Letters: "A Troublesome Inheritance"

Published in The New York Times Book Review August 8, 2014

To the Editor:

As scientists dedicated to studying genetic variation, we thank David Dobbs for his review of Nicholas Wade’s “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History” (July 13), and for his description of Wade’s misappropriation of research from our field to support arguments about differences among human societies.

As discussed by Dobbs and many others, Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results, political institutions and economic development. We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork. They do not.

We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade’s conjectures.

 

GRAHAM COOP

DAVIS, CALIF.

The writer is a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis.

MICHAEL B. EISEN

BERKELEY, CALIF.

The writer is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

RASMUS NIELSEN

BERKELEY, CALIF.

The writer is a professor of computational biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

MOLLY PRZEWORSKI

NEW YORK

The writer is a professor of biology at Columbia University.

NOAH ROSENBERG

STANFORD, CALIF.

The writer is a professor of biology at Stanford University.

 

This letter was submitted on behalf of more than 100 faculty members in population genetics and evolutionary biology (listed below). The letter appears online in the August 8, 2014 issue of The New York Times Book Review.

SIGNATORIES

	NAME	AFFILIATION
1	Goncalo Abecasis	University of Michigan
2	Devin Absher	HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
3	Joshua Akey	University of Washington
4	David Altshuler	Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
5	Peter Andolfatto	Princeton University
6	Adam Auton	Albert Einstein College of Medicine
7	Doris Bachtrog	University of California, Berkeley
8	David Balding	University College London, United Kingdom
9	Michael Bamshad	University of Washington
10	Guido Barbujani	Università di Ferrara
11	Gregory Barsh	Stanford University & HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
12	Doron Behar	Rambam Medical Center, Israel
13	Jada Benn Torres	University of Notre Dame
14	Jaume Bertranpetit	Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
15	Abigail Bigham	University of Michigan
16	Michael Boehnke	University of Michigan
17	Deborah Bolnick	University of Texas, Austin
18	Anne Bowcock	Imperial College London, United Kingdom
19	Carlos Bustamante	Stanford University
20	Francesc Calafell	Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
21	Ranajit Chakraborty	University of North Texas Health Science Center
22	Aravinda Chakravarti	Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
23	Andrew Clark	Cornell University
24	Graham Coop	University of California, Davis
25	Jerry Coyne	University of Chicago
26	Michael DeGiorgio	Pennsylvania State University
27	Anna Di Rienzo	University of Chicago
28	Peter Donnelly	University of Oxford, United Kingdom
29	Richard Durbin	Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, United Kingdom
30	Evan Eichler	University of Washington & Howard Hughes Medical Institute
31	Michael Eisen	University of California, Berkeley & Howard Hughes Medical Institute
32	Yaniv Erlich	New York Genome Center & Columbia University
33	Laurent Excoffier	University of Bern, Switzerland
34	Daniel Falush	Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
35	Justin Fay	Washington University in St. Louis
36	Marcus Feldman	Stanford University
37	Joseph Felsenstein	University of Washington
38	Greg Gibson	Georgia Institute of Technology
39	Yoav Gilad	University of Chicago
40	David Goldstein	Duke University
41	Esteban Gonzalez Burchard	University of California, San Francisco
42	Joseph Graves	North Carolina A&T State University & University of North Carolina, Greensboro
43	Matthew Hahn	Indiana University, Bloomington
44	Michael Hammer	University of Arizona, Tucson
45	John Hardy	University College London, United Kingdom
46	Garrett Hellenthal	University College London, United Kingdom
47	Brenna Henn	State University of New York, Stony Brook
48	Ryan Hernandez	University of California, San Francisco
49	Evelyne Heyer	Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, France
50	Joel Hirschhorn	Boston Children's Hospital & Harvard University
51	Richard Hudson	University of Chicago
52	Keith Hunley	University of New Mexico
53	Mattias Jakobsson	Uppsala University, Sweden
54	Mark Jobling	University of Leicester, United Kingdom
55	Lynn Jorde	University of Utah
56	Henrik Kaessmann	University of Lausanne, Switzerland
57	Alon Keinan	Cornell University
58	Joanna Kelley	Washington State University
59	Brian Kemp	Washington State University
60	Eimear Kenny	Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
61	Jeffrey Kidd	University of Michigan
62	Kenneth Kidd	Yale University
63	Mary-Claire King	University of Washington
64	Mark Kirkpatrick	University of Texas, Austin
65	Rick Kittles	University of Illinois, Chicago
66	Toomas Kivisild	University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
67	Joseph Lachance	Georgia Institute of Technology
68	Marta Mirazón Lahr	University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
69	Tuuli Lappalainen	New York Genome Center & Columbia University
70	Cecil Lewis	University of Oklahoma
71	Jun Li	University of Michigan
72	Kirk Lohmueller	University of California, Los Angeles
73	Jeffrey Long	University of New Mexico
74	Daniel MacArthur	Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard University
75	Ripan Malhi	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
76	Franz Manni	Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, France
77	Tomas Marques-Bonet	Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
78	Gil McVean	Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, United Kingdom
79	Joanna Mountain	23andMe, Inc.
80	Connie Mulligan	University of Florida
81	Richard Myers	HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
82	Michael Nachman	University of California, Berkeley
83	Rasmus Nielsen	University of California, Berkeley
84	Magnus Nordborg	Gregor Mendel Institute, Austria
85	John Novembre	University of Chicago
86	Harry Ostrer	Albert Einstein College of Medicine
87	Sarah Otto	University of British Columbia, Canada
88	Svante Paabo	Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
89	Lior Pachter	University of California, Berkeley
90	Nick Patterson	Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
91	Bret Payseur	University of Wisconsin, Madison
92	Itsik Pe'er	Columbia University
93	Trevor Pemberton	University of Manitoba, Canada
94	George (PJ) Perry	Pennsylvania State University
95	Dmitri Petrov	Stanford University
96	Vincent Plagnol	University College London, United Kingdom
97	Alkes Price	Harvard University
98	Jonathan Pritchard	Stanford University & Howard Hughes Medical Institute
99	Molly Przeworski	Columbia University
100	Lluis Quintana-Murci	Institut Pasteur, France
101	Peter Ralph	University of Southern California
102	Sohini Ramachandran	Brown University
103	Bruce Rannala	University of California, Davis
104	David Reich	Harvard University & Howard Hughes Medical Institute
105	Neil Risch	University of California, San Francisco
106	Matthew Rockman	New York University
107	Noah Rosenberg	Stanford University
108	Charles Rotimi	In a personal capacity
109	Aylwyn Scally	University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
110	Michael Seldin	University of California, Davis
111	Guy Sella	Columbia University
112	David Serre	Cleveland Clinic
113	Mark Shriver	Pennsylvania State University
114	Adam Siepel	Cornell University
115	Andrew B. Singleton	In a personal capacity
116	Karl Skorecki	Technion Ð Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
117	Montgomery Slatkin	University of California, Berkeley
118	Yun S. Song	University of California, Berkeley
119	Chris Spencer	Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, United Kingdom
120	Stephen Stearns	Yale University
121	Anne Stone	Arizona State University
122	Mark Stoneking	Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
123	Hua Tang	Stanford University
124	Alan Templeton	Washington University in St. Louis
125	Mark G. Thomas	University College London, United Kingdom
126	Sarah Tishkoff	University of Pennsylvania
127	Paul Verdu	Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
128	Richard Villems	University of Tartu, Estonia
129	Benjamin Voight	University of Pennsylvania
130	John Wakeley	Harvard University
131	Jeffrey Wall	University of California, San Francisco
132	James Weber	PreventionGenetics
133	Kenneth Weiss	Pennsylvania State University
134	Spencer Wells	The Genographic Project, National Geographic Society
135	Eske Willerslev	University of Copenhagen, Denmark
136	Amy L. Williams	Cornell University
137	Scott Williams	Dartmouth College
138	Elad Ziv	University of California, San Francisco
139	Sebastian Zöllner	University of Michigan

After publication of the letter in The New York Times Book Review, a number of additional faculty in population genetics who had not had the opportunity to sign added their names. We include these below.

 

	NAME	AFFILIATION
140	Emmanouil Dermitzakis	University of Geneva, Switzerland
141	Emilia Huerta-Sanchez	University of California, Merced
142	Norman Johnson	University of Massachusetts, Amherst
143	Shamil Sunyaev	Harvard Medical School & Brigham & Women's Hospital