This post is a few days old now, but I wanted to create an account specifically to respond to this.

First of all, I have to just express two things: (1) I wish that the article had spent less time delving into Wade’s associations as it did; and (2) regardless of that fact, I still think Wade is a crank.

What people need to keep in mind, however, is that people like Rushton, MacDonald and Wade aren’t taken seriously in the fields of population genetics, anthropology or evolutionary biology. They’re irrelevant to scholarly debate, because there are so many resources available to people if they want to learn the science behind these debates. Concerning race, I’d recommend the American Journal of Physical Anthropology: “Race Reconciled.” That’s a fairly standard one that I refer people to, but from there you can find many other great resources.

Back to Wade’s book, however, it’s important to note a few things:

1: Although it’s non-fiction, it’s also not peer-reviewed.
2: Nicholas Wade is a science writer. He isn’t a scientist.
3: He dismisses anthropology, specifically cultural anthropology, complaining it lacks scientific rigor. Enough said.
4: Population geneticists, even ones that Wade cited, and ones that have been frequently cited as supporting the racialist position (ex. Noah Rosenberg) wrote a letter to the New York Times rejecting Wade’s book and his findings:

cehg.stanford.edu

So at this point it should be fairly obvious that anything Wade says should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s just blatant that he’s not familiar enough, or well enough known, to be taken seriously.