Ron Unz reviews Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance in his Unz Review:
But a year or two ago, when I heard smart intellectuals still citing [Stephen Jay] Gould, I asked a prominent academic how that would possibly be the case. He explained that whereas in the 1990s, probably 99% of intellectuals believed in Gould, the massive revelations of recent years had merely reduced that support to 95%, leaving Gouldism almost as entrenched as ever. Whereas worldwide support for Stalinism substantially collapsed following Khrushchev’s 1956 “Secret Speech” Gouldian nonsense seems to have largely avoided that fate.
In the comments, James raises the possibility of awarding a posthumous Lysenko Prize to Gould. Ogunsiron replies:
James says:
May 22, 2014 at 5:09 pm
Brilliant. I hope to get many to read it, and Wade’s book. BTW, did anything come of the idea of awarding a Lysenko Prize for which I recall S.J.Gould was to be the first recipient?
ogunsiron says:
May 22, 2014 at 6:23 pm
did anything come of the idea of awarding a Lysenko Prize for which I recall S.J.Gould was to be the first recipient?
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http://www.clubdelhorloge.fr/lyssenko_1990jacquard.php
It’s in french but it’s the same idea :)
They gave a Lyssenko prize to the french equivalent of Gould.
Jacquard was the go-to man of the intelligentsia and media on genetics and related topics.
That's pretty enterprising of those Frenchmen, because the French generally feel that Darwin was a perfidious Albion who ripped off the great Lamarck.
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Apart from being a Lysenkoist, Gould was a nasty piece of work. He was proved wrong on the Burgess Shale by Simon Conway Morris, who in return had to put up with years of spite and invective. But Gould made far more money. Life isn't fair.
Must the Lysenko prize be limited to writers on genetics? There are many Climate Scientists worthy of the dishonour.
Perfidious Albion refers to the island of Great Britain. It is related to the Latin Albus meaning white as in the white cliffs of Dover. I've never seen Albion used to describe a person before. Perhaps the 'correct' usage is Albanian or even Alban.
http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2014/5/21/ukip-and-the-sailer-strategy
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/05/is-ukip-the-answer/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics.
Around 12,000 years ago, a short teenage girl was wandering a system of caves, likely searching out water, when she fell into a deep pit and cracked her pelvis.
But skeletons found throughout the Americas have posed a problem: these early Americans don't resemble modern Native Americans, nor the Siberians from which they're believed to have descended.
This new skeleton, said to be one of the six oldest ever found in the Americas, serves as some of the best evidence yet toward confirming the latter: that the first Americans did in fact come from Beringia and later evolved features distinct from modern Native Americans. "This expedition produced some of the most compelling evidence to date of a link between Paleoamericans … and modern Native Americans," Chatters says in a statement.
That's because the skeleton, which the researchers have named Naia, has features distinct from modern Native Americans but can also be linked to them through DNA — something that hasn't been possible with earlier remains.
Many animals fell in too, and researchers found in the pit the bones of sabertooth tigers, pumas, coyotes, and sloths, among other animals.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/15/5720980/naia-ancient-skeleton-sheds-light-on-americas-first-inhabitants
"recent, copious, and regional"
Score 1 Cochran,Harpending, Wade
"That's pretty enterprising of those Frenchmen, because the French generally feel that Darwin was a perfidious Albion who ripped off the great Lamarck."
Interestingly enough, I've heard that Freud's theories also encountered a certain level of resistance in France, and that Freudianism didn't really take-off until Lacan provided a suitably Gallicized version for the French public.
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details at blogs.ft.com: Data problems with Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanne_Langer
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susanne_Langer
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French Lysenko Prize, since 1990.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prix_Lyssenko
J.K. Galbraith got one in 1994.
Unz is now quite spectacularly hostile to Cochran. Shouldn't surprise; they are both trained in physics, and physics doesn't even have an answer for determining the position and momentum of a particle at the same time.
It would be nice if you could get get an answer for who is right about the cause of achievement, by putting humans into a 'quantum state' (ie subtracting all the social ramifications) But we can't, and shouldn't even try.
Lynn Margulis demonstrated the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. Margulis thought Darwinism was excessively focused on inter-organismic competition: "a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology." She also believed that proponents of the standard theory "wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin – having mistaken him... Neo-Darwinism, which insists on [the slow accrual of mutations by gene-level natural selection], is in a complete funk."
Like ancient Greek city states, HBDers tear each other to pieces. Which suggests Margulis was right about the tenor of their beliefs, and that in the future our descendants will have our genes, but only our genes.
Perfidious Albion refers to the island of Great Britain. It is related to the Latin Albus meaning white as in the white cliffs of Dover. I've never seen Albion used to describe a person before. Perhaps the 'correct' usage is Albanian or even Alban.
I'd say albionais perfide was your best option. "Perfidious Albionese" seems a bit... uh... something.
A Lysenko Prize for Gould could well be followed by giving it to Lewontin and Kamin, two other biologists whose loyalty to Marx trumped their Darwinism.
Then we should institute a Duranty Prize for journalism... candidates are too numerous to list.
Lysenko phenom we can understand cuz it happened under Stalinism where people could get imprisoned or even killed.
But the fact that ghoulish Gouldism happened in a free and democratic society is downright chilling.
It proves, even if society is free, power is about those who accumulate it and monopolize it and how they will collude to destroy their enemies.
Gould Prize is more in order.
Paradoxically, democracies can be more crippling scientifically in some ways.
Because of overt oppression, no one outside the USSR needed take Lysenkoism seriously.
But because US is seen as a free nation, ideas that come from it are taken seriously all over the world as real ideas based on facts and free inquiry.
The stamp of 'free and legit' on the material makes it an easier sell.... like all those toxic derivatives sold all over the world because they came with the 'American' label.
The tribe...
I think it would be quite relevant and very interesting to examine historical correlates to
this problem of the undue persistence of practices and assumptions that have been effectively called into question by facts and science. Semmelweis' correct perceptions about childbed fever were denied and denied and denied for a long time beyond which they should have given pause within mainstream medicine. For many many years after it was obvious that limes consumed by sailors would prevent scuvy, the Royal Academy of Science refused to acknowledge the relationsip.
A good review of Wade's book here. It's conclusion:
Nicholas Wade has failed spectacularly. A Troublesome Inheritance is wrong in its facts, sloppy in its logic, and blatantly misrepresents evolutionary biology. If the white power movement views this book as a triumph it is a sad reflection on the state of their ideas. Instead of providing a Darwinian success story, Wade’s thesis deserves a quick extinction.
Au contraire, certain Frenchman have made le grande contribution to HBD; and then there's that "Confederacy of the Saints" novel you lot are always droning on about, which I've not read yet since I'm assured it's "happening now in real life, maaaan." Generally the French have a keener eye to the practical limitations of any twee British ontological model, whether it's ol' Chuck D or Beatrix Potter.
A good review of Wade's book here. It's conclusion:
...failed spectacularly... wrong in its facts, sloppy in its logic.. White Power movement blah blah... Wade's book deserves a quick extinction
Author bio at the end says his specialty is "looking at the interplay between evolutionary biology and politics"
One commenter in that SciAm blog post used the handle "ssm1959"--I detect a jokester...
slashdot.org: facebook-refuses-to-share-employee-race-and-gender-data
let the games begin...
"Freud's theories also encountered a certain level of resistance in France, and that Freudianism didn't really take-off until Lacan provided a suitably Gallicized version for the French public."
It proves, that Parisians were less prone to fall for the bullshit artists´crap than New Yorkers and Californians.
"Freud's theories suffered a certain level of ..." But France
was the genesis of Freud's insights (Charcot/ Janet ). Freud managed spectacularly to create a literary / metaphorical/
superstructure for the phenomena of medical hypnosis. It was more
like hijacking a bandwagon rather than creating one.
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