Nicholas Wade was formerly a staff
writer for the Science Times section of
The New York Times. He is also an
author, who most recently has written
the controversial book, A Troublesome
Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human
History that has been widely criticized
by scientists.
Biography
Wade was born in Aylesbury, England and
educated at Eton College. He is the
grandson of teacher and author Lawrence
Beesley, a survivor of RMS Titanic. He
earned a BA and an MA from King's
College, Cambridge in 1960 and 1963.
Wade emigrated to the US in 1970.
Wade has been a science writer and
editor for the journals Nature, from
1967 to 1971, and Science, from 1972 to
1982. He joined The New York Times in
1982 and retired in 2012 but freelances
occasionally for his former employer. He
had been an editorial writer covering
science, environment and defense, and
then an editor of the science section.
Two of his books deal with less savory
aspects of scientific research. His 1980
book, The Nobel Duel: Two Scientists'
Twenty-one Year Race to Win the World's
Most Coveted Research Prize, described
the competition between Andrew Schally
and Roger Guillemin, whose discoveries
regarding the peptide hormone led to
them sharing the 1977 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine. According to the
Washington Post Book World, it "may be
the most unflattering description of
scientists ever written." Betrayers of
the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls
of Science, co-authored with William J.
Broad, discusses historical and
contemporary examples of scientific
fraud.
His A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes,
Race and Human History was criticized in
the New York Times Book Review of Sunday
July 13, David Dobbs wrote that it was
"a deeply flawed, deceptive, and
dangerous book" with "pernicious
conceits". However, Edward O Wilson of
Harvard University says of the book,
“Nicholas Wade combines the virtues of
truth without fear and the celebration
of genetic diversity as a strength of
humanity, thereby creating a forum
appropriate to the twenty-first
century.” And Ashutosh Jogalekar of
Scientific American wrote, “Extremely
well-researched, thoughtfully written
and objectively argued…. The real lesson
of the book should not be lost on us: A
scientific topic cannot be declared off
limits or whitewashed because its
findings can be socially or politically
incendiary." Some biologists, however,
categorically dismissed his view of race
in a joint letter published in The New
York Times on August 8, 2014: "Wade
juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate
account of our research on human genetic
differences with speculation that recent
natural selection has led to worldwide
differences in I.Q. test results,
political institutions and economic
development. We reject Wade’s
implication that our findings
substantiate his guesswork."
Nonetheless, Wade replied: "I make no
such statement. To the contrary, my book
explicitly takes no position on the
cause of racial differences in I.Q.
results, given the difficulty of
assessing the many factors other than
genetics that heavily influence I.Q.
scores. I find it hard to see how any
reader of the book could have missed
this point, and can only assume that the
organizers of the biologists’ letter
induced many signatories to condemn a
book they had not read."
Other books by Wade include Before the
Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our
Ancestors, about human evolution, and
The Faith Instinct, about the evolution
of religious behavior.
Wade has criticized anthropology,
particularly cultural anthropology, as
lacking in scientific rigor, saying in a
2007 lecture, that cultural
anthropologists should become trained in
genetics. In a review of a book by
Napoleon Chagnon he criticized the
American Anthropological Association for
its treatment of Chagnon.
References
^ a b c d e "Nicholas Wade."
Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit:
Gale, 2011. Biography in Context. Web. 8
July 2014.
^ Amos Esty. "The Bookshelf talks with
Nicholas Wade". American Scientist. 
^ Gitschier J Turning the Tables—An
Interview with Nicholas Wade. PLoS Genet
1(3): e45
^ Michael Hiltzik. "Racism, the Misuse
of Genetics and a Huge Scientific
Protest". Los Angeles Times. 
nheritance-genes-race-and-human-history/
http:blogs.scientificamerican.com201413
^ Wade, Nicholas. "As Hundreds of Men
Perished, One Ignored a Rumor to
Survive". New York Times. Retrieved 10
July 2014. 
^ "Nicholas Wade Interview – A
Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and
Human History". Luke Ford. 11 May 2014.
Retrieved 10 July 2014. 
^ [1]
^ [2]
4. Eric Michael Johnson"On the Origin of
White Power" Scientific American [3]
External links
New York Times page
