At what level is racialism accepted in the scientific community?

[orcenio]

This post pertains to the NYtimes science Journalist Nicolas Wade, but it has some relevance to how the community of biological scientists view “race science”

In April 28th of this year, Nicholas Wade authored a book called “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History” I read a free copy of the book (it’s quite a short and easy read) and I’d summarize it in a few points:

1. Humans are biologically clustered into the “5 major races.”
2. These well known races are genetically separate due to (recent) evolution.
3. Jews/Europeans/Asians are genetically wired for intelligent/peaceful civilizations/culture.
4. Blacks/Africans/“tribals” are wired for violent/mindless/criminal actions.
5. This simple knowledge is not racist, its scientific fact. You are not a racist for agreeing with science.
6. There’s a gigantic (liberal?) conspiracy to keep this science from being proven/taught/discussed. All/most scientists fear openly speaking the truth due to this conspiracy.

While a careful, measured, thoughtful response from the scientific community was quick and overwhelming…

[ul]
[li]A one hour web seminar hosted by the American Anthropological Association called to discuss the racial questions raised by Wade: A Troublesome Inheritance – A discussion on genes, race and human history with author Nicholas Wade and Biological Anthropologist Agustín Fuentes.[/li]
[li]A 20 minute CBC hosted discussion involving Nicholas Wade and Stanford medical anthropologist Duana Fullwiley. [/li]
[li]A polite but forceful rebuttal to the book’s assertions from Wade’s own newspaper:[[/li][QUOTE=NYTimes: Arthur Allen]
Mr. Wade takes this already controversial argument a step further, contending that “slight evolutionary differences in social behavior” underlie social and cultural differences. A small but consistent divergence in a racial group’s tendency to trust outsiders — and therefore to accept central rather than tribal authority — could explain “much of the difference between tribal and modern societies,” he writes.

This is where Mr. Wade’s argument starts to go off the rails…

Mr. Wade occasionally drops in broad, at times insulting assumptions about the behavior of particular groups without substantiating the existence of such behaviors, let alone their genetic basis. Writing about Africans’ economic condition, for example, Mr. Wade wonders whether “variations in their nature, such as their time preference, work ethic and propensity to violence, have some bearing on the economic decisions they make.”
[/QUOTE]
](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/books/nicholas-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance.html)
[li]Evolutionary anthropologist Jonathan Marks pens a scathing response to the book and Wade’s manipulative attempts at co-opting science. Marks is “old hat” at rebutting racialists and has no time for fools. [/li][
[QUOTE=Jonathan Marks]
There is little to recommend here. This book is as crassly anti-science as any work of climate-change denial or creationism. And like those odd birds, Wade adopts a radical relativism of expertise. Sure, all the relevant experts say one thing, but he’s going to tell you the truth.

It’s a sad day for the profession of science journalism.
[/QUOTE]
](http://inthesetimes.com/article/16674/the_genes_made_us_do_it)

[li]Agustín Fuentes expands further on some of the ideas he touched on in the webinar.[/li][

1. Genes matter, but they are only a small part of the whole evolutionary picture and focusing on DNA segments won’t get you very far in understanding human evolution…
2. When making scientific argument about genetic variation you need to focus on populations–and be clear about your definitions (a common one for “population” is a geographical cluster of people who mate more within the cluster than outside of it). Many people talking about this subject use the words cluster, population, group, race, subrace and ethnicity in a range of ways, with few concrete definitions and occasionally interchangeably. If you do not define something then you cannot measure it, test for it, or try to construct and refute or support hypotheses for it—in short you can’t do science.

](Things to Know When Talking About Race and Genetics | Psychology Today)
[li]Anthropology proff Alex Golub carefully summarizes the Fuentes-Wade webinar. A causal reading clearly shows how little Wade brought to the discussion.[/li]
[li]Jonathan Marks again restates his opposition to the perniciously racialist ideas rehashed by Wade.[/li][QUOTE=HuffPost]
Wade’s ambition, then, is not to popularize the science, but to invalidate the science. He explains that anthropologists, who have been studying human variation for a while, and who think they have learned something about it, have actually been blinded by their prejudices – politically-correct prejudices, that is. And his message to them egghead professors is that he believes the science of 250 years ago was better than that of today: There are just a few basic kinds of people, and economic stratification is just an expression of an underlying genetic stratification.
[/QUOTE]

[li]Evolutionary Biologist Jerry A. Coyne (often touted by SDMB racialists as a “hidden HBd member”), pans the racialist ideas of Wade’s as unfounded.[/li][

Wade’s main thesis, and where the book goes wrong, is to insist that differences between human societies, including differences that arose in the last few centuries, are based on genetic differences—produced by natural selection— in the behavior of individuals within those societies. In other words, societal differences largely reflect their differential evolution.

For this Wade offers virtually no evidence, because there is none. We know virtually nothing about the genetic differences (if there are any) in cognition and behavior between human populations. And to explain how natural selection can effect such rapid changes, Wade posits some kind of “multiplier effect,” whereby small differences in gene frequencies can ramify up to huge societal differences. There is virtually no evidence for that, either. It is a mountain of speculation teetering on a few pebbles.

](New book on race by Nicholas Wade: Professor Ceiling Cat says paws down – Why Evolution Is True)

[li]The current president of the American Anthropological Association, Monica Heller, writes a reluctant response to the Anti-Anthro nonsense pimped by Wade. [/li][

as President of the AAA, I could not help but notice that Wade portrays contemporary cultural anthropology as entirely represented by the American Anthropological Association (though admittedly, Wade doesn’t always get the association’s name right; let’s hope his copy editors catch those errors). Next, he portrays it as entirely founded on the work of Franz Boas, as though no one has had an original thought or a critique of Boas in the last 100 years or so. Third, he portrays the association as entirely devoted to a particular form of cultural anthropology which Wade decries as refusing to acknowledge biology altogether because it is a victim of its ideology; this will likely surprise both cultural anthropologists and AAA sections like the Evolutionary Anthropology Society as much as it surprised me. I am sure such oversimplification and reduction is useful for a book hoping to make a single point to a general public, but it concerns me that it should come from the person responsible for the science section of the New York Times.

](http://blog.aaanet.org/2014/05/16/is-cultural-anthropology-really-disembodied/)
[li]This next series of articles were published in the HuffPost. It contains more criticisms from Fuentes in addition to those by Jennifer Raff (a post doc from UofT). What’s surprising is that Wade penned a rebuttal (shockingly questioning the academic credentials of Marks, Fuentes, and Raff), which invoked a reply by Fuentes and a response by Wade again. I simply reading the title one can see how “off the rails” it went. In the end Wade rejects all criticisms and takes pride in the universal panning of his book. [/li][ol]
[li]The Troublesome Ignorance of Nicholas Wade - Agustín Fuentes[/li][li]Nicholas Wade and Race: Building a Scientific Façade - Jennifer Raff [/li][li]In Defense of A Troublesome Inheritance - Nicholas Wade[/li][li]A Troublesome Response: Nicholas Wade Still Avoids the Debate About Race and Genetics - Agustín Fuentes[/li][li]Five Critics Say You Shouldn’t Read This ‘Dangerous’ Book - Nicholas Wade [/li][/ul]
[/ol]

…the Huffington post pieces marked a strong escalation that ended in large swaths of the scientific community acknowledging the seriousness of Wade’s agenda to popularize genetic racialism. Wade is quoted dismissing the anti-racialists by saying that he “has not been challenged by any serious scientist.” The flood gates then opened…

[ul]
[li]“Jews are adapted to capitalism”, and other nonsenses of the new scientific racism - Ian Steadman (Science reporter)[/li][li]On the Origin of White Power - Eric Michael Johnson (MSc in Evolutionary Anthropology and doctoral student in the history of science)[/li][li]Troublesome Sources: Nicholas Wade’s Embrace of Scientific Racism - Jon Phillips (Grad student in the history of science)[/li][li]How A Troublesome Inheritance gets human genetics wrong - Jeremy Yoder (postdoctoral associate in Plant Biology)[/li][li]Nicholas Wade’s troublesome inheritance - Lior Pachter (Computational Biologist)[/li][li]Stretch Genes - H. Allen Orr (Professor of Biology)[/li][li]Don’t Trouble Yourself - Philip N. Cohen (Professor of Sociology)[/li][li]A guide to the science and pseudoscience of A Troublesome Inheritance - Jeremy Yoder[/li][LIST]
[li]part I: The genetics of human populations[/li][li]part II: Has natural selection favored violent behavior in some human populations?[/li][li]part III: Has natural selection produced significant differences between races?[/li][/ul]
[li]If scientists were to make the arbitrary decision that biological race is real, can you think of a positive outcome? - Holly Dunsworth (Assistant Professor of Anthropology)[/li][li]The visible colors: and the falseness of human races as natural categories - Ken Weiss (Professor of Anthropology and Genetics)[/li][li]On Nicholas Wade and the blurring of boundaries between science and fantasy - Michael Eisen (biologist at UC Berkeley)[/li][li]A fairy tale but, oh, so feeble: Review of A Troublesome Inheritance - Kenan Malik (Science writer trained in Neurobiology and Science history)[/li][li]Mr. Murray, You Lose the Bet (referring to Charles Murray’s review) - Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall (curators at the American Museum of Natural History in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics)[/li][li]Nicholas Wade and His Determinist Genes - Daniel Lende (Associate Professor in Anthropology)[/li][li]Race and mental traits: Nicholas Wade’s third error - Sam Wang (Professor biophysics and neuroscience)[/li][li]Whites Win, Because Genes. My Times review of “A Troublesome Inheritance” - David Dobbs (Science writer)[/li][li]The Fault in Our DNA - David Dobbs (Science writer)[/li][li]Book Review: Great are Wade’s Errors in “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History” - JOSEPH L. GRAVES JR (Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Biological Studies)[/li][li]A Troubling Tome - Greg Laden (Science writer and Anthropologist)[/li][/LIST]

And this is not all of them.
[
[QUOTE=Nature: news]
More than 130 leading population geneticists have condemned a book arguing that genetic variation between human populations could underlie global economic, political and social differences.

“A Troublesome Inheritance“, by science journalist Nicholas Wade, was published in June by Penguin Press in New York. The 278-page work garnered widespread criticism, much of it from scientists, for suggesting that genetic differences (rather than culture) explain, for instance, why Western governments are more stable than those in African countries. Wade is former staff reporter and editor at the New York Times, Science and Nature.

But the letter — signed by a who’s who of population genetics and human evolution researchers, and to be published in the 10 August New York Times — represents a rare unified statement from scientists in the field and includes many whose work was cited by Wade. “It’s just a measure of how unified people are in their disdain for what was done with the field,” says Michael Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-drafted the letter.
[/QUOTE]
](http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/08/geneticists-say-popular-book-misrepresents-research-on-human-evolution.html)That’s right. 139 population geneticists have signed a letter to the New York Times Sunday Book review decrying the “Race Science” being popularized by Nicholas Wade.

Now, why did I write this thread?

I want this to serve as a source for the SDMB. I want people to confidently know where (almost) the entire scientific community lies in the age old “black iz dumb” racialist debate. Chief Pendant and all the other JAQing racialists in this current pit thread; often selectively quote scientists to misrepresent their views as ones that support racialism. Now all you need to do is look up the scientist in the NYTimes list and post a reply. It won’t stop the racialists from posting crap, but it is now easier to refute this garbage.

[orcenio]

Also Wade did get some positive reviews, but mostly they came from White Nationalists and Charles Murray.
[QUOTE=Charles Murray]
It is hard to convey how rich this book is. It could be the textbook for a semester’s college course on human evolution, systematically surveying as it does the basics of genetics, evolutionary psychology, Homo sapiens’s diaspora and the recent discoveries about the evolutionary adaptations that have occurred since then. The book is a delight to read—conversational and lucid. And it will trigger an intellectual explosion the likes of which we haven’t seen for a few decades.
[/QUOTE]

[JKellyMap]

Thanks for that helpful list of links. (Not a snark – I’m serious).

[Ibn_Warraq]

nm

[GIGObuster]

Nicely done orcenio

I did not see what one of my to go guys on this issue said: Here is P. Z. Myers (associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris):

Spanking Nicholas Wade

 As discussed by Dobbs and many others, Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results, political institutions and economic development. We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork. They do not.

We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade’s conjectures.

Ow, that has to sting. But I know exactly how the Human Biodiversity wackos will respond: all those scientists must actually be acolytes of the New Creationism.

[iiandyiiii]

Great post, orcenio. Well done, and thanks for all the effort!

[MrDibble]

Wonderful effort, but it will all be in vain, I fear.

[Stringbean]

So the conclusion from the mainstream is that genetic variations between the major races do exist but they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things?

Does anyone find this a bit intellectually lazy?

What does the field of neuroscience say about this?

[andros]

@Stringbean

So the conclusion from the mainstream is that genetic variations between the major races do exist but they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things?

Does anyone find this a bit intellectually lazy?

I don’t. Would you kindly elaborate?

[njtt]

@Stringbean

What does the field of neuroscience say about this?

Why would the field of neuroscience (most of which has little concern with any sort of genetics) have anything to say?

[Jonathan_Chance]

I’m just amused that anyone could say with a straight face that Europeans are peaceful. What couple of millenia has HE been watching.

Now, with Mod Hat on…

This is a tricky one. I honor the effort, Orcenio, but have doubts as to whether it’s truly a debate. I’m sure not willing to make it a sticky, and I don’t see it in ATMB.

OK, I’ll let it ride here. At least for the moment…for lack of a better option.

[marshmallow]

If Mr. wade wants to think black and brown people have low intelligence or impulse control, well, whatever floats his boat – but no way in hell are they the most violent too. Whites and Asians are the kings of good old fashioned ultra violence. I see Nicolas Wade is of the British extraction. He should have some pride in his people’s long and storied history of slaughtering everyone to get what they want.

I mean really, what is black violence? Ghetto shootings? Cutting up your neighbor with machetes? The Second Congo War? Pikers. Tamerlane made mountains of skulls. Romans built arenas so everyone could gather around and watch men and animals fight to the death for da lulz. Listing all the fucked up shit the Japanese did in WWII could fill a library.

[JRDelirious]

@marshmallow

I mean really, what is black violence? Ghetto shootings? Cutting up your neighbor with machetes? The Second Congo War? Pikers. Tamerlane made mountains of skulls. Romans built arenas so everyone could gather around and watch men and animals fight to the death for da lulz. Listing all the fucked up shit the Japanese did in WWII could fill a library.

And let’s not forget those highly cultured, philosophy-reading, theatregoing classical-music-listening Caucasians in charge of Germany, Russia and neighbors of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans during much of the 20th century. Yep, that’s civilized all right.

[Merneith]

@Stringbean

So the conclusion from the mainstream is that genetic variations between the major races do exist but they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things?

Does anyone find this a bit intellectually lazy?

Hair color variation is a product of genetic diversity. There is no science to support the idea that different hair color is connected to anything that matters in any scheme, grande or otherwise.

If we went to the dog track and I insisted that all the black haired dogs were guaranteed to be faster than all the white haired dogs - you’d think I was a moron and immediately arrange a few friendly side bets, wouldn’t you?

Or would you argue, like Wade, that black skinned dogs are vicious and warlike but white skinned dogs are calm and peaceful?

What does the field of neuroscience say about this?

You’re in luck. Here’s Sam Wang, neuroscientist and mathematician, originally linked by orcenio:

http://election.princeton.edu/2014/07/08/race-and-mental-traits-nicholas-wades-third-error/

Spoiler: he’s unimpressed.

[MrDibble]

@Stringbean

So the conclusion from the mainstream is that genetic variations between the major races do exist but they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things?

No. The conclusion from the mainstream is that “races” are not a sensible scientific grouping for human beings in the first place.

[VinylTurnip]

@iiandyiiii

Great post, orcenio. Well done, and thanks for all the effort!

Both his and theirs, but it is rather sad to see a troll given such a sumptuous feast.

[Crotalus]

I really think that the OP is the best post I have seen in my nine years on this board. Well done!

[iiandyiiii]

@VinylTurnip

Both his and theirs, but it is rather sad to see a troll given such a sumptuous feast.

I don’t think it’s just for trolls – anyone who wants to learn more about the issue, and be well-armed to discuss it, could find the OP very useful.

[Marley23]

Not that it’ll help much, but thank you, orcenio. It can be discouraging to watch self-described intelligent people bang on and on about how this race crap is either true or clearly plausible, so it’s heartening to see someone make a concerted effort to get the facts together and show that it’s not.

@Stringbean

So the conclusion from the mainstream is that genetic variations between the major races do exist but they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things?

Does anyone find this a bit intellectually lazy?

Take a look at the sheer volume of research orcenio just posted and then look at what you just posted. Maybe you should reconsider your use of the words “intellectually lazy.”

[Crotalus]

@iiandyiiii

I don’t think it’s just for trolls – anyone who wants to learn more about the issue, and be well-armed to discuss it, could find the OP very useful.

I interpreted iiandyiiii as meaning that author Wade is a troll.