On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, snit snat wrote:
> >Personal responsibility is all to the good, but everything else in "Fat
> >Land" suggests it is probably no match for the thrifty gene and the
> >Happy Meal.
>
> wow! gee! another authoroperating from the same framework as Friedman! :)
Except for coming to the opposite conclusion, of course, as you note in your happy face.
To be serious though, we can't really call it the same framework. Friedman's framework is that genes determine all behavior and environment none. This framework is that genes and environment interact -- a big difference.
I think Friedman's problem is obvious: he's a monomane. He believes genes determine everything and free will is an illusion. It's a silly, reductionist point of view -- but it's probably exactly what gave him the conviction, determination and sitzfleisch to discover leptin.
That he thinks his discovery is of more epic importance than other people do is something most of us are guilty of at one time or another. And that it leads him to make tendentious arguments, ditto.
As Kolata herself notes, Friedman hasn't studied the problem epidemiologically in 25 years (if ever). His expertise is purely in lab work about mice and genes. And it seems that outside the lab, he's just like most people: he looks for something that confirm his pre-existing prejudices, and then draws a curve through one point, glossing over everythnig that doesn't fit. His seriousness as a lab researcher not only has no bearing on his complete (un)seriousness as an analyst of social statistics, the one seems to undercut the other. He seems to be made anxious by the idea that genes don't determine everything -- that they interact with the environment -- because it makes his lifetime's accomplishment seem less epochal. C'est la vie. He should get over it. I haven't accomplished even that much, and I'm sanguine about it :o)
Michael