143
votes
Accepted
Is 8% of human DNA from viruses?
Normal viruses infect cells in order to take advantage of cellular mechanisms to reproduce themselves. A class of viruses known as "retroviruses" have a slightly peculiar mechanism to achieve this - ...
- 6,678
88
votes
Do humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas?
Finally, a question covering my nominal area of expertise.
To answer this question meaningfully we'll need to define some concepts but first.
Yes, sort of. The statement is factually correct for ...
- 9,466
87
votes
Accepted
Did a 'Black History Month website' call white people ‘genetically defective descendants of albino mutants’?
It is indeed the site that you found. The article was entitled "Frances Cress Welsing: Melanin Theory". Frances Cress Welsing was a homophobic black supremacist writer. She claimed that the ...
- 44.9k
42
votes
Did a 'Black History Month website' call white people ‘genetically defective descendants of albino mutants’?
Here's a cache'd snippet from Duck Duck Go pointing to this article.
https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/science-and-medicine/frances-cress-welsing-melanin-theory/
This now 404's
...
- 521
41
votes
Can the Bajau people stay underwater for as long as 13 minutes?
I will say 'no'.
According to the study Underwater working times in two groups of traditional apnea divers in Asia: The Ama and the Bajau, Bajau divers dive for 28 seconds with an standard deviation ...
- 5,231
31
votes
Do humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas?
The claim that we share 50% of our DNA is likely a misquote of an older claim, that we share 50% of our genes with bananas. Both claims, as best I can tell, are false. I'll address each claim in turn.
...
- 846
25
votes
Accepted
Are humans descended from chimp-pig hybrids?
The hypothesis that humans descended from chimp-pig hybrids can be denied on the following points.
Hybrids between different orders of mammals are very rare due to the genetic differences and ...
- 22.7k
12
votes
Did a 'Black History Month website' call white people ‘genetically defective descendants of albino mutants’?
It's not limited to one Black history website.
The site "Black Then: Discovering Our History" says:
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing is a psychiatrist who is noted for the “Cress Theory of Color ...
- 106k
11
votes
Do the mother's genes almost exclusively determine the sons' intelligence?
No, this grossly summarised version of the paper overstates its conclusions.
The quoted media reports suggest that the mother's genes account for all of the (variation) in intelligence of male ...
- 141k
10
votes
Do the hemoglobin genotypes of a couple affect whether their offspring will get Sickle Cell Disease?
Yes, this is accurate. The Wikipedia article has a good summary of the science, and you can also read this leaflet from the NHS in the UK.
Your question about why this matters so much is a good one, ...
- 15.8k
10
votes
Is this image of eye colour inheritance accurate?
According to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) (emphasis added):
Researchers used to think that eye color was determined by a single gene and followed a simple inheritance pattern in which ...
- 14.1k
10
votes
Of all humans ever born, did most men not become fathers?
This is not my area of scientific expertise. I cannot say if this study by Wilder et al is correct or not, but I can read the study and compare their conclusions to Baumeister's.
Wilder et al ...
- 12k
9
votes
Are humans descended from chimp-pig hybrids?
There is evidence of the opposite.
Here are some comprehensive references that based on genetic evidence show how actual human evolution probably happened. Some basics: Pääbo, 2003. Stringer, 2012 ...
- 245
8
votes
Accepted
Are crocodiles more closely related to birds than lizards and snakes?
While it is certainly not obvious to the eye, the fact that the closest relatives of crocodiles are birds appears to be well-established. These two clades are the only living members of a group known ...
- 11.1k
8
votes
Is 8% of human DNA from viruses?
I wish to add to the above answer. Approximately 9% of the genome is viral in origin, but current research suggests there is less of 'you' than there are other viral related sequences. Here is a very ...
- 637
6
votes
Are girls and boys pre-programmed to behave... like girls and boys?
The BBC produced a programme called "No More Boys and Girls", where they tried to do the opposite of most studies which attempt to measure the amount of gendered behaviour in infants or monkeys.
The ...
- 3,131
5
votes
Fewer shared immune genes in a couple correlate with (or even cause) more female orgasms?
The correlation is observable. Despite the ongoing replication crisis, this statistical effect is reported relatively often. But the correlation is small, the effect size is small and the explanatory ...
- 44.1k
5
votes
Accepted
Are new genes created through duplication?
Gene duplication is a very important way of creating new genes and hence it helps organisms to evolve.
Once a gene is duplicated, the "spare" copy of the gene is effectively not needed by the cell, ...
- 5,846
5
votes
Did Homo sapiens have children with Neanderthals?
There's a significant body of evidence for this claim. Eg:
an analysis of a first draft of the Neanderthal genome by the same team released in May 2010 indicates interbreeding may have occurred.1,2 ...
- 151
2
votes
Has increased computer use led to increased myopia?
I think Oliver had it right with respect to the most influential environmental factor (light intensity). I was a bit skeptical because near-work was a long-time favorite environmental hypothesis and ...
- 59.8k
2
votes
Have more than a million people had their whole genomes sequenced by the end of 2018?
Probably but it's hard to be certain.
It's hard to say exactly because not all whole human genome sequencing data goes into research databases, there's a number of national databases and many research ...
- 9,466
1
vote
Is divorce caused (or influenced by) genetics?
A VCU news release has the name of the (yet to be published) paper: “Genetics, the Rearing Environment, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce: A Swedish National Adoption Study,”. The ...
- 59.8k
1
vote
Are red-heads going extinct?
Some phenotypes caused by recessive genes occur in sub-populations that tend to reproduce with other members of the sub-population.
For example, Tay-Sachs disease is a recessive genetic disease ...
- 38.9k
1
vote
Is 8% of human DNA from viruses?
The question assumes that organisms came before viruses. From the latest attempts to deduce what happened many years ago, a current belief is that viruses and organisms had a single originating ...
- 1,146
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible