Michael Lewis telling fish tales?

Jonas Moody, who has lived on Iceland for the past seven years, takes Michael Lewis to task for some inaccuracies and other odd things in his Vanity Fair piece about the country’s economic crisis.

5. “Icelanders are among the most inbred human beings on earth — geneticists often use them for research.”

Now this is insulting. Icelanders’ DNA shows their roots to be a healthy mix between Nordic Y chromosomes and X chromosomes from the British Isles. The reason genetic-research company deCODE uses Icelandic genes for its research is not because the codes are so homogeneous, but because the population has kept excellent genealogical records dating back thousands of years.

I sort of shrugged my shoulders at this stuff when I read the piece and forged ahead for the financial meat and potatoes, but it doesn’t read so well when collected all in one place like this. Was the piece supposed to be a farce? If not, it doesn’t reflect well on Lewis or his editors at VF. (thx, micah)

• 2008 recession
• economics
• Iceland
• jonasmoody
• journalism
• Michael Lewis