WORKING NOTES — Divergence Phenotype Project M.L. Reyes — Spring/Summer 1993 [NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION — DRAFT MATERIAL ONLY] ===================================================================== May 3, 1993 Starting this file to track observations before I have a framework for them. The paper won't be written for at least another year. These are the things I don't want to forget. The five families I've been looking at most closely — the ones with the skip-generation pattern — share something I can't quite articulate yet. It's not just the heritability data. It's the texture of the family histories. The grandparents all have this quality in the record that I keep calling "before and after." Like something happened to them and the person who came back from wherever they went was not quite the same as the person who left. Their children — the G2 generation, the ones with low expression — describe fathers and grandfathers who were "quiet" or "removed" or "very private." One woman said: "He was gentle. He was always gentle. But he was like he was behind glass." Behind glass. I've heard that phrase before, in clinical contexts. It usually means something pathological. In this cohort it seems to mean something different. These men weren't dissociated. They were contained. There's a distinction. --------------------------------------------------------------------- May 19, 1993 Started reading the epigenetics literature more seriously. The Yehuda work on Holocaust survivors is the most directly relevant. The core finding — that the children of trauma survivors show measurable neurobiological differences consistent with the parent's trauma, even when they weren't exposed to the trauma themselves — is exactly the mechanism I need. But there's a problem. The Yehuda model is about trauma. The inheritance is of a traumatic response pattern. What I'm looking at doesn't feel like a trauma response. These families aren't anxious. The G3 subjects aren't hypervigilant. They're calm. They're affectively contained. Whatever was passed down, it doesn't look like fear. It looks more like immunity. Which raises the question: immunity to what? --------------------------------------------------------------------- June 7, 1993 I have been trying for three months to get the military service records for the G1 subjects in the skip-generation cluster. The NPRC response is consistent: partial records only, citing the 1973 fire. I've now gotten this response for 8 of the 14 families. The 1973 fire was real. It destroyed roughly 80% of Army records for personnel discharged 1912–1960. I know this. But the statistical probability of 8 specific families — out of a much larger pool of families with Army veterans in this period — all having their records destroyed in the same fire is starting to feel non-random. I could be wrong. Confirmation bias is the easiest trap in observational research. I'm aware of it. I'm trying to account for it. I'm not succeeding very well. --------------------------------------------------------------------- July 2, 1993 TJK left a note on my desk today. He wants to meet about the research direction. He didn't specify what the concern is. He's been with the program since before I arrived. He knows the cohort. I respect his judgment. I'll hear him out. But I've been thinking about one of the G3 subjects I interviewed last month — the woman from Portland, born 1964, in the 1973 program. She described sitting in a room for hours answering questions from adults who never introduced themselves, and feeling, despite everything, not frightened. Not even particularly curious. "I understood," she said, "that they were there to look at me. I didn't mind. I thought: someone should know what I am." Someone should know what I am. I've been sitting with that sentence for three weeks. --------------------------------------------------------------------- August 4, 1993 The literature review is largely done. Three findings I keep returning to: 1. The HPA axis profile in my subjects is genuinely novel. I can't find it in the published literature. Flat diurnal cortisol curve, attenuated acute stress response, rapid return to baseline. It's not a pathological profile. It's an efficient one. 2. The SLC6A4 promoter variant that may be involved — the one the researcher in [REDACTED] called the "quiet switch" — is not in any published variant database I can access. That's unusual. Variants get catalogued. This one hasn't been. That could mean it's genuinely novel, or it could mean someone decided it shouldn't be catalogued. 3. The educational program data. The more I look at the documented history of the 1968–1976 programs, the less it resembles gifted education. The program at the Portland school district — the one my subject was in — left no public record. I found a budget line in a 1972 district report, under "special assessment services." That's it. That's the entire paper trail. "Special assessment services." --------------------------------------------------------------------- October 7, 1993 Starting to write the paper. The framework is holding: three core characteristics, heritability data, epigenetic mechanism hypothesis. I can defend all of it. The parts I can't defend — the parts I'm not sure how to include — are the parts that feel most important. I know what I'll do. I'll write the defensible paper first. Then I'll write the true one. [file ends]