ReviewHeredity2019
A century of bias in genetics and evolution.
Review in Heredity, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A systematic review and critical analysis of the evidence for transmission ratio distortion in humans.Genetics · 2026Pooled it
- Protocol: An absolute egg-to-adult viability assay inmicroPublication biology · 2025Article
- Meiotic drive against chromosome fusions in butterfly hybrids.Chromosome research : an international journal on the molecular, supramolecular and evolutionary aspects of chromosome biology · 2024Article
- Main Factors Shaping Amino Acid Usage Across Evolution.Journal of molecular evolution · 2023Review
- Evidence for Strong Mutation Bias toward, and Selection against, U Content in SARS-CoV-2: Implications for Vaccine Design.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Adequacy and sufficiency evaluation of existing EFSA guidelines for the molecular characterisation, environmental risk assessment and post-market environmental monitoring of genetically modified insects containing engineered gene drives.EFSA journal. European Food Safety Authority · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Mendel proposed that the heritable material is particulate and that transmission of alleles is unbiased. An assumption of unbiased transmission was necessary to show how variation can be preserved in the absence of selection, so overturning an early objection to Darwinism. In the second half of the twentieth century, it was widely recognised that even strongly deleterious alleles can invade if they have strongly biased transmission (i.e. strong segregation distortion). The spread of alleles with distorted segregation can explain many curiosities. More recently, the selectionist-neutralist duopoly was broken by the realisation that biased gene conversion can explain phenomena such as mammalian isochore structures. An initial focus on unbiased transmission in 1919, has thus given way to an interest in biased transmission in 2019. A focus on very weak bias is now possible owing to technological advances, although technical biases may put a limit on resolving power. To understand the relevance of weak bias we could profit from having the concept of the effectively Mendelian allele, a companion to the effectively neutral allele. Understanding the implications of unbiased and biased transmission may, I suggest, be a good way to teach evolution so as to avoid psychological biases.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.