Gregory Cochran
| Gregory Cochran | |
|---|---|
| Born | Gregory M. Cochran 1953 (age 63–64) |
| Citizenship | American |
| Fields | Physics, Anthropology |
| Institutions | University of Utah |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign |
| Known for | The 10,000 Year Explosion |
Gregory M. Cochran (born 1953) is a physicist, and research associate at the anthropology department at the University of Utah, known for hypotheses in evolutionary medicine and genetic anthropology. He argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution. He is co-author of the book The 10,000 Year Explosion.
In opposition to what he sees as the 'conventional wisdom' that civilization has been a static environment which imposed stabilizing selection on humans, Cochran, along with like minded anthropologists such as John D. Hawks, contends that haplotype and other data indicate the selection of genes has been strongest since the advent of farming and civilization.
Cochran and co-authors Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending suggest that the widely observed high average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews may be attributed to natural selection for intelligence during the Middle Ages and a low rate of genetic inflow. Cochran et al. hypothesise that the occupational profile of the Jewish community in medieval Europe had resulted in selection pressure for mutations that increase intelligence, but can also result in hereditary neurological disorders.
Along with Paul W. Ewald, Cochran believes an evolutionary perspective suggests that common diseases are caused by pathogens. In a paper they point to a history of common diseases, once thought to be due to noninfectious environmental factors, being found to have an infectious origin; for example, peptic ulcers, once thought to occur because of stress, are now believed to often be caused by the pathogenic bacteria Helicobacter pylori. The association of human papilloma virus with cervical cancer is another example. Cochran and Ewald propose that Koch's postulates are difficult to fulfill for the still unproven cases of infectious causation because of the focus on identifying the infectious agent which is often highly cryptic.
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