Book Review: Rob Desalle and Ian Tattersall, Troublesome science: the misuse of genetics and genomics in understanding race, (New York: Columbia University Press), 2018

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creat iveco mmons .org/ publi cdoma in/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Keeping the scientific high ground Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Dobzhansky’s dictum has been employed to solve some of the most difficult problems in biology including why aging, altruism, and sex exist. I have argued that one of evolution’s greatest triumphs (and failures) is how it helps us to understand human biological diversity (Graves 2005a, b). The triumph is that evolutionary biology is the only way to make sense of both the origin and maintenance of our species genetic diversity, the failure is that we have not explained how evolution does this well to scholars and laypersons outside of our discipline. The failure has allowed the proliferation of false ideas concerning our diversity to stand, even when these should have been put to rest forever by developments in both evolutionary theories of the origin of and maintenance of variation within species and the technology to test them in the later portion of the 20th century. Specifically, I refer to the ongoing confusion concerning biological theories and social definitions of race. Nicholas Wade’s book entitled A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History is case in point. It was published in 2014 (Wade 2014). Wade’s book misrepresented the views of many of the scientists whose work he reported on. I wrote a blog piece criticizing this book and signed a statement along with over 130 other geneticists also denouncing its claims which were published in the New York Times on August 10, 2014 (Why this book on race and genetics is a problem, https ://evolu tion-insti tute.org/book-revie w-great -are-wades -error s-in-a-troub lesom e-inher itanc e-genes -race/; and Letters: a troublesome inheritance. https :// www.nytim es.com/2014/08/10/books /revie w/lette rs-atroub lesom e-inher itanc e.html?modul e=inlin e. Accessed 10 Aug 2014). Yet and still we don’t accept things because the majority of scientists say that something is true. Desalle and Tattersall’s Troublesome Science presents solid reasons grounded in evolutionary science to reject the claims made by Wade in Troublesome Inheritance. The book begins with an explanation of tree and population thinking (Chapters 1–5). Chapter 6 briefly examines the history of how biology classified human beings beginning with Linnaeus. Chapter 7 addresses how early population genetic theory (beginning with Fisher and Wright) morphed into the more sophisticated analysis of human variation of the latter portion of the 20th century (Lewontin, Cavalli-Sforza, Edwards, Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson). The remainder of the book (chapters 8–14) addresses 21st century results such as the revelations of ancient DNA and the use of structure algorithms to visualize human genetic diversity. In these chapters the authors do an excellent job of explaining the strengths and weaknesses of these new methods for understanding the massive expansion of genomic data related to human variation. While I think they do an excellent job of addressing these topics, because many of them are quite sophisticated, individuals without strong scientific backgrounds may be put off by the book. However I do think that this book Open Access Evolution: Education and Outreach