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Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

science.org

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Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#51

Post by vmception »

nefitty wrote: post #49
vmception wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what they're trying to convey is that certain phenotypes have correlations to an overly broad construct, and with your example it is only showing that certain debilitating evolutionary paths are correlated or exclusively within a subset of people with those phenotypes not that hard, to me, let me know when you get there though

You're being unnecessarily condescending when my comment was sincere and inviting of new information. I'm not really sure what you intended to accomplish with that last line, except making yourself feel superior to a stranger online who hasn't read some book or taken some class you have?

yeah you’re right, so without that last line what do you think

its not supposed to be new information, its supposed to deconstruct that people in the largest continent on the planet have the most genetic diversity and only chose/were forced to group together for shared representation after noticing they all got a shitty parallel experience in some other continents

the same concept applies to other groups that happen to overlap in some unique phenotypes

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#52

Post by nverno »

jevoten wrote: post #40
nverno wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can also distinguish at a much finer level than the typical black, white, asian races. It's a social construct because the cutoff for being one or the other is determined by whatever matters to people in a society, not because science can distinguish them.

That the precise cutoffs are socially constructed does not imply the categorization itself is not biological. It's simply a coarse clustering based on kinship, that can be reproduced without reference to any society. Edit: To the replies claiming the categorization is arbitrary and mostly cultural - that does not appear to be the case. In fact, it almost perfectly corresponds to genotype principal component plot clus…

You could group people by hair color or eye color as well, without reference to any society. But, the social importance of that grouping could vary greatly between societies. Eg. not many people care about who is an Ionian or an Achaean in modern society.

The racial distinctions (at least today in the west) are associated with biological traits, and specifically the ones that are visually obvious. But, I think those biological traits are used socially to distinguish groups that are considered different for other reasons (values, beliefs, etc.).

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#54

Post by ofTheFountain »

jevoten wrote: post #40
nverno wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can also distinguish at a much finer level than the typical black, white, asian races. It's a social construct because the cutoff for being one or the other is determined by whatever matters to people in a society, not because science can distinguish them.

That the precise cutoffs are socially constructed does not imply the categorization itself is not biological. It's simply a coarse clustering based on kinship, that can be reproduced without reference to any society. Edit: To the replies claiming the categorization is arbitrary and mostly cultural - that does not appear to be the case. In fact, it almost perfectly corresponds to genotype principal component plot clus…

The categorisation isn't fully biological though, it's far heavier in the cultural camp. And even when it is biological, it's mainly phenotypic, which isn't adequate for genetic research.

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#55

Post by nobody9999 »

"Race" is an outdated term that is rightly being supplanted by terms such as "geographic locus," "ethnicity" and "ancestry."

There is, AFAIK, only one sentient primate "race" on the Earth, Homo Sapiens.

And the members of that species are, genetically, incredibly closely related.

Differences in melanin content, bodily proportions and other immutable traits don't rise to the level of a different species for Homo Sapiens.

As such, referring to disparate groups by their geographic locus, ethnicity or ancestry is much more precise than using outdated terms like "race."

It's not about "wokeness" or "political correctness." Rather, it's about precision and more useful groupings of individuals.

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#56

Post by rectang »

_od5n wrote: post #50

Quoted post unavailable.

"Created equal" doesn't mean cloned. Even in the 18th century nobody would have thought that.

It means that regardless of whether you are an athletic prodigy, someone with developmental disabilities, or anybody else, you are deserving of equal share in governance — in contrast with aristocracy where some are considered more worthy to rule over others by dint of who they are.

With a different version of "created equal", the whole meaning of the rest of your post changes.

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#57

Post by [deleted] »

dhosek wrote: post #24

Of course all the initial commenters are going to declare that this is political correctness gone amok who haven't actually read the article (it was behind a paywall for me), but here are some things that I know from my own reading: 1. "Black" is a not especially useful categorization as there are multiple genetically distinct strains of ancestry within Africa. It's likely that there's a greater difference geneticall…

[deleted]

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#58

Post by esyir »

nverno wrote: post #23
polski-g wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter. The problem with this line of thinking is that race is a genetic term. Crime investigators can determine race from a blood droplet. NHS has a monthly begging campaign for "black blood" donations. And the biggest thing is that race corresponds to generic ancestry with 99.86% accuracy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/

They can also distinguish at a much finer level than the typical black, white, asian races. It's a social construct because the cutoff for being one or the other is determined by whatever matters to people in a society, not because science can distinguish them.

So is ancestry. All Phylogenetic histories with any form of categorization is by definition a social construct. Social constructs, however, are not useless.

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#59

Post by sbelskie »

_od5n wrote: post #50

Quoted post unavailable.

From your link:

> However, a large genome-wide association study has failed to find any large or statistically significant effects of the MAOA gene on aggression.[47] A separate GWAS on antisocial personality disorder likewise did not report a significant effect of MAOA.[48] Another study, while finding effects from a candidate gene search, failed to find any evidence in a large GWAS.[46] A separate analysis of human and rat genome wide association studies, Mandelian randomization studies, and causal pathway analyses likewise failed to reveal robust evidence of MAOA in aggression.[49] This lack of replication is predicted from the known issues of candidate gene research, which can produce many substantial false positives.[50]

Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers

#60

Post by bytelines »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #48
bytelines wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Human geneticists have mostly abandoned the word “race” when describing populations in their papers, according to a new study of research published in a leading genetics journal. That’s in line with the current scientific understanding that race is a social construct, and a welcome departure from research that in the past has often conflated genetic variation and racial categories, says Vence Bonham, a social scient…

Race being a social construct is an idea of social justice ideology, not of science. Race as a category is incredibly useful for science, and using it is standard practice in forsensic investigations for example.

> Race being a social construct is an idea of social justice ideology, not of science.

Source?

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