Similarly, creationists have argued (in an unsuccessful legal brief before the Supreme Court by the Creation Legal Research Fund) that there is no direct "proof" for human macroevolution. "The evidence for evolution is far less compelling than we have been led to believe," states the brief. "Evolution is not a scientific 'fact,' since it cannot actually be observed in a laboratory."

Such posturing by the tobacco industry, creationists and environmental determinists is scientific hogwash. As Barbara Ehrenreich and Janet McIntosh wrote in the liberal weekly the Nation in 1997, this is yet another round of an unrelenting, almost hysterical, attack on the scientific method by a coterie of influential social thinkers, including Marks of UNC-Charlotte. Its goal is entirely political: to caricature the clear scientific fact that there are biologically based commonalties in populations to support the now-discredited belief that humans are a blank slate, shaped entirely by their environment and culture.

This ideologically driven perspective is infected by a fundamental misunderstanding of scientific reasoning, which rarely lends itself to "smoking guns" and absolute certainty. The search for scientific truth is a process. It may be years before we identify a gene that ensures that humans grow five fingers, but we can be assured there is one, or a set of them. We have yet to find the gene set for height, yet we can be quite certain that if one exists, men will be more likely to have it than women. Most theories, including those in genetics, rely on circumstantial evidence tested against common sense, known science and the course of history. If scientific theories depended only upon observable evidence or laboratory experiments, then everything from the theory of relativity to the certainty that the Earth revolves around the sun could be written off as speculative.

The fact that geneticists cannot yet isolate the chromosomes that contribute to hip-shifting, breakaway running does not automatically undermine the theory that such skills are genetically based -- any more than the lack of an eyewitness at a crime is proof that the crime never happened. It may be years before geneticists isolate particular strands of DNA linking population clusters to athletics, "but that is not the same as saying that there is not a genetic basis for the racial patterns we see in sports," asserts Bengt Saltin, a physiologist, director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute and author of the cover story on why athletes are born, not made, in the September Scientific American. "Identifying genes will not and cannot expect to resolve the issue. The basis for the success of black runners is in the genes. There is no question about that."

Although ideological critics will undoubtedly continue to spin this issue, "what began as a healthy skepticism about misuses of biology [has become] a new form of dogma," write Ehrenreich and McIntosh. "Like the religious fundamentalists, the new academic creationists defend their stance as if all of human dignity -- and all hope for the future -- were at stake," they add. But "in portraying human beings as pure products of cultural context, the secular creationist standpoint not only commits biological errors but defies common sense."

Here's a challenge to academic creationists, who are far better at mau-mauing than rational debate: If there are no biological differences that contribute to the vast performance disparities in sports, what is the explanation for the fact that 498 of the top 500 100-meter times in history are held by athletes of primarily West African ancestry? And why shouldn't we discuss it?

Limiting the rhetorical use of that problematic concept of race, an admirable goal, is not going to make the patterned biological variation on which it is based disappear. Although people share a common humanity, we are different in critical ways, such as our varying genetic susceptibility to diseases.

Sports is a wonderful metaphor to encourage a constructive discussion of the wonderful benefits and potential ethical concerns ushered in by the revolution in genetics. Indeed, if we do not welcome the impending genetic revolution with open minds, if we are scared to ask and to answer difficult questions, if we lose faith in science, then there is no winner; we all lose. The question is no longer whether genetic research will continue but to what end.

Athletic competition, which offers a definitiveness that eludes most other aspects of life, is a perfect laboratory for a serious exploration of our humanity. The challenge is in whether we can conduct the debate so that human diversity might be cause for celebration of our individuality rather than a source of distrust. After all, in the end, for all our differences, we are far, far more similar.

"If decent people don't discuss human biodiversity," writes George Mason University professor Walter Williams in a review of "Taboo" in American Enterprise magazine, "we concede the turf to black and white racists."

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