Justin’s Notes

Denunciation Without Reading Builds Orthodoxies That Can't Hold

2026-09-07 · AI-generated insight

These two notes bracket the same phenomenon fifty years apart, and reading them together reveals a mechanism: the orthodoxy Reich describes in the present tense was manufactured by episodes like the one in the Coon anecdote. When the American Anthropological Association voted to condemn a book that essentially none of its members had read, it wasn't weighing evidence — it was establishing a boundary of permissible discussion. Repeat that move for decades and you get exactly what Reich confronts: a consensus that average genetic differences "can be ignored," held not because the evidence was examined and found wanting, but because examining it was itself the transgression.

The deeper tension is about what actually guards the slippery slope both notes worry over. The AAA anthropologists and Reich's orthodoxy share the same fear — that acknowledging biological difference feeds racism — but they propose opposite defenses. The AAA's answer was preemptive denunciation; Reich's is honest engagement, precisely because the facts will surface anyway. And the Coon story shows why the denunciation strategy is self-defeating: it spends down the one asset that makes scientific consensus persuasive. As the second note observes, laypeople trust scientists on the assumption that they've looked at the evidence rationally. A condemnation issued by people with unraised hands is a forgery of that process. Once discovered — and Coon's resignation guaranteed it would be part of the record — it doesn't just fail to refute the heresy; it lends the heretics their most powerful argument, that the establishment fears the question.

The irony is that Coon's procedural objection — have you read it? — was more scientifically rigorous than the vote that followed. An orthodoxy built on unexamined condemnation isn't a wall against pseudoscience. It's a vacuum, and Reich's warning is that vacuums get filled by whoever is willing to talk.

Woven from these notes

The orthodoxy maintains that the average genetic differences among people grouped according to today’s racial terms are so trivial when it comes to any meaningful biological traits that those differences can be ignored. The orthodoxy goes further, holding that we should be anxious about any research into genetic differences among populations. The concern is that such research, no matter how well-intentioned, is located on a slippery slope that leads to the kinds of pseudoscientific arguments about biological difference that were used in the past to try to justify the slave trade, the eugenics movement and the Nazis’ murder of six million Jews. I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among “races.”
— David Reich How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of 'Race'
Carleton Coon was one of the greatest anthropologists of the 20th century and a champion of the study of racial differences. In 1961 he was elected president of the American Anthropological Association. It was during this year that Carleton Putnam's infamous book Race and Reason came out. Putnam's book argued that there were significant differences between the races and that this had important political implications. A few anthropologists became upset when they saw the book gain popularity and wanted the AAA to intervene. But they knew that Coon supported the book and that, as a result, having the AAA take action against it would be difficult. So they organized a secret meeting behind Coon's back in order to issue a statement denouncing Putnam's work. Coon found out about the meeting and went to stop it. Upon entering the meeting Coon asked all the association members who had actually read Putnam's book to raise their hands. Only one rose. He then asked for the hands of everyone that had even heard of the book prior to that meeting. Only a few hands rose. None the less, the statement against the book passed. Coon, disgusted by the actions of his peers, resigned from the AAA (1). This incident stands out in the history of science as a particularly clear example of scientists not living up to what people expect of them. People often take what scientists say for granted. They trust that scientists have looked at the evidence rationally and are giving the public as accurate an account of all the relevant facts as they can. When explaining science to laypeople researchers are expected to only make authoritative statements on topics they are knowledgeable of, to not lie about scientific evidence, and to not omit obviously relevant facts. People trust scientists to do these things and so feel comfortable taking what they tell them for granted. (See