Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 07 – 19
Introductory scientific education necessarily relies on simplified examples. Such examples are indispensable for teaching fundamental concepts before introducing the complexity of real scientific phenomena. Yet prolonged reliance on pedagogical simplifications may have unintended epistemological consequences. Students may gradually come to regard the simplified model not merely as a teaching device but as an accurate representation of reality.
Genetics provides many familiar examples. Dominance is commonly introduced through cases of complete dominance, as though one allele entirely masks the effect of another. Likewise, epistasis is often presented as the complete masking of one locus by another. These examples are pedagogically effective because they illustrate the underlying concepts with exceptional clarity. In quantitative genetics, however, both dominance and epistasis occur across continuous ranges of magnitude. Complete dominance and complete epistasis represent special cases rather than the general rule.
The educational problem is not the use of simplified examples themselves but their continued dominance within scientific instruction. When idealized cases become the principal point of reference, they may encourage an overly discrete conception of phenomena that are, in reality, quantitative, multivariate, and probabilistic. The resulting habits of thought may persist long after students encounter more sophisticated theoretical frameworks.
This illustrates a more general principle of scientific education. Pedagogical models are designed to facilitate learning, not to provide exhaustive descriptions of reality. Their success should therefore be measured by their ability to prepare students for increasing complexity rather than by the simplicity of the examples themselves.
Hossein Jorjani 