Calibrating scientific skepticism – a wider look at the field of transgenerational epigenetics
I recently wrote a blogpost examining the supposed evidence for transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TGEI) in humans. This focused specifically on a set of studies commonly cited as convincingly demonstrating the phenomenon whereby the experiences of one generation can have effects that are transmitted, through non-genetic means, to their offspring, and, more importantly, even to their grandchildren. Having examined what I considered to be the most prominent papers making these claims, I concluded that they do not in fact provide any evidence supporting that idea, as they are riddled with fatal methodological flaws. While the scope of that piece was limited to studies in humans, I have also previously considered animal studies making similar claims, which suffer from similar methodological flaws ( here and here ). My overall conclusion is that there is effectively no evidence for TGEI in humans (contrary to widespread belief) and very little in mammal...