r/neoliberal • u/ghhewh Anne Applebaum • Aug 11 '24

Richard Dawkins lied about the Algerian boxer, then lied about Facebook censoring him Opinion article (non-US)

https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/richard-dawkins-lied-about-the-algerian

634 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

u/BBlasdel Norman Borlaug Aug 11 '24

He did not have important academic contributions, he was a very successful popularizer of the ideas of other people, and got lucky that those people didn't mind how heavily he has always implied that those ideas were his.

42

u/ToInfinity_MinusOne World's Poorest WSJ Subscriber Aug 11 '24

Dawkins is arguably the most influential evolutionary biologist since Darwin himself. What are you talking about? His academic contributions are massive in the field.

21

u/mrdilldozer Shame fetish Aug 11 '24

Yeah, The Selfish Gene was a big fucking deal. It's not like it was full of a ton of original research, but he doesn't pretend it is. The book was basically designed to say, "Hey everyone, here's how we should view evolution, and here is a layman's version of what current research says supporting this. The book was influential because people read it and agreed with him.

16

u/ToInfinity_MinusOne World's Poorest WSJ Subscriber Aug 11 '24

He did do a lot of research on the topic. The book was just a way of communicating to a larger audience. It wasn’t really his intention for it to become popular science for lay people. But it is arguably the first popular science book. And he kicked off the scientists as media personalities that is now widespread. But he’s the real deal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins_bibliography

2

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