最近《纽约人》（New Yorker）上面关于表观遗传学的一篇文章（The piece in question is "Same But Different," a 6,000-word feature on the science of epigenetics by physician and science writer Siddhartha Mukherjee. ）惹了麻烦。科学家指责这篇文章犯了科学错误，最主要的是两点：

"The coils of DNA seemed to open and close in response to histone modifications — inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, like life," Mukherjee writes.

Next, Mukherjee notes (more vaguely) that scientists have found "other systems, too, that could scratch different kinds of code on the genome."

关于第一点，一位科学家说没说对，因为"there is no evidence that coiling and uncoiling of DNA has a causal effect on gene activity."

关于第二点，另一们科学家说不该忽略，而该多写一点才行：“The second is the critics say those glossed-over "other systems" are actually the prevailing theory on how it all works, and should be at least discussed at greater length.”

总体上的问题，一位分子生物学家Steve Henikoff是这样说的: Mukherjee seemed not to realize that transcription factors occupy the top of the hierarchy of epigenetic information, that this has been widely accepted in the broader chromatin [i.e. DNA] field, and that histone modifications at most act as cogs in the machinery that enforces the often complex programs specified by the binding of transcription factors.