Conservatives aren't the only science deniers

This was inspired by a Washington Post article several years ago. However, the topic remails current, unfortunately, and provides an egregious example of where the left can be just as anti-science as the right. I illustrated it with a pic of Barack Obama--someone every identifies as black, despite the fact that he's 50.0% white. And in fact, most American so-called "African Americans" wouldn't be regarded as black in Africa, but rather as mixed race, which Apartheid South Africa designated "colored."

To: ombudsman@washpost.com

Subject: Bad Science Stated as Fact by the Washington Post

Re: "Scientists Find A DNA Change That Accounts For White Skin," by Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, December 16, 2005:

In this article Weiss said "Recent revelations that all people are more than 99.9% genetically identical has proved that race...is a phony construct." This canard is as popular among liberals as so-called "Intelligent Design" is among conservatives. Both are, however, equally fatuous--and equally driven by ideology.

Race is determined by constellations of traits, not particular genes. Most widespread species of plants and animals develop into distinct races as part of the process of evolution that eventually produces separate species. For example, dogs and wolves are different races. They can interbreed freely for the most part, and though no one gene sets them apart, only a fool would call them indistinguishable. Likewise doctors who ignore race ill-serve their patients. Everything from Tay-Sachs syndrome to sickle-cell anemia are strongly racially linked, as are subtler traits, such as the fact that many Eskimos' livers metabolizing one tuberculosis drug so quickly as to render it ineffective. Ignorance of this led to a TB epidemic in Canada in the 1950s.

Even the 99.9% argument shows profound ignorance of the effect of relatively small numbers of genes on differentiation. Chimpanzees are 98% genetically identical to humans. Even mice appear to share over 39,000 of our 40,000 genes. Would you call their differences from us just skin--or fur--deep?

For further reading, try "Medicine's Race Problem" from the Hoover Institute. I realize the Hoover Institute is a conservative think tank, but the assertions in this article are all confirmable independently.

As a moderate Democrat I'm dismayed by the Republican Party's broadband assault on science, seeking to subvert it to political expediency as thoroughly as the Soviets did. But it may dismay me even more to see one of my favorite newspapers fall prey to equally ideological considerations on the other side. Outcome-driven investigation is always bad, no matter how noble the goal. It's particularly galling that your writer presented something so controversial--the assertion that race doesn't exist--as settled fact. This particular scientifc faux pas represents the ongoing historical backlash against White Southern racism in America and Nazi racism in Europe. But how can we oppose Republican tampering with scientific objectivity when we do it ourselves?

I hope for more than a correction or a piece of editorial asperity from your desk. Ideally the Washington Post should do a series of articles showing how both the left and the right seek to corrupt science on behalf of their goals and ideology. It's obvious to liberals what convervatives are pulling, and to some extent vice versa. But such a series would draw the wrath of both sides, and I believe you've stated that that's a good omen.

I sent a letter to the editor on December 16 regarding the Washington Post article, on the day it came out. I'm sending this message to you now since that approach evidently failed.

--Ehkzu
California

"Journalism is the one source those who want to manipulate the public are most prone to denounce." --the Project for Excellence in Journalism

POSTSCRIPT: To my knowledge the Post never responded and never printed a correction.