Oct 23, 2023 05:09 PM
My letter to the Washington Post on race
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/2...t-on-race/
EXCERPTS (Jerry Coyne): ... The author Sydney Trent, is a science journalist who covers social issues, and that may explain why the article was replete with scientific problems, among them the neglect of existing research on ethnic groups (my preferred term for “race”). You can see the article by clicking on the headline below. Since it’ll probably be paywalled if you subscribe, I found the whole article archived here.
[...] Implicit in Trent’s effort to dethrone the term is the misguided idea that if you think “races” have any biological reality, then that buttresses racism. That need not be true, but, historically, belief in races has been associated with the idea of a racial hierarchy in various traits (most often intelligence), and so I prefer to use “populations” or “ethnicity”, which doesn’t carry that historical taint.
[...] But there is no doubt that ethnicity, and even the “old fashioned” races, carry meaningful biological information and are genetically differentiable. If they weren’t, then you wouldn’t be able to pay companies like 23andMe to suss out your ancestry, or to trace the history of human migration by using genetic differences between populations.
[...] And, as I say in my published letter, one study showed that if you ask people to self-identify their “old fashioned” race (they used 3,636 Americans who self identified as either African American, white, East Asian, or Hispanic), and then independently look at their DNA in a blind study, you find that when you compare the DNA with the self-identification, you find a 99.84 percent match! That means that even the widely-reviled “classical” races are genetically differentiable using cluster analysis. This is not surprising because these groups evolved in different parts of the world, and for much of their history they evolved in semi-isolation, leading to the accumulation of differences in the DNA by either genetic drift or natural selection.
At any rate, the Post‘s article was scientifically misleading, and so I set out to correct it by writing a letter to the paper... (MORE - missing details)
Superconductivity ‘damaged’ as researchers look to move on from retractions
https://physicsworld.com/a/superconducti...tractions/
EXCERPT: .... And when other researchers tried to reproduce the findings, they failed. ... Theorists who tried to explain the high-temperature superconductivity found themselves struggling too...
[...] What will happen regarding Dias’ group is unknown. In August the University of Rochester announced it is investigating Ranga Dias’ work again, although when that investigation will be complete is unknown. “Unfortunately, Dias’ inconsiderate behaviour has harmed the reputation of the field and it may take a few years to repair the damage,” says Boeri.
That view is backed by condensed-matter physicist James Hamlin from the University of Florida, who examined some of Dias’ group’s work. “I do think the whole saga is damaging to science in general, and superconductivity research more so and more broadly it’s fuel for anti-science types,” he told Physics World. “It could have an impact on funding for high pressure research and that would be unfortunate given that it’s been such a fruitful area with so many exciting recent developments.” (MORE - missing details)
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/2...t-on-race/
EXCERPTS (Jerry Coyne): ... The author Sydney Trent, is a science journalist who covers social issues, and that may explain why the article was replete with scientific problems, among them the neglect of existing research on ethnic groups (my preferred term for “race”). You can see the article by clicking on the headline below. Since it’ll probably be paywalled if you subscribe, I found the whole article archived here.
[...] Implicit in Trent’s effort to dethrone the term is the misguided idea that if you think “races” have any biological reality, then that buttresses racism. That need not be true, but, historically, belief in races has been associated with the idea of a racial hierarchy in various traits (most often intelligence), and so I prefer to use “populations” or “ethnicity”, which doesn’t carry that historical taint.
[...] But there is no doubt that ethnicity, and even the “old fashioned” races, carry meaningful biological information and are genetically differentiable. If they weren’t, then you wouldn’t be able to pay companies like 23andMe to suss out your ancestry, or to trace the history of human migration by using genetic differences between populations.
[...] And, as I say in my published letter, one study showed that if you ask people to self-identify their “old fashioned” race (they used 3,636 Americans who self identified as either African American, white, East Asian, or Hispanic), and then independently look at their DNA in a blind study, you find that when you compare the DNA with the self-identification, you find a 99.84 percent match! That means that even the widely-reviled “classical” races are genetically differentiable using cluster analysis. This is not surprising because these groups evolved in different parts of the world, and for much of their history they evolved in semi-isolation, leading to the accumulation of differences in the DNA by either genetic drift or natural selection.
At any rate, the Post‘s article was scientifically misleading, and so I set out to correct it by writing a letter to the paper... (MORE - missing details)
Superconductivity ‘damaged’ as researchers look to move on from retractions
https://physicsworld.com/a/superconducti...tractions/
EXCERPT: .... And when other researchers tried to reproduce the findings, they failed. ... Theorists who tried to explain the high-temperature superconductivity found themselves struggling too...
[...] What will happen regarding Dias’ group is unknown. In August the University of Rochester announced it is investigating Ranga Dias’ work again, although when that investigation will be complete is unknown. “Unfortunately, Dias’ inconsiderate behaviour has harmed the reputation of the field and it may take a few years to repair the damage,” says Boeri.
That view is backed by condensed-matter physicist James Hamlin from the University of Florida, who examined some of Dias’ group’s work. “I do think the whole saga is damaging to science in general, and superconductivity research more so and more broadly it’s fuel for anti-science types,” he told Physics World. “It could have an impact on funding for high pressure research and that would be unfortunate given that it’s been such a fruitful area with so many exciting recent developments.” (MORE - missing details)