One of the people behind the revival of race science was, not long ago, a mainstream figure. In 2014, Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science correspondent, wrote what must rank as the most toxic book on race science to appear in the last 20 years. In A Troublesome Inheritance, he repeated three race-science shibboleths: that the notion of “race” corresponds to profound biological differences among groups of humans; that human brains evolved differently from race to race; and that this is supported by different racial averages in IQ scores.
Wade’s book prompted 139 of the world’s leading population geneticists and evolutionary theorists to sign a letter in the New York Times accusing Wade of misappropriating research from their field, and several academics offered more detailed critiques. The University of Chicago geneticist Jerry Coyne described it as “simply bad science”. Yet some on the right have, perhaps unsurprisingly, latched on to Wade’s ideas, rebranding him as a paragon of intellectual honesty who had been silenced not by experts, but by political correctness.
“That attack on my book was purely political,” Wade told Stefan Molyneux,
Well write a load of political shite, expect a load of political responses.
Not madly surprised as his deliberate mischaracterisation of people, correctly on the evidence, ignoring anything Trump said as having any persuasive weight was telling. He complained that people were being unfair to poor Trump. Which is a standard Trumpy trope.
Yes, but the Lancet paper, as pointed out, was written (as was the other one) with the guy who was financing the GoF experiments in bat coronaviruses at that laboratory as chair, so at the very least, his conflicts of interest should have been disclosed (they wre not). They also group that particular theory in with other much more plausible explanations, painting with a very broad brush, and conveniently covering up his more than slightly unethical experimentation funding.
Do the same things you’re saying apply to Stephen Carl Quay MDn PHD?
His paper seems to be a much more detailed version, and hasn’t (I’m only 20 pages in) delved much into politics.
“Beyond a reasonable doubt” immediately causes me to doubt the conclusion, but my background does not really lend itself to analyzing a paper like that. As I noted above, there are interesting factors brought up, but nothing definitive and there is unlikely to be anything definitive. Hence the problem with political overlay on all of it. As far as Wade’s right wing, racist FUD, that is something I was unaware of, but does nothing to change my statement, only moves the needle from the “not definitive” to “highly questionable, but IMHO can’t be easily ignored” category. I would dearly love for science to be free of political influence, but that was never the case, and unlikely to happen anytime soon.
No, the question of lab release vs animal vector remains open, very important, and should be examined carefully.
I’m saying that Nicholas Wade is a dishonest narrator with major credibility problems, and his article should be examined with highlighter and lots of double-checking, especially for what’s been omitted.
Stephen Carl Quay MDn PHD. 140 pages, with no table of contents, grumble. Don’t people write these in apps that generate those automatically? (I’ve been going through the 450+ paper pages of medical files from mom’s previous doctor, looking particular tests for her new doctor, all carefully organized by the order that they scooped the papers out of folders from the cabinet and piled them in a heap to be digitized. And they stopped numbering the printed pages after 358. I like indexes.)
Since I’m not an expert in the stuff in there, what I need is an equal and opposite expert, and bang them together.
Pre-publication peer review.The manuscript was provided by email to the following medical and scientific peers to afford an opportunity to review, comment, and critique the manuscript before publication.
for those who don’t twitter, this about anti-vax employees complaining because their employer is offering vaccinated workers $1/hour extra to their wages. it makes them feel discriminated against because they won’t get the money.
would it help to try to sell the anti-foreign aid anti-vaxxers on the idea that if we get enough shots in the arm here we won’t be able to send vaccines abroad so “furriners” can get them?
As long as science is done by people, it’s never going to be free of politics, bias, or ulterior motives unfortunately.
BTW, if you’re going to pass anything on to more knowledgable people, the one I’ve been reading seems much, much more detailed in the dissection and discussion of what exactly doesn’t work in the zoonotics therom, including a lot of missing information and pieces of evidence which don’t provide the sort of certainties the people who presented them claim.
I very much agree on Mr Wade presents a rather one sided article, and I’ve been much happier to read some of the stuff he linked, as the evidence in there is presented in full (well, except for the actual genetic code but as I remember my Dad bringing home reams of printed out gene sequences… it’s very dry reading… we used the back side to draw on )
Not sure on the peer review part, I’m certainly not a competent geneticist, and I think it would definitely be in the interest of the world to have it reviewed and vetted by people who know the science.
however, this hardly follows a trump like narrative, routing the source of the funds and initiation of the research on American companies, and the NIH.
The delay in the release of raw material for the CoronaVac vaccine may change the vaccination schedule as of June, according to Mr. Dimas Covas, director of the Butantan Institute, which produces the vaccine in Brazil. He also said that the immunization program could be impacted if the Chinese government does not allow the import of the materials.
The Institute hopes to resume filling the CoronaVac vials after May 15, when they expect receiving a new batch of raw material. The Government of the State of São Paulo states that statements by the federal government against China affected the negotiations between the laboratories.
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