Top all-time · #1538
Jerry Coyne
Personal blog · whyevolutionistrue.comsciencepolitics
Jerry Coyne writes Why Evolution Is True, a personal blog at whyevolutionistrue.com about science and politics. Since 2020, 49 different Hacker News readers have linked it 95 times, most often “Scientific American does an hit job on E. O. Wilson, calling him a racist”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Most-linked posts?
- Scientific American does an hit job on E. O. Wilson, calling him a racist4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-12-30
- Dawkins vs. Rose on whether there’s a sex binary3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-28
- Māori “Ways of Knowing”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-12-20
- Bob Trivers Died2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-15
- Evolutionary Psychology for the Tyro2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-21
- /2019/12/31/life-science-jobs-at-berkeley-with-hiring-giving-precedence-to-diversity-and-inclusion-statements/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-08-02
What Hacker News says?
The Rolling Stone article is inaccurate. NYT article is better. Clean your mind of Rolling Stone. Shaw quit because of a hostile work environment prompted specifically by her protest, which your linked article elides. Regarding the rap, she was told specifically she could not do it because she is white, and not because of any other reason. Here's a compare-and-contrast between the 2 articles (NYT vs RS) https://whye…
Comment linking /2021/02/25/smith-meltdown-nyt-reports-honestly-for-once-but-rolling-stone-doesnt/
on “Heresy”Submitted MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions as a story · 962 points
HN discussionIt's worth noting that this Pinker-Epstein connection is about as meaningful as the anti-Scott NYT article's own guilt-by-assocation attempts. Here's Pinker's statement on the matter: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/07/12/tarring-steve-pink...
Comment linking /2019/07/12/tarring-steve-pinker-and-others-with-jeffrey-epstein/
on “Statement on New York Times Article”Submitted Scientific American does an hit job on E. O. Wilson, calling him a racist as a story · 95 points
HN discussionThis is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily equally - I'm not "both sides"-ing this), and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". E.g. before the administration's attack on higher education, I do believe a lot of elite unive…
Comment linking /2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-after-dei/
on “America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back”Submitted Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal as a story · 84 points
HN discussionNot claiming that ACLU does nothing useful -- I certainly don't know enough to say -- but what do you think about this (which suggests to me a damaged commitment to civil liberties): https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/01/30/the-aclu-reverses-... What other organisations do you donate to along the same lines?
Comment linking /2022/01/30/the-aclu-reverses-course-once-again-in-the-interest-of-wokeness/
on “US border forces are seizing Americans' phone data and storing it for 15 years”Submitted MIT faculty worried about chilling of speech as a story · 43 points
HN discussionReminds me of when the IDF was criticized for not raping Palestinians: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2017/02/17/israeli-army-veter...
Comment linking /2017/02/17/israeli-army-veteran-criticized-for-not-wanting-to-rape-palestinian-women/
on “Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens”Submitted Pinker vs. the AAAS on the politicization of climate change as a story · 33 points
HN discussionThe post linked to other critiques of the article in question ( https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/30/scientific-america... ), but seemed to be focused more on larger concerns about SA and a refusal to contribute to it any longer. Might well be ranty and emotionally charged, but seems relevant enough to be of concern for this site.
Comment linking /2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-asinine-hit-job-on-e-o-wilson-calling-him-a-racist/
on “The Demise of Scientific American”Submitted A once respected biology journal indicts evolutionary biology for ableism as a story · 29 points
HN discussionAgreed. This seems to be a better reasoned critique: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/30/scientific-america...
Comment linking /2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-asinine-hit-job-on-e-o-wilson-calling-him-a-racist/
on “The Demise of Scientific American”Submitted My children’s book about India was rejected because I’m white as a story · 25 points
HN discussionReminiscent of what happened with Jason Arday[0]. [0] https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/08/04/the-bizarre-tale-o...
Comment linking /2026/08/04/the-bizarre-tale-of-cambridge-university-professor-jason-arday/
on “'You Can See Everything' Review: Nathan Fielder's Doc About Elizabeth Holmes”Submitted More from New Zealand, a nation whose science is circling the drain as a story · 16 points
HN discussionScientific American is already scraping the bottom of the barrel. You can’t trust any publication to be written in good faith. > Scientific American has hit rock bottom with this new op-ed that is nothing more than a hit piece on Ed Wilson, basically calling him a racist. > It is written by someone who apparently has no training in evolutionary biology, though she says she “intimately familiarized [herself] with Wil…
Comment linking /2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-asinine-hit-job-on-e-o-wilson-calling-him-a-racist/
on “Why does science news suck so much?”Submitted White House plan to foster equity and excellence in STEMM is all about equity as a story · 11 points
HN discussionIf I were to post one of these things, I would certainly get some side-eye, but I very much doubt I would be fired or the like. And since when is feeling some trepidation over saying something controversial (because people might dislike you for it) unnatural? I mean, is your stance "it should be ok for me to say whatever I like publicly"? I guess you think these are all examples of perfectly rational things to say t…
Comment linking /2020/07/05/the-purity-posse-pursues-pinker/
on “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”Submitted Science magazine touts the existence of strong and ubiquitous “implicit bias” as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThere is a recent post by Jerry Coyne on this New Zealand issue: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/11/01/richard-dawkins-is...
Comment linking /2022/11/01/richard-dawkins-is-interviewed-in-nz-on-maori-ways-of-knowing-is-grossly-misunderstood/
on “The sinister attempts to ‘decolonise’ mathematics”Submitted Scientific American Goes Defensive as a story · 10 points
HN discussionUniversities in California are going in precisely the other direction by mandating ideological purity tests aka "diversity statements" for staff. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-prof...
Comment linking /2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-professor-demonized-for-criticizing-required-diversity-statements-for-academic-jobs/
on “Improving MIT’s written commitment to freedom of expression”Submitted New Zealand pushes to have mythology taught on parity with modern science as a story · 10 points
HN discussionHere's a blog post laying out in detail the gulf from Darwin: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/10/07/did-arabs-come-up-...
Comment linking /2020/10/07/did-arabs-come-up-with-darwinism-before-darwin/
on “1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection”Submitted Art Institute of Chicago fires all volunteers because they aren’t diverse enough as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI would recommend taking a moment to read the actual articles instead of dismissing the sources offhand. The City Journal article has links to the actual documents in question. The Washington Examiner has screenshots of the actual training. The WSJ has links to the actual politically biased and ideologically narrow hiring criteria being used. You can complain about the bias of these sources (just like other people d…
Comment linking /2019/12/31/life-science-jobs-at-berkeley-with-hiring-giving-precedence-to-diversity-and-inclusion-statements/
on “What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?”Submitted Sabine Hossenfelder on free will and “superdeterminism” of quantum mechanics as a story · 8 points
HN discussionHe isn't saying there isn't such research being done, he's criticizing the attempts made by ideologues to discredit and discourage research along such premises. Did you even bother to read the piece? He explicitly opens his fifth point with an example of The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) weaponizing its reputation to do precisely just that. He documented another instance of this in Nature recently a…
Comment linking /2025/05/11/nature-tackles-race-and-eugenics-in-a-torturous-and-tortuous-article/
on “Self-reported race, ethnicity don't match genetic ancestry in the U.S.: study”Submitted The controversy continues about naming the Webb Space Telescope as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
