I found this joke of a "study":
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7412/full/nature11396.html
Mutations generate sequence diversity and provide a substrate for selection. The rate of de novo mutations is therefore of major importance to evolution. Here we conduct a study of genome-wide mutation rates by sequencing the entire genomes of 78 Icelandic parent–offspring trios at high coverage. We show that in our samples, with an average father’s age of 29.7, the average de novo mutation rate is 1.20 × 10−8 per nucleotide per generation. Most notably, the diversity in mutation rate of single nucleotide polymorphisms is dominated by the age of the father at conception of the child. The effect is an increase of about two mutations per year. An exponential model estimates paternal mutations doubling every 16.5 years. After accounting for random Poisson variation, father’s age is estimated to explain nearly all of the remaining variation in the de novo mutation counts. These observations shed light on the importance of the father’s age on the risk of diseases such as schizophrenia and autism.
This is a contrarian study that goes against MOUNTAINS of evidence which shows the mothers age to be the #1 factor in the health of the child and there is no mention of the age of the mothers? And it bases it's conclusions off a measly 78
trios?
How anyone can make a conclusion based on such a small sample is beyond me, but the study then takes their "findings" (from 78 couples) and extrapolates it to 752,343 father-child pairs since 1650. The inherent absurdity of doing something like this boggles my mind, but wait - there's more!
According to this study, if older fathers keep having more children over time then the mutations will increase and build upon each other, yet according to Figure 4 in their own study the amount of de nova mutations went down dramatically between 1900-1979 despite the prior 300 years having the average age of fathers being over 35. There appears to be little evidence of these mutations doing anything negative at all.
The
definition of a de novo mutation:
An alteration in a gene that is present for the first time in one family member as a result of a mutation in a germ cell (egg or sperm) of one of the parents or in the fertilized egg itself
So, in summary:
- De novo mutations are not inherently bad or good.
- We have no idea what the role of the mother is since the study does not show how they separated the father's role from the mother's role.
- The sample size was pathetically small.
Apparently you need to pay $3.99 to "rent" the article and see, or $32 to "buy". I hate Academia, it's such a scam. Charging money so people can see your results is absolutely retarded. This means that if we don't pay we're expected to take this shit at face value based on the authority of this "peer-reviewed journal." God knows if knowledge was made available to the public I wonder how many people would take them seriously?
It is telling is that this study has gotten 700K page views, which just goes to show people will believe what they want to believe without doing any checking of the facts because people are too cheap to pay $3.99 or $32 for the article thus giving Nature a lazy-man's monopoly on information.
This is feminist pop-science, and probably deserves to be exposed via RoK. How did such a weak study make it into Nature, supposed a prestigious academic journal?
And then this weak "science" is used to generate the following headlines:
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/24/news/la-heb-older-dads-more-mutations-evolution-20120824
Older dads pass down more mutations: the implications
A study this week reported that older men pass on more new mutations to their offspring than do younger men, a fact that could help explain higher rates of disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and others in kids born of older fathers.
LA Times just talking out of their ass, but I actually got a real link to a full study from this article:
http://www.nature.com/articles/ng.2...gn5vc=&tracking_referrer=articles.latimes.com
In this article they claim to know that mutations are not caused by the mother, yet they do not explain how they arrived at the conclusion. They say, "see supplementary tables, which are included in the online version of the paper," which means you need to pay.
Whole system is fucked, again, but there isn't any reason to believe they used accurate or sound methods after withholding such important information. My bullshit meter is off the charts.
Also interesting about the above study is that they try to infer, based on the rate of mutations, how fast humans evolved from the apes; I believe what they found is that the white race based on higher numbers of mutations evolved from apes faster than blacks and other types of apes in Table 2. But again, because they do not list how they calculate mutations, I wouldn't take this with more than a grain of salt.
So, to TL; DR:
1. Mutations: probably good if anything since mutations are the main drivers of evolution. Some mutations will be bad; these children die. Some mutations are good; these children then go out to reproduce successfully while young which according to the above papers means younger fathers = less mutations, so if fathers reproduce while young even if their fathers were old, it means they got a helpful mutation that allowed to them reproduce successfully earlier than normal.
2. If these studies are true, older fathers more likely to create unique characteristics in their sons and daughters (more likely in their sons since they inherit the Y chromosome). Again, it's a gamble but according to evolutionary theory mutations are one of THE most important drivers of evolution.
Therefore, older fathers are a GOOD thing if what these papers say is true. The Bible wins again.
3. Modern Academic science journals are a racket and charging money just to look at a single paper is reprehensible and immoral.
