This book is loaded with basic info on how genomics works, but it's not written in a way intuitive to a reader who might have a basic understanding of genetic tools from 23AndMe.

What immediately drew me to this book was the fact that it discussed race and how it isn't a thing. I've been trying for a while now to explain to people how race doesn't really exist and is a social construct, but it doesn't always go so well. The first part of this book was a little over my head. It's been a while since I've taken any biology or genetics classes, and I did struggle a bit to get through it. Other people who aren't in science fields might have a hard time getting through it as well. However, I did learn a lot about taxonomy, DNA and how ancestry tests are misleading, among other things, so even though I struggled a bit, I'm glad I read it. The second part was much easier to read and understand, and I really hope it starts opening more doors into discussions on how race doesn't really exist, and how we're making things worse by constantly dividing people into racial groups. There is no reason to constantly divide people, and we could probably get somewhere if we realized this.

Could have been interesting but got bogged down in the details

I stopped reading around half-way through when the discussion turned to humans, denisovans and neanderthals. At that point I still had no better idea about race than when I started the book. It was too detailed and took too long to get to the point. I think that the book will be interesting to biologists only.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of the book via Netgalley for review purposes.

The preface of this book is pretty clear. By way of summary, I would say it amounts to: we can't believe we have to say this again! Race is a social construct and has no discernible foundation in scientific and DNA.

But they do have to say it again. Recent events in American culture and politics necessitate it, but this is written in direct response to Wade's recent book claiming a scientific basis for race and the review in the New York Times (Murray) stating that, since the science of the book was unassailable, all criticism of the book would be about the social implications of intrinsic racial differences between people. Well, DeSalle and Tattersall are here to assail the science. Because it sucks.

They begin with several chapters setting up the scientific studies that lead to the important conclusions: evolution, especially human evolution, taxonomy, speciation. Then a bit about how humans are clustered into groups using DNA and the science of sorting species, which was then applied to humans. Then Ch 14 directly addresses Wade's book.

The final chapter is an acknowledgment of the social construct of race. Race exists because we act like it does. The authors are frustrated that medical/pharma studies still sort their subjects by race, and also that the census requires us all to sort ourselves according to race. They acknowledge that there's sociological meaning in doing so. But they also think that every time we sort humans according to race, we're buying into the lie. I'm not sure what the right answer is here, and the chapter seemed like the beginning of a good discussion rather than the end of one. But the social construct is not their area of expertise nor their focus on the book. They're trying to lay out in a somewhat shortened form (compared to their previous book) the arguments against a scientific basis for race.

A lot of the initial chapters was review for me. I did appreciate their chapter about Neanderthal DNA, since ancestry tests tell people how much of their DNA is from Neanderthals (that used to be an insult, but when we discovered that there's Neanderthal DNA in a lot of white people, we've changed our tune), and how little of the story is captured by those reports. This discussion includes rather adorable uses of the term "hanky-panky" by two stiff academicians. I also appreciate their definition of the misleading ancestry phenomenon they call the Stephen Colbert effect -- the fact that those ancestry tests only capture the origin of the last few generations of our ancestry and neglect the fact that Colbert, and all of us, are 99% African.

All in all a good read, although I suspect it would be rather repetitious for those who have read their earlier book on race (I have not). I think the language is a little too thick to convince someone who truly believes that race is a genetic phenomenon (and that one race is superior to the others) that they are wrong. But it's a good resource for those with an open mind to have access to the main issues in the debate, and to make clear what good science says on the subject.

I got a copy to review from Net Galley.

I read an ebook edition of Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall’s Troublesome Science in May 2018. This was provided to me by Columbia University Press through netgalley, in return for promising to write an honest review. The book is scheduled for release on June 19, 2018. The authors are curators and faculty at the American Museum of Natural History. Among their other books, is a somewhat related one: Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth.

So, it seems that after science journalist Nicholas Wade published his A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History purporting to present the biological basis of race within the human species, the libertarian political scientist Charles Murray made a prediction regarding the nature of the criticism of Wade’s book. Murray, a supporter of Wade’s position, wanted to bet that there would be attacks directed at Wade’s conclusions rather than science. DeSalle and Tattersall took him up on that and wrote a scientific take-down, publishing “Mr. Murray, You Lose the Bet” in GeneWatch, July 13, 2014. The Council for Responsible Genetics posts that at http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/genewatch/GeneWatchPage.aspx?pageId=532

That article also appears as Chapter 14 in this new book. Now, I have not read Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance. Nor have I read DeSalle and Tattersall’s prior related book. In fact, I was not even really aware of the controversy, when I agreed to read this book. If you, like me, are not prepared to understand the arguments, you will first need the background provided in Chapters 1-13. Along the way, I learned a lot about taxonomic science and genomics, and honestly that was the real value of the book for me. In case you don’t see it elsewhere, here is the table of contents:

1 Evolutionary Lessons
2 Species and How to Recognize Them
3 Phylogenetic Trees
4 The Name Game: Modern Zoological Nomenclature and the Rules of Naming Things
5 DNA Fingerprinting and Barcoding
6 Early Biological Notions of Human Divergence
7 Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam
8 The Other 99 Percent of the Genome
9 ABBA/BABA and the Genomes of Our Ancient Relatives
10 Human Migration and Neolithic Genomes
11 Gene Geneologies and Species Trees
12 Clustering Humans?
13 STRUCTUREing Humans?
14 Mr. Murray Loses His Bet
E Race and Society

Something like one third of taxonomically accepted tree topology differs from newly identified genetic lineage, and things are being rearranged actively at this time. I was astounded at the rapid progress made in paleogenomics in recent years, including even the identification of a new species of hominid (Denisova) from just a few fossil fragments. The book is dated 2018, and the most recent material contained within is from about 2016, so this is a great way to ramp up to the current state of knowledge. Given the rate of change, I fully expect that some of the specific hypothesis presented here will be revised within just a few more years.

Beyond the findings of the science, this book also explains the how of it. With abundant examples, it illustrates how the massive amount of data involved in the human genome is of necessity reduced to manageable size. Any exclusion of any data that is not simply instrumentation error introduces information bias; understanding that bias is necessary to the proper assessment of the results. For example, the selection of AIMs (ancestral information marker) from among SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism) in the genome can lead to ascertainment bias. It is circular reasoning to select data which is central to a population, excluding a large number of “outliers,” and then find that clustering occurs. Of course it does!

I think the first twelve chapters could have stood quite well on their own, using only chapter 13 to deal with the race controversy. The actual last chapter reads like a sort of grudge match, where I don’t know the players. Even the tone of it may tend to give credence to the other side’s claim of elitist orthodoxy on the part of established science. As far as I’m concerned, as scientists rather than as reporters, Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall have the street cred, but while the targeted essay was suitable for the journal, the book didn’t need to also go there.