May
13
May Café Scientifique with Steven Heine
Posted by: jdewitt | May 13, 2016 | Leave a Comment
Dear Café Scientifiquers, our next café will happen on Tuesday May 31st, 7:30pm at Yagger’s Downtown (433 W Pender). Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Steven Heine, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at UBC. The title of his talk is:
DNA is Not Destiny: How Essences Distort how we Think about Genes
People the world over are essentialist thinkers – they are attracted to the idea that hidden essences make things as they are. And because genetic concepts remind people of essences, they tend to think of genes in ways similar to essences. That is, people tend to think about genetic causes as immutable, deterministic, homogenous, discrete, and natural. Dr. Heine will discuss how our essentialist biases lead people to think differently about sex, race, crime, eugenics, and disease whenever these are described in genetic terms. Moreover, Dr. Heine will discuss how our essentialistic biases make people vulnerable to the sensationalist hype that has emerged with the genomic revolution and access to direct-to-consumer genotyping services.