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Slate on NYT writer’s book, defending Darwinian race theory

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First, from Breitbart London:

Nicholas Wade’s résumé is such that critics who find his ideas uncomfortable cannot simply dismiss him as a racist. Indeed, he told the Spectator podcast that only one review of A Troublesome Inheritance so far had done so.

Nonetheless, entrenched hypersensitivities persist. Journalists are often silent—or, worse, resort to name-calling—when they encounter research they find uncomfortable. Ian Steadman, a science writer for the British New Statesman, admitted he had not read Wade’s book when he referred on Twitter to extracts from it as “pretending racism is science.”

“[I’ve] read enough reviews to know what it’s pushing,” he told me later.

Steadman declined to answer further questions, but he did say he has since read A Troublesome Inheritance and intends to review it at some point in the future.

Jason Pontin, publisher of MIT’s Technology Review, wrote yesterday: “I can’t imagine what compelled a science journalist of Nicholas Wade’s stature to take on the subject of race. We don’t know much right now, and while genomics will tell us much more, it can’t yet. For a journalist to go wading speculatively into the subject is asking for career-ending trouble.”

Pontin almost certainly didn’t mean for “career-ending trouble” to sound as sinister or threatening as it does. But his choice of words is instructive: even though the jury is still out on whether race can be said to have any meaningful biological basis, only the social construct side of the argument is considered acceptable in public.

It’s pretty remarkable that the Breitbart London writer Milo Yiannopoulos thinks it would be unusual for a person’s science career to be ended because they offered a  politically incorrect opinion. He sure needs to get out more.

From Andrew Gelman at Slate:

As a statistician and political scientist, I see naivete in Wade’s quickness to assume a genetic association for any change in social behavior. For example, he writes that declining interest rates in England from the years 1400 to 1850 “indicate that people were becoming less impulsive, more patient, and more willing to save” and attributes this to “the far-reaching genetic consequences” of rich people having more children, on average, than poor people, so that “the values of the upper middle class” were “infused into lower economic classes and throughout society.”

Similarly, he claims a genetic basis for the declining levels of everyday violence in Europe over the past 500 years and even for “a society-wide shift … toward greater sensibility and more delicate manners.” All this is possible, but it seems to me that these sorts of stories explain too much. The trouble is that any change in attitudes or behavior can be imagined to be genetic—as long as the time scale is right. For example, the United States and other countries have seen a dramatic shift in attitudes toward gay rights in the past 20 years, a change that certainly can’t be attributed to genes. Given that we can see this sort of change in attitudes so quickly (and, indeed, see large changes in behavior during such time scales; consider for example the changes in the murder rate in New York City during the past 100 years), I am skeptical of Wade’s inclination to come up with a story of genetics and selection pressure whenever a trend happens to be measured over a period of hundreds of years.

Well, Gelman, welcome to the world of evo psych (evolutionary psychology). There is very little that can’t be explained with reference to a theory about spreading one’s genes. In fact, if you look a little further down in the pile, you’ll find that some enterprising persons have Darwinized being gay.

Here’s Wade:

N.W.: The principal criticism of the book so far is that my arguments for the impact of evolution on human social behavior are speculative. Since I point this out prominently in the introduction, I find it hard to see what these critics think they are adding to the discussion. Nor does it seem unreasonable to give the reader one’s best guess as to the likely consequences of recent human evolution. Critics of the book seem to accept that human evolution has indeed continued to the present day, but none has said what the consequences might be, if different from those that I suggest. So far I see no reason to have written the book differently.

Finally, reading the responses, the picture is coming in. In the social hierarchy of political correctness, it is okay to say things that sound like racism again as long as one professes faith in Darwinian evolution. Daring, but the guy is probably right. That might help explain why disparate people who are obviously not creationists are attacked for being “creationists” only because they disagree with the book’s thesis.

Wonder how or if the Darwin in the schools lobby will deal with this? Or are they so PC that they get a special pass from dealing with the contradictions?

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Comments
Axel Thats quite a history story of yours. yet its unrelated to what I said. I said there are real results in the moral and intellectual status of peoples and persons. Its measurable. The winners were the English/British civilization. This because of the strong minority of evangelical/puritan influence. Everyone else os just a copy in part or whole. Including North America. Its about identity but its from free will and Gods blessing. Not genetics or historical forces etc etc. i see no relevance to the British civilization from these normans. Its all sudden and fresh from the protestant reformation and the puritan motivation. this is , or should be, a obvious conclusion. these latter migrations of anyone coming to us is only evidence of the equality of men to rise up. however they were just brought up by moving to us or learning from us. No one has ever contributed to the Angloshere as a different people group. just mimics they are. Thats a history of identity.Robert Byers
May 21, 2014
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Robert, the English people are an occupied people after almost a millennium, so we can't be that smart. The Normans (norsemen, Scandinavians) had only lived in Normandy for about 150 years, before William I and his cohorts invaded England. He was not Mr Nice Guy, imposing the feudal system and banning people living off the wildlife in the vast forests which covered much of the country at the time, on pain of amputation of limbs or death. The Normans were fanatical about hunting and were jealous of the custody of their desired prey. They settled in this country, as its lords and ruling class, and have ever since sought to keep a distance between themselves and the indigenous English and neighbouring Celts. Subsequent wars of empire have really been extensions of that large Norman empire of the Middle Ages, which extended as far as Russia. We provided the cannon fodder. It doesn't mean we are dumb, but that we have a better balance of spiritual and worldly intelligence; (worldly intelligence is only temporary, mortal, and not a function of ultimate spiritual enlightenment.) It is no doubt on that account that, as has been claimed, for all the oppressive rule the country suffered under the Normans, up to the middle of the last century, England had been well-named, Merry England. There seems to have been a bit of a levelling following the disgrace of WWII (before which the monied folk of the West, from the Antipodes to North America, had been fanatical admirers of Mussolini and Hitler), as the Scandinavians still seem a lot smarter than us, including their scions and hybrid progeny bearing rule over us here today. These are now reasserting their caste dominance, in a currently rather less than Merry England, and in their insensate greed, with their kith and kin in the US, have brought the world to the verge of unparalleled economic ruin. With a little help from Peak Oil, resource depletion, and God stirring the pot with a spot of climate change. We won't even talk about nuclear accidents. If that is what you mean by intelligence Robert, I pity you.Axel
May 21, 2014
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there is no such thing as racism. All there is IS conclusions about people based on race. right or wrong and kind or in malice thats all it is. its wrong to say race matters. Lincoln said blacks were a inferior race and the nazis said certain races were inferior. They have the right to think and say so as long as no injustice comes. The good guys can say there is no possible evidence that there is any difference in dumb babies. Everyone has the same thinking ability. Even retarded people are only interfered with but have the same ability innate. I've seen these race/sex equals smarts things for a decade or two. it was under the table but waiting to come it. Obama is prz and i guess Wade and friends thought THIS IS THE TIME. its hilarious to see a liberal establishment dealing with this. What a bunch of crackpots all around. I say and i say again. There is no genetic racial rights to talk about intelligence until they admitt to the superiority of the english people by any measurement. In fact they cheat by scoring everyone aFTER they immigrate to our intellectual circles. Its all absurd investigation just like all the other evolution stuff by this Wade clown. UD could do a better job of attacking wade and proving his incompetence. I hope uD doesn't agree with his evolutionary concepts?Robert Byers
May 20, 2014
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