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Evolutionary Theories of Imprinting— Enough Already!

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Genomic Imprinting

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 626))

Abstract

In our view, the conflict theory of imprinting explains the evolution of parental allele-specific gene expression patterns in the somatic tissues of mammals and angiosperms. Not surprisingly, given its importance in mammalian development and pathology, the evolution of imprinting continues to attract considerable interest from theoretical and experimental biologists. However, we contend that much of the ensuing debate is of poor quality. We discuss several problems with the manner in which workers in the field engage in this debate and we argue for a more formal approach to the discussion of theories of the evolution of imprinting.

Again, for the naive falsificationist a theory is falsified by a “(fortified) observational” statement which conflicts with it (or rather, which he decides to interpret as conflicting with it). The sophisticated falsificationist regards a scientific theory T as falsified if and only if another theory T′ has been proposed with the following characteristics: (1) T′ has excess empirical content over T: that is, it predicts novel facts, that is, facts improbable in the light of, or even forbidden, by T, (2) T′ explains the previous success of T, that is, all the unrefuted content of T is contained (within the limits of observational error) in the content of T′; and (3) some of the excess content of T′ is corroborated. -Imre Lakatos, Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press, 1970:91–95.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry, Biosciences Institute, University College Cork, College Road, Cork, Ireland

    Tom Moore & Walter Mills

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  1. Tom Moore
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  2. Walter Mills
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Correspondence to Tom Moore .

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  1. Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

    Jon F. Wilkins Ph.D.

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© 2008 Landes Bioscience and Springer Science+Business Media

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Moore, T., Mills, W. (2008). Evolutionary Theories of Imprinting— Enough Already!. In: Wilkins, J.F. (eds) Genomic Imprinting. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 626. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-77576-0_9

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