Last summer I wrote in the New York Times about a controversy over one of the most influential concepts in the recent history of evolutionary biology. Known as inclusive fitness, it basically says that helping relatives can be a good way to pass on your genes, because they’ve got your genes too.

In August, Nature published a lengthy paper by Martin Nowak, E.O. Wilson, and Corina E. Tarnita in which they argued that inclusive fitness was mathematically flawed and basically superfluous. I had no trouble finding other scientists who were ready to say all sorts of scathing things about Nowak et al. I’m no fan of ginning up fake debates, but when somebody says, “This paper, far from showing shortcomings