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Exposing Hype over Genome Study and Junk DNA Claims

There's more to say about those extravagent claims regarding junk DNA. They're hyped, for one thing.

In addition to exploring the evolutionary implications of junk DNA in my last column, I've written two posts for the Knight Science Journalism Tracker discussing the hype surrounding recent junk DNA -related claims.

The claims came from a press conference staged by NIH and designed to drum up publicity for a genome-related project called ENCODE.


This was the first:
http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2012/09/did-encode-results-get-junk-out-our-geno

And this one I posted yesterday after more time and research.
http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2012/09/skeptical-takes-elevation-junk-dna-and-o

The ENCODE project really was interesting, but the scientists and their PR people generated excitement for the wrong reasons.


Also, as one commenter pointed out, I did misuse the term "genetic code" in last week's column. That's been fixed. Thanks for pointing out the error.