This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Hasher Britarse sorry to chop up this article and pompously show off my learning, but it was very poor science. I have a biology degree (upper second honours) and have done postgrad work on genetics and I have to say that the science teacher at the school of whoever put that 'inherited at half power' and the 'melanin levels average out' ideas needs to work on explaining science to his/her students more clearly!
Earnest: That would be Mr. Wiley. He did a fine job; if you have an issue with my biology mistakes, blame the student.
Not to knock your extensive studies, but "Without a long winded discussion of genetics" was put there to avoid just that. I appreciate the correction of basic biology mistakes, but the two paragraphs added really don't have much bearing on the trope itself. A link to the appropriate biology site would help keep the article from getting bulky or too technical.
Ununnilium: ...frankly, the genetics discussion in the article right now seems a bit... off. The issues of inheritance are a lot more complicated than the high-school Mendellian squares described in the article, and you can't really say that you couldn't inherit a superpower that way. The real issue here isn't how inheritance works, but that powers gotten during one's lifetime shouldn't be inheritable at all. I'm thinking of yanking that whole section there and rewriting; any objections?
AlexandraErin: I have to agree the sciency exposition seems rather beside the point. The issue highlighted by the title "Lamarck Was Right" is the idea that what happens to a parent (bizarre accident, ninja training, enchantment, whatever) would/could be passed on to the offspring... whether a somatic change (or a mental or spiritual one) would somehow overwrite the genetic code in the germ plasm.
Janitor: Seconded. Discussion of whether or not superhuman trait alleles are automatically dominant is off-topic, really. The entry is about the Lamarck fallacy
. Pulling discussion of actually inheritable traits off to another article might be fun, though.
Alexandra Erin: I'll agree it's probably worth saving the writing for use elsewhere... I'm not sure how that would be best accomplished (for A Noob Am I), so I'll leave it for somebody else.
Janitor: Good enough. I'll yank parts out to Superpowerful Genetics.
Alexandra Erin: Not sure why you axed so many of the examples. Even if they made reference to the yanked "variation" part, they were all about what the trope was about, even when the description of the trope wasn't.
Janitor: Quick chop up. If you think an example belongs back in this one — that it demonstrates the Lamarck fallacy — go ahead and shift it back.
Alexandra Erin: Yeah, sorry, I didn't immediately see that you'd moved them along with the body of text. It looked like they were just pruned.
Janitor: No sweat. We ordinarily don't just straight-up "prune" (unless whatever it was is just hopeless), but move things to discussion or elsewhere. Like this: Pulled ....
Alexandra Erin: Well, how is this site ever supposed to be taken seriously as a reference material if you're not willing to prune whole contributions outright? :P
arromdee: I did google "teratogen". It doesn't.
In general, causing birth defects and causing mutations are two different things, and anything that causes mutations causes them at random. If something causes both, the mutations are still going to be random and won't match the birth defects.
Pepinson: But the phenomenon is documented—even people who didn't demonstrate defects of their own are giving birth to malformed children. I'm not sure why Wikipedia doesn't mention it—but then, genetics isn't my strong suit, so for all I know I just couldn't understand the language used....
Unknown Troper: to further muddy the issue, try googling epigenetics. This... might be [[Truth In Television]] (later: sigh. I need to read the whole entry before I open my mouth. It's already there.)
Gitman: The Lot R entry is rife with justifying edits. If I see no objections in the next few days, I'm going to do some chopping.
About some of the examples of this trope J2 gained his powers because a demonic supervillain was trying to steal his father's powers. This resulted in a split and somehow, through a father/son bond I suppose, half of Juggernauts powers ended up transfered to his son instead of the villain.
Ununnilium: Pulling, then:
- This doesn't explain how J2 gained a limited version of his father Juggernaut's powers, however... as those were magically granted, and could be lost—depending on the period, if he lost the Ruby of Cyttorak which granted the powers, or if he did something of which Cyttorak disapproved. One can Hand Wave it by saying magic doesn't have to follow genetic rules.
- This troper just wants to know who J2's mother is.
- The Juggernaut bitch, perhaps?
Conversation In The Main Page.
- Variation: In The Lord Of The Rings, Smeagol/Gollum, despite having started out as, basically, a hobbit, seems to evolve into a creature built for caves-all by himself. Although he was wearing the Ring...
- and played straight in the creation of the orcs, who were originally elves that were captured by Morgoth and tortured untill they were corrupted forms of their former selves. Somehow, this trait is passed on to their offspring...
- Of course, considering he could have selectively bred the elves into orcs over several generations, this may not actually apply at all.
- One must wonder how a few generations of an impossibly long-lived race could be culled into a completely different species which itself probably counts a good many more individuals than the parent race. Dues ex evolutiona?
- Do fantasy worlds count here? It's not really a plot hole that a fantasy world wouldn't share the same genetic rules as our reality does. If you accept that magic presents different rules of physics from our own, then surely you can accept different rules of biology, too.
- Except that in the LotR Verse, all these events are supposedly happening in our own world, far in the past.
- In the distant past of our world, yes, but with various supernatural beings running around who could presumably affect genetics (though it's hard to say, since magic in The Lord Of The Rings is very vaguely defined).
- There's a second major one in Lot R that I'm surprised no one's touched on, (granted it is more of an In the Blood thing, but still) those possessing the blood of Numinor (Aragorn was one of the last) gained incredible stamina and longevity. He's someplace in his 80s at the beginning of the books. Though Frodo's over 60, so, it doesn't count for as much on Middle Earth as it would here, I guess. The other thing is this was pretty clearly a case of a bloodline, but, I guess it fits in here.
- and played straight in the creation of the orcs, who were originally elves that were captured by Morgoth and tortured untill they were corrupted forms of their former selves. Somehow, this trait is passed on to their offspring...
Ow. Thread Mode Conversation In The Main Page. Also, it's never explained exactly what the origin of orcs is; Tolkein considered the "corrupted elves" thing, but never actually put it into the books. And Smeagol doesn't count for this, since he's a single individual. And was the source of Numenorean longevity and such ever explained?
- It's recently been discovered that Lamarck really WAS right, to an extent. (Warning: Technobabble by someone who only barely understands the concept ahead) Much of the genome that was previously considered junk DNA has now been found to produce inheritable changes in response to environmental changes. The study is called .
- Um... Not quite. There's a few ways that epigenetics can work, but junk DNA doesn't come into it much. For instance, malnutrition might mean that your DNA doesn't methylate properly while you're growing up - basically, chemical changes to the DNA that help inactivate or activate parts of it - and because it's still DNA, that can be passed on. Another, even simpler example is that conditions in the womb can affect development of the foetus, which can pass on some information about the mother's environment - how much food is available, etc - to the child. Likewise, in single-celled organisms, they often split in half to reproduce, Trypanosomes use the parent as a pattern to form the right shape, and other such things. However, epigenetics is generally a weaker, less permanent, and (probably) less important form of inheritance than natural selection and genetic drift.
Cutting this down to make actual sense.
In regards "Adam's apple" that's actually folklore, not christian theology.
Pink Lime: Removed
- Harry Potter's father used too rough up his hair to make it look like he just got off a broomstick , as a result Harry's own hair is next to impossible to keep down.
- What? That's never stated, nor is it really implied.
- Agreeing with the comment above. Harry's hair is messy because James's hair...is also messy. That's just genetics. It's just that James used to mess up his hair even more because he thought girls liked it that way. Or something.
Sylvia Sybil: The Dresden Files example doesn't fit here. In some cases magical aptitude is an inherited trait, and in some cases magic just pops up at random. In no case does someone pass down actual learning to their children, just the ability. Wizards still have to study how to do magic — being born sighted in the land of the blind doesn't automatically teach you how to read, it just gives you the capability. In Harry's case, his mother's magical ability was passed down, while his father's profession was irrelevant to his magic. In Molly's case, she inherited her mother's ability despite the fact that her mother explicitly "buried her silver coins" and stopped learning magic. As for Molly's siblings, well, they haven't inherited any magic yet.
So, I'm deleting this:
- Harry Dresden in Dresden Files has a normal stage-magician father, while his mother was a powerful mage.
- Also, Molly Carpenter, from her mother's side. Her many siblings doesn't seem to inherit any magical powers, however.
