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[Phys-l] OT, Maybe not so. Self censorship in Human Imunology



I thought not to post until I came across:

"Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research
publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it
may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical
dogma."

Full excerpt:

SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL PULLS ARTICLE THAT FINDS PALESTINIANS AND JEWS FROM
SAME GENE POOL

ROBIN MCKIE, OBSERVER, UK - A keynote research paper showing that
Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical
has been pulled from a leading journal. Academics who have already
received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the
offending pages and throw them away. Such a drastic act of
self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has
created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the
suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma. 'I have
authored several hundred scientific papers, some for Nature and
Science, and this has never happened to me before,' said the article's
lead author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of
Complutense University in Madrid. 'I am stunned.' British geneticist
Sir Walter Bodmer added: 'If the journal didn't like the paper, they
shouldn't have published it in the first place. Why wait until it has
appeared before acting like this?'

The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New
York, claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its
extreme political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. The
article has been removed from Human Immunology's website, while
letters have been written to libraries and universities throughout the
world asking them to ignore or 'preferably to physically remove the
relevant pages'. Arnaiz-Villena has been sacked from the journal's
editorial board. Dolly Tyan, president of the American Society of
Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, which runs the journal, told
subscribers that the society is 'offended and embarrassed'.. . .

In common with earlier studies, the team found no data to support the
idea that Jewish people were genetically distinct from other people in
the region. In doing so, the team's research challenges claims that
Jews are a special, chosen people and that Judaism can only be
inherited. Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East share a very
similar gene pool and must be considered closely related and not
genetically separate, the authors state. Rivalry between the two races
is therefore based 'in cultural and religious, but not in genetic
differences', they conclude.

But the journal, having accepted the paper earlier this year, now
claims the article was politically biased and was written using
'inappropriate' remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its
editor told the journal Nature last week that she was threatened by
mass resignations from members if she did not retract the article.
Arnaiz-Villena says he has not seen a single one of the accusations
made against him, despite being promised the opportunity to look at
the letters sent to the journal. He accepts he used terms in the
article that laid him open to criticism. There is one reference to
Jewish 'colonists' living in the Gaza strip, and another that refers
to Palestinian people living in 'concentration' camps.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,605798,00.html

bc, who thanks UNDERNEWS MAR 2