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Wow. This is very nice work in which the authors find that about a third of undergrad students completely misunderstand the physical process underlying information flow from DNA to RNA.

I teach the central dogma of molecular biology to learners at multiple postgraduate levels. With the curse of knowledge, it never even occurred to me how wrongly people might get this.

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I used to TA undergraduates in Molecular Bio. It was demoralizing to see how many answers to midterm and final exams were just regurgitated babble-stage nonsense. A hidden Markov model could have outscored half my students.

Well this is kind of what undergraduate studies are about, yeah? Not every student who wants to go into molecular biology is cut out for it. Hopefully when they meet a topic thats too hard and the grading is tough but fair they’ll put their efforts elsewhere.

Maybe we should be encouraged that half would really understand a Markov chain in biology?

The comment before didn't mean half know what a Markov chain is, instead that their knowledge is not better then one.

Only in the USA. Undergrad in the US is what high school is in most of the developed world -- a time for broad learning and exploration. Outside of the USA, if you're going to college, you're getting serious and fairly specific. In my experience, Americans take an extra four years or so to grow up, because they're allowed to. (I'm not saying this is good or bad.)

A lot of people from outside the US go to college in the US.

This was down last year with the pandemic, but apparently not as much as you'd think.

FYI I am a US citizen but studied did elementary school in Japan and USA, high school in Brazil and Sweden, undergrad in England, PhD in USA.

Normally, this is because they don't actually want to be there but the class is in the way to some other objective. So, what degree were you in the way of the students getting?

In addition, molecular biology may be the first "biology" class that an undergrad ever encounters where "memorization" isn't the point. That habit needs a while to get broken.

I HATED biology in high school--a bunch of useless memorization. Then I hit a molecular biology class and loved it--everything made sense. Of course, most of the students in the class reacted in precisely the opposite direction.

I was the same with school - no sciences for 11 & 12 because it was so dry

Then I completed a bachelors majoring in biochem and genetics under my own steam after I’d come to science in my own way and I couldn’t be happier with the path. There is such a big difference between the route, boring, dry way science is taught at school compared to the broader field of study. I even loved organic chem.

In the interest of learning, could you provide some resources that explains the information flow?

I think I'm in the dangerous area of knowing enough about the subject to not recognise my own short comings, so I'd be grateful for any resources that helps me learn concepts I don't yet understand, or helps me understand, that I don't know enough about the subject to justify voicing an opinion

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Don't AP Bio classes still cover some of this? I remember it being covered, at least at a high level, in my AP Bio class back when I was in 10th grade.

They still do, as someone who completed AP Bio a few months ago.

Good to know! I took it almost 30 years ago. (Yeah. I'm old.)

The arrow just looks too much like the one used in chemistry.

Having studied biology myself, I am also amazed by the level and the frequency of the misunderstandings that the authors found amongst students.

By the way, relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2501/

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