We’ve been misled. We’re taught that Gregor Mendel’s pea-crossing experiments provide a timelessly excellent foundation for genetics. Yet in the early twentieth century those experiments were heavily criticized for neglecting the role of environments in shaping hereditary characters. But, as Gregory Radick shows, those criticisms failed to carry the day – not because they were defeated in reasoned, evidence-based debate, but because of mere historical accident. As a result, the mistaken idea that genes determine character traits was allowed to persist.
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