October 18, 2018
THERE ARE NO DARWINISTS:
Elizabeth Warren Falls for Trump's Trap--and Promotes Insidious Ideas About Race and DNA (Masha Gessen, October 16, 2018, The New Yorker)
She is also reinforcing one of the most insidious ways in which Americans talk about race: as though it were a measurable biological category, one that, in some cases, can be determined by a single drop of blood. Genetic-test evidence is circular: if everyone who claims to be X has a particular genetic marker, then everyone with the marker is likely to be X. This would be flawed reasoning in any area, but what makes it bad science is that it reinforces the belief in the existence of X--in this case, race as a biological category.
That danged Gould conundrum.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 18, 2018 4:03 AM