I think he's responding to the line "harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has hindered medical advancements" which I would consider false. The existence of genetic diseases that are largely present in a single race has been known for a long time. Tay-Sachs is seen almost entirely in Ashkenazi Jews, Sickle Cell is mostly seen in Africans, etc. I don't think "identity politics" is rejecting this notion, or if it is it's doing a bad job of it.

To be honest, it's equally difficult to have a serious discussion about science related to ethnicity when people insist on using an interesting piece of research as a launchpad to make tangential and evidence-free claims that social science is harming serious research, regardless of whether they actually harbour any sympathy for the viewpoints of your garden variety racist or not.

At the time of this article only two of the many subthreads related to this article had descended into politics and name-calling. One was initiated by your very own unsubstantiated attack on "identity politics". The other (considerably less favourably-received) post was claimed the notion of a social element to race that was the work of "lunatics and agitators seeking to attack and disrupt western society" and argued the researchers were doing themselves and society a disservice by engaging with it. Remind me who it was that's putting a negative slant on useful medical research again.

I'll admit my snipe at the end about identity politics was inflammatory, but it's specifically because of my frustrations trying to have any sort of serious discussion about these types of topics. People immediately throwing out the racist card and comparing you to neo-nazis for wanting to discuss the topic is /exactly/ what I mean by "identity politics" although its just one of the more pernicious subsets. My attack on "identity politics" is substantiated by my own experiences and a significant body of philosophical work, but probably this is not the appropriate forum for it.

As a side note, when I started my thread there were more than 60 upvotes on the article and no comments. At least there's a discussion.