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Nicholas Wade
Born	(1942-05-17) 17 May 1942 (age 82) Aylesbury, England
Nationality	British
Education	Eton College
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (BA)
Known for	A Troublesome Inheritance
Website	www.nytimes.com/by/nicholas-wade

Nicholas Wade (born 17 May 1942) is a British author and journalist. He is the author of numerous books, and has served as staff writer and editor for Nature, Science, and the science section of The New York Times. His 2014 book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History was widely denounced by the scientific community for misrepresenting research into human population genetics.

Early life and education

Wade was born in Aylesbury, England and educated at Eton College. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge in 1964.

Wade immigrated to the United States in 1970.

Career

Wade was 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 he freelances occasionally for his former employer. At the Times he served as an editorial writer covering science, environment and defence, and then as an editor of the science section.

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 (1982), co-authored with William J. Broad, discusses historical and contemporary examples of scientific fraud.

In the 2000s, Wade's books began to focus on human evolution. He released Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors in 2006, which is about what Wade referred to as "two vanished periods" in human development, and The Faith Instinct in 2009, about the evolution of religious behavior.

In May of 2021, Wade published an article which advanced the claim that COVID-19 likely originated from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Wade's article generated significant controversy, and has become one of the most-cited pieces in support of the lab leak hypothesis. This claim is at odds with the prevailing view among scientists that the virus most likely has a zoonotic origin. Some experts have supported taking the lab leak hypothesis seriously, while others have dismissed it as very unlikely, calling it "speculative and unsupported". Others noted the explosive and implausible nature of Wade's allegations about virologists conspiring to avoid blame for causing the pandemic, with Science-Based Medicine calling Wade's argument a conspiracy theory,

A Troublesome Inheritance

In 2014, Wade released A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, in which he argued that human evolution has been "recent, copious, and regional" and that genes may have influenced a variety of behaviours that underpin differing forms of human society. The book has been widely denounced by scientists, including many of those upon whose work the book was based.

On 8 August 2014, The New York Times Book Review published an open letter signed by 139 faculty members in population genetics and evolutionary biology. After publication, the letter was signed by 4 more faculty members. The letter read:

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. They do not.

We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade's conjectures.

Wade issued a statement in response, saying that these scientists had misunderstood his intent.

The book was further criticized in a series of five reviews by Agustín Fuentes, Jonathan M. Marks, Jennifer Raff, Charles C. Roseman and Laura R. Stein. which were published together in the scientific journal Human Biology. Marks, for instance, described the book as "entirely derivative, an argument made from selective citations, misrepresentations, and speculative pseudoscience." Other reviews were more moderate in their criticism, such as that of H. Allen Orr, who wrote in The New York Review of Books that "Wade's survey of human population genomics is lively and generally serviceable. It is not, however, without error. He exaggerates, for example, the percentage of the human genome that shows evidence of recent natural selection."

References

1. ^ "Nicholas Wade." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Biography in Context. Web. 8 July 2014.
2. Amos Esty (25 May 2006). "The Bookshelf talks with Nicholas Wade". American Scientist. Archived from the original on 25 October 2007.
3. Gitschier, Jane (2005). "Turning the Tables—An Interview with Nicholas Wade". PLOS Genetics. 1 (3): e45. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0010045. ISSN 1553-7390. PMC 1239940. PMID 16205791.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
4. ^ Balter, Michael, "Geneticists decry book on race and evolution", Science, 8 August 2014
5. ^ Callaway, Ewen (8 August 2013). "Geneticists say popular book misrepresents research on human evolution". Nature.
6. ^ Michael Hiltzik (12 August 2014). "Racism, the Misuse of Genetics and a Huge Scientific Protest". Los Angeles Times.
7. "Spirit level". The Economist. 17 December 2009. Retrieved 14 February 2018.
8. "Nicholas Wade: Journalist & Science Author, Speaker | PRH Speakers Bureau". www.prhspeakers.com. Retrieved 9 December 2017.
9. "Nicholas Wade". The New York Times.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
10. Salevouris, Michael J. (2015). The methods and skills of history : a practical guide. Conal Furay (4 ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, UK. p. 273. ISBN 978-1-118-74544-1. OCLC 885229353.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
11. Shulevitz, Judith (24 December 2009). "The God Gene". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
12. Wade, Nicolas (5 May 2021). "The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan?". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
13. Mukunth, Vasudevan (12 May 2021). "In COVID Origins Storm, Fauci Denies US Funded Controversial Study in Wuhan". The Wire Science.
14. May, H. Holden Thorp 13; 2021 (13 May 2021). "Continued discussion on the origin of COVID-19 | Editor's Blog". blogs.sciencemag.org. Retrieved 23 June 2021. {{cite web}}: |last2= has numeric name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
15. Facebook; Twitter; options, Show more sharing; Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Email; URLCopied!, Copy Link; Print (8 June 2021). "Column: A Nobel laureate backs off from claiming a 'smoking gun' for the COVID-19 lab-leak theory". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 23 June 2021. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
16. Beaumont, Peter (27 May 2021). "Did Covid come from a Wuhan lab? What we know so far". The Guardian.
17. Hakim, Mohamad S. (14 February 2021). "SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19, and the debunking of conspiracy theories". Reviews in Medical Virology: e2222. doi:10.1002/rmv.2222. ISSN 1099-1654. PMC 7995093. PMID 33586302.
18. Frutos, Roger; Gavotte, Laurent; Devaux, Christian A. (18 March 2021). "Understanding the origin of COVID-19 requires to change the paradigm on zoonotic emergence from the spillover model to the viral circulation model". Infection, Genetics and Evolution: 104812. doi:10.1016/j.meegid.2021.104812. ISSN 1567-1348. PMC 7969828. PMID 33744401.
19. "COVID-19 Virtual Press conference transcript - 9 February 2021". www.who.int. Retrieved 13 February 2021.
20. Ward, Myah; Rayasam, Renuka. "Experts weigh in on the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis". POLITICO. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
21. Ling, Justin. "The Lab Leak Theory Doesn't Hold Up". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
22. Siegel, Ethan. "No, Science Clearly Shows That COVID-19 Wasn't Leaked From A Wuhan Lab". Forbes. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
23. "The origin of SARS-CoV-2, revisited | Science-Based Medicine". sciencebasedmedicine.org. 31 May 2021. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
24. Wade, Nicholas (2014). A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. New York: Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0698163799.
25. ^ Coop, Graham; Eisen, Michael; Nielsen, Rasmus; Przeworski, Molly; Rosenberg, Noah (8 August 2014). "Letter to the Editor of The New York Times Book Review (Letter from Population Geneticists)". Retrieved 25 September 2014. We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade's conjectures.
26. Human Biology 2014; 86 (3).
27. Marks, Jonathan M. (1 July 2014). "Review of a Troublesome inheritance by Nicholas Wade". Human Biology. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
28. Orr, H. Allen (5 June 2014). "Stretch Genes". New York Review of Books. Retrieved 17 May 2014.

• 1942 births
• Living people
• 20th-century British journalists
• 20th-century British writers
• 21st-century British journalists
• 21st-century British writers
• Alumni of Kingston College (England)
• British magazine editors
• British science writers
• The New York Times writers
• Science journalists
• People educated at Eton College
• People from Aylesbury
• Race and intelligence controversy