March 13, 2006

Brad DeLong forgets his own advice

Brad DeLong forgets his own advice: back on 9/12/05, Berkeley economist Brad DeLong posted a self-satisfied mathematical " proof" that the distribution of genes around the world must be homogenous, even though they aren't. A lively argument broke out in his Comments section.

The eminent professor then went through his Comments section and deleted many posts by better informed individuals, such as Gregory Cochran, that undermined his worldview. Where does he find the time? Unfortunately, he forgot to delete the responses by his supporters attempting to answer the now-deleted heresies, making the experience rather like looking at those pictures from the Bolshevik Revolution that Stalin had airbrushed where Lenin is shaking an invisible Trotsky's invisible hand.

I posted some of the comments DeLong deleted here.

Later, DeLong ruefully posted:

"(And, while we're at it: never get involved in a land war in Asia; do not read My Pet Goat when death is on the line; never play poker with a man named 'Doc'; never accept a battle of wits where iocane powder is a factor; never blithely download and install a file from Microsoft without carefully, carefully researching what it will do beforehand; never get involved in an argument over Noam Chomsky; and never post about human genetics on you weblog.)"

He seems to have forgotten his own advice because he came back Sunday with a dismissive post about Nicholas Wade's NYT article explicating physicist turned evolutionary theorist Cochran's "dangerous idea" of accelerating evolution, claiming that:

"Yet neither Nicholas Wade nor Jonathan Pritchard nor Gregory Cochrane [sic] seem capable of doing even the simplest of math."

Hey, Brad, rude and wrong make a poor combination.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

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