Jennifer Raff

"Anthropological geneticists should participate in because of the complexity of their work, its implications for human health and societies, and its tendency to be co-opted for particular political or social agendas. They are positioned to offer important contributions to public conversations on issues of race, genetic identity, history, and conflict. There are multiple avenues to public outreach for academics; among them, is a powerful, underused tool."

"... Getting the science wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn’t vaccinate children because they’re afraid of “toxins” and think that prayer (or diet, exercise, and “”) is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen."

"The maintain that their ancestors were a seafaring people who have lived in since the dawn of history. This discovery of this man, whom the Tlingit called , was consistent with that they descend from an ancient, coastally adapted people who engaged in long-distance trade."

"In her new book, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” Raff beautifully integrates new data from different sciences (archaeology, genetics, linguistics) and different ways of knowing, including Indigenous oral traditions, in a masterly retelling of the story of how, and when, people reached the Americas. While admittedly not an archaeologist herself, Raff skillfully reveals how well-dated archaeological sites, including recently announced 22,000-year-old human footprints from , are . She builds a persuasive case with both archaeological and genetic evidence that the path to the Americas was coastal (the ) rather than inland, and that was not a bridge but a homeland — twice the size of Texas — inhabited for millenniums by the ancestors of the . Throughout, Raff effectively models how science is done, how hypotheses are tested, and how new data are used to refute old ideas and generate new ones."