From an article in the Atlantic about what happened when people failed to test the fundamental premises of research on a gene that supposedly was related to depression.
Using data from large groups of volunteers, ranging from 62,000 to 443,000 people, the team checked whether any versions of these genes were more common among people with depression. “We didn’t find a smidge of evidence,” says Matthew Keller, who led the project.
Between them, these 18 genes have been the subject of more than 1,000 research papers, on depression alone. And for what? If the new study is right, these genes have nothing to do with depression. “This should be a real cautionary tale,” Keller adds. “How on Earth could we have spent 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars studying pure noise?”
“What bothers me isn’t just that people said [the gene] mattered and it didn’t,” wrote the pseudonymous blogger Scott Alexander in a widely shared post. “It’s that we built whole imaginary edifices on top of this idea of [it] mattering.” Researchers studied how SLC6A4 affects emotion centers in the brain, how its influence varies in different countries and demographics, and how it interacts with other genes. It’s as if they’d been “describing the life cycle of unicorns, what unicorns eat, all the different subspecies of unicorn, which cuts of unicorn meat are tastiest, and a blow-by-blow account of a wrestling match between unicorns and Bigfoot,” Alexander wrote.
If you read the ASSESS distribution list run by AALHE you will see lot of discussion of the unicorn type with very little thought about the fundamentals or concern about evidence. I can’t say I recommend signing up for the list. I did and it’s pretty depressing. Or perhaps I an have a copy of SLC6A4 kicking around my chromosomes.