There is alot of overlap with Inheritance of acquired characters, and since this article has the refs I would say move it all here. But perhaps I am missing something? Zab (talk) 05:20, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This article has virtually no refs and do you not see that the article itself says that "hard inheritance holds sway today"? There are so many problems with this short article I don't know where to begin. First, WHEN did Mayr coin this term? Who is Mayr? Why do the references have no dates? Why does Mayr get to reclassify Lamarck into a new modern term? If use/disuse (Lamarckism) is part of Mayr's theory - and Lamarckism has been disproved - what scientific work did Mayr do to resurrect it? The first part of "soft inheritance" as mentioned here - that the environment can have an effect on genes (and by implication, though it's not said here) on the way genes work is the ONLY scientifically accepted meaning of the term (which really isn't an acceptable scientific term, anyway - it's fringe). Use/disuse has been disproved so many times and I see not one citation proving it. So, "environment can influence genes" is one thing - but use/disuse, an entirely different thing - and a vast amount of research disproving the second and emerging research supporting the first. All of this needs to be teased out. By contrast, actual Lamarckism: inheritance of acquired traits is a well known theory (also disproved) and that article should stand as it is. This article is very very poor. Perhaps someone has taken the sources out. One of them (the second reference) actually contradicts most of what is said here, so this is one of those articles. Really, it's almost in need of deletion at this point and really does a disservice to the emergent notion of soft inheritance.LéVeillé 17:22, 14 January 2012 (UTC)