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by cmsmith 3012 days ago
News article titles:

> 7% of Scott Kelly's DNA was changed due to his year in space

> Humans and chimps share 96% of the same DNA

Seeing as how Scott Kelly is not severely mutated (or dead, as the article says), this should be an indication that something is wrong with the reporting.

2 comments

I heard about this on NPR yesterday afternoon. In their interview, this bit of misinformation was specifically called out:

> Now, there's been a little bit of misinformation about this study. Scott is still Mark Kelly's identical twin. And he did not have 7 percent of his genes altered by space travel.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/15/594062986/nasa-study-finds-as...

Sure. But the headline leads the reader in a different direction despite "change" not meaning what people think it means: "NASA Study Finds Astronaut's Genes Changed While In Space"
Yes. I haven't actually read any of the articles with that 7% headline as it seemed to me that they likely got something completely wrong - I've seen plenty of videos/photos of Scott Kelly since he got back to Earth and he was clearly not horrifically deformed or unhealthy in any way (nor has anyone who's spent significant time on the ISS come back that way).