Why You Should Think Twice About Those DNA-By-Mail ResultsPosted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Health/Medicine/Genetics, History on 2017-07-07 20:36Z by Steven |
Why You Should Think Twice About Those DNA-By-Mail Results
Cosmos & Culture: Commentary on Science and Society
National Public Radio
2017-07-06
Barbara J. King, Professor Emerita of Anthropology
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
iStockphoto
In a new book, University of North Carolina, Charlotte anthropologist Jonathan Marks says that racism in science is alive and well.
This stands in sharp contrast to creationist thinking, Marks says, which is, like racism, decidedly evident in our society but most certainly not welcome in science.
In Is Science Racist? Marks writes:
“If you espouse creationist ideas in science, you are branded as an ideologue, as a close-minded pseudo-scientist who is unable to adopt a modern perspective, and who consequently has no place in the community of scholars. But if you espouse racist ideas in science, that’s not quite so bad. People might look at you a little askance, but as a racist you can coexist in science alongside them, which you couldn’t do if you were a creationist. Science is racist when it permits scientists who advance racist ideas to exist and to thrive institutionally.”
This is a strong set of claims, and Marks uses numerous examples to support them. For example, a 2014 book by science writer Nicholas Wade used genes and race to explain, as Michael Balter put it in Science magazine, “why some people live in tribal societies and some in advanced civilizations, why African-Americans are allegedly more violent than whites, and why the Chinese may be good at business.”…
Read the entire article here.