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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Mildly Interesting
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One thing that's kind of funny to me about this is the 1940s, which has a lot of the ones from modern times...
I could be wrong (and I'd be super interested to hear if this was the case), but... Were we teaching kids about the human genome before we even knew the structure of DNA and before we knew that DNA carried genetic information? I know we knew DNA existed, and it was probably hypothesized that it could play a roll in genetics before the Hershey-Chase experiments in 1952, but I'm not sure whether most schools would talk much about anything resembling the human genome in the 1940s? What would have been in the curriculum then? It's actually kind of wild how much the scientific landscape has changed since then.
From what I could trace, the 1940s myths were most likely spread around then (a lot were circa 1930s), just perhaps less commonly. I can definitely attest that at least in the scientific literature then, that was a common enough idea to be inaccurate since, so I'd assume that it was taught to students when approaching biology too. If I'm wrong on this though I can remove this from the site
The human genome one was the one that stood out to me. I’d be curious to see a source from the time if you’ve got one!