I just finished reading Jeanson’s book “Traced.” I almost regret having taken the time to do so, but as a college genetics professor with a degree in plant molecular systematics, I like to keep up on what the YEC crowd is up to in terms of their treatment of evolution, and human evolution has been a more recent interest of mine. Interestingly, I was in the middle of reading the book Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer Raff, and am now back to finishing that. What a refreshing read when contrasted with Traced! So far I am finding Origin a wonderful read and a very positive contrast with Traced.
Suffice it to say, Traced, in my opinion, is one of the more dangerous books to have been published recently on this topic, and I fear that many lay people with little knowledge populations genetics will be taken in by Jeanson’s book. Although his writing about the results of his research is riddled with errors and clear misunderstandings of populations genetics concepts, it has the veneer of being scientific, although much of what he writes is so muddled I am not sure what he is saying in a number of places. He also cites almost nothing, so it is often hard to know where his ideas are coming from.
My main reason for starting this discussion thread is that I wanted to get input from others who may have as much, or hopefully more, expertise than I do in this topic. I am scratching my head trying to figure out how to communicate with lay people I encounter who oft3en ask me questions about this kind of thing. I am dreading the next person who may have seen or read this book asking me what I think. I am trying to decide how to approach that question with those who have little or no background.
Here is what I wrote on my Goodreads account about the book:
I am a plant molecular geneticist by training, so understand a thing or two about population genetics and phylogenetic reconstruction using molecular data. Considering Jeanson is employed by Answers in Genesis, and organization that requires its employees to pledge to a set of beliefs that include that the universe only 6,000 years old and that a worldwide flood occurred about 4,500 years ago as a literal interpretation of Genesis suggests, I expected to be a little skeptical about some of his conclusions. What I was not expecting, however, was to see so many simple, yet profoundly devastating, errors in his understanding of population genetics, gene mutation rates, and the meaning of phylogenies (let alone the proper methods for constructing valid trees).
Suffice it to say, as a geneticist I would not recommend this book to anyone. It is so full of errors and faulty reasoning that one cannot depend on the veracity of anything he says. He also seems to have a poor grasp of world history and has no actual training in population or evolutionary genetics, which shows when he attempts to explain what his findings mean. He also grossly misrepresents the work of other legitimate evolutionary biologists doing similar kinds of research, researchers from whom he has used data since he has generated none of his own data. Besaides, most lay readers would likely not be able to make any sense whatsoever of his explanations. Even I, as a trained molecular systematist, couldn’t make sense of many of his convoluted explanations, and have had to conclude that parts of this book are barely better than word salad.
Lastly, it should be noted that the research on which he based much of this book has not been published in peer-reviewed journals. Every one of his papers on the topic have been published in Answers in Genesis internal journals, which undergo no real peer review. If his results had any validity, their extraordinary conclusions would immediately be published in the likes of Nature or Science, but given the disaster his research represents, such papers would never pass peer review. Thus the reason he chose to share his work in a book like this, I assume.
So, basically, I am hoping for advice or examples of how to deal with this book if approached about it. Have any of the rest of you had such interactions already? What kind of response to the book are any of you seeing in your local interactions, either in person or online? What are some practical ways to counter what I see as seriously flawed disinformation about human history?