Nicholas Wade

Nicholas Michael Landon 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.

In May 2021, Wade published an article in support of the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis, fueling the controversy around the origins of the virus. Wade's claims about the origin of COVID-19 are at odds with the prevailing view among scientists.

Early life and education

Wade was born in Aylesbury, England and educated at Eton College. He is a grandson of Lawrence Beesley, a survivor of the sinking of the ''Titanic''. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge in 1964, and 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. In a 1976 article in ''Science'', Wade documented the controversy surrounding E. O. Wilson's book '' Sociobiology: The New Synthesis:'' portraying Wilson in a sympathetic light, and the opposing Sociobiology Study Group more critically.

Wade's 1977 book, '' The Ultimate Experiment: Man-Made Evolution'', covered the then new and controversial field of gene splicing. His 1981 book, '' The Nobel Duel: Two Scientists' 21-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. '' Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science'' (1982), co-authored with William J. Broad. Wade joined ''The New York Times'' in 1982 as a staff and editorial writer, was appointed science and health editor in 1990; he left the ''Times'' in 2012.

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 behaviour. In 2007, ''Before the Dawn'' received a Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers''.''

''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 which read:

After publication, the letter was signed by four more faculty members. In response to the letter, Wade said these scientists had misunderstood his intent.

The book was further criticised 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." Biologist H. Allen Orr called the book "lively and generally serviceable", but said it was "not ..without error", stating that Wade had overstated the evidence for recent natural selection in the human genome.

COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis

In May 2021, Wade published a 10,000-word article on Medium and later in the ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'' titled "The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?" in which he argued that the possibility that the novel coronavirus was bioengineered and had leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, couldn’t be dismissed. Wade's article fuelled the controversy around the origins of the virus, and has become one of the most-cited pieces in support of the lab leak hypothesis. Wade's argument is at odds with the prevailing view among scientists that the virus most likely has a zoonotic origin. While some experts have supported taking the lab leak possibility seriously, the majority consider it very unlikely, unsupported by available evidence and bordering on speculation. David Gorski of ''Science-Based Medicine'' described Wade's argument as a conspiracy theory.

See also

* COVID-19 misinformation

References

External links

Archived articles
at ''The New York Times''
*

Nicholas Wade Oral History Collection
at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wade, Nicholas
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
British science journalists
People educated at Eton College
People from Aylesbury