David Meadows
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Registered: 09-2003
Posts: 197
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Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects
I don't subscribe to the British Medical Journal myself, but it may be worth a trip to the library to read a paper in the December issue:
Sreeram V Ramagopalan et al., "Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects", BMJ 335:1299-1301, 22 December 2007
Objective: To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic.
Design: Literature review.
Setting: Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling.
Participants: Muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs.
Interventions: Limited.
Main outcome measures: Family and twin studies, magical ability, and specific magical skills.
Results: Magic shows strong evidence of heritability, with familial aggregation and concordance in twins. Evidence suggests magical ability to be a quantitative trait. Specific magical skills, notably being able to speak to snakes, predict the future, and change hair colour, all seem heritable.
Conclusions: A multilocus model with a dominant gene for magic might exist, controlled epistatically by one or more loci, possibly recessive in nature. Magical enhancers regulating gene expression may be involved, combined with mutations at specific genes implicated in speech and hair colour such as FOXP2 and MCR1.
(Yes, the BMJ usually publishes a spoof paper at Christmas  )
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"By tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing."
-- Lynne Truss
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1/2/2008, 4:51 pm
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QS2
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Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 576
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Re: Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects
Very cute indeed, just an exercise in seeing how much sense they can make out of a piece of fiction I guess.  Though in this case it seems they got relatively far. 
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1/2/2008, 9:32 pm
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dragonlady
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Registered: 04-2003
Location: England
Posts: 66
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Re: Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects
That sounds amusing.
I think those The Science of... books usually try to make sense of fiction and go quite far to do it.
They have ones for James Bond, Doctor Who, Harry Potter and the X-men; there are probably more. My boyfriend read the X-Men one and apparently they go into quantum physics to explain some of the powers. 
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"Why sometimes I've believed as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast" -- Red Queen, Lewis Carrol
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1/3/2008, 6:12 pm
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