Nicholas Wade Interview - A Troublesome Inheritance Genes Race And Human History (5-11-14)

May 11, 2014 http://www.lukeford.net/blog/?p=54601 Luke Ford interviews retired New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade about his new book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History.

This is an edited transcript.

Nicholas: “[The book] is based on about a dozen articles I’ve written for the New York Times covering advances in genetics and in the course of that, I speak to the authors of the research, supporters and critics and get a feel for what scientists think in the field, and I supplement that with my further reading, and that is the background of the book.”

“I retired from the Times about two years ago. There’s a blogosphere story today that the Times didn’t like the book and fired me, but the writer invented the whole thing based on his having seen the words ‘former Science editor’ in the piece I did in Time.”

Luke: “What were the biggest challenges in writing this book?”

Nicholas: “I think the biggest challenge was that I had so few scientific sources to guide me in interpretation because this is an area where academics cannot tread for fear of being accused of racism and seeing their careers destroyed. The scientific literature has the basic facts but few people try to draw them together. So I found the lack of guidance difficult, and even more so when I came to the second part of the book. Historians and economists just never consider human evolution as a possible explanatory variable. They just assume that all the populations they are dealing with are interchangeable and that natural selection never need be an explanation to even consider. So there again, there was no guidance for someone trying to figure out the possible consequences of the fact that human evolution has continued and has never come to a stop.”

Luke: “You will be writing future articles for the New York Times?”

Nicholas: “I assume so. I write for them quite regularly on a contract basis but I am not on their staff any longer.”

Luke: “Are there certain scientists who are brave enough to go into these areas?”

Nicholas: “There are just a few, yes.”