To begin this blogging / commenting experiment, here's the link to the New York Times article on the genetics of East Asian physical traits. Thanks Maurine for sending this, and for sending us all the original article (which can also be found here). I see the piece in the NYT is written by the indefatigable Nicholas Wade, who has more than occasionally been criticized for his love of "gene for X" stories. He's been taken to task for this by Mark Liberman (the linguist I mentioned today), some prominent anthropologists, and by Mark Blumberg. You can read Mark's comments and Wade's (snarky) reply here.
I'm new to blogging, so I'm not sure if I should create a new post or comment here, but I just wanted to post that AgustÃn Fuentes, a biological anthropologist and blogger at Notre Dame, posted a brief response to Wade's article on the American Anthropological Association site: http://blog.aaanet.org/2013/02/20/erroneous-notions-of-race-and-human-biology/.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thanks to Deirdre for setting up this blog!