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Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times

294 points by crunchiebones 8y ago

barry-cotter 8y ago
This is in response to the hit piece. Upvote the parent. Spread the truth. > To the Editor: > Gideon Lewis-Kraus (Jan. 17) profiles the nascent field of ancient DNA, which in the last few years has contributed to a transformation in our understanding of the deep human past. His article touches on important issues that we, as a field, have yet to deal with fully: including how to handle ancient remains ethically and in a way that preserves them for future generations; how geneticists and archaeologists can work in equal partnerships that reflect true respect for the insights of different disciplines; and how ancient DNA technology, which at present is applied efficiently only in large labs, can be made accessible to a wider group of scholars. > But Lewis-Kraus misunderstands several basic issues. First, he suggests that competition to publish is so extreme that standards become relaxed. As evidence, he cites a paper by my lab that was accepted on appeal after initial rejection, and another that was reviewed rapidly. In fact, mechanisms for appeal and expedited review when journals feel they are warranted are signs of healthy science, and both processes were carried out rigorously. > Second, he contends that ancient DNA specialists favor simplistic and sweeping claims. As evidence, he suggests that in 2015 I argued that the population of Europe was “almost entirely” replaced by people from the Eastern European Steppe. On the contrary, the paper he references and indeed my whole body of work argues for complex mixture, not simple replacement. Lewis-Kraus also suggests that I claimed that our first study of the people of the Pacific island chain of Vanuatu “conclusively demonstrated” no Papuan ancestry. But the paper in question was crystal-clear that these people could have had some Papuan ancestry – and indeed, to support his claim, Lewis-Kraus could only cite his own notes from an interview I gave him long after I had published a second paper proving that there was indeed a small proportion of Papuan ancestry. > Lewis-Kraus also suggests that I use small sample sizes to make unjustifiable sweeping claims. In fact, small sample sizes can be definitive when they yield results that are incompatible with prevailing theories, as when my colleagues and I described two samples that proved the existence of the Denisovans, a previously undocumented archaic human population. In my papers, I am careful to only make claims that can be supported by the data I have. In small-sample size studies, I emphasize that more samples are needed to flesh out the details of the initial findings. A major focus of my lab is generating the large data sets needed to do this. > Lewis-Kraus’s critiques are based on incomplete facts and largely anonymous sources whose motivations are impossible to assess. Curiously, he did not ask me about the great majority of his concerns. Had he done so, the evidence underlying his thesis that my work is “indistinguishable from the racialized notions of the swashbuckling imperial era” would have fallen apart. The truth, and the main theme of my 2018 book Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, is exactly the opposite - namely, that ancient DNA findings have rendered racist and colonialist narratives untenable by showing that no human population is “pure” or unmixed. It is incumbent on scientists to avoid advocating for simplistic theories, and instead to pay attention to all available facts and come to nuanced conclusions. The same holds true for journalists reporting on science. > David Reich Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- detaro 8y ago
  What's the point of copy-pasting the content of the submission here?
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    You know how most people don’t read on the internet? Most people don’t click on links either, on Reddit or Hacker News. When I posted the article text the story was 50 minutes old and about to drop off the front page. I wanted to make it more obvious who aren’t into this specific field what’s going on. Half an hour later when I checked again the article had 50 points and was near the top of the page. Posting the article text got Reich’s response to the hit piece much more visibility than it otherwise would have. That’s a good thing.
seibelj 8y ago
The opinion section of the NYT, and also many of the long form articles, are selected and shaped by the editorial staff which has an agenda. I’ve noticed that popularized science articles are especially bad, and if the science touches even slightly a controversial issue like race or ancestry the meaning and nuance can be warped to match their agenda. This isn’t only the NYT but given their status as the premier news source in the USA it is the most glaring to me. Also, I know it’s become a trope to post this on HN as it’s basically gospel at this point, but The Submarine essay by Paul Graham gives some nice insight into the PR and media industry http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- ronnier 8y ago
  Funny. I just read another “suits back in style” story yesterday. https://www.france24.com/en/20190119-dowdy-no-more-men-suits-storm-back-style https://www.france24.com/en/20190119-dowdy-no-more-men-suits...
  - porpoisely 8y ago
    Great catch and that's hilarious. I saw the same story from multiple sources/platforms yesterday. I thought the paul graham article was about yesterday's news and then I read the date "April 2005". 14 years ago. Anyone who pays attention to news for any amount of time sees redundant news and agenda. But PR stooges? If PR firms are so entwined with traditional news and media, I wonder how entrench PR firms are in the social media space.
    - thwarted 8y ago
      If PR firms are so entwined with traditional news and media, I wonder how entrench PR firms are in the social media space Watch the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix
    - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
      Most social media platforms are designed with their clients needs in mind. Often, those clients are PR firms.
jackschultz 8y ago
Here's the New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-paleogenomics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-pale... Boy that seems so story based. That's what's to be expected to get people to read, but also makes it so easy to come up with examples of misinformation when the story is trying to make a subject more easily understandable.
- dmix 8y ago
  You could solve those issues by having the actual scientists you mention get involved in the process and ask their perspective on something before you write about them. The laziness of journalists today, even in long form articles like this, with a full graphics team and everything, never ceases to amaze me.
Symmetry 8y ago
I thought Razib Kahn also had a response worth reading. This is all out of line with my previous impression of the New York Times as a respectable paper. Is the new era of virality driven news taking its toll on them? My impression is that they wouldn't have published this 10 years ago but perhaps I'm being naive? https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/01/19/194105/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/01/19/194105/
- racists 8y ago
  The New York Times is definitely run by racists. It’s just a constant flood of race baiting from them, on a daily basis at this point, and they just don’t know how to control themselves.
- racistNYT 8y ago
  The New York Times is just constantly pumping out racially charged articles, every day. You can hellban me, but it’s true.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  You’re being naive. Things were never better, it’s just that we live in an era when disseminating the counter narrative is easier than it used to be. Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer was never revoked. He worked for the NYT as Moscow Burea Chief while the Holodmor, the Ukrainian famine was happening and didn’t cover it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty > What Duranty knew and when > It was clear, meanwhile, from Duranty's comments to others that he was fully aware of the scale of the calamity. In 1934 he privately reported to the British embassy in Moscow that as many as 10 million people may have died, directly or indirectly, from famine in the Soviet Union in the previous year.[25] > Both British intelligence[26] and American engineer Zara Witkin (1900–1940),[27] who worked in the USSR from 1932 to 1934,[28] confirmed that Duranty knowingly misrepresented information about the nature and scale of the famine. > There are some indications that Duranty's deliberate misdirection concerning the famine may have been the result of duress. Conquest believed Duranty was being blackmailed over his sexual proclivities.[29]
burlesona 8y ago
I heard it this way once: You open the paper and read an article about your field. “This thing is crap, they got all the details wrong and are drawing ridiculous conclusions!” Then you click to the next article, about something else. “Wow, this is really fascinating. We need to do something about this!” ... I think this idea has a name, though I don’t remember it.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
  - burlesona 8y ago
    Thank you!
  - rhizome 8y ago
    Gell-Mann has to do with the contagiousness of poor logic, not the fact that there are stories you like and stories you don't.
  - rjf72 8y ago
    This leads to a possibility I'd not considered before. Trust in the media has deteriorated extensively. This seemed logically attributable to the rise of the internet thus ostensibly creating a race to publish, and publish sensationally, like never before. But something that always bugged me is that distrust of the media is nothing new. Writing in 1807 Jefferson stated [1], "To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. ... I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." Yet in my own personal experience, the media seemed at the minimum 'better' before the internet. So what gives? Maybe there is a very simple explanation. What may have changed is that now the internet enables individuals to share their expertise (and the media's lack thereof). It's no longer just the man who is an expert in a field facing disillusionment, but rather now anybody at all that reads his testimony. In times past there was no way to get such messages out. In other words the internet did not create mediocrity in the media, but rather emphasized it loud and clear for all to bear witness to, even those who otherwise would have been none the wiser. [1] - http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_spe...
sjroot 8y ago
The thing that annoys me about this the most is the use of anonymous sources. If you are writing a scientific article, or generally hope to establish some scientific fact, I do not think it is appropriate to hide behind a veil of anonymity.
- dylan604 8y ago
  I totally agree. People speaking on condition of anonimity because they are not authorized to discuss is one of the most annoying things about news today. As the reader, I just don’t trust the info. In recent news, BuzzFeed seems to have been recently burned and the SuperMicro hack sources seemed to have burned the journalists as well (don’t remember which outlet that was). It seems like people are fed up enough to break confidentiality agreements to leak info, but not fed up enough to quit and leave the hostile environment. I still appreciate the Snowden method. Got fed up to the point that the info must be released, but did not hide to keep his job. Also, some leaks are from official sources like a press secretary or similar official, but staying anonymous to float information as a trial balloon so there’s some plausible deniability if the balloon was made of lead. In marketing, the leaked photos seem to be an internally approved method to get free PR.
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    Bloomberg
  - rchaud 8y ago
    > People speaking on condition of anonimity because they are not authorized to discuss is one of the most annoying things about news today. This has likely annoyed people since the beginning of anything related to journalistic inquiry. If these people didn't have a guarantee of anonymity, the public would be in the dark most of the time. > I still appreciate the Snowden method. Got fed up to the point that the info must be released, but did not hide to keep his job. Not everybody is in Snowden's position; relatively young, unmarried, no kids. He may be able to take this "cool guys don't look back at explosions" approach, but most people can't. That doesn't mean that what they know should remain hidden from view because it doesn't meet your standards for what a 'real whistleblower' looks like. Snowden is also essentially trapped in Russia. The only reason he was able to find refuge there at all is because his revelations are a useful symbol of American hypocrisy any time the words "surveillance state" are bandied about in discussions about Russia. He's a smart guy and probably knows that the Kremlin's generosity will last only as long as he doesn't try to rock the boat by commenting on domestic Russian matters.
Topgamer7 8y ago
This response is very well thought out and well written. For someone who was likely incensed by the article in question, they responded in a cordial, professional manner.
snackematician 8y ago
I've worked in the ancient DNA field but left (at least for now). I haven't worked with David but have with competing labs. I have mixed feelings about the NYT piece -- on the one hand it has a lot of valid criticisms and brings sorely needed critical eye to this hyped field; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to David -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece. The industrial ancient DNA publication machine is real. A few giants control the vast majority of ancient DNA samples behind a wall, and these giants decide when and where to release these samples. I was part of a study, that got mashed together with a totally unrelated study at the last minute, for the sake of another hyped headline in Nature/Science, which reviewed and accepted the article very quickly. The whole process felt sloppy & rushed, and I was left with a bitter taste that ultimately led me to move on to other areas. On the other hand, I have immense scientific respect for David. In population genetics, there are a whole host of methods used to infer demographic history that are very biased and ignore important forces like natural selection. David's group has pioneered statistical methods that are more robust and less biased, that make less sweeping claims but are on much sounder scientific footing, and used these methods to derive important insights on human history.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >The industrial ancient DNA publication machine is real. A few giants control the vast majority of ancient DNA samples behind a wall, and these giants decide when and where to release these samples. Who controls the samples? That sounds like a sci-fi thriller plot in the making.
  - dpflan 8y ago
    Agreed. This interesting. How does one get access to these samples? Do the custodians have a website with order requests -- something like that? Is there a bidding process for access?
    - snackematician 8y ago
      I should have been more precise. The vast majority of unpublished samples are controlled by a few. Of course, once they are published they are open. To gain access to unpublished samples, you need to form collaborations with the gatekeepers, who decide the ultimate form of publication -- usually, a big Nature/Science paper with 100 authors. I liked this twitter thread about some of the challenges of smaller groups in obtaining samples: https://twitter.com/paleogenomics/status/1086402894641971204 https://twitter.com/paleogenomics/status/1086402894641971204
nyt_is_racist 8y ago
Why respond?
rossdavidh 8y ago
As someone who has (once) written an opinion piece for the NYT, I wonder how much the published piece resembled the author's original text. My experience: https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opinion/ https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...
- lewis500 8y ago
  wow this is brutal. thanks for sharing. I had mused on the idea of pitching them an opinion piece about my field, traffic, but not anymore.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    I should say, their check did clear (and I didn't even expect to get paid when I agreed to do it). So there's that.
- iamdave 8y ago
  I (once) wrote a Sports Illustrated opinion article years ago (similar situation to yours: made a comment on twitter to one of the popular talking heads, talking head took notice and replied, SI took notice, asked me to write something), your experience matched mine from the editing and review standpoint. At first sitting back and reading the suggested edits and changes in place I had a similar first reaction as you did, but after doing the "walk away, do something else and come back to your writing later" thing, I found the opinion was still there though much less verbose. Share that to say, the editorial process itself, even for opinion pieces-is rather....well... opinionated.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    Very interesting to hear that. I guess I am not surprised. I felt that my basic opinion was there, but an opinion of theirs had been layered on top, in a very politically-oriented way. I don't know if this was conscious or not.
    - 8y ago
jrd259 8y ago
As a recent reader of Reich's book "Who We Are and How We Got Here" I concur that he explicitly and forcefully refutes the notion of racial or ethnic categories as having any meaning over the lifetime of our species. Simply put, humans have migrated a lot and interbred with whoever. Your ancestry is a "tangled tree" (to borrow Quammen's term https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Tree-Radical-History-Life/dp/1476776628 https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Tree-Radical-History-Life/dp/...)
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  The problem is that politics doesn't deal with the lifetime of our species; it deals with the recent past, the present, and the near future. When you narrow the timeframe down like that, race and ethnic categories are meaningful, important, and real. You can look at someone and make some pretty good guesses about their life history and where their ancestors came from and what they experienced. I appreciate the sentiment behind the "race isn't real" position, but it's wrong and, in being wrong, it gives a toehold to people who really do care about race for all the wrong reasons. IMO, a much better position is to acknowledge that race is real, but just one part of what makes an individual who they are.
dmix 8y ago
Anyone got a mirror? Looks like it's not loading... Edit: found one http://archive.is/vI29T http://archive.is/vI29T
- BuildTheRobots 8y ago
  Thank you - the URL is currently timing out, getting a 404 from google cache and isn't found in archive.org if you give it the url.
kauffj 8y ago
Perhaps there was a time when the New York Times could be trusted, but that era ended at least several years ago. Off the top of my head: - The New York Times fired Quinn Norton basically for being willing to talk to weev (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-new-york-times-fired-my-doppelganger/554402/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-n...) - The New York Times fired Razib Khan for reporting on facts that are basically consensus opinion among geneticists and intelligence researchers. - The New York Times kept Sarah Jeong despite her offenses being substantially beyond the above. (I think it would have been fine to keep Jeong if they also kept Norton and Khan). - The New York Times published a completely uncritical review of Democracy in Chains, despite it's dishonest scholarship. Even NPR added an editor's note to their report on this book.
- globeSpin 8y ago
  Let’s not forget the 98% “chance of winning” estimate of the 2016 election. For months ahead of the election, the election was never called by The New York Times as being below a 90% certainty. They were basically declaring a winner up front, and contributed to the spectacle of total upset. Now as an outlet, it just spews shit on a daily basis. And I mean shit. It’s been unreadable since then. The last time I observed good coverage on anything from The New York Times was during the first two years of the 2003 Iraq war. Since then, garbage. Hot garbage.
  - magicalist 8y ago
    > Let’s not forget the 98% “chance of winning” estimate of the 2016 election. > For months ahead of the election, the election was never called by The New York Times as being below a 90% certainty. It's trivial to verify that neither of these things are true[1][2], so...just adding to the garbage, I guess? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html#trend https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/forecast/president https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/forecast/president
    - 8y ago
_bxg1 8y ago
"I have mixed feelings about the NYT piece -- on the one hand it has a lot of valid criticisms and brings sorely needed critical eye to _________; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to _________ -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece." I cancelled my subscription to the NYT because I felt this way about many of their pieces.
- TomMckenny 8y ago
  May I ask, do you have many specific examples?
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    For numerous others in recent times see the coverage of the Covington Catholic situation: misreporting and sensationalism at it's finest. I wonder sometimes if some of these traditional media behemoths even bother to follow basic journalistic practices like 1. cross referencing your sources 2. seeking the other side of the story / opposing viewpoints 3. asking those involved for comment because it seems glaringly obvious to me in the Covington Catholic case, none of that was done until 48 hours when some high profile twitter names started actually pointing out the glaring errors.
    - scabarott 8y ago
      Unfortunately this happens a lot but I don't entirely blame the media companies. In the age of twitter and social media, some news moves fast and they have to decide quickly whether to publish something about a trending news item or wait to do proper reportage and lose valuable page-views to more sensationalistic outlets which they have to compete with. I've come to accept this is the new reality and not get too bummed about it as long as we still occasionally get the usual well reported long-form investigative pieces we're used to and that you only get from these outlets
      - ALittleLight 8y ago
        It's difficult to trust the reporting of an organization that misrepresents or gets wrong an event that is entirely recorded on video from many angles. I agree that the New York Times publishes some great articles, but I'm deeply concerned about the bad articles they publish. If their editorial standards permit them to rush to judgment as they did in the Catholic school incident how can I trust their editorial standards in more nuanced areas where I don't get to see the full story on video for myself?
crsmithdev 8y ago
> Lewis-Kraus’s critiques are based on incomplete facts and largely anonymous sources whose motivations are impossible to assess. Curiously, he did not ask me about the great majority of his concerns. Had he done so, the evidence underlying his thesis that my work is “indistinguishable from the racialized notions of the swashbuckling imperial era” would have fallen apart. Well, yes. For those wondering why the author did do the simplest possible due diligence — asking the subject of the article about the thinking used to frame it — it's because it likely would have resulted in a less-interesting, less-trafficked story. Accuracy isn't the objective, reach and audience is. Corrections can be packaged up and slipped in later.
asabjorn 8y ago
At some point I hope the left takes back the NYT from the ideologues. This is the same trite attack on science and bullying of scientists we’ve seen before when it doesn’t comply with their social justice beliefs [1], and this time it’s more dangerous than the creationists that tried to do something similar for their beliefs because as this article shows truth is not a priority in this ideology and they control universities as well as cultural institutions like the NYT. Another thing that is more worrying is that social justice activists are using the technicality of them not worshipping a God per se to bypass secular protections against enforcing religious beliefs institutionally. [2] [1] https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studi... [2] https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk
marcus_holmes 8y ago
Newspapers aren't about truth. Newspapers are a business that runs on advertising, and advertising makes more money when the news is sensationalist. If you talk to a journalist then don't be surprised if you are then heavily mis-characterised and slandered. The journalist isn't there to tell your story, they're there to tell the story that will get the most clicks.
cleanyourroom 8y ago
He should have ended this with drops mic

294 points by crunchiebones 8y ago

This is in response to the hit piece. Upvote the parent. Spread the truth. > To the Editor: > Gideon Lewis-Kraus (Jan. 17) profiles the nascent field of ancient DNA, which in the last few years has contributed to a transformation in our understanding of the deep human past. His article touches on important issues that we, as a field, have yet to deal with fully: including how to handle ancient remains ethically and in a way that preserves them for future generations; how geneticists and archaeologists can work in equal partnerships that reflect true respect for the insights of different disciplines; and how ancient DNA technology, which at present is applied efficiently only in large labs, can be made accessible to a wider group of scholars. > But Lewis-Kraus misunderstands several basic issues. First, he suggests that competition to publish is so extreme that standards become relaxed. As evidence, he cites a paper by my lab that was accepted on appeal after initial rejection, and another that was reviewed rapidly. In fact, mechanisms for appeal and expedited review when journals feel they are warranted are signs of healthy science, and both processes were carried out rigorously. > Second, he contends that ancient DNA specialists favor simplistic and sweeping claims. As evidence, he suggests that in 2015 I argued that the population of Europe was “almost entirely” replaced by people from the Eastern European Steppe. On the contrary, the paper he references and indeed my whole body of work argues for complex mixture, not simple replacement. Lewis-Kraus also suggests that I claimed that our first study of the people of the Pacific island chain of Vanuatu “conclusively demonstrated” no Papuan ancestry. But the paper in question was crystal-clear that these people could have had some Papuan ancestry – and indeed, to support his claim, Lewis-Kraus could only cite his own notes from an interview I gave him long after I had published a second paper proving that there was indeed a small proportion of Papuan ancestry. > Lewis-Kraus also suggests that I use small sample sizes to make unjustifiable sweeping claims. In fact, small sample sizes can be definitive when they yield results that are incompatible with prevailing theories, as when my colleagues and I described two samples that proved the existence of the Denisovans, a previously undocumented archaic human population. In my papers, I am careful to only make claims that can be supported by the data I have. In small-sample size studies, I emphasize that more samples are needed to flesh out the details of the initial findings. A major focus of my lab is generating the large data sets needed to do this. > Lewis-Kraus’s critiques are based on incomplete facts and largely anonymous sources whose motivations are impossible to assess. Curiously, he did not ask me about the great majority of his concerns. Had he done so, the evidence underlying his thesis that my work is “indistinguishable from the racialized notions of the swashbuckling imperial era” would have fallen apart. The truth, and the main theme of my 2018 book Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, is exactly the opposite - namely, that ancient DNA findings have rendered racist and colonialist narratives untenable by showing that no human population is “pure” or unmixed. It is incumbent on scientists to avoid advocating for simplistic theories, and instead to pay attention to all available facts and come to nuanced conclusions. The same holds true for journalists reporting on science. > David Reich Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, Massachusetts

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
detaro 8y ago
What's the point of copy-pasting the content of the submission here?
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  You know how most people don’t read on the internet? Most people don’t click on links either, on Reddit or Hacker News. When I posted the article text the story was 50 minutes old and about to drop off the front page. I wanted to make it more obvious who aren’t into this specific field what’s going on. Half an hour later when I checked again the article had 50 points and was near the top of the page. Posting the article text got Reich’s response to the hit piece much more visibility than it otherwise would have. That’s a good thing.

seibelj 8y ago

The opinion section of the NYT, and also many of the long form articles, are selected and shaped by the editorial staff which has an agenda. I’ve noticed that popularized science articles are especially bad, and if the science touches even slightly a controversial issue like race or ancestry the meaning and nuance can be warped to match their agenda. This isn’t only the NYT but given their status as the premier news source in the USA it is the most glaring to me. Also, I know it’s become a trope to post this on HN as it’s basically gospel at this point, but The Submarine essay by Paul Graham gives some nice insight into the PR and media industry http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

ronnier 8y ago
Funny. I just read another “suits back in style” story yesterday. https://www.france24.com/en/20190119-dowdy-no-more-men-suits-storm-back-style https://www.france24.com/en/20190119-dowdy-no-more-men-suits...
- porpoisely 8y ago
  Great catch and that's hilarious. I saw the same story from multiple sources/platforms yesterday. I thought the paul graham article was about yesterday's news and then I read the date "April 2005". 14 years ago. Anyone who pays attention to news for any amount of time sees redundant news and agenda. But PR stooges? If PR firms are so entwined with traditional news and media, I wonder how entrench PR firms are in the social media space.
  - thwarted 8y ago
    If PR firms are so entwined with traditional news and media, I wonder how entrench PR firms are in the social media space Watch the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix
  - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    Most social media platforms are designed with their clients needs in mind. Often, those clients are PR firms.

jackschultz 8y ago

Here's the New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-paleogenomics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-pale... Boy that seems so story based. That's what's to be expected to get people to read, but also makes it so easy to come up with examples of misinformation when the story is trying to make a subject more easily understandable.

dmix 8y ago
You could solve those issues by having the actual scientists you mention get involved in the process and ask their perspective on something before you write about them. The laziness of journalists today, even in long form articles like this, with a full graphics team and everything, never ceases to amaze me.

Symmetry 8y ago

I thought Razib Kahn also had a response worth reading. This is all out of line with my previous impression of the New York Times as a respectable paper. Is the new era of virality driven news taking its toll on them? My impression is that they wouldn't have published this 10 years ago but perhaps I'm being naive? https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/01/19/194105/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/01/19/194105/

racists 8y ago
The New York Times is definitely run by racists. It’s just a constant flood of race baiting from them, on a daily basis at this point, and they just don’t know how to control themselves.
racistNYT 8y ago
The New York Times is just constantly pumping out racially charged articles, every day. You can hellban me, but it’s true.
barry-cotter 8y ago
You’re being naive. Things were never better, it’s just that we live in an era when disseminating the counter narrative is easier than it used to be. Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer was never revoked. He worked for the NYT as Moscow Burea Chief while the Holodmor, the Ukrainian famine was happening and didn’t cover it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty > What Duranty knew and when > It was clear, meanwhile, from Duranty's comments to others that he was fully aware of the scale of the calamity. In 1934 he privately reported to the British embassy in Moscow that as many as 10 million people may have died, directly or indirectly, from famine in the Soviet Union in the previous year.[25] > Both British intelligence[26] and American engineer Zara Witkin (1900–1940),[27] who worked in the USSR from 1932 to 1934,[28] confirmed that Duranty knowingly misrepresented information about the nature and scale of the famine. > There are some indications that Duranty's deliberate misdirection concerning the famine may have been the result of duress. Conquest believed Duranty was being blackmailed over his sexual proclivities.[29]

burlesona 8y ago

I heard it this way once: You open the paper and read an article about your field. “This thing is crap, they got all the details wrong and are drawing ridiculous conclusions!” Then you click to the next article, about something else. “Wow, this is really fascinating. We need to do something about this!” ... I think this idea has a name, though I don’t remember it.

CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
- burlesona 8y ago
  Thank you!
- rhizome 8y ago
  Gell-Mann has to do with the contagiousness of poor logic, not the fact that there are stories you like and stories you don't.
- rjf72 8y ago
  This leads to a possibility I'd not considered before. Trust in the media has deteriorated extensively. This seemed logically attributable to the rise of the internet thus ostensibly creating a race to publish, and publish sensationally, like never before. But something that always bugged me is that distrust of the media is nothing new. Writing in 1807 Jefferson stated [1], "To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. ... I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." Yet in my own personal experience, the media seemed at the minimum 'better' before the internet. So what gives? Maybe there is a very simple explanation. What may have changed is that now the internet enables individuals to share their expertise (and the media's lack thereof). It's no longer just the man who is an expert in a field facing disillusionment, but rather now anybody at all that reads his testimony. In times past there was no way to get such messages out. In other words the internet did not create mediocrity in the media, but rather emphasized it loud and clear for all to bear witness to, even those who otherwise would have been none the wiser. [1] - http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_spe...

sjroot 8y ago

The thing that annoys me about this the most is the use of anonymous sources. If you are writing a scientific article, or generally hope to establish some scientific fact, I do not think it is appropriate to hide behind a veil of anonymity.

dylan604 8y ago
I totally agree. People speaking on condition of anonimity because they are not authorized to discuss is one of the most annoying things about news today. As the reader, I just don’t trust the info. In recent news, BuzzFeed seems to have been recently burned and the SuperMicro hack sources seemed to have burned the journalists as well (don’t remember which outlet that was). It seems like people are fed up enough to break confidentiality agreements to leak info, but not fed up enough to quit and leave the hostile environment. I still appreciate the Snowden method. Got fed up to the point that the info must be released, but did not hide to keep his job. Also, some leaks are from official sources like a press secretary or similar official, but staying anonymous to float information as a trial balloon so there’s some plausible deniability if the balloon was made of lead. In marketing, the leaked photos seem to be an internally approved method to get free PR.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  Bloomberg
- rchaud 8y ago
  > People speaking on condition of anonimity because they are not authorized to discuss is one of the most annoying things about news today. This has likely annoyed people since the beginning of anything related to journalistic inquiry. If these people didn't have a guarantee of anonymity, the public would be in the dark most of the time. > I still appreciate the Snowden method. Got fed up to the point that the info must be released, but did not hide to keep his job. Not everybody is in Snowden's position; relatively young, unmarried, no kids. He may be able to take this "cool guys don't look back at explosions" approach, but most people can't. That doesn't mean that what they know should remain hidden from view because it doesn't meet your standards for what a 'real whistleblower' looks like. Snowden is also essentially trapped in Russia. The only reason he was able to find refuge there at all is because his revelations are a useful symbol of American hypocrisy any time the words "surveillance state" are bandied about in discussions about Russia. He's a smart guy and probably knows that the Kremlin's generosity will last only as long as he doesn't try to rock the boat by commenting on domestic Russian matters.

Topgamer7 8y ago

This response is very well thought out and well written. For someone who was likely incensed by the article in question, they responded in a cordial, professional manner.

snackematician 8y ago

I've worked in the ancient DNA field but left (at least for now). I haven't worked with David but have with competing labs. I have mixed feelings about the NYT piece -- on the one hand it has a lot of valid criticisms and brings sorely needed critical eye to this hyped field; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to David -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece. The industrial ancient DNA publication machine is real. A few giants control the vast majority of ancient DNA samples behind a wall, and these giants decide when and where to release these samples. I was part of a study, that got mashed together with a totally unrelated study at the last minute, for the sake of another hyped headline in Nature/Science, which reviewed and accepted the article very quickly. The whole process felt sloppy & rushed, and I was left with a bitter taste that ultimately led me to move on to other areas. On the other hand, I have immense scientific respect for David. In population genetics, there are a whole host of methods used to infer demographic history that are very biased and ignore important forces like natural selection. David's group has pioneered statistical methods that are more robust and less biased, that make less sweeping claims but are on much sounder scientific footing, and used these methods to derive important insights on human history.

whatshisface 8y ago
>The industrial ancient DNA publication machine is real. A few giants control the vast majority of ancient DNA samples behind a wall, and these giants decide when and where to release these samples. Who controls the samples? That sounds like a sci-fi thriller plot in the making.
- dpflan 8y ago
  Agreed. This interesting. How does one get access to these samples? Do the custodians have a website with order requests -- something like that? Is there a bidding process for access?
  - snackematician 8y ago
    I should have been more precise. The vast majority of unpublished samples are controlled by a few. Of course, once they are published they are open. To gain access to unpublished samples, you need to form collaborations with the gatekeepers, who decide the ultimate form of publication -- usually, a big Nature/Science paper with 100 authors. I liked this twitter thread about some of the challenges of smaller groups in obtaining samples: https://twitter.com/paleogenomics/status/1086402894641971204 https://twitter.com/paleogenomics/status/1086402894641971204

nyt_is_racist 8y ago

Why respond?

rossdavidh 8y ago

As someone who has (once) written an opinion piece for the NYT, I wonder how much the published piece resembled the author's original text. My experience: https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opinion/ https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...

lewis500 8y ago
wow this is brutal. thanks for sharing. I had mused on the idea of pitching them an opinion piece about my field, traffic, but not anymore.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I should say, their check did clear (and I didn't even expect to get paid when I agreed to do it). So there's that.
iamdave 8y ago
I (once) wrote a Sports Illustrated opinion article years ago (similar situation to yours: made a comment on twitter to one of the popular talking heads, talking head took notice and replied, SI took notice, asked me to write something), your experience matched mine from the editing and review standpoint. At first sitting back and reading the suggested edits and changes in place I had a similar first reaction as you did, but after doing the "walk away, do something else and come back to your writing later" thing, I found the opinion was still there though much less verbose. Share that to say, the editorial process itself, even for opinion pieces-is rather....well... opinionated.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  Very interesting to hear that. I guess I am not surprised. I felt that my basic opinion was there, but an opinion of theirs had been layered on top, in a very politically-oriented way. I don't know if this was conscious or not.
  - 8y ago

jrd259 8y ago

As a recent reader of Reich's book "Who We Are and How We Got Here" I concur that he explicitly and forcefully refutes the notion of racial or ethnic categories as having any meaning over the lifetime of our species. Simply put, humans have migrated a lot and interbred with whoever. Your ancestry is a "tangled tree" (to borrow Quammen's term https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Tree-Radical-History-Life/dp/1476776628 https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Tree-Radical-History-Life/dp/...)

toasterlovin 8y ago
The problem is that politics doesn't deal with the lifetime of our species; it deals with the recent past, the present, and the near future. When you narrow the timeframe down like that, race and ethnic categories are meaningful, important, and real. You can look at someone and make some pretty good guesses about their life history and where their ancestors came from and what they experienced. I appreciate the sentiment behind the "race isn't real" position, but it's wrong and, in being wrong, it gives a toehold to people who really do care about race for all the wrong reasons. IMO, a much better position is to acknowledge that race is real, but just one part of what makes an individual who they are.

dmix 8y ago

Anyone got a mirror? Looks like it's not loading... Edit: found one http://archive.is/vI29T http://archive.is/vI29T

BuildTheRobots 8y ago
Thank you - the URL is currently timing out, getting a 404 from google cache and isn't found in archive.org if you give it the url.

kauffj 8y ago

Perhaps there was a time when the New York Times could be trusted, but that era ended at least several years ago. Off the top of my head: - The New York Times fired Quinn Norton basically for being willing to talk to weev (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-new-york-times-fired-my-doppelganger/554402/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-n...) - The New York Times fired Razib Khan for reporting on facts that are basically consensus opinion among geneticists and intelligence researchers. - The New York Times kept Sarah Jeong despite her offenses being substantially beyond the above. (I think it would have been fine to keep Jeong if they also kept Norton and Khan). - The New York Times published a completely uncritical review of Democracy in Chains, despite it's dishonest scholarship. Even NPR added an editor's note to their report on this book.

globeSpin 8y ago
Let’s not forget the 98% “chance of winning” estimate of the 2016 election. For months ahead of the election, the election was never called by The New York Times as being below a 90% certainty. They were basically declaring a winner up front, and contributed to the spectacle of total upset. Now as an outlet, it just spews shit on a daily basis. And I mean shit. It’s been unreadable since then. The last time I observed good coverage on anything from The New York Times was during the first two years of the 2003 Iraq war. Since then, garbage. Hot garbage.
- magicalist 8y ago
  > Let’s not forget the 98% “chance of winning” estimate of the 2016 election. > For months ahead of the election, the election was never called by The New York Times as being below a 90% certainty. It's trivial to verify that neither of these things are true[1][2], so...just adding to the garbage, I guess? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html#trend https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/forecast/president https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/forecast/president
  - 8y ago

_bxg1 8y ago

"I have mixed feelings about the NYT piece -- on the one hand it has a lot of valid criticisms and brings sorely needed critical eye to _________; on the other hand it is sensationalistic, too long, and very unfair to _________ -- I guess they needed a villain for the piece." I cancelled my subscription to the NYT because I felt this way about many of their pieces.

TomMckenny 8y ago
May I ask, do you have many specific examples?
- jimmy1 8y ago
  For numerous others in recent times see the coverage of the Covington Catholic situation: misreporting and sensationalism at it's finest. I wonder sometimes if some of these traditional media behemoths even bother to follow basic journalistic practices like 1. cross referencing your sources 2. seeking the other side of the story / opposing viewpoints 3. asking those involved for comment because it seems glaringly obvious to me in the Covington Catholic case, none of that was done until 48 hours when some high profile twitter names started actually pointing out the glaring errors.
  - scabarott 8y ago
    Unfortunately this happens a lot but I don't entirely blame the media companies. In the age of twitter and social media, some news moves fast and they have to decide quickly whether to publish something about a trending news item or wait to do proper reportage and lose valuable page-views to more sensationalistic outlets which they have to compete with. I've come to accept this is the new reality and not get too bummed about it as long as we still occasionally get the usual well reported long-form investigative pieces we're used to and that you only get from these outlets
    - ALittleLight 8y ago
      It's difficult to trust the reporting of an organization that misrepresents or gets wrong an event that is entirely recorded on video from many angles. I agree that the New York Times publishes some great articles, but I'm deeply concerned about the bad articles they publish. If their editorial standards permit them to rush to judgment as they did in the Catholic school incident how can I trust their editorial standards in more nuanced areas where I don't get to see the full story on video for myself?

crsmithdev 8y ago

> Lewis-Kraus’s critiques are based on incomplete facts and largely anonymous sources whose motivations are impossible to assess. Curiously, he did not ask me about the great majority of his concerns. Had he done so, the evidence underlying his thesis that my work is “indistinguishable from the racialized notions of the swashbuckling imperial era” would have fallen apart. Well, yes. For those wondering why the author did do the simplest possible due diligence — asking the subject of the article about the thinking used to frame it — it's because it likely would have resulted in a less-interesting, less-trafficked story. Accuracy isn't the objective, reach and audience is. Corrections can be packaged up and slipped in later.

asabjorn 8y ago

At some point I hope the left takes back the NYT from the ideologues. This is the same trite attack on science and bullying of scientists we’ve seen before when it doesn’t comply with their social justice beliefs [1], and this time it’s more dangerous than the creationists that tried to do something similar for their beliefs because as this article shows truth is not a priority in this ideology and they control universities as well as cultural institutions like the NYT. Another thing that is more worrying is that social justice activists are using the technicality of them not worshipping a God per se to bypass secular protections against enforcing religious beliefs institutionally. [2] [1] https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studi... [2] https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk

marcus_holmes 8y ago

Newspapers aren't about truth. Newspapers are a business that runs on advertising, and advertising makes more money when the news is sensationalist. If you talk to a journalist then don't be surprised if you are then heavily mis-characterised and slandered. The journalist isn't there to tell your story, they're there to tell the story that will get the most clicks.

cleanyourroom 8y ago

He should have ended this with drops mic