Too much information

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this past week about a scientist by the name of Bruce Lahn who is a Professor at the University of Chicago. The gist of the story is that he is a world renowned scientist in the field of genetics and spent several years analyzing DNA from various populations looking at how mutations over the past several thousand years might be linked to cultural development. Oops. The data did not suit the outcome desired by the politically correct crowd. Even though Dr. Lahn is of Asian descent, his findings that lead to maps showing mutations and brain size and accomplishments followed those who established themselves in Asia, Europe and the Americas exceeded those of the people who were analyzed in sub- Saharan Africa were not appreciated. The usual charges of racism were hurled at him and even his own school advised him to go into other pursuits rather than raise the ire of the critics who want nothing to confirm what we all strongly suspect--there is a genetic basis for behavior and intelligence. Dr. Lahn, who left China as a teenager, based his research on the premise that there was a small group of anatomically modern humans who left Africa some 100,000 years ago and once they reached the Eurasian land mass they continued to split up and became isolated from one another. Thus genetic analysis of these groups was undertaken to determine if various traits could be identified which developed differently. So, one finds lactose intolerance in Europeans, for example, is much less common than in the African gene pool. This could be explained by a theory which holds that drinking milk from domesticated dairy animals conferred a nutritional advantage which was not needed by those in Africa with different eating habits. Likewise, the African population has a resistance to malaria which is not observed in other populations to the North. These traits are perfectly fine to publish, but not theories which would hold that one gene Dr. Lahn found corellated with the appearance of art on cave walls and another appears in a group which occured 5,800 years ago and coincided with the development of cities and written language. It is not necessary to point out that none of this happened in the sub-Saharan African population left behind, of course.
Well, the uproar over this research is most interesting but not surprising. There is simply some research that the liberal establishment does not want done. The results could be awkward for these antiscientific protectors of African descendents and their argument is that the knowledge does not help anyone and could be "hurtful". As a scientist, I would like to see the results and doubt they should cause damage we can't handle. In any event, it is an interesting dynamic.