
Letter in Response to Jan. 17 Article in The New York Times - crunchiebones
https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/letter-response-jan-17-article-new-york-times
======
snackematician
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
> _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
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
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 The vast majority of unpublished samples are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To gain access to unpublished samples, you need to form collaborations with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)

~~~
dpflan
Thanks for clarifying and sharing that tweet. Who is the owner of the samples
when they are discovered? Does the nation authorize/grant ownership to the
discoverer? Where are the financial incentives in this "supply chain"?

------
seibelj
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)

~~~
da_chicken
Simply put, editorial and opinion sections are _supposed_ to be like that.
It's not an error; it's by design, and it's a design that has existed for as
long as editorial and opinion sections have existed.

You, as the reader, are expected to be know enough about how newspapers are
organized to tell that you're reading part of the opinion or editorial
sections and what that means. In an ideal newspaper practicing journalistic
integrity, letters to the editor like the one presented here would be
published in future editions of the paper, or, failing that, published in
competing newspapers.

Yes, everything is subject to bias. _Everything_ is subject to bias. You
cannot eliminate it. The point is to be aware of it's existence, and
newspapers help do that by placing these types of pieces in their opinion and
editorial sections.

~~~
pcstl
Which would be perfectly fine, except that digital newspapers have a pesky
habit of putting "Opinion" or "Editorial" in _very tiny font_ on the piece's
header, with no other indication that the piece being read is, in fact, an
opinion/editorial piece.

~~~
Kadin
I think part of the blame is also on aggregators like Google News; I've
noticed that GN mixes opinion/editorial content in with real news articles,
especially on the sidebar (e.g. "Spotlight" section).

It also seems like the ratio of opinion content to actual news has been
increasing lately. In the print version of the NYT, opinion pieces were
generally only found on two pages, sometimes maybe overflowing a bit, but
you'd never see them on the front page and they certainly weren't the bulk of
the paper. Now it seems like the majority of "news" content from some outlets
are actually opinion pieces.

~~~
icebraining
> It also seems like the ratio of opinion content to actual news has been
> increasing lately.

Well, sure. Now that everyone has access to 24h news for free, the facts
become commodities and lose their value, and therefore the reference
publications start giving more space to the product over which they have some
market power: the analysis of news by picked columnists.

If you just want an event log, you're better off skipping the uninterested
middleman and just going to AP or Reuters or similar.

------
kauffj
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-n...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-
new-york-times-fired-my-doppelganger/554402/))

\- 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.

~~~
Consultant32452
I thought this admission/apology from NYT after the 2016 election was
interesting.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/elections/to-our-
reade...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/elections/to-our-readers-from-
the-publisher-and-executive-editor.html)

we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism.
That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor,
striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life
experiences in the stories that we bring to you.

~~~
hopler
It's been 2 years and they haven't changed yet.

------
rossdavidh
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_opini...](https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opinion/)

~~~
iamdave
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
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.

~~~
iamdave
I suspect this will be a take that someone is going to have a problem with, or
maybe many do-but this is kind of the editor's job. Editorials while probably
not the express opinion of the publication you're writing for does need to at
least carry enough of an opinion of _theme_ to stay consistent with readers
expectations when they pick up $Publication_Weekly$.

Would it be nice to see if a publication just decided to run editorials
contrary to or perhaps ones that eviscerated a viewpoint or position said
publication has been known to hold-and entertain plurality for plurality's
sake?

Probably. If that's what the readers have come to expect, probably.

But as a default condition of running a newspaper? I think senior editors like
keeping their jobs too much for that.

------
Symmetry
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/)

~~~
barry-cotter
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
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
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

~~~
rjf72
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_spe...](http://press-
pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html)

------
_bxg1
"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.

~~~
sgustard
The press as "enemy of the people" is one of the primary memes in the US right
now. Are you comfortable with the side you're taking on that?

~~~
wolco
It is not always binary. Liberal's read the nyt and if readership feels like
they are being tricked into a false truth by canceling they can express any
distaste without automatically becoming a conservative.

------
jackschultz
Here's the New York Times article:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-
pale...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-
paleogenomics.html)

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
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.

------
jrd259
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/...](https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Tree-Radical-
History-Life/dp/1476776628))

~~~
toasterlovin
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.

------
crsmithdev
> 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
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-
studi...](https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-
the-corruption-of-scholarship/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk](https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk)

------
Topgamer7
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.

------
dmix
Anyone got a mirror? Looks like it's not loading...

Edit: found one [http://archive.is/vI29T](http://archive.is/vI29T)

~~~
BuildTheRobots
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.

------
sjroot
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
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.

~~~
rchaud
> 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.

------
marcus_holmes
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
He should have ended this with _drops mic_

------
barry-cotter
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

~~~
detaro
What's the point of copy-pasting the content of the submission here?

~~~
barry-cotter
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.

