[5][6][7] In May 2021, Wade published an article in support of the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis,[8] contrary to the prevailing scientific view,[9][10][11][12] and fueling controversy on the origins of the virus.

He released Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors in 2006, which is about what Wade referred to as "two vanished periods" in human development, and The Faith Instinct in 2009, about the evolution of religious behaviour.

[27][5][6][7] On 8 August 2014, The New York Times Book Review published an open letter signed by 139 faculty members in population genetics and evolutionary biology[5][6] which read:[27] Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q.

We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade's conjectures.After publication, the letter was signed by four more faculty members.

[5][6] The book was further criticised in a series of five reviews by Agustín Fuentes, Jonathan M. Marks, Jennifer Raff, Charles C. Roseman and Laura R. Stein, which were published together in the scientific journal Human Biology.

"[29] Biologist H. Allen Orr called the book "lively and generally serviceable", but said it was "not [...] without error", stating that Wade had overstated the evidence for recent natural selection in the human genome.

[30] In May 2021, Wade published a 10,000-word article on Medium and later in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists titled "The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?"