{"id":10581,"date":"2018-08-02T22:01:05","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T05:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=10581"},"modified":"2018-08-03T02:54:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-03T09:54:23","slug":"sewing-psuedo-scientific-seeds-of-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=10581","title":{"rendered":"Sowing Pseudo-Scientific Seeds of Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have previously expressed great concern about journalists confusing the categorization of a people as H.<\/abbr> sapiens<\/span> with their being human<\/em>.<\/a> Bodies Keep Shrinking on this Island, and Scientists Aren't Sure Why<\/q>, a story in the New York Times<\/cite><\/a>, offers yet another illustration of this confusion. Within it<\/a>, Carl Zimmer writes:<\/p>

The researchers found that a very small percentage of the villagers' DNA<\/abbr> came from Neanderthals or Denisovans. A tiny portion could not be matched to humans, Neanderthals or Denisovans.<\/p>

But these enigmatic pieces weren\u2019t dramatically different from human DNA<\/abbr>, as you\u2019d expect if they had come from Homo floresiensis. Dr. Tucci concluded that the Rampasasa villagers have no Homo floresiensis ancestry.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Note that, once again, Neanderthals and Denisovans are distinguished by a journalist from humans<\/em>, as are now those of H.<\/abbr> floresiensis<\/span>. No reason is given for classifying any of these people as not human<\/em>; the journalist has simply inferred that they are not because they have been classified as of a different species<\/em>; what that classification actually means<\/em> is utterly unconsidered.<\/p>

Further, in the article, modern populations are noted to have differing occurrences of presence of DNA<\/abbr> from the supposedly<\/em> in<\/em>human populations — not dramatically<\/em> inhuman, but supposedly inhuman none-the-less.<\/p>

Let me make it very plain: Mr Zimmer and the New York Times<\/cite> are offering pseudo-science<\/em> with racist<\/em> implications.<\/strong> He probably doesn't intend those implications, but is simply thoughtless. However, his thoughtlessness and that of his editors are inexcusable<\/em>. And, if he had any conversations with the scientists who conducted these studies, then I'd like to know why the Hell<\/em> they failed to impress upon him that the taxonomy did not<\/em> separate people into humans and non-humans. These scientists did not<\/em> have the prerogative of unscientifically presuming that Mr Zimmer had more intelligence than has been actually demonstrated<\/em> by the typical journalist.<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have previously expressed great concern about journalists confusing the categorization of a people as H. sapiens with their being human. Bodies Keep Shrinking on this Island, and Scientists Aren't Sure Why, a story in the New York Times, offers yet another illustration of this confusion. Within it, Carl Zimmer writes: The researchers found that […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,104,4],"tags":[1443,1444,947,1439,1525,1526,1441,182,1440,90,1442],"class_list":["post-10581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-news","category-public","tag-anthropology","tag-biology","tag-definitions","tag-denisovans","tag-h-floresiensis","tag-homo-floresiensis","tag-humanity","tag-journalism","tag-neanderthals","tag-racism","tag-speciation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}