A troublesome inheritance
Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Few ideas have been more harmful than one race or another being inherently superior to others. For this understandable reason, discussion of biological differences between races has been virtually banished from polite academic conversation. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, this view cannot be right. Nicholas Wade, the esteemed science journalist who has long reported on new genetic advances for The New York Times, cites the mounting evidence that human evolution has continued to the present day. Because populations stayed in place for thousands of years, substantially isolated, evolution has proceeded independently on each continent, giving rise to the various races of humankind. Here, Wade explores the possibility that recent human evolution has included changes in social behavior and hence in the nature of human societies. Rejecting unequivocally the notion of racial superiority, he argues that the evolution of the human races holds information critical to the understanding of human societies and history, and that the public interest is best served by pursuing the scientific truth without fear.--From publisher description.
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2014–2024years
14% recommend57% neutral29% critical
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What Hacker News says
- "A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History" by Nicholas Wade.
Controversial but fascinating.
- Some popularisations:
"A Troublesome Inheritance" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G3L7VFM/ref=kinw_myk_ro...
"A Farewell to Alms" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EQ4OLA/ref=kinw_myk_ro...
"Human Diversity" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y8K5FX8/ref=kinw_myk_ro...
Read the citations and go from there.
- Sadly, i am pretty close with a population geneticist (Dr Mallard, worked for the CNRS and INRAE before retiring ~20 years ago, we had regular, very informative dinners for years), and while i cannot judge "A farewell to Alms (which seems great), i can tell you that we talked "A Troublesome Inheritance". It was not good.
The context was about the lack of science popularization, and he took the example of this book and his author, which he copiously insulted, and said it was exactly the reason why scientists do not trust journalists and avoid them, because while being ignorantly misquoted and misunderstood isn't a good feeling, being approached with bad intentions and being misread and misquoted on purpose in order to push political agenda is worse. I would have to research more on why this book in particular was on his mind, but i would bet that most geneticists think this book is hogwash.
- Worth pointing out the source of this article which came from journalism at US Right to Know:
https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/scientists-proposed-makin...
More context about the author of the article:
> Nicholas Wade was science editor of the New York Times from 1990 to 1996 and is author of three books on recent human evolution: Before the Dawn, The Faith Instinct, and A Troublesome Inheritance.
- Not rats but humans, very interesting : https://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-H...
- I believe that Chua was talking about the Ashkenazi Jews. I was convinced of the "scientific racism" explanation for their achievement based on the evidence presented in the book the 10,000 The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution Paperback by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Nicholas Wade, a long time writer for the New York Times also made the same arguments in his book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History although I haven't read it.
