Richard Powers - Generosity

Researchers whose greatest social stress consists of writing grant proposals slink out of their labs and into broadcast studios. They summarize the complex article using short, digestible sentences of simple words. On cue, across the big three monotheistic target markets, creationists flood the call-in lines, leading the discussions into threads more tangled than any enzyme pathway.

A hard-core genetic determinist from the University of Leiden, interviewed on BBC Four, points to the haunting twin studies: the more genes any two people share in common, the more likely they are to share dispositions, no matter how or where they’re raised. A nurturist colleague from Hamburg refutes that “hardwire hype,” suggesting that any individual’s emotional highs and lows probably differ as much as any two people’s baselines.

In the scattered sniping, both sides commit crimes of passion. A symposium at the University of Florida generates a complex exchange of ideas that culminates in face-slapping. An outspoken engineer from MIT who champions Kurton’s paper as an important early step in the future structural improvement of humans receives death threats.

The most damning critique comes from the epigenetics community. A revolution is afoot, one that looks almost like retooled Lamarckism, calling into question the centrality of the gene and all the old dogma of fixed inheritance. The genome seethes with extragenetic inherited mechanisms, environmentally altered chemical switches. The gene-centric view looks increasingly like the domain of fifty-seven-year-olds still in the grip of obsolete paradigms. Nurture can directly affect germ cells. Old-style gene-association studies like Kurton’s may be not even irrelevant. Temperament may be in the water, food, and air, as much as in the chromosomes

For a few strange days, neither right-wing nor left-wing talk radio knows whether they should be for this discovery or against it. Both wings flap over the notorious footnote, Jen. Is she real, or just some kind of research artifact? Is she the poster child for the coming, new human? Or is she just some chick who’s more chipper than she should be?

The consensus, if any, is vague. Most talking heads agree that the sculpting of affect is lifelong and fluid. But most also concede that people’s bedrock emotional skills vary as greatly as their skills in math. For proof, witness the chaos of this public argument.

But in all the din, no one comes forward with any substantive criticism of the original paper’s methodology. The statistics withstand scrutiny. Other studies will take years to confirm or contradict the outcome. The story could vanish in shame. It could be put to rest once and for all in a new definitive study. And still the genes of happiness will knock about in the collective marketplace for generations.

Candace Weld did, at least, have the foresight to run one definitive experiment that spring. At the beginning of April, she entered into Google the quoted phrase “happiness gene.” The search engine returned 727 hits, one-fifth of them false positives. She tried again near the beginning of May, when even the TiVo-and-leave-o people had gotten their first hive-mind vibe of Thomas Kurton. By then the hits had reached 162,315. Come June, she didn’t have the nerve to try again. Nor did she have the need.

In short, Truecyte’s announcement produces the usual scientific free-for-all. No one is shocked but the general public. Science has never hidden the fact that truth is red in tooth and claw. Blood has flowed over the question of inherited temperament since Paleolithic humans started breeding dogs.

Usually the shouting takes place behind closed doors, out of earshot of the press. Few families bicker in public. The gap between any two scientists pales next to that between science and the science-hating public. But once betrayal is involved, all bets are off.

The betrayal in question splits along generational lines. In one corner, the old-style university geneticist, hands full of reagent, head full of a slowly accreting body of knowledge. In the other, the molecular engineer, hands on the computer simulations and head full of informatics, working for a start-up drug company that reduces even the research professor to a licensed client. Patience versus patents, say the old-style professors. Law versus awe, say the upstarts.

Like the worst of family fights, this one gets uglier as the stakes rise. But in the weeks following publication, Kurton sails above the fray. If he and Truecyte have indeed discovered deep foundations of human emotion, then they’ve just made themselves indispensable. And if they’ve moved a little too quickly or hopefully, the damage will be smaller than the potential gain. They’re a private company after all, accountable to no one but their investors. Write off the loss, manage the resulting publicity, and stake a new claim.

The mastodon has evolved. It’s a whole new elephant.

Thassa’s genome slips into the wild, joining the list of laboratory escapees from killer bees to SARS. A fifth of the popular articles about The Journal of Behavioral Genomics cite the footnote woman from the obscure ethnic population who has won the happiness triple crown. One million people hear Kurton marvel about “Jen.” Ten million hear about her from that one million. And so the imaginary woman comes to life, growing from anonymous childhood to cult adolescence in about five days.

Of course, the bloggers get to her first. There’s a funny piece on Queen Elizabeast (high authority ratings from all user indexes) called “No Cry, No Woman,” suggesting that

anybody who is that far above the human baseline-anyone whose brain scan looks like a symphony-probably should already be considered her own honorary species. If Jen truly is without sadness, then she’s missing out on something profound, mysterious, and essentially human. That’s my feeling, and I’ll go on saying as much, at least until I get the Paxil tuned

The piece gets a few dozen trackbacks and spawns four times as many uncredited imitations across sites large and small. The online magazine Betatest runs a longer, philosophical rumination, “Jen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” It’s a careful piece, distinguishing between destiny and predisposition. It paints a rich picture of positive psychology’s current understanding of emotional set points. It surveys the huge body of research about environmental contributions to happiness and argues that from any point of view, we ought to be much more interested in the part of our mood that’s under our control than in the part that’s not. It concludes:

Any contentment that Truecyte’s mutant of happiness feels, the rest of us can also experience, much more meaningfully, because more intermittently, through daily effort.

The article gets e-mailed tens of thousands of times around the Net, and with every copy of the article comes a full-length color portrait of a woman in a pose suggesting euphoria. Her features have been Photoshopped out and replaced by the ubiquitous sunny smiley face.

Countless Internet top feeders follow the happiness-gene kerfuffle in detail. They browse to the Behavioral Genomics site and give up in frustration halfway through the abstract. They surf to the Truecyte home page and take the Flash guided tour. They add a few new key terms to their newsreaders, plunge into numerous user groups, or lurk invisibly around the corners of the crazier brawls. They post questions on various Answers Forums, asking whether Jen is for real or some kind of medical composite.