Slashdot Mirror
Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution
sciencehabit writes "A best-seller by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade about recent human evolution and its potential effects on human cultures has drawn critical reviews since its spring publication. Now, nearly 140 senior human population geneticists around the world, many of whose work was cited in the book, have signed a letter to The New York Times Book Review stating that Wade has misinterpreted their work. The letter criticizes "Wade's misappropriation of research from our field to support arguments about differences among human societies."
Geneticists admit that physical appearance varies thanks to mutations and variations in the expression of the genome, so why is intellectual variability so verboten? Because it's politically incorrect?
In other words, if white people exclusively possess blond hair and blue eyes, and Asians possess epicanthal folds and very dark hair, why is it so hard to believe that IQ, a physical aspect of the mental organ we call the brain, might vary as well?
Seems very bizarre to me. And irrational.
Read the TFA. People aren't getting upset about skin color: Quote: "In the book, Wade suggests that such genetic differences may help explain why some people live in tribal societies and some in advanced civilizations, why African-Americans are allegedly more violent than whites, and why the Chinese may be good at business."
It's an extremely sensitive topic, for obvious historical reasons. Despite the mountains of hard scientific evidence to the contrary, the political dogma, at least where I live, is that we are all born as blank slates and any measurable difference between individuals is due to environment. We would all be as good as Tiger Woods at golf if we lived his life. This includes differences between the sexes, and isn't hyperbole or an exaggeration.
It's a nice thought, and if it were true governments could mold the behavior of its citizens to be exactly what they wanted.
It's easy to accept physical differences, like skin tone, height, and facial features are genetically determined, but to suggest that there might also be differences across individuals and races in the brain, and therefore behavior, is so politically incorrect most scientists will not touch it with a ten foot pole. I'm not suggesting that any particular race is "better" than any other, but I don't see how you can claim that there are no genetic differences between races that effect behavior if you accept the current model of evolution. I mean, why wouldn't there be? How do you justify that claim?
It's already a NYT best seller. This isn't some un-read pamphlet. At this point the errors in it need to be addressed. Ignoring it won't make it go away.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Indeed, it's not as though cultures of European stock have been uniformly ahead of the curve. There's just so much that can randomly happen, for example a strong case could be made that if the social changes wrought by the black death hadn't taken place, Europe might still be languishing at a near medieval level of technology. Or say the Minoans, they had indoor plumbing, air and light control, aqueducts and sophisticated codes of law what, four thousand years ago, then their island exploded.
Is he seriously taking a snapshot of modern US culture and trying to explain it mostly by genetics?
I actually have studied it; some of my colleagues work directly in this area. It's a fairly big interest here in Scandinavia, because some populations can be identified with relative genetic stability over significant periods of time, which makes some kinds of studies easier. Iceland has particularly good records and genetic isolation, but much can also be done in other parts of Scandinavia. And it is quite difficult to correlate societal changes with genetic changes even with these detailed records. For example the major shifts in Scandinavian society from warlordish violent societies to peaceful egalitarian societies don't appear to be related to genetic shifts.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As you say, the European lead in politics and technology could have happened "randomly". There are other strategies to explain it, like Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel". And then there's this evolutionary story. Any one of these could be true, or a combination, or some other story that we just haven't worked out yet. Along the way, science proposes - and then eventually (hopefully) rejects - false theories. Some of the ideas about population genetics that are in circulation now will be consigned to the dustbin. It's the same story in chemistry, neurology, etc. Science is full of false theories that teach us something valuable when we find enough evidence to reject them.
But something very different is happening here. There is a lot of scorn and finger-wagging for simply proposing that an evolutionary story might have produced geographically inhomogeneous distributions of human character traits. This is not how real scientists react to the proposal of a false theory. You don't submit an angry mass NYT condemnation of the physicist that proposes the variability of the speed of light, or the doctor who proposes a novel and improbable metabolic pathway of leukemia cells. The book is available. If scientists think some of its claims are shown to be false by evidence we already have, they should say which those claims are, and reference the invalidating evidence.
Everyone knows that evolution is limited to effects from the neck down.
You're being a prat and trying to see conspiracies about ignoring genetics where none exists. In the real world, the state of knowledge of genetics and cultures is far far too poor to attribute nebulous concepts to genetics.
There is no gene which makes you "good at business". This is not the XMen world where you have a mutant gene which gives you some superpower. The real world is far more complex and far messier.
The geneticsts know this. Now you do.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You have to be very careful attributing things to genes rather than environment. Testosterone level, since you mentioned it, rises and drop in response to winning or losing in competitions, and increases in response to exercise. The nature of our encounters with others (dominance) and exercise (which depends on job function) are both clearly culturally influenced.
The problem is, people are suggesting there are differences across races but then cannot really show compelling, conclusive scientific evidence to support their claim.
For instance, scientific research (something that is not widely reported in public venues for obvious reasons of political sensitivity) clearly shows a huge IQ gap between blacks and whites, consisting of 10-20 points and persisting across the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
Some have argued that this gap is genetic (and we certainly cannot rule it out); however, there is no conclusive evidence to support their claim that the IQ gap is genetic.
Similar IQ gaps (such as between whites and Native Americans) have disappeared over time in the past, so anyone should be very skeptical of a claim that blacks have a lower IQ because it is a genetic population trait and not an environmental trait.
Like with the IQ gap, many people (most of them not actual research scientists like this author) are making these nature over nurture arguments on a wide variety of topics without sufficient research to back them up but rather to fit into their own world-view about cultures and population groups being genetically inferior or superior, an antediluvian throwback to the pseudoscience of anthropology at the turn of the 19th century.
That is a misuse of science and the actual researchers are right to call-out the author on his misinterpretation of their work.
The scientists who work he based his premise on are saying their research does not support this conclusions. The scientists are showing you with their research. You would know that if you read the article.