An error has become apparent throughout the civgene site and papers. I have been incorrectly using the term recessive. This stems from my high school level biological science background. The mistake specifically was thinking that there were only two basic building blocks of genetic combinatorics. A gross miscalculation.
In my defense I had no idea I would ever envision or peruse anything like civgene. My rudimentary Mendelian generic understanding caused me to infer that any gene that was not dominant must be recessive. I was at the least, dated. In fact had I been aware of the many types(and still growing) of genetic inheritance I would never have said it. It is possible psychopathy is a combination of several genes and/or could be autosomal recessive, Autosomal dominant, (probably not X or Y linked) or a number of not commonly named patterns. I just don’t know, but will pursue this knowledge.
My error was in not saying what I really meant, ‘Not Mendelian dominant.’ or ‘Not dominant’ This assertion is based on solid external science. Psychopaths are officially considered to not be not curable. This was the original tell for me that it is likely genetic. Cases are distributed evenly between males and females. Further, symptoms seem to begin from a very young age, one or two years old as childhood amnesia ends sooner, making postnatal epigenetics less likely. Psychopaths can appear in families with no apparent history, but there does seem to be a higher likelihood of psychopaths being born to one or more psychopath parents.
I caught this error after some vague advice about misusing ‘recessive’ prompted me to look into the combinatorics of a civgene. I could not line up some estimates of psychopath growth with the numeracy of recessive genes. During this process I learned that combinatorics vary wildly along with inheritance patterns. Many alleles be part of a single gene or that genes with a single function can include large swaths of DNA. Using combinatorics to prove genetic inheritance types without first knowing the genes involved can be difficult or impossible. Lesson learned.
If you are a geneticist, you probably already realize this error does not effect the viability of civgene. My thinking was correct even if my label was incorrect. I apologise for any part in delaying recognition or visibility of civgene with this error.
The question remains of remediation. Since the meaning was consistent, I can simply replace the word. I have found 1 papers and 5 blog posts with the error. I will correct ‘recessive’ with ‘not dominant’ ASAP and post the corrected links here as I find them.
- http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/papers/Final_Fronteer.html
- http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/52
- http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/188
- http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/896
- http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/archives/1013
- http://civgene.matthewnewhall.com/theories
Please if you find this to be further in error, please contact me with corrections ASAP. Also if you find recessive in use, please contact me. Thanks for you assistance.