The DNA is backwards on The Selfish Gene’s cover – again

Josie Ford Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Don’t get it twisted Feedback is not young. We have been here on the back pages for many years, endlessly pushing a boulder up a hill and trying to take joy in the effort. This means, every so often, we are forced to repeat ourselves – because the world repeats itself. With a due sense of ennui, we turn our world-weary eyes to the cover of the new 50th anniversary edition of Richard Dawkins’s popular science classic The Selfish Gene. The title, written in all-caps, takes up most of the cover. The “I” in “SELFISH” has been replaced by a colourful little drawing of a DNA double helix. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.adverts.addToArray( { "pos": "mid-article-slot" } ); } Alas, something is awry. Geneticist Simon Fisher pointed it out on Bluesky: “You know a gene is selfish when its DNA twists the wrong way, as demonstrated by the left-handed double-helix proudly adorning the 50th Anniversary Edition of the multimillion copy bestseller on this topic.” Yes, once again we have an example of a DNA molecule being drawn, essentially, backwards. In reality, it is a right-handed double helix, but the one on the book cover is left-handed. It’s twisting the wrong way. Feedback’s mind’s eye immediately cast itself back to March 2025, when we covered a Lego model that included many scientific and technological objects, including a sadly left-handed DNA. It turns out that The Selfish Gene‘s art has been wrong for at least a decade. Patrick Goymer, an editor at PLOS One, shared the cover of the 40th anniversary edition on Bluesky, and it has the same left-handed DNA in place of the “I”. Feedback notes that our own copy is the 30th anniversary edition, and the DNA is correct. At some point since 2006, the DNA on the cover has flipped into a mirror universe. This little mistake would be doubly embarrassing if, say, the Nobel prize in chemistry had recently been awarded for research into these sorts of mirror molecules. Can you imagine? Coca-Cola faecaloma Sometimes a scientific paper has a title so vivid, so immediate, that Feedback just has to write about it. Such is the case with a paper published in Cureus, titled: “Massive fecaloma dissolved by Coca-Cola: A case report”. It was sent to us by Australia reporter Alice Klein, who either has a truly terrible browser history or makes extensive use of a VPN. A faecaloma, for those not yet blessed with the knowledge, is a large lump of impacted faeces trapped in a person’s rectum. In this case report, the faecaloma had a maximum diameter of 12.2 centimetres. Readers anxious to see a dramatisation of such a condition are advised to try series two, episode five of The Pitt, in which one of the patients has impacted faeces that the doctors must manually dislodge. Based on our own personal experience, we do not recommend watching this sequence over dinner. Back in the real world, the doctors reported that they tried “conservative management”, which apparently consisted of “polyethylene glycol, senna, mineral oil, and sodium phosphate enemas”. But the faecaloma didn’t budge, so they turned to a more drastic solution. The authors tell us that “isolated case reports have described the use of Coca-Cola enemas for fecaloma dissolution with favorable outcomes”. This is because “Classic Coca-Cola acts as a mucolytic agent [it makes mucus less thick and sticky], a source of carbonic acid, and an effervescent solvent”. Hence the doctors administered two 1-litre Coca-Cola enemas, which shrank the faecaloma enough to resolve the situation. Feedback has a number of thoughts, such as: would Pepsi work as well? What if the doctors had first inserted Mentos? We are also not sure we ever want to put Coca-Cola into our mouth ever again: if it can be used to destroy a faecaloma, we dread to think what it might be doing to our teeth. @2, Brute? Some weeks ago, Feedback began investigating unfortunate technology-induced truncations and abbreviations. These truncations have gone on for a long time and there is no end in sight. Stuart Arnold was bemused to find Facebook recommending a post about an obsolete form of aircraft called a Rotodyne, which never made it past the prototype phase. It is best described as “a plane, but stick a set of helicopter rotors on top”. Unfortunately, due to the character limit in the Facebook feed, the post was cut off as follows: “designed to take off vertically, then fly faster and fart…” “It’s probably a good thing that the program was cancelled,” says Stuart. Secondly, David Smith encountered a related problem: tech-induced rudeness. Because his name is a common one, he has long struggled to find unique identifiers for email addresses and such. Imagine his surprise when he joined a large organisation and found he was only the second person there with that name. This seemed like (minor) good news, but he swiftly discovered a downside to being the second David Smith. “The part of the email address corresponding to ‘2@’ has to be pronounced very carefully,” he says. And finally, Andy Howe reminds us that Trinity Hall, one of the Cambridge colleges, “is colloquially abbreviated as Tit”. He tells us: “This was particularly unfortunate for an archaeology student who saw his name listed in a society’s membership records, followed by the descriptor ‘Arch Tit’.” Got a story for Feedback? You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.