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From: doug@eris.berkeley.edu (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Invert Zoo and a reply inherited memory
Keywords: Invertebrate Zoology
Message-ID: <1991May4.190132.22684@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 4 May 91 19:01:32 GMT
References: <1991May2.181440.14045@athena.mit.edu> <1991May3.162715.21825@hollie.rdg.dec.com>
Sender: root@agate.berkeley.edu (Charlie Root)
Distribution: sci.bio
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 34

In article <1991May3.162715.21825@hollie.rdg.dec.com> winalski@psw.enet.dec.com (Paul S. Winalski) writes:
>  The educated flatworms were gound up and fed to a group
>of flatworms that did not know how to run the maze. [...]
>I think later Biological research has invalidated these studies.

Right. This, the discrediting of Penfield's interpretation of his
experiments with electrical stimulation of the brain, and the discrediting
of the "you only use 10% of all the parts of your brain", are probably the
three most important debunkings of things that "everyone knows" about the
brain.

(I've heard third hand reports of some paper that claims that that it
takes 50 to 100 years for scientific research, or its debunking, to become
common cultural knowledge --- things that "everyone knows", not just
scholars. Things are probably not quite this simple, but it's probably true
that it will take a very long time until these three things cease to be
things that "everyone knows".)

>This concept of RNA inheritance of memory has been widely adopted by
>science fiction authors (e.g., Frank Herber's DUNE books).

Bad example. Dune assumed no such thing. It did assume a mystical transference
of memory from one generation to the next (apparently to/from females only),
and (arguably) tied this to some sort of inherited cellular memory, but
RNA was not mentioned, the tie between neural memory and reproductive
system was never explained, and the emphasis was 100% on mysticism, not
any assumption of a scientifically explicable mechanism. Dune is primarily
sociological science fiction; it makes little or no pretense of being
"hard" science fiction.
	Doug
-- 
--
Doug Merritt		doug@eris.berkeley.edu (ucbvax!eris!doug)
		or	uunet.uu.net!crossck!dougm