From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Dec 25 2002 - 10:45:54 MST
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> Robert J. Bradbury wrote,
>
>>>Healing power in a gene
>>>
>>>University of Illinois at Chicago researcher Robert
>>>Costa believes he knows why: our FoxM1B gene retires.
>>>
>>>http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-12/uoia-hpi122402.php
>>
>>Ok, I've read it and I'm not buying it. It sounds like hype to me.
>
> I strongly concur with Robert's analysis. The FoxM1B gene may be required
> for cell division, and cell division failures would cause aging. But most
> old age symptoms are not caused by a lack of cell division. This is over
> simplistic and not a general symptom of aging. Plus, the hype at the
> beginning of the article, about skin elasticity, immune system response,
> healing, and other symptoms are only vaguely linked into this gene by saying
> that none of these could occur without cell division. There was no
> scientific process here, no cause and effect, no experimental data, and no
> logical argument for the position. It was loosely references as fact with
> no reason. I believe understanding this gene is probably very important,
> but jumping to these conclusions that it will lead to a major aging therapy
> breakthrough seem unwarranted.
I again remind all and sundry that a messed-up press release does not
necessarily indicate messed-up research. The included hype and
irrelevancies are probably more likely the result of a reporter trying to
"make the research interesting". My guess would be that Costa found
FoxM1B was implicated in cell division and everything else is a figment of
the reporter's imagination.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:53 MST