ACADEMIA Letters

Comparison of the Scientific Developments of First 2

Decades of 20th Century and 21st Century
Atam Vetta, Retired Academic

The scientific developments about human genome in the first 2 decades of the 21st C bear some
resemblance to those of the first 2 decades of the 20th C. In the 20th C scientists discovered
a few major effect genes and the first steps to develop the science of genetics were taken.
The name GENETICS was coined in the year 1900. One of the major papers on theoretical
genetics by R A Fisher was published in 1918. The paper was not concerned with major
genes or their effects. Here Fisher hypothesised that there are polygenes in the human genome
(each polygene has a very small negligible effect but a large number of polygenes determine a
normally distributed trait). Therefore, human traits with a normal distribution are determined
by polygenes. Fisher worked at the Galton Laboratory of the UCL. Later, he was a Professor
at Cambridge. After WWII, Fisher’s students became Professors of Genetics or Statistics in
English speaking universities all over the world. They taught Fisher’s ideas of Genetics and
Statistics.
Some disciplines and areas of research e. g. Behaviour Genetics, Evolutionary Biology,
Evolutionary Psychology, Neo-Darwinism, etc. based on Fisher’s 1918 paper arose. The
scientific journals were full of papers analysing data, sometimes, dubious data on physical and
intellectual traits. A major proportion of these publications related to the data on IQ based on
papers of Sir Cyrl Burt. The only difference was that Fisher’s 1918 paper used Correlations
whereas these researchers used covariances. Correlations and covariances are closely related.
These papers “proved” that the USA black Americans had genetically low intelligence. Som
epapers suggested that it is cruel to teach black American children subjects that require level
II intelligence because they will not be able to understand them.
Professor Kamin noted that in Burt’s papers correlations remained exactly the same though
the number of cases increased which is extremely unlikely. This cast doubt on Burt’s work.

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Atam Vetta, vettaatam@hotmail.co.uk

Citation: Vetta, A. (2021). Comparison of the Scientific Developments of First 2 Decades of 20th Century and
21st Century. Academia Letters, Article 1127. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1127.

1
The US IQists began to search for Burt’s data to answer Kamin. Some of Burt’s papers were
co-authored by 2 women. The IQists found no trace these women or Burt’s data. They were
forced to admit that Burt faked his data. Many USA, Canadian and Australian researchers,
however, continued fitting Fisherian type models to their data.
In the 1918 paper, Fisher used a new type of mathematics and omitted many steps in his
proofs. Many papers and even a book was published to explain his paper. It was, however,
not realised that Fisher’s sib correlation formula was wrong for his model. Why? A basic rule
of genetics is that in absence of dominance, parent-child correlation = sib correlation. But in
the presence of dominance sib corr. > parent child corr. Fisher formulae always give sib corr.
< parent- child correlation in presence of dominance. Which is obviously wrong. Working
through Fisher 1918, I found the reason for his error. He took account of the terms of second
degree of smallness and ignored terms of third and higher degree of smallness. I found that the
terms of the third degree of smallness were NOT negligible as compared with the terms of the
second degree of smallness. Taking account of this fact, I reworked the correct sib correlation
formula in presence of dominance. My correction was published in the Journal NATURE in
1976 (MY 2 other papers were also published in NATURE). Yet most researchers continued
to use Fisher wrong formulae (expressed in covariances).
Now about scientific developments involving human genome in the first 2 decades of the
21st C. Just as Genetics began in the year 1900, the human genome was analysed in the year
2000. This has opened the way to study the effects of individual genes in human and other
species. There are only about 20,000 human genes. This surprised many researchers who
thought humans probably have
over a million genes. All genes are major effect genes. There are NO polygenes. Thus,
the Fisherian type of genetics analysis cannot be used. To use Fisher’s model we will have to
wait till the discovery of a specie that has polygenes.
Fisher’s view that the action of a gene depends on its neighbouring genes is now proven.
For example, mice and humans have about 50% of their genes in common. But a given com-
mon gene acts differently in the two species because of the effect of neighbouring uncommon
genes.
Fisherian and other genetic analyses methods did not take human brain (or an animal’s
nervous system) into account. Moreover, it was thought that a human child is born with mil-
lions of neurons in the brain and NO new neurons are born in its life time. In the 21st C we
have discovered that this is not true. When a human learns or does something new, new neu-
rons are born in the brain. This is true even in older people. Thus, there is still hope for older
people like myself.
We have also learnt how to tinker with a gene. This is particularly useful if a gene becomes

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Atam Vetta, vettaatam@hotmail.co.uk

Citation: Vetta, A. (2021). Comparison of the Scientific Developments of First 2 Decades of 20th Century and
21st Century. Academia Letters, Article 1127. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1127.

2
corrupted. This has allowed us to deal with CODIS19. We have been able to fight it with
some success. A property of Codis19 gene is that it changes its genetic composition. Here
our ability to deal with a bad gene of any type has enabled us to defeat CODIS19, well almost.
We can now successfully fight any disease and we might be able to increase our average life
span.
What about new discoveries and scientific developments? Many possibilities remain. Re-
searchers at the UCL using powerful X-ray beams have discovered that a human chromosome
weighs about 20 times more than the DNA it contains. If confirmed, the question arises; What
is the roll of the extra weight? Further research might have serious implications for the health
of humanity.

Academia Letters, June 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Atam Vetta, vettaatam@hotmail.co.uk

Citation: Vetta, A. (2021). Comparison of the Scientific Developments of First 2 Decades of 20th Century and
21st Century. Academia Letters, Article 1127. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1127.