A Troublesome Controversy

Nicholas Wade's book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History has been out for a month, and the fuss, such as it was, seems to be dying down. As of June 6, its Amazon rank has dropped to 1300 (it did briefly hit 21), while Barnes and Noble has it at 34,695, and in The New York Times it's only at 7 in Science Times, below the long-running hit about Henrietta Lacks.

A roundup of reviews by a supporter essentially confirms that those scientists who bothered to review the book panned it. The Genetic Literacy Project is listed as a positive review, but in fact that's just a report on Charles Murray's piece in the Wall Street Journal. The minority who were predisposed to agree with his thesis -- self-described "race realists" and the like, including some anti-semites at David Duke's site -- by and large came away wondering why Wade didn't go further.

So, is "scientific racism" dead? Unfortunately, it's too soon for that particular funeral. This was just a bad book.

The biologists...