Posted on 05/11/2014 10:16:48 AM PDT by mojito
Nicholas Wade, a British-born science reporter and editor for more than 30 years with The New York Times, is no longer with the newspaper — just days after the release of his latest book, in which he depicts blacks with roots in sub-Saharan Africa as genetically less adapted to modern life than whites and Asians.
Was The New York Times uncomfortable with Wade’s science or his conclusions? It’s unclear. Neither Wade nor his former employer returned requests for comment.
Wade’s last Times article appeared April 24. His Penguin Press book “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History” arrived in bookstores on Tuesday, May 6. In excerpts from his book posted by Time.com on Friday, he is identified as a “former science editor” of the Times. Until then, coverage of his book called him a current Times journalist.
Wade’s main thesis is that “human evolution has been recent, copious and regional.” He writes, “Though there is still a large random element, the broad general theme of human history is that each race has developed the institutions appropriate to secure survival in its particular environment.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
The only people who could be born at high-altitude, where the ones whose mothers could successfully give birth at high altitude.
Thou shalt not tell the truth about race in modern America....
Wade’s main thesis is that “human evolution has been recent, copious and regional.” He writes, “Though there is still a large random element, the broad general theme of human history is that each race has developed the institutions appropriate to secure survival in its particular environment.”Multiregionalism, rather than the master race Replacement model? Yeah, I can see why the Slimes would fire him.
Charles Murray, the author of “The Bell Curve,” reviewed Wade’s book in the Wall St Journal 2 Saturdays ago.
Is it possible for you to provide a link to that review? I'd like to read it.
Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat.
Hasn’t the NYT changed its slogan? I think that it’s now:
All the news that fits our views.
There are some other mutation traits which have spread rapidly because they conferred survival advantage. For Europe we have the white gene which enabled people to move north from Africa because fair women could absorb Vitamin D better and produce hips wide enough to yield live young. Now, it is also believed that Neanderthal had fair skin, red hair and blue eyes, so some interbreeding may have helped too.
Another gene is the one that enables adults to drink cows milk without suffering from digestive upset. Getting rid of lactose intolerance was a great boon to farmers in Europe who had cattle. Places like China, America, etc. that lacked large bovines never spread this gene even if it did occasionally occur. Apparently, there is also a genetic basis for survival of the black death in Europe. Perhaps some are aware of other recent genes we could list.
CCR5-delta32 comes to mind.
More background info with references here
http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/hiv_resistant_mutation
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303380004579521482247869874
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.
Close enough.
I’d forgotten about Richwine.
(But it is no worse that he was treated as he was because he is married with two children.)
Ross Douhat of the Times published a piece on the book four days ago and called Wade a writer for the Times. I’m not arguing, just pointing this out.
Douhat’s piece from May 8
1. Nicholas Wade, “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History.” The Times’ science correspondent’s argument for the reality and importance of race is both less and more controversial than I expected going in: Less because my colleague treads very carefully around the black-white-Asian I.Q. gap debate, more because he then embarks on some very wide-ranging and (as he acknowledges) speculative theorizing about genes, race, and cross-civilizational differences. I found the less-speculative first half of the book extremely persuasive, but await dissenting takes. Most of the reviews so far have come from the political right: Charles Murray raves, Robert VerBruggen has some anxieties; Anthony Daniels critiques. I would very much like to read a Ta-Nehisi Coates review.
That was Marx’ most-used dismissal of his critics - they were “unscientific”.
The liberal apple doesn’t fall far from the Marxist tree.
Yes, genetically, no two humans are identical and children are born with 60 new mutations, on average, from their parents.
But that's 60 out of THREE BILLION DNA base pairs, and most of those have no effect whatever on us.
So, the total of human DNA diversity amounts to one tenth of one percent of DNA base pairs.
This compares with around two tenths of one percent with Neanderthals and around five percent with Chimpanzees.
Point us that genetic differences amongst humans are relatively small, and even though evolution (or de-evolution if you prefer) continues every day, we are still much more alike than different from each other.
That goes without saying. That's why interracial procreation can occur without systematically producing sterile offspring. On the other hand, the tiny differences are sufficient to account for great differences in mental and physical ability, just as they are in other species. And to put things in perspective, pigs and humans are said to have 98% of their genes in common.
The reason these small differences need to be researched thoroughly is that it would be nice to find a way to tweak the genes that affect intelligence, susceptibility to sickle cell anemia (prevalent among blacks), diabetes (prevalent among Asians and Pacific Islanders) and so on.
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