Harry Potter and the Teaching of Genetics to Children

I am a Harry Potter fan. Like millions of other Harry Potter fans, this July I went to a book store on the first day and got a copy of the sixth installation. I really enjoyed reading those books and was fascinated by J.K. Rowling's imaginations.

I am also a biologist, thus it is quite interesting reading two recent correspondences in the top scientific journal Nature. The first one was published by a group of scientists from Australia. The title of their letter is "Harry Potter and the recessive allele". They argued that it would be easier to teach children genetics if we could use analogies to things they are interested in, for example (what a surprise), Harry Potter. So they went on and discussed the allel for wizards and muggles, also about pure-blood, half-blood, muggle-born and so on. I think this is a little too much, but still is fine. Yet I am a little confused at why this idea merits a publication in Nature.

Then this Thursday, a second correspondence (Harry Potter and the prisoner of presumption) came out. This time a group of British scientists expressed their disagreement with the first group's assumption that the ability of wizarding is a monogenic trait, in which wizarding allel (w) is recessive to muggle allel (M). And their so-called "available evidence" is the characters Hermoine and Naville. I can't help bursting out laughing. Come on, my fellow scientists, can't we talk about something more solidly scientific in Nature?