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| Ancestral Genomes |
 Title text: SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH: No further research is needed as it is frankly none of our business. |
Explanation
A genotype is the complete genetic makeup of an individual, i.e. all of its genes. In humans, genotypes are almost always inherited from an individual’s parents; the two parents’ genotypes combine during sexual reproduction to form the genotype of the child. Mutations do occur, where parts of the DNA change randomly in a way that gives rise to a new genotype, and each human has about 60 such mutations, on average, out of about 20,000 genes. However, most mutations are "silent", i.e. not causing any visible changes. Depending on the behavior of the mutation, and if it even occurs to any gamete cells or those that produce them, it may spread throughout a population, or disappear again, or end up only being present in a certain fraction of the population. Either way, when studying a genotype, it is exceedingly rare to not arise through sexual intercourse, and impossible to spread throughout the population without it. As modern-day genetics researchers, Megan and Cueball should definitely know this fact. Randall has talked about the subject of genetics and sex before.
Currently in the United States, topics around sex are at least partially considered taboo. This taboo most strictly covers depictions of sex and nudity in media, which are usually the domain of pornography and less mainstream art forms (e.g. nude photography). Megan defending themselves as not being “weirdos” suggests that she in fact does not want to break the taboo. In academic science however, such topics are generally part of regular scientific discussion, including depictions and descriptions that would be considered offensive in other circumstances. For example, Wikimedia Commons contains many depictions of sexual intercourse for scientific and educational purposes. While some researchers, like the ones depicted in the comic, might be offended by such “lewd” contents, most would regard them well as long as they further the research on the topic at hand. Real-world biologists or geneticists would most likely not be offended by these issues, as sexual reproduction is a common or even predominant topic in both fields. Furthermore, the obscenity of the topic (genetic distributions affected by sexual reproduction) is very low in comparison to fields that deal with intercourse directly. This view seems to be shared by the off-screen commenter in the comic.
What is more problematic, and also addressed by the researcher’s comments, is the privacy of the individuals in the population under examination. Namely, using such data, it might be possible to figure out who had intercourse with whom, possibly reducing the timeframe to within less than a year based on the offspring’s age. However, since the analysis depicted likely takes place over many generations within a population, and is done on historical data, it is likely that the vast majority of the people whose genomes were analyzed are no longer alive. This is supported by the description of the population as “ancestral”. Beyond a certain point, even private data pertaining to deceased people is no longer considered sensitive, as it becomes the subject of history. The only problematic part is the ancestral information for living individuals, which is indeed worthy of protection—but not for the reasons given.
The title text alludes to the fact that most scientific papers contain a section suggesting future research avenues. This is done in the hope that other researchers will pick up where the authors have left off, or to announce the author’s own intentions for follow-up work. However, in this case, Megan and Cueball are both averse to the idea of future research, since as established they don’t think it’s appropriate to do so.
Presenting outlandish or plain bad/incorrect research has been a common topic for XKCD comics, such as in 3129: Archaeology Research and 3000: Experimental Astrophysics.
If the researcher had access to the time machine from the previous page, they would not need to rely on techniques such as admixture.
Transcript
- [Cueball and Megan are shown, with Megan using a pointer stick to point at a diagram on a poster. The diagram features a top-down tree structure.]
- Megan: Our admixture analysis showed that these genotypes arose in the ancestral population almost entirely through sexual intercourse.
- Megan: Upon realizing this, we of course promptly deleted all our data.
- Off-screen voice: What? Why??
- Megan: We're not weirdos!
- Megan: Jeez, give these people some privacy!
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