Bribiesca, a critic to memetics, calls it "a pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the serious study of conciousness and cultural evolution" among other things. As factual criticism, he refers to the lack of a code script for memes, as the DNA is for genes, and to the fact that the meme mutation mechanism (i.e., an idea going from one brain to another) is too unstable (low replication accuracy and high mutation rate), which would render the evolutionary process chaotic.[2]
Another scientific critique comes from semiotics, (e.g., Deacon[3], Kull[4]) stating that the concept of meme is a primitivized concept of sign. Meme is thus described in memetics as a sign without its triadic nature. In other words, meme is a degenerate sign, which includes only its ability of being copied. Accordingly, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation (sensu lato) and interpretation are signs.
