namic multi- level system that has actually evolved, in which regulation
is much more top- down than bottom-up. It has been demonstrated how
“phantom” heritability can arise out of such interactions—an artifact of
the statistics, but not there in real ity.^24
Of course, all kinds of rationalizations and obfuscations are now
created to explain the missing genes. Th ese are most commonly along the
lines that the candidate genes are too numerous, with individual eff ects on
variation too tiny, to actually detect. So now we seem to have another
phantom—an imaginary cloud of tiny- eff ect genes, for which there is no
causal scientifi c evidence. Th e idea falls into the same category as the other
phantoms: the concepts of potential, intelligence, g, in de pen dent genes,
heritability, and the causal correlation coeffi cient. We are presented with
another fuzzy vehicle of ideology with which scientists confi rm the social
prejudices of the faithful without in fact proving anything scientifi cally.
Th is will not, of course, deter those gene hunters who now fi nd them-
selves looking, not for single genes, but for (very large) packs of them.^25
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