I’ve had some fun with the race wienies today - it’s almost as if I could write a book on how to argue with a racist. Anyway, here’s some of the highlights:
1) the credentialists. How can it be that I have a job in one of the best genetics departments on Earth, and the BBC?? 😘



2) ‘you’re a disingenuous retard’

I read a lot of books, and here are my non-fiction books of the year, just in time for presents, in no particular order. 1: Toxic by Sarah Ditum. Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Janet, Amy. These early-noughties mononym women who stood charged with being women at the juncture between the old media and the new. Will make you sad, angry and baffled.

I went to see Oppenheimer. It is hard to imagine a film that I disliked more intensely. Apart from Tenet.

Positives: acting is fabulous, cinematography beautiful, music a bit overbearing but massive. Negatives <deep breath>
* learn to write dialogue. People don’t speak like that. Every sentence is designed to elicit a zinger or exposition point in response.

Oh come on, don't make me do this, please. The sun is shining, and it's a nice da... MALE SEA OTTERS DROWN FEMALES AND USE THEIR CARCASSES FOR SEX UNTIL THE FALL APART. DON'T BE FOOLED, THEY ARE ABSOLUTE FURRY ARSEHOLES.

Carry on.

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1666882829622312967

Oh screw it.

Bottlenose dolphins form gangs and kidnap teenage female dolphins to sexually assault.
Fuck you Flipper.

🚨 Genetics is PROBABILISITIC, not deterministic 🚨 This is a fundamental aspect of inheritance. The idea that being in possession of a certain version of a gene - an allele - determines a trait is incorrect, and you will fail 1st yr Introduction to Genetics if you write that. Next: For the most part, the way we understand the influence of certain alleles - e.g. taste preferences - comes from studies in populations, and do not directly or deterministically translate to individuals.

I’m having a giant crumpet. I shall report back. I will confess I am suspicious. Disappointing. As others predicted, the circumference to interior ratio (√2) makes for too much butter-soaked sponge and not enough crunch. Ruler for scale.

Creationists cannot help but lie:
1) Darwin spent time in Cape Town which is <checks atlas> in Africa
2) Social Darwinism has little to do with Darwin. European expansion used racist pseudoscience to justify subjugation, but it was nothing to do with Darwin - an abolitionist.

https://twitter.com/DiscoveryCSC/status/1627853238484750337

Darwin held opinions that were universal amongst his class - meaning that he held typically and not extreme racist and sexist views. It would be fairly impossible for him not to have these ideas at that time…

You asked for it, a Valentines sex in nature thread 🧵
1) Adélie penguins: transactional sex: females will give it up for a smooth stone. Males copulate with dead females, their own offspring, other males, and sometimes ejaculate onto the ice. Didn't show that in Happy Feet. 2) Giraffes: the best evidence we have says that the vast majority of sexual encounters in giraffes are male to male, penetrative and ejaculatory, and follow bouts of necking.

This story neglects to mention that the attempted edits DID NOT WORK, but He Jian Kui implanted the edited embryos anyway. This is one of the most obvious violations of basic ethics, and yet here we are, a lecture tour around U.K. universities.

amp.theguardian.com/science/2023/f… He was attempting to modify the CCR5 gene to introduce the delta32 allele, which when homozygous bestows immunity to HIV infection. BY HIS OWN results, the two embryos that became LuLu and Nana DIDI NOT carry this version, but new edits unknown to science or nature.

Hello. My latest book Control: the dark history and troubling present of #eugenics is out today. waterstones.com/book/control/a… Some links: here's Bad Blood, the Radio 4 series, with everything from Plato to Trump, The Great Gatsby to Mendel, Francis Galton to designer babies.
bbc.in/3PF342Q

⚡🧬 New paper klaxon! 🧬⚡

A bunch of us at @GenSocUK have been thinking about the public perception and understanding of genetics, and how it may have changed during the pandemic. So, we commissioned a large survey, and this paper is the results.
🧵

https://twitter.com/GenSocUK/status/1617961819716616193

We figured that the pandemic response involved public exposure to genetics and molecular biology in an unprecedented way – all of a sudden there were daily discussions all over the media of PCR, exponential growth, R numbers, vaccines, mRNA, and spike proteins.

Perfection! All the History Reclaimed wankfantasists are wetting their tiny bunched panties about this spectacular book. You just know if you're annoying ahistorical pub bores like these tiresome carotid throbbers, you're doing the right thing.

https://twitter.com/BruceDGilley/status/1617206290136322048

The thing is that it's meticulously researched, and terribly well written. You can see why Its critics in the right wing press hate it, cos they don't seem to be capable of either of these traits.

I am enjoying Harry Wales’ book a lot. I mean, it’s tragic and laced with deep sadness. It’s not brilliantly written or read, but it’s a moving insight into the life of a fairly normal boy, born into a pantomime of absurdities, cruelty, and madness. Each character also a victim of the absurdity of the life they were born into, the casual cruelty of boarding schools (please read @BeardRichard on this), the nonsense of the monarchy, and the utter immorality of the press.

Not for the first time, I find myself disagreeing with A.N. Wilson's literary output. Here is my review of his 'biography' 'of' Darwin and his work - something I know a little bit about. Wilson is fine entertainment in his well carved out domain of comically bad biographies. Here is one in which he was hoaxed into believing a fake love letter that included an acrostic: "AN Wilson is a shit."

bit.ly/3GX0Yst

One of the true joys of my job is that I get to read books before they are published. So instead of dunking on funky ballsweat like Sapiens, here are 5 books coming out this year that I have read/am reading, that are splendid. 1/x First up, On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe by @carolinepennock. Truly a spectacular important story of Indigenous Americans in Europe. That's 19th Jan, and Book of the Week on @BBCRadio4

I know sometimes you look to me for comment on such matters: human evolution, genetics, race. But I just can’t be arsed. This is bad science - it’s baffling that it was published. The Twitter thread is absolute balls. I’m sure colleagues can chip in. I’m watching the football.

https://twitter.com/shi_huang5/status/1602681639301046273

Sorry for being so lazy. I’ve got 42 papers to grade, and can’t be dealing with nonsense like this. There’s an interesting strand of nationalism in human evolution that comes from China, but it is untethered to evidence, and should only be acknowledged as a political ideology.

<self promo> My book, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived just passed its 1000th rating on Amazon, and makes a nice Christmas present. If you don't believe me, check out these two One Star reviews.
amzn.to/3WcFWuZ How to Argue With a Racist is a bit punchier, but just passed 1500 ratings.

amzn.to/3FgeuFL

I’m on Instagram. Never posted but might do now. Adamdavidrutherford, same skull avatar.

Peace. I enjoyed talking about genetics and evolution and history and cricket and films and laughing at racists and posting pictures of my dog and meeting clever and fun people and even the 7,000 messages a stalker sent to me. Jessie and Cleo signing off now.

I am interested in the evidence base for people who think that Churchill was *not* a racist or white supremacist. I mean this sincerely, cos I often am challenged on this, despite there being plenty of evidence, much from his own words. I’m not asking about defending his other actions in public life, nor semantic arguments about what White Supremacy is, but scholarly arguments that WC did not persistently adhere to racial hierarchical taxonomies, and overtly racist views.

Just absolute balls, and anyone who believes these foetid trembling pearl-clutching winnets of ‘common sense’ is daft.

https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/1589690878050062336

Look at the retweets. Why are people so keen to hoover up and regurgitate this nonsense? I’m not sure any of these people have been near an undergraduate biology module in decades.

Fascinating. The father of Boris Johnson espousing very clear eugenics policies, and Great Replacement ideology whilst referring to the fecundity of ‘black and brown and yellow races’ as opposed to indigenous Britons Here is a thread form a couple of years ago after footage of Dominic Cummings’ father in law gagged up some staggeringly ignorant related views:

https://twitter.com/adamrutherford/status/1266257048880025600