In a roundup of reviews (pro, so-so, anti), Nicholas Wade’s fans, defending Troublesome Inheritance (and Darwinian racism) at Occam’s Razor (the Dark Enlightenment), note,
Ashutosh Jogalekar: “Genes and Race: The Distant Footfalls of Evidence” (Kudos to Scientific American for publishing such a thoughtful review. John Derbyshire responds. Apparently, Ashutosh Jogalekar just got fired from Scientific American for preferring scientific inquiry to New Creationism; see here, here, here, etc.)
The only way any of it links to creationism, assuming the term still has meaning today, now that P.Z. Myers has been called a creationist, is that long ago, the very capable Forrest Mims was dumped by Scientific American for holding that view, and has since expressed dismay that Jogalekar was similarly dumped. Anyway, thoughtfulness didn’t help Jogalekar any more than it helped Mims; it never does when you are dealing with trolls or their natural victims.
As Razor reminds us,
The Daily Caller ran a story saying Nicholas Wade was fired over a Troublesome Inheritance. This story is false. (If it were true, it wouldn’t be surprising, as the USA now seems committed to anti-Darwinian liberal creationism.) Anyway, just heard from reliable source that Wade took a retirement package a couple of years ago. The deal was that he could continue to make occasional contributions on a fee basis. Info on NY Times buyouts is here. Charles Murray tweets corrective here and here. Nicholas Wade confirms here that he was not fired. (colour emphasis added)
We suspect that no one who lives in the United States is likely to have noticed the upsurge in “liberal creationism.” The reality on the ground, as in Canada incidentally, is more like this: The people who never believed in that ol’ Darwinian magic don’t now. And have less reason than ever. Most educated people think that genuine racism is retarded. And everyone seems to have missed the Dark Enlightenment.
Some outlines of this otherwise very puzzling story are beginning to take shape. People who think that race is real decided to advance in Darwin’s name, making themselves much more difficult to attack than, say, the Bell Curve guys were (Murray and Herrnstein back in the early ‘90s).
That mainly shows us the power that Darwin’s name exercises over a large swatch of the U grad public. Just invoking his sacred name sanitizes what they would all otherwise be screaming about as “racism!” A few of them get it.
The people who disagree with this direction for research are sometime forced to act in bad faith, as Scientific American did with Jogalekar (who really did get fired). They ostensibly fired him, Soviet-style, over a lack of sufficient repudiation of physicist Feynman for being a jerk around women. All poor Jog had said was, maybe it was more acceptable in mid-century than now (and let’s face it, Jog probably doesn’t know; no way is he old enough). It was utterly nothing unless the mag was trying to get rid of him anyway over Troublesome, but didn’t want to have to discuss that. Book was well named, anyway.
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