I am only two semesters away from wrapping up an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences. After four years of science classes, there is only one lesson I have learned that I am confident I will retain post graduation.
In five years, I probably won’t be able to model chemical reactions, nor will I be able to label entire muscle groups or biochemical pathways. But I will remember one thing – science is complicated, and anyone who offers you an easy-to-understand answer to a scientific question is almost always oversimplifying reality to the point where the knowledge they are imparting is close to worthless.
Every law of biology has exceptions. Many chemical equations work only under a set of controlled variables that are rarely replicated outside a lab. Conclusions that seem obvious often fall short of reality. Lessons learned in high school biology or chemistry classes usually convey only half-truths.
The reality that science is not easily understood is, in my mind, the single most important lesson of science that is not taught to young students. I believe it is important that young students have a grasp on what they don’t yet understand.
While the scientific knowledge a student gains in high school is essential for understanding the broad strokes of how the world works, it is usually insufficient to fully explain natural phenomena, and can be less than useful when crafting policy that depends on scientific knowledge.
This gap between what students learn and what is true in reality leads many to fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where individuals with low competence in a given field vastly overestimate their competence in that same field.
Take genetics as an example of how this overconfidence can present itself. Genetics was one of my favorite units in my high school biology class, mostly because it seemed really simple. You had two alleles, either dominant or recessive, from each parent for any given trait, and you could determine the likelihood a child would inherit a trait by solving a punnet square.
Most people assume this is all the relevant information one needs to confidently do the science of genetics.
When I had to take a genetics course several years ago, I assumed that it would be easy. After all, I could solve punnett squares very easily, and I understood how meiosis and mitosis worked.
It was barely a week into the course when I realized that everything I learned about genetics was just an oversimplification.
The reality is that the heritability of most traits a human could display can not be accurately predicted with a Punnett square. Punnett squares are useful for getting the big picture of how traits can be inherited, but very few traits are influenced by a single gene or two alleles.
Some traits are polygenic, where dozens or hundreds of genes influence the same trait.
Alleles are also more complex; they don’t necessarily have to be either dominant or recessive.
Two different alleles could be codominant, where both versions of a gene could be equally and fully expressed in the offspring, think of a flower that has both red and white petals.
Two different alleles of the same gene can also display incomplete dominance, in which offspring can exhibit a phenotype that is a mix of both alleles. For example, the offspring of a red and a white flower could be pink rather than red or white.
Most high schoolers are also never taught epigenetics, or how DNA can be modified to express certain genes differently, nor are they taught about genetic linkages, where two or more separate genes are inherited together.
All of these complexities (which are still only scratching the surface) make modeling genetic inheritance very difficult and infinitely more complicated than a high school biology student might think.
This is not to say that what is taught in high school is pointless; most people won’t be geneticists after all. The issue comes when students think they are being taught everything relevant on a given subject.
This creates adults who overestimate their scientific ability and scientific knowledge. These adults often lean on their public school education and believe that makes them experts in a given field. It can make them say things like “It’s common knowledge that-” or “It’s basic biology.”
Sure, something might be “basic biology,” but as I hope I have illustrated, “basic biology” is often an oversimplified reality.
I was inspired to write this column by a comment from Nebraska State Sen. Kathleen Kauth. Kauth was arguing in favor of LB 730, which she introduced. The bill would require schools and state agencies to designate restrooms and locker rooms based on sex assigned at birth, either as male or female.
Kauth holds a degree in criminology and sociology and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Northern Iowa. She has no formal education in biology.
When we discuss biology, there is no doubt that there are only two sexes: male and female. If we truly believe in science, there are no other options,” Kauth stated.
This made my blood boil because there is significant doubt in the scientific community that there are only two sexes. This doubt doesn’t jive well with what is usually taught in science classes- that an individual either has or lacks a Y chromosome, and that determines if they are a male or a female, respectively.
Defining biological sex is not simple, and there is significant disagreement among biologists about how it should be defined. Some say it’s determined by whether an individual has ovaries or testes. Some say it is determined by secondary sex characteristics like facial hair or the pitch of one’s voice, others say it is determined by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome.
No matter how one chooses to define biological sex, the reality of all of these factors is that they do not contribute to a purely binary definition of sex.
You have probably heard the term intersex before. The term refers to individuals with disorders of sex development, or DSDs, whose sexual anatomy doesn’t match their sex chromosomes. It is estimated that 1 in 100 people has some kind of DSD.
Are intersex people male or female? Which is the actual indicator of their biological sex, their anatomy or their DNA?
If you think that an individual’s chromosomes should be the ultimate indicator of their biological sex, then it might be relevant to know that roughly 1 in 500 newborns have some form of Sex chromosome aneuploidy- a condition where an individual has an atypical number of sex chromosomes.
These conditions include conditions such as Klinefelter syndrome, in which males are born with two X chromosomes and a Y chromosome. These individuals have two X chromosomes, so does that make them female? High school-level biology can’t answer that question.
Or what about Turner syndrome? Girls with Turner syndrome have only a single X chromosome. Without the complementary X chromosome, can they be considered female if they lack the second X chromosome? Again, high school biology offers no clear answer.
I bring all of this up not to shame Sen. Kauth for her lack of biological knowledge, but to illustrate the inherent problem in crafting public policy based on high school science.
The idea that is taught in high school that sex is binary is an oversimplification of reality, and that means that public policy that is built upon that idea is unfit for reality.
This is why I believe it is important for people to understand what they don’t know. Not to sow mistrust in what they were taught in school, but because it is useful, imperative even, for us to understand that we may not have the ability to speak authoritatively on scientific subjects, and we should be deferent to those who do have knowledge on the complexities of scientific subjects.
Jackson Hatcher is a senior majoring in biological sciences with a minor in political science. You can reach him at jacksonhatcher@dailynebraskan.com.
