I remember talking to my colleagues about 15 years ago about trying to do research on some noncoding polymorphisms and was ridiculed. The basic response was som

I remember talking to my colleagues about 15 years ago about trying to do research on some noncoding polymorphisms and was ridiculed. The basic response was something along the lines of "those are noncoding, why would you look at those?" as if I was an idiot who didn't understand current genetics. It's been long ago enough that I don't remember all the details, but my perspective was that it was naive and arrogant to assume we had a good handle on everything about DNA, especially then as it was all new, and there was evidence then that a lot of the noncoding DNA had function. Dogmatic attitudes are surprisingly prevalent in academics. There's definitely a weird hubris accompanying published findings that goes something like peer reviewed -> established fact as if the point of academics isn't to understand things but to score points like on a test. Some skepticism about certain things seems warranted but other times there's really nothing but overly simplistic models that were really never evaluated to begin with. I wish there was more awareness of the topography of uncertainty in research findings.