Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

by David Reich

Wade’s Troublesome Inheritance ran with the theme again, suggesting that a politically correct alliance of anthropologists and geneticists has banded together to suppress the truth that there are significant differences among human populations and that those differences correspond to classic stereotypes. One part of the argument has something to it—Wade correctly highlights the problem of an academic community trying to enforce an implausible orthodoxy. Yet the “truth” that he puts forward in opposition, the idea that not only are there substantial differences, but that they likely correspond to traditional racial stereotypes, has no merit. Wade’s book combines compelling content with parts that are entirely speculative, presenting everything with the same authority and in the same voice, so that naive readers who accept the parts of it that are well argued are tempted to accept the rest. Worse, when compared to Wade’s previous writing, in which the rebels speaking the truth were scholars of creativity and accomplishment, he does not identify any serious scholarship in genetics supporting his speculations.38 And yet by celebrating those who have opposed the flawed orthodoxy, he implies wrongly that their alternative theories must be right.