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THE NEWYORKER, OCTOBER 18, 2021 3
If these variables were represented by
a deck of fallen playing cards, then we
could be confident that in “carefully”
gathering them we would retrieve all
fifty-two cards. But in observational re-
search this certainty is never possible:
researchers cannot know if they’ve left
a few cards, or nearly the entire deck,
on the floor.
In the emergency room, we see how
the genetic factors in a patient’s case are
often dwarfed by poverty, racism, cli-
mate change, and violence. Could a bet-
ter understanding of genetics help me
with my patients? Of course. But I fear
that this observational research could
be used as an excuse to avoid address-
ing the environmental inequities that
hurt my patients daily.
Bradley Shy
Aurora, Colo.
1
REMEMBERING DERRICK BELLAs a longtime friend and colleague of
Derrick Bell’s—Thurgood Marshall
had us share a closet-size office while
working at the Legal Defense Fund in
the nineteen-sixties—I was moved by
Jelani Cobb’s vivid portrait of Bell (“The
Limits of Liberalism,” September 20th).
Derrick never lost his ironic sense of
humor or his willingness to mix per-
sonal commitment with a tolerance for
disagreement. Though Derrick’s pessi-
mism was perhaps bolstered by the ju-
dicial regressions that followed the few
years of progress after Brown v. Board
of Education, he once acknowledged to
me that the Supreme Court had opened
the door to a world of changes for Black
people—just far too few to vanquish
white supremacy.
Michael Meltsner
Professor of Law
Northeastern University
Cambridge, Mass.GENES AND DESTINY
I read with interest Gideon Lewis-
Kraus’s Profile of the behavior geneti-
cist Kathryn Paige Harden (“Force of
Nature,” September 13th). My academic
research relates to Harden’s concerns re-
garding attention paid to the political
connotations of who does, and does not,
perceive genomics as having a signifi-
cant influence on human traits and be-
haviors. In my book “Genomic Politics,”
I conclude that, with few exceptions,
beliefs about the validity and the im-
pact of genomics are not related to par-
tisan identity or to political ideology. I
found that disagreements about whether
genomic science will, on balance, ben-
efit or harm society do exist among the
American public and among experts—
but not along liberal and conservative
lines. Whether left-leaning people can
embrace genetics is probably the wrong
question to ask. Research shows that
some progressives and some conserva-
tives can be convinced of the utility of
genomics, even if others cannot. Poli-
tics does matter in scientific debates,
but not all disputes should be cast as
ideological or partisan.
Jennifer Hochschild
Jayne Professor of Government
Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass.
Lewis-Kraus notes that an observational
study promoted by Harden was “care-
fully controlled for childhood socio-
economic status.” As an associate pro-
fessor at the University of Colorado’s
medical school and an emergency-room
doctor, I contemplated the use of the
phrase “carefully controlled.” I caution
my students and residents about the
limitations of observational studies,
which make up much of the genetic re-
search cited in the piece. It’s not that
observational research is inferior to ran-
domized controlled trials; rather, it re-
sides in a category that by itself can
never establish causation. I worry that
people might misunderstand “carefully
controlled” as implying that all con-
founding variables were fully measured.
•
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